Better CAI "PiterAI" (smarter opponents) EB 2.4a

[Piterx93]

I've added a new version. More naval invasions.

[Macaras]

Tested another game with the updated file, wow! It's fantastic, the war/peace cycle is very much fixed and the AI really shines now. There may be an occasional time when a war/peace issue happens but it's not enough to be noticeable. Thanks so much Piter!

Since I was closely watching AI sieges I did notice a couple things that could be improved if it's possible: While the AI usually brings a large enough army to a siege to have a decent chance of taking it, there are times where it will bring something like half the units that the city's garrison has, which of course makes it an automatic loss for the attacker. Sometimes (though not always) the attacker will bring another army along as reinforcements which would give them a good chance but the reinforcement army will stand one tile away from the city, keeping it out of the assault on the city so the attacker gets crushed.

So there's two things that could be improved: the AI more consistently bringing enough units in its initial army to have a chance at taking the city, or if it has reinforcements, making sure that army places itself close enough to the city to aid in the assault.

bob124 - the issue with attacking army being too small may be changed probably in descr_campaign_db.xml - in the <ai> section. There are some factors:

<sally_att_str_modifier float="0.8"/> - if too high - AI sally out too fast, too low - AI attacks settlements with too small armies
<siege_att_str_modifier float="0.35"/> - modifies the effective sieging attackers strength when determining the priority of making attack decision: If high AI attacks faster, but many times the attacker looses; if its too low AI is too hesitant in attacking.

You may try to adjust these factors and see how ai will behave.
About the second issue, I have no idea how to fix it, and I suspect that it may not be easy fixable (maybe in EOP or changing somehow the pathfinding).

[Piterx93]

bob124 - the issue with attacking army being too small may be changed probably in descr_campaign_db.xml - in the <ai> section. There are some factors:

<sally_att_str_modifier float="0.8"/> - if too high - AI sally out too fast, too low - AI attacks settlements with too small armies
<siege_att_str_modifier float="0.35"/> - modifies the effective sieging attackers strength when determining the priority of making attack decision: If high AI attacks faster, but many times the attacker looses; if its too low AI is too hesitant in attacking.

You may try to adjust these factors and see how ai will behave.
About the second issue, I have no idea how to fix it, and I suspect that it may not be easy fixable (maybe in EOP or changing somehow the pathfinding).

No, it's not because of it. I didn't use change these factors and folks used to see a difference.
These factors are set the highset as it possible to be.

<sally_att_str_modifier float="0.8"/> - if too high - AI sally out too fast, too low - AI attacks settlements with too small armies -

no it's opposite. If you set it to high then battle AI is broken. You can set here 1.0 and it will work great but the battle AI will be broken. The ai will not be able to use battering ram during sieges.

<siege_att_str_modifier float="0.35"/> - modifies the effective sieging attackers strength when determining the priority of making attack decision: If high AI attacks faster, but many times the attacker looses; if its too low AI is too hesitant in attacking.

Yes, it does but I will not fore the AI to attack by 2 armies. I've changed it to make AI a bit more passive as I wrote above.