AI nomad reforms

[myarta]

Hey folks,

So I'm playing Saba for the first time and I was looking at the regions flagged as Arabian and Ethiopia where I can build some of my more advanced government buildings. Now, unfortunately Saba are not on the list of factions that can convert camps. But this is mostly irrelevant, since the cities flagged in their royal_core or in (arabian OR ethiopia) are all already cities, OR are permanent camps that NO ONE can convert. Except one, Rekem, the capital of the Nabatu:

faction    f_nabatu, balanced smith
ai_label        f_nabatu
denari    8000
denari_kings_purse    2000
settlement castle
{
    level town
    region region_189
;    province 'Edum - city Rekem


    year_founded 0
    population 1330
    plan_set default_set
    faction_creator f_nabatu
    building
    {
        type hinterland_province_u province_189
    }
    building
    {
        type core_castle_building wooden_castle
    }
    building
    {
        type govnabatu nabatu_confed
    }
    building
    {
        type herds stock_one
    }
    building
    {
        type caravans caravan
    }
    building
    {
        type temple_of_battle temple_of_battle_L1
    }
}

Now, their reform is tied to settling Rekem. But as you'll note, due to starting with a stock_one, they will never be able to build the large farm needed to qualify for the convert_to_city building process, unless they smash their herds building first. Having a stock_one will cap them at a mid-level farm. The AI, to my knowledge, never smashes buildings like this, so Rekem will always be a camp instead of a settled city unless it's played by a human player. The reform scripts for Nabatu don't make them only apply to the player; the AI and the player Nabatu have the same requirements. It's just that the AI will never, ever meet them because it can't upgrade the starting camp into a city without having scripted support for smashing the herd so they can build a larger farm.

What bugs me as a player of Saba is that I was thinking I would just wait for them to convert it into a city for me, and then steal it from them. But they never, ever will. So I'll have to take it and just leave it as a camp. Personally I dislike camps because they have so few building options. You get a few buildings set up then you just ignore that settlement for the rest of your campaign, I've found, because there are no more decisions to make there as long as it's not rioting or directly on a warfront. If I had noticed this earlier, I would have made Saba able to convert camps as well so I could handle Rekem myself, but I didn't and I don't feel like re-playing. But this does seem to totally lock the AI Nabatu out of advancing into its reforms.

Does anyone else try to watch the AI carefully to swoop in and steal camps from them once they're converted into villages, because you know if you take them too soon you'll be stuck with a camp? Or do people not care enough about whether a particular settlement is city or camp to go through that? Does it matter whether AI Nabatu stays at reform stage 1 throughout the campaign?

[QuintusSertorius]

I think there's a simple solution to this one: add a simpler set of AI conditions for the reform, as we've done in many other instances. Just triggered by them getting a certain number of settlements.

[myarta]

Yeah. In this case, they need cities for higher levels of government buildings (interestingly implemented with 'and building_present core_building' instead of 'city' before 'requires factions'), so they're still SOL in Rekem since they'll never convert it, so they'll just be at the early gov't there, but any of the pre-existing cities they settle can get the post-reform govt.

I think what I'll just do as far as the camps go is, if it's a remote camp that no one can convert, accept/RP it as a nomadic client-run place (or limited factional govt if I have a faction that can build govt's in camps). But if it's a camp that SOMEONE can convert, submod to unlock my faction converting as well, and house rule doing it under a client ruler. Since under some circumstances they'll make the decision to settle into a city themselves, I prefer the flexibility of facilitating this rather than hoping the AI builds farms instead of herds it doesn't know how to smash and leaving some regions unsettled that are acknowledged as historically feasibly settle-able by having received the 'mixed' flag.