Originally Posted by
CavalryCmdr
On Build personalities:
The AI's set to do nothing but build, so as to minimize uncontrollable variables, with the same excelerated city growth as before so the AI has to choose it's buildings rather then have time to build everything regardless.
I set up a test for 100 turns with 'unlimited' money (50000 at start, 15000 for kings purse)
I set up a test for 100 turns with 'normal' money (5000 at start, 1500 for kings purse)
I set up a test for 100 turns with 'low' money (1000 per settlement at start, 0 for kings purse)
For each of these I ran through 3 personalities, checking each building constructed in 39 different settlements. There is no appreciable difference in the different personalities with any of these three situations. Obviously there is a large difference between the 'unlimited' money and the 'low' money, but not the personalities at the same level. We are talking 3 to 4 total (as in all 39 towns added together) levels difference at most!
Bottom line: I am fairly confident in saying build personality (balanced, religious, trader, etc.) has no valuable effect on what buildings the AI constructs over the course of 100 turns. This is a tedious and time consuming process, with no noteworthy results, unless someone has some valuable info to change my mind, or there is significant interest, I am done testing build personalities as anything that dose not garnish results in 100 turns is not worth messing with IMO.
Actually 'no noteworthy results' in not quite true, the AI built the 'best' most well balanced towns with the 'normal' money levels, it seems the AI is well aware of income and with a 'kings purse' of 15,000 it had no need to build any income into their cities, they also neglected 'happiness' buildings. Unfortunately they did not use this extra time on military buildings either as they would have 1 or 2 of them maxed out with usually nothing built in the other 2 or 3 (out of Stable, Barracks, Range and Siege.) With 'normal' money they all tended to be closer with only a few settlements per faction building siege. To give a more clear understanding, 'unlimited' had a level 1 Stable and a 5 Barracks (with 0 for range and siege) while 'normal' had a level 2 stable, 3 barracks, 2 range and 2 siege. Also, 'normal' was much more likely to build higher level smiths so their lower end units would generally have armor upgrades.
However, the 'unlimited' money did have a tendency to max out their Ports and more importantly Walls (core buildings) while the 'normal' still tended to be a level or rarely two levels lower in each then they 'could' have been. Perhaps strange, 'normal' money had a much higher rate for building 'special' buildings (caravan, bull ring, jousting lists, bank etc) then 'unlimited.'
Unfortunately 'normal' also had much higher (total) levels of 'Inn' buildings, usually level 2-4 in each city, while the 'unlimited' tended to have level 1-3 in fewer cities. I have absolutely no idea why this is.
Also, 'normal' universally had a 'balanced' budget, consistently making a couple hundred more then they were spending per settlement (so factions with 8 settlements would have 2000-3000 income, while a faction with 2 would have 500 to 700 or so) while 'low' tended to barely brake even or sometimes loose money per turn regardless of how many settlements they had.
Edit: It is probably important to note that I have a completely re done buildings for my mod, eliminating 'castles' and incorporating those buildings into 'cities.' So this may or may not have some influence on these tests, I cannot be sure.