Much more fun with mods

[Kamiyama]

I was raging yesterday because the antics used by the AI are clearly not capable on the player side.

1. AI is able to recruit much more quickly than the player. Doomstack led by daimyo, defeated. 2-3 turns later doomstack led by daimyo, defeated. 2-3 turns later doomstack led by daimyo finally takes my province. >:0

2. The AI provinces should be starving. The AI ignores food. They will have fortresses, no farm upgrades, and a rice exchange in the same province.

3. The AI spams ships much more quickly than I can build them. I was at war with the Hojo and they had 3 stacks of ships fighting each other to blockade one of my ports. Cost and time to build aside, three fleets should cost a tidy sum in maintenance each turn.

4. And despite all of the above, the AI somehow can still afford to spam agents and afford agent actions each turn.

So I had enough of it.

Yarkis' no AI cheat mod
Ak's no upkeep cheat

Both of the above together have made the game much less rage-inducing.

So Yarkis' mod doesn't stop the AI from cheating. It still cheats, just less. Come to find out of the AI recruits ashigaru and the player doesn't see that ashigaru because of fog of war, the AI can upgrade that ashigaru to a samurai unit. Apparently this is really cheap for it to do, and that's why by mid-game the AI is spamming doomstacks full of samurai. It's recruiting ashigaru from multiple provinces and upgrading them.

Yarkis' mod tunes that down a little. The AI should now use a mix of samurai and ashigaru in battle.

AK's no upkeep cheat only works for the player (the AI seems to already ignore upkeep costs) and allows the player to field larger armies. Playing a game with it right now, I seem roughly on par with the AI. I don't feel like I'm backed into a corner and fighting for my life anymore. The game is actually fun now.

If you are like me and were just looking for a balance change to make the game seem fair, these mods are what you're looking for.

There are plenty of cheat mods that give you unlimited funds or recruit level 9 units, or whatever. I didn't want that. I just wanted a fair playing field and I think I've found it.

[Smoothhoof]

Or just turn the difficulty down so the AI gets fewer buffs. For me, harder the better. I want the AI to challenge me.

If you win on legendary but the game was modded to reduce AI recruitment, did you win on legendary at all?

[Elitewrecker PT]

What Smooth said. If you think AI has too many units then lower the difficulty to reduce their income, increase their upkeep and reduce their recruitment slots.