Emotive Diplomacy & Campaign AI 1.2

[Brenil]

Emotive Diplomacy & Campaign AI 1.2

by Brenil

REQUIRES THE LEAKED 1.2 PATCH (DOES WORK WITH 1.2 BUT USE AT YOUR OWN RISK)

Download Link:

http://files.filefront.com//;7382245;/

What is Emotive AI?

Emotive AI is a campaign and diplomacy enhancement modification for Medieval 2: Total War. The goal of Emotive AI is to improve the vanillia campaign AI within Medieval 2 in many aspects to make it more challenging, logical, and most importantly, fun. The best way to describe how Emotive AI plays is a 'middle of the road' AI mod. I seek not to completely rewrite how the AI reacts, yet improve on the work that CA has done and add personality to each faction.

Installation

To properly install Emotive AI, I've made it easy by already providing the mod switch files required to play a mod with Medieval 2. To install Emotive AI 1.2, do the following:

1) Unzip the file to your Medieval 2 directory.
2) Read the readme.
3) Place the EmotiveAI folder in your Medieval 2 directory (default is C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War)
4) Double click the Launch_EmotiveAI1.2
5) Play!

Changelog for Emotive 1.2's Campaign AI

- AI targetting adjusted for early game to make them more apt to attack rebels.
- Milan's unchecked imperialism has been drastically toned down to attempt to maintain a 'city-state' mentality.
- Papal States no longer should be an aggressive faction, purely a responsive one.
- Wars of annihilation are now much less common.
- Ceasefires are easier to obtain with nations you're obviously beating.
- Ceasefires occur during 'border skirmishes', where nations will fight a brief war and then seek peace, rather than trying to always annihilate their foe.
- Ceasefires are occasionally offered by the aggressor if they feel the war has become a quagmire.
- Various diplomatic changes (listed below).
- Raids reduced in frequency.
- Faction standings reworked in several areas.
- Faction standing triggers reworked to prevent rapid standing loss based on difficulty.
- Faction standings for all nations have been reworked to make obvious natural enemies and allies.
- Factions will not ally with nations they do not like (player excluded).
- Factions will seek natural allies during the first part of the game (semi-historic).
- Factions will base their alliance decisions on their like or dislike for a nation.
- Factions will be more apt to ally with nations that are enemies of their enemies or friends of their friends.
- Factions have no restrictions on alliance (Catholics can ally with Muslims), however these are uncommon.
- Early game slowed down and priotry given to grabbing rebel settlements increased.
- Early wars are slow and scattered.

Diplomacy Changes

- Cash is king. Monetary offers are now more highly valued than others (exceptions exist, such as offering to attack another faction).
- Trade rights, map information, and other 'minor' offers yield less excited reaction and conflict.
- Marriage offers now can go two ways depending the offer and the persons involved. While an average offer might be thought of as generous, offering to marry to an heir or faction leader could cause for some money needing to be changed hands.
- Vassals are slightly more common than in vanillia.
- Ceasefires reworked (as mentioned above) to create more 'regional wars'.
- Nullifying a treaty slightly effects your global reputation more & causes your faction standing to react (usually negatively).
- Various other smaller changes.

Mod Changes

- Turns counter replaced with date (turns show as years)
- Gunpowder pushed back to 1325-1350.
- Sicily given a more distinctive coloring (less like Rebels).

This is the mod itself and has no bearing on the campaign or diplomatic AI. In the future I may end up adding more features to the mod; yet for right now it's basically just a very slightly modified vanillia Medieval 2.

Future Goals

- Personalized nation behaviour (preview of this in the current version with the Papal States & Milan)
- Finely tuned alliances
- More intelligent diplomacy behaviour
- Refined AI army management
- AI army make-up improvements

Known Issues

- Certain factions (Moors especially) will sometimes ignore factors in place of who they can and cannot ally with. So if you see them ally with the Papal States don't be alarmed, it's errant code from 1.2 leaked patch causing it.

None beyond that yet in my testing. If you run across any, let me know and I'll add them.

Special Thanks

GrandViz for his excellent Ultimate AI mod. His mod and him personally helped alot in creating the alliances within Emotive AI 1.2. I greatly appreciate his work and his help.

Playing Recommendations

I would recommend playing any campaign with Emotive AI on either hard or very hard for a challenge and active wars. If you play on medium, the campaign will be slower and less difficult. Also, blitzing the AI is not recommended as it will make the campaign too easy.

If any of you have any problems, questions, or comments just let me know and I'll answer them to the best of my ability as soon as I can.

Enjoy!

[Axe-Battler]

it sounds good, but I'm pretty happy with the vanilla 1.2 ai.

I may try this later.

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

Thanks - I'll give it a go - this sounds like exactly what I was looking for. However, I'll only use the AI part since I use my own descr_events.txt along with LTC 2.2 and BBB 1.9+.

So I'll only use

descr_campaign_ai_db.xml
descr_diplomacy.xml
descr_faction_standing.txt
descr_strat.txt (modded to fit my own 0.5 timescale changes)
descr_sm_factions.txt
descr_win_conditions.txt

On top of the other mods. I'll report my experiences later.

Just a few thoughts on your future plans: In general, I prefer mods dealing with one specific aim - no offense intended, but I don't get why a diplomacy mod should incorporate anything else but diplomacy. I think BBB does an excellent job there - it is completely focused on traits and retinue and does an excellent job in this, because two ppl deal with this and only this and it can be incorporated into virtually any other mod.
Sure, I can pick the AI related files myself and use it on top of another mod, but if this is focused on diplomacy, why incorporate things that have allready been modded in different variations?

Again - no pun intended and thanks for your effort.

[Brenil]

descr_strat.txt (modded to fit my own 0.5 timescale changes)

The only thing you need from my descr_strat to play with LTC is the bottom diplomacy section. Just copy and paste it from mine, delete it from LTC's and paste it in there and it'll be fine. If you replace LTC's you'll lose alot of Lusted's work and it could adversly effect your LTC.

Sure, I can pick the AI related files myself and use it on top of another mod, but if this is focused on diplomacy, why incorporate things that have allready been modded in different variations?

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Future plans is basically what I'm pondering doing but haven't decided on yet. I'm not attempting to make another gameplay mod intertwined with a diplomacy AI mod.

It really depends on how popular this mod becomes as to where I'll go with it. However, it will always be a diplomacy and campaign AI mod first and foremost. The changes I listed as possible in the future to the mod itself are mostly very basic (except adding new factions) and will be purely optional if I do decide to even do it.

There'll always be the option to just download the vanillia files if I do decide to change some gameplay aspects, so don't worry. One of my aims is to make it compatible with all gameplay mods out there eventually (it works fine with LTC btw, although it's a touch more difficult due to Lusted's money script).

Thanks for your input and I look foward to any other opinions anyone else may have.

[war91]

The only thing you need from my descr_strat to play with LTC is the bottom diplomacy section. Just copy and paste it from mine, delete it from LTC's and paste it in there and it'll be fine. If you replace LTC's you'll lose alot of Lusted's work and it could adversly effect your LTC.



Yeah, I know what you're saying. Future plans is basically what I'm pondering doing but haven't decided on yet. I'm not attempting to make another gameplay mod intertwined with a diplomacy AI mod.

It really depends on how popular this mod becomes as to where I'll go with it. However, it will always be a diplomacy and campaign AI mod first and foremost. The changes I listed as possible in the future to the mod itself are mostly very basic (except adding new factions) and will be purely optional if I do decide to even do it.

There'll always be the option to just download the vanillia files if I do decide to change some gameplay aspects, so don't worry. One of my aims is to make it compatible with all gameplay mods out there eventually (it works fine with LTC btw, although it's a touch more difficult due to Lusted's money script).

Thanks for your input and I look foward to any other opinions anyone else may have.

So if I copy and paste the diplomacy part from the bottom of descr_strat in this mod, and put it in LTC,I would get the good AI from this mod in LTC?

I would put this in the LTC descr_strat text, where diplomacy is.

[Brenil]

Yes when you scroll down to the bottom of a descr_strat, you'll see:

"Start of Diplomacy section"

Below that is a bunch of values and faction names. Copy that entire section from the Emotive descr_strat until you get the the slaves section.

Then open your LTC descr_strat and find the same spot and delete his (I suggest making a back-up before editing this). Paste mine in place of it and baam you have the correct Emotive faction standings for LTC.

I've tested Emotive with LTC and it works fine. However, due to Lusted's money script and larger (earlier) armies, it's far more difficult than my vanillia version. Expect earlier wars in LTC than in Emotive vanillia. Which isn't exactly a bad thing, but just be aware of it.

Also, if you're using Emotive AI with any other mods (LTC included), the key files you need for it to work properly are:

descr_strat (diplomacy section as mentioned above)
descr_campaign_ai_db.xml
faction_standings.txt
descr_diplomacy.xml

The descr_events and win_conditions.txt are not required to play Emotive AI with another mod. The only thing I change in those files is the gunpowder event date and tone down and specify the win conditions of each factions (which most gameplay mods already alter), respectively. Also, the descr_sm_factions.txt is not a requirement for playing with another mod either. The only thing I changed in this version in that file is Sicily's colors. I wouldn't advise overwriting a gameplay mod's sm_faction.txt with mine.

[war91]

Thank you greatly!

[DrJambo]

I have a question for you Brenil:

Do you know what the various invasion parameters mean exactly? Specifically:

invade_buildup

invade_raid

invade_opportunistic

The reason for the query is I'm interested in putting a stop to the AI sending in small stacks and instead trying to focus it to send in large stacks only. Any ideas?

[Brenil]

Specifically, no.

However, my speculation is thus (and I based the mod around):

Invade_build up is waiting to make bigger stacks prior to attacking and therefore requiring a good production to trigger. This generally takes longer.

Invade_raid is things like blockading or quick incurisons into enemy terroritory to 'raid' an understrength army or city. This in my best opinion is the cause of what you're looking to tone down.

Invade_opportunistic is where the enemy will attack when it sees a hole open in your defenses. Such as you move an army away from a settlement and the enemy army attacks said settlement the second you leave.

I taught myself most of what I know about AI editing, so I wouldn't take my opinions as fact. However, it seems to fit the bill so far.

I toned down the raids aspect, however they still occur. A large part of AI editing is trial and error; therefore it's rather difficult to pin down the right code for the desired outcome. It's not as simple as reducing or increasing a number, unfornately; there's many variables involved that can complicate the whole issue.

GrandViz solved this issue for the most part with Ultimate AI, if you need to know more you could try asking him.

[Plautus]

Sorry to say but:

The AI act more horrible senseless in terms of Diplomacy and global AI then the mtw1.0 vanilla version...

But good luck with future releases of your mod, i ll keep an eye on it.

[Axe-Battler]

Sorry to say but:

The AI act more horrible senseless in terms of Diplomacy and global AI then the mtw1.0 vanilla version...

But good luck with future releases of your mod, i ll keep an eye on it.

Nothing can be worse than 1.0 vanilla.

[Brenil]

Sorry to say but:

The AI act more horrible senseless in terms of Diplomacy and global AI then the mtw1.0 vanilla version...

But good luck with future releases of your mod, i ll keep an eye on it.

In what way exactly?

I don't mind criticism, but could you be a little more specific as to what problems you're having?

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

I'd say that all in all it's an improvement (HRE H/VH), but I'll have to play some more with 1.2's vanilla AI to make a valid comparison. Milan and the papal states behave as they were intended, which is a good thing. There are some issues with the AI first turning down offers for ceasefires and then happily accepting the same offer in the very same diplomatic session, but I think that's an 1.2 bug and can't be fixed in the mod.

I've noticed the AI besieging cities with too small armies, but as far as I remember, this has allways been a problem and has never really been fixed - it's a hardcoded matter about how invade_buildup is interpreted by the AI (did some AI modding myself a long time ago and quit due to frustration with hardcoded issues)...


All in all, the mod's a good start - keep it up!

[Brenil]

I've noticed the AI besieging cities with too small armies, but as far as I remember, this has allways been a problem and has never really been fixed - it's a hardcoded matter about how invade_buildup is interpreted by the AI (did some AI modding myself a long time ago and quit due to frustration with hardcoded issues)...

Actually, Ultimate AI seems to of fixed that issue, but I can't find out what exactly GrandViz did to get it that way.

In my playtests, I've never really noticed it near as much as it happened in vanillia. But it does happen on occasion, mostly with armies that have superior armies or the AI judges it's auto-resolve ratio is better than the target (which is right on occasion, thanks crappy auto-resolve).

Like I said earlier, the entire aspect of balancing AI invasion and army make-up (which I haven't tackled yet), is something that can only been fixed through trial and error, and lots and lots of testing.

Thus why, I seek as much input from the community as possible. Positive or negative, I care not as long as it's specific.

There are some issues with the AI first turning down offers for ceasefires and then happily accepting the same offer in the very same diplomatic session, but I think that's an 1.2 bug and can't be fixed in the mod.

The diplomacy changes still are a work in progress. I've already spotted some things that need changing. Such as:

- Offering and demanding attacks needs to be a far more valuable diplomactic tool.
- Payment per turn is screwed up and I dunno if I can fix it or it's hardcoded, yet for some reason when you offer 500 per turn it's more reasonable than 1000, quite odd.
- Ceasefires are still a little dodgy, sometimes they're too often other times too rare.

The issue you mentioned is indeed a bug I believe. I've noticed that for along time. Such as attempting to purchase map information, any offer you give is generous at least, then they'll always reject. That's been in the game for quite sometime. I haven't a clue how to fix it if it's even possible.

[Woad-Warrier]

How much easier is it to get Vassal in your mod? Currently in 1.2 it fairly easy (compared to 1.1) if you take them down to 1 settlement and they have no army about 4 units..

I seem to get the impression that if your 2x bigger than the country they'll become your vassal?

[Brenil]

Well, compared to vanillia 1.2 it's slightly more easier (as I said). The parameters for the AI to ask a nation for a vassal (their parameters for accepting are less) are thus:

Four times frontline strength (armies arrayed against you) than the target and at least the same production and free military balance as the target.

If a nation is one you think should be a vassal and you know you're beating them. Just as a rule of thumb use the brute force tactic of showing them your cards and line their frontline with your armies and then offer them a vassalship.

Odds are they'll accept (sometimes they require a bit of money, but nothing ridiculously high) if you meet those conditions.

It's now very possible to have an actual nation as your ally and not a one settlement. Even in 1.2 vanillia, as the French I made the HRE my vassal when they still had six settlements.

Just remember, it's mostly about military strength. If you have far more than them, they'll be more apt to yield, regardless of how much terroritory they own.

[Woad-Warrier]

Thanks for the fast reply

That sounds awesome! 6 provinces you say? I absolutely hate having to beat a faction to one provinces and eradicate their entire strength (even the garrison) to get them to be your vassal.

Oh and by the way I always give my vassals at least 3+ settlements, theres no point in having a one province vassal

[Woad-Warrier]

Will there be an update for the official 1.2 patch?

DOWNLOAD THIS MOD PEOPLE!

[Brenil]

Indeed there will.

I'll also be releasing a more LTC friendly version later tonight or tomorrow. A few changes will include:

- Less overally aggressive early game AI (due to Lusted's money script the AI would rush the player very early).
- Tweaked diplomacy and ceasefires.

Those are the only real major changes I'll be making. Again this will be mostly for LTC and it's changes and some experimental changes I've made to my version to see how it works prior to 1.3 (which will be released for 1.2 final).

[Woad-Warrier]

1.2 is out

Get working on 1.3

EDIT: Will your 1.2 work with the offical 1.2 patch btw?