AI Buildings and Armies

[Celtik]

Following my WIP on this mod (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...and-armies-mod), here is the release thread. Yes the mod is now ready for you to play with

You'll find it attached to this post. To install it, extract the pack file directly into your data folder Steam\SteamApps\common\Total War WARHAMMER\data. After that click on your game launcher and then on mod manager. Be sure the "enable out-of-date mods" is activated and that the mod is activated too. Don't worry about the warning, the mod was made with the latest game files but because I haven't uploaded it yet on the workshop it says that it's "outdated". It will work fine.

Last thing to do is to install the mod Tier 4 for minor settlements made by Mazz: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...earchtext=tier
My mod will work without it of course but the AI will be less efficient. Mazz mod allows yourself and the AI to build tier 4 buildings in minor settlements which is a great help. There is no way to tell the AI where to build things so it will very often build blacksmith, stables, gunsmith, etc. in minor settlements and those buildings will never reach the much needed tier 4. With Mazz mod and mine at least the AI will upgrade those buildings, allowing it to have access to higher tier units.


So what does this mod do?

It significantly improves the AI build order and the way it spends its money. I have created a unique AI personality for its building and spending policies. In vanilla CA created multiple personalities (at least 15 including some naval ones) and half of them greatly focus on economy and rarely build any recruitment buildings! It may have been a good thing in a game like Civilization but not in a TW game, especially a Warhammer game! Whatever faction you play, you focus on military recruitment with a supportive economy and not build farms and taverns everywhere. Now the AI will focus on recruitment, economy and defense buildings. This way the AI will have better access to more units including higher tier ones and much sooner than in vanilla. Even if the AI only has 1 settlement, it will try to build the best combination possible for recruitment.

The second improvement is on how the AI will recruit. You will find mods that change the army ratios but that doesn't work, or not very well. Now with easier access to high tier units and more balanced recruitment values, you will see much better AI armies. This is what I wanted when I made this mod:
- balanced: the AI armies will be made of a mix of every kind of units available in a balanced manner. No more missile heavy or arty heavy or even melee only armies.
- challenging and fun: with balanced armies and higher tier units you can be sure it will more difficult than beating a dwarf army full of miners! And more interesting too.
- varied: AI armies will not always be the same, I allowed the AI to be able to choose between different kind of units. You will see some greenskins armies with heavy lines of big uns but low mobility, some armies with more wolf riders and spiders but always in a balanced manner (no full stacks of only wolf chariots and missile spiders), some with no artillery even if those units are available while other armies will have 3-4 of them.

I also had to change some cheats the AI gets. It was necessary to increase the building discount cheat and the upkeep cheat by 5% for each difficulty level. Because now the AI needs a little buff to build all those new high tier buildings and keep its high tier units in its armies. 5% isn't a game changing so you probably won't even notice. I also gave the AI a moderate growth bonus, roughly the same bonus you get when deploying a priest or a vampire but the AI doesn't do it so it evens things out I guess. If you are using a mod that changes cheats please don't use it with my mod or they will overwrite one another.

What else?

I made some changes to the Chaos invasion and horde factions scripts. Now there is slightly better chance to see a horde faction reemerge, but the same faction won't be able to come back for a longer time. This will force a better rotation between savage orcs and Beastmen. The spawning armies will also have better unit composition.

The Chaos invasion will begin at the same time it begins in vanilla. I nerfed Varg and Skaeling a little bit more. Now they will be able to field 2 full stacks each on hard difficulty instead of 3. The first wave of Chaos will also have less armies but they will be stronger and more balanced, they will be composed of a mix of Norsca and Chaos units. Now I hope Kislev and the Empire factions should be able to hold off the invasion by themselves so you won't see the world in ruin before Archaon arrives! But when he comes you better be ready! They will strike hard and only you could do something about it. The end game Chaos armies are way more frightening than before but each of them should be different from one another while still being very much balanced. Here again you will see some armies with a heavy focus on infantry and giants, others very offensive with half the stack being made of Chaos knights, spawns and chariots for a full impact, and others with a bit of everything. And of course Beastmen! Also there will be less end game waves because they are now stronger.

Game compatibility

This mod is compatible with update 2 and hotfix, as well as Chaos and Beastmen DLC. It is unfortunately not savegame compatible because it heavily change the Chaos invasion and the hordes scripts. Besides you will only see the full effect of the new build order with the help of Mazz tier 4 mod if you start a new game.

Mods compatibility

This mod is not compatible with overhaul mods like Radious. Those mods change so many things, including most of the tables I used in my mod, they won't be able to work together. It is also not compatible with mods changing AI of course and won't work with mods that change the scripts for Chaos invasion and hordes spawn. It will however work with all graphical mods, faction mods, battle mods, and some focused gameplay mods like home region movement bonus, passive agents etc.

Now for units mods I don't know because they will use at least one of the table I used. If the modder did a good job and only added the line for its unit it won't break my mod. However if he just extracted the whole table and left it as is it will completely break the new recruitment system I made. If you know how to use the PFM (if you don't search for it on the forum, it's easy to use), have a look and see for yourself if your favorite units mod can work with mine. Otherwise ask me and I'll take a look when I have a moment.

Those are the mods I'm using:
- Mazz tier 4 minor settlements --> a must have mod imo, especially for AI.
- Better camera mod and Olympian campaign camera --> great camera mods for battle and campaign maps.
- Home region movement bonus --> 10% more movement in your own regions, it's logical and help catching invaders. Works for AI too so don't be too reckless when invading!
- Passive agents only --> the agents are so broken in this game it's not even worth using them. I like having heroes in my army however. If you prefer you can try an agent limiter instead.
- Happiness matters --> gives you more taxes if your provinces have a high public order, or lower you tax income if the public order is negative. Works for AI too and it's a nice mod to have, otherwise there's no difference if you have 99 public order or -99.

I strongly recommend to play on a light modded version of the game, it may very well be possible that some mods would break mine. I also recommend to get an agent limiter mod to make your life easier because the AI will have access to more heroes and will spam them.

Mod is now live! Here is the link to the workshop: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfile.../?id=761596200

[Godz_Mercenary]

Going to try, thanks mate. Will let you know how it goes.

[Arayel]

Ok so I'm 25 turns into an Orc Campaign and thought I would share what's what so far using your mod.

First off however here's a quick list of other, possibly relevant, mods that I have installed and am using alongside this.

- Asynchronous Combat Mod: My own mod that redsigns the factions based more on the Lore. Unit sizes, combat ability and damage has all been altered along with things like morale. Add to this my Animated Combat mod that changes attack speed and it's getting the the point of being borderline overhaul now as it affects both the campaign and the battle maps. For this playthrough I removed all tables that previously altered ai recruitment or personalities in any way.

- Lords of War Mod: Another Mod of my own creation, this time spreading out the LL's of the game into their own factions. Kemmler went to Mousillon, Ungrim went to Kadrin, Azhag takes the skullsmasherz up to Start in Troll Country, Malagor Starts in the Badlands with his own Warherd and Khazrak starts in the Drakwald face to face with Todbringer (swapping places with The Redhorns who now plague Estalia). The Empire keep Franz and Gelt as they need all the help they can get these days. Also removes confederation...it's a giant civil war setting...

- Restricted Agents: Again my mod, this time limiting the actions available to each type of agent and lowering the overall cap to 4 of each type.

- Fair Very Hard: This is the one that may cause the most issue as it levels the playing field on VH difficulty by making the player and ai have exactly the same bonuses, that is to say mostly none. To avoid conflict I actually removed the campaign difficulty table from your mod (sorry!!!) so there is a chance this could cause some progression issues for the ai, we shall see.

- Regional Occupation: The full RO package, no diplomacy options included though.

- The rest: Happiness Matters, T4 Minor Settlements, No great Power, Garrison Commanders, Expedition march, Better trait triggers, Cataphs/Molays Magic and a whole bunch of graphical and visual mods.

So now that's done, lets get started.


With Azhag doing his own thing up North I obviously started as Grimgor. I almost always play on Very Hard (with my mod) but have battles on normal. I don't game the computer and like to play battles for fun, not to win vs an artificially buffed opponent. This playthrough is no different.

I start the game declining the intital rush attack and build a couple of new units of Boyz to aid in the future. As per the 'tutorial' The Red Fangs army waits patiently for me, doing nothing. I also immediately recruit a second Warboss. On turn 2 I attack the tutorial army with Grimgor and my new Boss as reinforcements. It goes without a hitch the Doom Diver proving way too powerful at this stage of the game. I don't hunt them down hoping to use them as a fightiness buff later on.

However, and this may be a bug or it may be a tutorial thing, this army would never move again. It got stuck on low fightiness, in a mustering stance but not actually recruiting or healing troops and just sat there. Gorfang Rotgut had as this point wandered off somewhere, so Grimgor took Iron Rock without incident (my one and only auto-resolve so far). He then returned with the following stack...

Spoiler

My combined armies dealt with Gorfang and followed up by taking Valaya's Hollow. Grimgor headed back up north towards a quest while my other general settled in to secure the new area. A third Warboss was then added back at Black Crag to start recruiting his army since at this point I was practically oozing teeth. Around me we had a few interesting armies starting to pop up.

Spoilers

Then this happened to Grimgor...

Uh-Oh!

A close victory that cost us quite a few lives meant the quest would have to wait. Grimgor limped back to Iron Rock to replenish his troops. Meanwhile, a little North of us the following stand off had occurred around Mount Squighorn.

After You?

Back down in the south Grimgors delay had given Rotgut the chance to lick his wounds, along with that pesky intercepting dwarf. Both armies were well on the way to a decent recovery.

Just stay down!

At this point I have no idea what happened to the Crooked Moons two armies. they had more tier 2 troops than anyone else and Karaz-a-karak was a full tier 3 settlement by this point. I'm guessing they did something dumb or were settling in for a 20 turn siege somewhere...the ai still sucks at that unfortunately.

Also around this time I got word that Malagor had been wiped out. I saw his second herd briefly with only 3 remaining units and wondered if it was still having recruitment issues. However at this poin;t both the Savae orcs and Khazrak were both still alive in the Empire (I dread to think what it might look like already), Azhag was still alive vs Kislev and I made contact with but never actually saw the Redhorns. So I don't think the hordes can be doing all that badly.

Grimgor finally finished the first quest and decided to head south and help out with Rotgut. He summarily dispatched his adversary again then took another region for the fun of it. It was at this point that I realised I had neglected Black crag a bit too much and a rebellion was imminent. Also my newly promoted Goblin Boss had been scouting the North and discovered this....

From the North they Came....

At turn 20 just when I thought everything was going swimmingly I'm suddenly facing rebellion, a potential new Warherd, although I think Malagor might have died in Tilea so that's ok, the Red Fangs have another new army and the North feels anything but secure. I also noticed this was still happening.

Bug?

Note that this is the second army to do this after the starting army. I'm not sure where this could be causing a glitch but it appears if an army gets to a certain low level of fightiness while in mustering stance it gets stuck there, since it cannot recruit and cannot heal either. I don't know if it sorted itself or not as I lost visibility of the area (damn assassins)

The final thing to happen before I had to stop playing was this rather (un-)expected attack

Well that's just lovely!!

So far as armies go everyone is definitely recruiting pretty well. At just over 20 turns I've already seen a variety of tier 2 units and every dwarf army I've seen has included grudge throwers. They also favor warriors over miners unless short on funds it seems too. Bearing in mind that nobody has any growth or recruitment bonuses I think this is looking pretty good. It's sadly still let down by the ai doing weird when it comes to moves...The Red Fangs attacked Grimgor with 1000 men when he was stood next to another army and a settlement making it a 3000 man defending force...which is just plain dumb. But that's not this mods fault.

Wish I could see the Savage Orcs up North. Pretty sure they never normally last till the mid 20's and Khazrak must doing alright too, He literally starts in front of Middenheim and Todbringer so it's a tough proposition for him. My guess is Malagor bit off more than he could chew with the Top Knots, though the Teef Snatchterz were all gone by about turn 10 which means someone went for the rush.

I'll hopefully get through some more in the next couple of days but it's looking good apart from that maybe one glitch with Orcs and low fightiness, but that could just as easily be a mod combination issue or something I did.

[Celtik]

Hey Arayel, thank you for your nice report

- Fair Very Hard: This is the one that may cause the most issue as it levels the playing field on VH difficulty by making the player and ai have exactly the same bonuses, that is to say mostly none. To avoid conflict I actually removed the campaign difficulty table from your mod (sorry!!!) so there is a chance this could cause some progression issues for the ai, we shall see.

In the difficulty table I added a small 5% increase to the discount the AI gets for building, and an additional 5% decrease to its upkeep because it will be able to field more high tier units than in vanilla. As you can see there are also the lines for the discount in cost of units but I haven't changed the numbers, I just fixed CA's mistake with hard difficulty (CA inverted hard and easy for this one, so easy difficulty gets the discount and not on hard lol, I fixed that!). If you have your own setting that's fine, we'll see how the AI goes. Regarding the growth bonus for towns, I added those because now the AI won't focus on building farms (and never use vampires or priests), only when it has the room for it so I think it should be kept but here again you'll see how it goes, if the AI is slow to reach tier 4 or not. However the bonus in growth for hordes should be kept, especially for Beastmen. With this and the new AI building and spending personality, they will be more willing to encamp to build things and also recruiting. Without this bonus it takes forever for the AI to get access to new buildings so its horde army just goes around doing nothing.

We'll see anyway how it goes, from what you posted it looks definitely good. That dwarf army who intercepted you was quite scary, no wonder you had heavy losses on this fight, could even have been a game over! And yes the dwarf AI will favor warriors over miners but will still keep some in its early game armies, same for Greenskins and goblin units as you saw. When the AI recruits more of them that's because it has low cash as you pointed out.

The glitch with that orc army is indeed very strange but I'm pretty sure it doesn't come from my mod because I didn't alter the CAI in any way (other than recruiting and building) and I haven't seen that behavior in my test games. Could be an isolated thing though. See in a few turns if that's still here.

Keep playing mate!

[Godz_Mercenary]

Yeah, the army recruitment is defo better, Dwarfs have loads of Warriors in their armies and no Miners. They don't seem to recruit Quarrellers much though which is a shame as it's their best early, even late game unit, especially against Orcs. I'm about 15 turns in so haven't seen enough yet to go into detail but the AI is building much better and the AI is recruiting much better. I'm playing on very hard as Orcs with an Agent Limiter mod(edit: and the tier 4 mod thing), but already this game feels so much better.

[Lowlander]

So happy this exists, giving it a go now, thanks!

[Horace35]

All looking in good in my new Dwarf game, the Greenskins are running around with some intimidating stacks

I will try and remember to get some screenshots tonight. This mod makes the game WAY more challenging, it is like playing on super hard mode

[Celtik]

Thank you guys, have fun! And yes post some screenshots if you can

Yeah, the army recruitment is defo better, Dwarfs have loads of Warriors in their armies and no Miners. They don't seem to recruit Quarrellers much though which is a shame as it's their best early, even late game unit, especially against Orcs.

They do, don't worry. It's just that at the beginning of the game, especially on higher difficulty levels, the AI can recruit a full stack right away but in order to have access to quarrellers (or crossbowmen) they have to upgrade their settlement to tier 2 (3 turns) and then upgrade the barrack to level 2 (2 turns). So during those 5 turns the AI will not wait a little bit as a player would do, they will recruit roughly 15 units before having access to those units.

[Godz_Mercenary]

OK, after playing a while I can say this mod is amazing. I actually think I'm about to lose my campaign as Orcs. I managed to defeat the Dwarfs in the south (forgot their name) early on but then, because the main Dwarfs have had time to build they were a power-house, attached screenshot of their army composition.

I managed to beat them down but...I made a critical mistake of forgetting how advanced their units were now so when they only had 2 settlements left I left them there and within 5 turns they were expanding again, destroying the other Orcs with their awesome units. I'm now back in a war to eliminate them but it's just been made worse as those other Dwarfs from the west (again bad with names lol) declared war and because they've been allowed to just turtle so long they bringing their stacks of advanced units too, so I actually think I'm about to get wiped out now unless I can get Black Orcs soon. I was concentrating on economy instead of advancing my units for too long which is another mistake I made with this mod.

Attached screenshots of their settlement buildings which impressed me a lot and their army composition. I'm on turn 70 now. Mount Squig whatever and Karak a Karek buildings were all built by the AI. I just took Mount Squiggy over (by confederating) and added the level 2 garrison, level 1 was there already.

Edit: Playing very hard with tier 4 buildings, region movement mod and agent limit mod.

[Godz_Mercenary]

Here's one of the Dwarf capitals fully upgraded by turn 70. No way could I take that. This mod is dam hard I must admit.

[Celtik]

I just updated the mod. See post #1 to get the new pack file.

UPDATE 1.01
- Even further improved the build order of the AI for all factions, it will now have a slightly slower start in terms of recruitment possibilities but will be much stronger economically, without adding any cheat.
- More balancing of Dwarfs and Greenskins armies.
- Small adjustments to recruitments of Bretonnia, Norsca, Savage Orcs and Empire factions. Kislev and TEB are now very strong because their positions allow them to build their regions without disturbance. The Empire should also be more powerful now.
- Some small adjustments to the Chaos armies.

This update is savegame compatible if you're already using the mod, though to enjoy the full aspect of it, it is better to start a new game. To install over the previous version just extract the pack file into your data folder and overwrite the old one. Then reload the mod in the mod launcher.


Some screens showing you how the AI performs after this update. See how the Empire factions balance their buildings between recruitment, defense and economy.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The Dwarfs will take advantage of the resources available when possible (gold and gems, military resources) to build a very strong economy base without forgetting recruitment buildings of course.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Greenskins and VC will do the same and also build mines when possible. And see how the buildings distribution across the provinces is now very well balanced, with walls when necessary to protect them.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Some random late game armies.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

That's all for today. Next update will be after the coming patch and DLC. In the meantime please give me your feedback.

Here's one of the Dwarf capitals fully upgraded by turn 70. No way could I take that. This mod is dam hard I must admit.

Yeah the AI is now more willing to build walls and garrisons in its settlements when it has the room for it. Good luck!

[Godz_Mercenary]

Well, I've just got completely owned and had to admit defeat by turn 84 on very hard. The Dwarven armies were just too teched up and strong. By time I got Black Orcs out I went bankrupt. Then Vampires declared war on me and that was the end. Very impressed by the mod, gonna try again soon but will have to lower the difficulty lol.

[Celtik]

Try the new version then

The recommended difficulty level would be hard I guess, it will be challenging but fair from what I've seen. On very hard with this mod you'll have to carefully plan all your moves, that's the difficulty I'm playing it right now and it can be quite difficult at times (I don't use any AI exploit or autoresolve abuse), but also very rewarding.

[Godz_Mercenary]

Try the new version then

The recommended difficulty level would be hard I guess, it will be challenging but fair from what I've seen. On very hard with this mod you'll have to carefully plan all your moves, that's the difficulty I'm playing it right now and it can be quite difficult at times (I don't use any AI exploit or autoresolve abuse), but also very rewarding.

Yeah just saw your update going to try that. Although the AI steamrolled me it was good fun. There were walls and fully upgraded settlements everywhere and real threatening armies for once. Feels more like how a human would build. Your work on this mod is excellent.

[Arayel]

Time for an update, finally got to play some more after an unfortunately work intensive week. Here are turns 25 through 50 of my Orc Campaign. I'm still using v1.0 and all my original mods, so it's stil without the bonuses the AI gets in your versions for buildings and growth.

The biggest thing that's been an issue for the AI so far is the sheer amount of war and death. No-one, not even really me, has had much of a chance to build up as we have constantly been ruining each others armies. It all went something like this.

If you'll remember back we left the Broken Tooth clan and Grimgor being besieged by a new enemy , the three region Barak Varr. The seige did not last long as on the second turn Barak Varr decided to try their luck and force the attack on Grimgor and the Iron Rock Garrison. Casualties were heavy on both sides, the resolute dwarfs refusing to break until they had cut down as many of my poor Greenskins as possible. Despite my numeric advantage casualties went in favor of the Dwarfs, earning me a close victory. The dwarfs retreated to lick their wounds. I declined to follow.

In the following turn another new threat popped up...and not just for me. It appears that somehow a rather well organised Orcish grass roots movement had taken hold. Rebellions in Black Crag, Karag Dron, Karak-Eight-Peaks, Dringorackaz and Karak Azul meant everyone suddenly had an extra army to fight. The crooked moon immediately reached out for aid in the form of a military alliance. With Wars on three fronts this seemed like a good idea, I accepted and they were promptly destroyed the same turn...so much for that. Dringo and Karak-Eight-Peaks fell to the rebels in a turn, and their bizarre "occupy hold" movement started. (I really need to mod my game so all rebel uprisings are real factions, this whole weird turn the map blank but occupied is not threatening enough).

Then when I looked south I also found these little guys (They start in Estalia so had been on a nice journey already).

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

So all hell is breaking loose. Black Crag is now under seige but with an amry there I decide to take the initiative. Still for turn 25 it's a tough rebel army having had just 1 turn of building istelf.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I win the fight and run down the hippie scum. At this point things start to get interesting. Barak Varr comes under a sustained assault from teh Top Knotz and sues for peace. I accept and take their 3000 teef (I didn't ask where they got them). The red horn tribe eventually razes karak Azgal and it turns out Malagor was down here too playing with the Dwarfs of karak Azgul. Spitepeak is a ruin and Malagor spends a few turns seiging Karak Azul before the dwarfs finally see him off. The rebellions however do me a big favor and I claim not only Karag Dron to secure Black Crag's province but also Eight Peaks and Dringorackaz. With the Dwarfs on the back foot and a timely mission I go to war with karak Azul. By turn 35 I have wiped them out, Malago's constant harassment and a Waagh giving me a fairly easy run of it. Barak Varr are still a threat however and now look like this.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

After seeing his capital get razed Gorfang comes out of retirement for the third time and thing time rounds up every troll he can find, obviously deciding since Orcs can't get the job done it must be time for something bigger.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

It doesn't work...he bounces off the Redfangs in a battle that literally destroyed both their armies down to about 5 units each. I decide it's time to put the redfangs out of their misery and go to war for the third time with them. My Waagh crashes into Gorfang a turn later only to reaslise he can still build pretty fast in his own territory...after a few good fights my Waagh is finally destroyed. I mop up, and over the next couple of turns I take the final two provinces, securing my consolidation of the Entire eastern side of the badlands and Worlds Edge Mountains. Things are looking good.

Karaz-a-Karak still have their hands full witih the Bloody Spears and my non-aggression pack is holding with the Top Knotz, who now own the rest of the badlands and as I discover a few turns later, also the Border Princes and now Barak Varr, meaning the dwarfs recruitment is back to tier 1 troops again.

I also, partly quest instigated, finally get a goblin up north to see whats going on. At turn 44 this is the army of the Most powerful leader in the Old World (I'm number 2)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I also discovered how it came to be that the Skull-takerz were still alive....it's because their army looks like this!!!!! On a side note I can't wait until CA give us a Savage Orc warboss and Shamen so these armies can stop relying on regular Orcs to lead them!!!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

These guys would get a waaagh! around turn 50...I'm glad I'm not a Dwarf in the Black Mountains right now!!!!

I spend the next few turns consolidating and building. I finally have some time and money so I get my first tier 4 building!! yep, turn 50+, it's been brutal on everyone! At this point Malagor decides it's time he had some more fun and this popped up in the Silver Road. I was quite glad it decided the Bloody Spears and Dwarfs were a more fun target than me as I had no armies in the area to help at all, they were all helping public order in the south!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

So some actual feedback.


- Firstly the mod absolutely improves the overall balance and playability of the game. I ahve played more battles in this play-through than probably my last three put together. The ai's recruitment is that much more efficient that most battles are pretty even on the scale, the exception being unwalled/garrisoned minor settlements.

- Despite my 'no cheat's' setup the ai clearly understands growth and economy at least to a similar level as a player, without some of the intricacies. Barak Varr was a good example of what I saw from any multi region faction with military, public order and growth all accounted for. I'm sure your new update improves that even further.

- For some reason the Dwarfs seem far slower to progress to higher units than everyone else that I saw. I was constantly fighting effectively the same dwarf army. The one exception was Karaz-a-Karak's second army that was pretty much tier 3 based with longbeards at it's core (though it was only 7 units strong).

- Heroes seem to get used in armies more. I'm not sure if that's because of something you did or because of my own agents mod combined with any updates CA have made in the background, but it's welcome nonetheless, although seeing 3 captains in the same Border Princes army was strange, though it does mean that at some point they got to a decent level of building as I never even managed to get more hero slots opened up.

- Hordes are definitely stronger. The Red Horns and Malagor both got themselves killed and re-spawned, but did their share of burning and chaos spreading first. Khazrak is still alive somewhere, which is amazing to me, and you saw above what the infamously bad Skull-takerz were doing...so that's a nice plus, though in my case it literally made my game easier, though I'm sure in another play I'd be the one under fire from them and it would make it all the harder.

Finally, I realize it's not in your mod but I think it's something that potentially should be and that's dealing with the ai's reluctance to recolonize. I'm effectively doin as well as I am because the minute the rebels too over the ai practically ignored those provinces, the same for ones that were razed. Gorfang spent 4-5 turns fighting the redhorns then me instead of simply recolonizing Karak Azgul and turtling for a couple of turns. Mount Spite or whatever it's called remained unused for probably 15 turns before I finally bothered to claim it as I destroyed Karak Azul. If you could include a higher desire to spread out for the ai in your work with their methods of building that would be amazing!


I'm planning to try and finish this play-through before I start one with someone else (and your version 1.1), but that might well be after the new DLC, and that means updating all my mods first too...which isn't easy unless CA stop being stupid with how they introduce the new data into the tables....but we will see. Also need the fix for the startpos so I can have some voctory conditions again! I'd like to try a dwarf play now I've made them more like dwarfs but I hate Thorgrims Model, maybe I'll work out the modelling system and see if I can't put him on the floor....

Thanks again for the mod and the work mate, another 30 turns coming up soon...then we shall see what Chaos brings.

[Celtik]

So all hell is breaking loose. Black Crag is now under seige but with an amry there I decide to take the initiative. Still for turn 25 it's a tough rebel army having had just 1 turn of building istelf.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The rebels armies will use the templates I've made to create their armies and as you can see they will offer a very well balanced and challenging force! This is scaled with the difficulty level and on very hard those armies are well... hard! Because you're playing on very hard they also start with more units so 1 turn is enough for them to have that kind of army. This will force the players to take them seriously and really watch their public order.

I also, partly quest instigated, finally get a goblin up north to see whats going on. At turn 44 this is the army of the Most powerful leader in the Old World (I'm number 2)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The VC armies... sigh I don't even know where to begin. That is literally a pain to see their armies composition, even after 150 turns. And you're lucky, Mannfred has some grave guard units lol! Most of the time he only has zombies and basic skeletons. I decided to investigate and watch their every moves during several test games. And here is what I learned:
- Right at the beginning they will build the gold mine which is good.
- Then they take Eschen and build some things there like a balefire or an ossuary which is also good.
- Right from the beginning Mannfred will be recruiting 3 zombies and skeleton each turn.
- Because of the very low upkeep and the gold mine he will recruit at least 2 lords who will be recruiting 3 zombies/skeleton each turn + some more with the raise dead ability.
- By the time they take Waldenhof/Templehof and build Binding Circle, Forest and a Reliquary they have 4 full stacks of garbage units because they have high income and very low upkeep!
- Then they go to war with Ostermark or Zufbar or Karak Kadrin, literally swarming them with 3-4 full stacks while those factions only have 1 or maybe 1 and a half. So even with superior troops what can you do when your army is attacked by 3 or 4 full stacks of zombies lol!

Because they swarm their enemy armies they take very little casualties, sometime even no casualty at all! So you'll see Mannfred and his mates running around the Empire and the World Edge Mountains with full stacks of garbage units and the AI never disband its units. But if you destroy those armies like I did once just to see what they will do next... then that's another story. They will come back with absolutely nightmarish stacks full of monstrosities. I used to chase Mannfred as the Empire just for the fun of it and always saw him as a joke. Then I caught him and destroy his pitiful zombies stack. Some turns later he came back with something like 6 grave guards, 3 crypt horrors, 3 varghulf, 1 terrorgeist, 3 blood knights and some ghosts. And I was like "what have I done"!

The problem is that the other AI factions won't be able to take down those starting armies and so they will stay there as long as nobody destroy them. The only way I found to fix this is to forbid them to recruit skeletons and zombies and it works, but only for the VC, leaving Mousillon or Swartzhafen completely useless.

- Firstly the mod absolutely improves the overall balance and playability of the game. I ahve played more battles in this play-through than probably my last three put together. The ai's recruitment is that much more efficient that most battles are pretty even on the scale, the exception being unwalled/garrisoned minor settlements.

- Despite my 'no cheat's' setup the ai clearly understands growth and economy at least to a similar level as a player, without some of the intricacies. Barak Varr was a good example of what I saw from any multi region faction with military, public order and growth all accounted for. I'm sure your new update improves that even further.

I'm glad you like it mate, have fun with the new version which improves the AI's economy so it should work better with your no cheat version of the mod (I still think you should keep the public order and growth bonus for the AI because it can't handle those).

- Heroes seem to get used in armies more. I'm not sure if that's because of something you did or because of my own agents mod combined with any updates CA have made in the background, but it's welcome nonetheless, although seeing 3 captains in the same Border Princes army was strange, though it does mean that at some point they got to a decent level of building as I never even managed to get more hero slots opened up.

I'd like to take credit for that but this is CA's work. I only activated the heroes to be generated in custom battles when you auto-generate an army. Because of the agent spam CA decided to force the AI to use something like 50% of its agents on the field and the rest should be embed into armies. It works but the AI usually put all of them in the same army lol! CA's way of doing things I guess!

Finally, I realize it's not in your mod but I think it's something that potentially should be and that's dealing with the ai's reluctance to recolonize. I'm effectively doin as well as I am because the minute the rebels too over the ai practically ignored those provinces, the same for ones that were razed. Gorfang spent 4-5 turns fighting the redhorns then me instead of simply recolonizing Karak Azgul and turtling for a couple of turns. Mount Spite or whatever it's called remained unused for probably 15 turns before I finally bothered to claim it as I destroyed Karak Azul. If you could include a higher desire to spread out for the ai in your work with their methods of building that would be amazing!

Actually I did take a look at it and the value of recolonizing is already very high for the AI, especially on very hard and legendary. There's no point of increasing it if it works at all. I noticed than in vanilla during the first few turns the Skull Takers usually destroy Pfeildorf and the Red Horns destroy Norden. Only 1 or 2 turns later you will see Averland colonizing Pfeildorf and Nordland colonizing Norden. When Kislev is at war with Varg and loses Zoishenk or Fort Stragov or Erengrad you will see an army of Nordland or Ostland immediately comes and claims those ruins without waiting. Same with Kazhrak destroying Carcassone/Parravon and then Estalia comes a few turns later to recolonize everything. The key factor is that the AI has to be in a peace state of mind. CA designed 5 states for the AI: peace, tension, war, total war and last stand. At peace the AI recolonizes like crazy but it seems to be disabled when it is in one of the other states. I absolutely don't know how to change it if it is possible at all. Besides I will stay away from changing the CAI behavior on the campaign map because there are tons of values, half of them nobody knows what they do or even if they work at all (most of them were here with Shogun 2 then Rome 2 then Attila, a whole bunch of them are certainly obsolete). To change the AI's behavior, if it is possible, you will need to tweak those values one by one then see if it does something in game, then change them again, repeat etc. This would take weeks if not months of work!

[Godz_Mercenary]

- For some reason the Dwarfs seem far slower to progress to higher units than everyone else that I saw. I was constantly fighting effectively the same dwarf army. The one exception was Karaz-a-Karak's second army that was pretty much tier 3 based with longbeards at it's core (though it was only 7 units strong).

With the AI bonuses on Dwarf factions were running around with solid armies on my playthrough. I lost because I couldn't beat back their longbeards and cannons as Greenskins. Plus their settlements were walled etc. This was on very hard though with all bonuses.

[Celtik]

Arayel, I'm curious about one thing. I think you're using a mod that allows factions to occupy every settlements, the one made by Dresden right? Does it work well with my mod on? Does the AI build normally in settlements where it can't settle in vanilla? I'm curious to see how it goes because if that works well, just imagine how powerful some factions could become!

[Arayel]

Arayel, I'm curious about one thing. I think you're using a mod that allows factions to occupy every settlements, the one made by Dresden right? Does it work well with my mod on? Does the AI build normally in settlements where it can't settle in vanilla? I'm curious to see how it goes because if that works well, just imagine how powerful some factions could become!

Yea I'm running Occupy Everywhere. Let me go scout out the Top Knotz in the Border Princes and I'll post up some screenshots. Seriously the way it's gone a civil war with them would be an insane fight right now!

With the AI bonuses on Dwarf factions were running around with solid armies on my playthrough. I lost because I couldn't beat back their longbeards and cannons as Greenskins. Plus their settlements were walled etc. This was on very hard though with all bonuses.

Dwarfs are slightly different in my game as I have modded all the factions. They have smaller units than before but are tough and more skilled. The other thing that is definitely affecting the way the enemy builds is the fact that with my morale values units don't really ever fight to the last man, and since I can't find a way to reduce a units melee attack and defense once they are routing like I want to (so they really would start getting cut down) at the moment even when you beat an army the majority of its units survive, and I guess the AI doesn't combine units to speed healing either. That's definitely affecting this mod.

I guess it really might be time to start looking at the cai tables to go with the way I've modded the game....oh what joy.

[Celtik]

I'm really sorry guys I've just found out that there is a bug somewhere in the Chaos invasion script with this version. If you start a new campaign you'll see that Archaon is here on the map... it happens when there's a bug in the script and it indicates that it doesn't work. The strange thing is that it wasn't there yesterday when I last tested it and I haven't modified it before uploading the mod here. I remove the mod for now until I fix that bug. Do not use the 1.01 version for now if you already have it!

HOTFIX for 1.01
Mod file is back online. I fixed the bug with the Chaos invasion script, it was a nasty one damn those lua scripts. For those who downloaded the previous file, you'll have to delete it and take this one instead. You'll also have to restart your campaign if you started one because of the bug in the previous version, it prevented the Chaos script to work correctly and the values within my mods were not taken into account. The mod should be good now until the next patch and DLC. I'm really sorry for this bug and the inconvenience.