Does the mod improve AI lords?

[tommyg]

Hey there,

I’ve recently downloaded the mod and just been looking around, haven't played any games yet, it all looks really good so far and loving the new options and content! Though I have a question regarding the AI, during my play throughs of vanilla I was always disappointed at how bad the AI players were, the AI is extremely dumb. Often their lords would be travelling alone or with tiny armies, or just stand around on the same spot for many turns. The AI seems to be unable to consolidate smaller armies into one, there were tons of single military units travelling in a seemingly random location alone, without forming together as an army.

So I'm wondering whether the GS mod does anything to improve the AI behaviour? I'd like to be able to have a long game where the other Lord powers are still a challenge 100+ turns in.

[Boaster]

I think it does. Don't have over the top expectations, but things should be better overall.

[lemminkainen]

Nov 29, 2021 14:01:38 GMT -6 tommyg said:

Hey there,

I’ve recently downloaded the mod and just been looking around, haven't played any games yet, it all looks really good so far and loving the new options and content! Though I have a question regarding the AI, during my play throughs of vanilla I was always disappointed at how bad the AI players were, the AI is extremely dumb. Often their lords would be travelling alone or with tiny armies, or just stand around on the same spot for many turns. The AI seems to be unable to consolidate smaller armies into one, there were tons of single military units travelling in a seemingly random location alone, without forming together as an army.

So I'm wondering whether the GS mod does anything to improve the AI behaviour? I'd like to be able to have a long game where the other Lord powers are still a challenge 100+ turns in.

It's been improved a lot. I'm not sure how Boaster did it, but somehow the AI takes a normal decision most of the time and does stupid things only a small portion of the time. Leaders stay with their armies more than before. They attack you when they're stronger, and flee when they're weaker. They retreat during battle, only when needed. They prevent you from retreating. They use more artifacts and more wisely. They clean more dungeons around their cities instead of idling. The AI calculates these decisions depending on the power of armies, so for a better experience I suggest you play with all the highest difficulty settings.

[tommyg]

Thanks both for the reply, it does sound like there's quite a sizeable improvement! But the vanilla AI is so bad I'd be happy with even modest changes, the AI not coalescing their forces into a stronger army is a big one for me.

I love long challenging games, so I'm really looking forward to playing on insane mode, it's exactly what I need after so many vanilla games that are over by turn 100!

[lemminkainen]

Please come back tell us how it goes if you play a really long game. Screens are welcome. Also, I hope the game won't get too buggy. It often gets much buggier the longer it goes.

[tommyg]

Hey there, so I've been playing on Insane mode with the mod active and have to say there is a big increase in AI difficulty, more so than just having the additional lords and armies.

The AI will still send random units off alone, but this seems to happen a lot less, and on the whole the AI lords appear to consolidate their armies, and just behave better in general. I'll go into more detail when I post my full review of the mod, but there is definitely a tangible improvement.

The AI certainly seems more aggressive if you piss them off, I played Life and started off neutral to air, as per the insane mode starting relations. I caught an air faerie thief trying to steal from me, so naturally I killed it to stop it trying again, big mistake! Air became loathing towards me and kept sending armies at my main city!

As I did not want to wage war against this faction so early, I had to raise my relations back to empathy by giving them tons of Life Warriors, which eventually did the trick.

Another point of interest is how the AIs interact with one another, I didn't kill any of the Air lords, but after they got involved in a long war with Water they were wiped out entirely. Being my only allies, it was quite sad seeing them go. I wonder how this war started between two neutral factions, perhaps water caught another pesky faerie thief helping themselves to some gold? And the whole thing kicked off a war.

In a LOM remake, I hope the diplomacy aspect of the game will be expanded, with the possibility of forming alliances or agreements between AI factions. I like how the current parley and relations aspect works in LOM, but it's very shallow and could do with more detail. We should have the possibility to create and break pacts, and of course declare war.

Anyway, I imagine AI scripting must get extremely complicated, so whatever Booster's done to improve this should be applauded!