What motivates the AI?

[Kraut and Tea]

I recently had a conversation via steam about the campain AI and more specificaly about what motivates the AI to march into certain directions.

Because ever since I played the tw series since Rome 1, I have been under the impression that the AI tries to conquere the regions that are that factions victory regions.

That is the conclusion that I drew out of my tw campains over the years when I watched the Spanish in Medieval 2 build their empire or the British in Empire go to India and everyone in Shogun 2 went for Kyoto.

So one of the main reason I thought was responsible for the redicilous empires in Rome 2 were the horrendously stupid victory conditions.

When some of the victory conditions were revealed for Attila and shown to be historicaly accurate (Visigoths have to conquere Iberia) I was very excited and hoping for somewhat accurate empire building.

But on steam someone negated me and told me that the campain AI does not care about voctory conditions and is directed by other influences?

So was I wrong over all those years?

[Butan]

I can say by looking at some R2 CAI mods that there is a ton of other variables than victory conditions for CAI moves in R2. If victory conditions are of any significance, you would need to dive into a lot of tables to confirm or not. And then, in Attila it may or may not be the same.

It probably is one of the AI logic, but I dont know if it has a lot of weight compared to more down to earth situations, like where to expand, where to send troops to defend, etc.