Subscribe to download
Improved AI Skill Selection

A version for Total War: Warhammer 3 is available here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2909055000

---

This mod improves how AI characters spend their skill points. They will spend fewer skill points on very weak or niche skills and will spend more on the powerful and general use skills.

The primary goal is to make the AI a bit harder and more interesting to fight. As a side effect it will make confederations less frustrating because you will inherit lords and heroes with somewhat decent skill selections.
Naturally, the effects are better visible on high level AI characters so mods that increase their experience gain or level can be a good addition.
The results are still far from perfect but they’re the best I could achieve with the systems CA put in place. There’s also significant randomness so the AI will not always stick to my changes.

Army skills: In vanilla ALL (!) Warhammer 1 races and the Vampire Coast lack any rules on what army skills to prioritize and which to avoid. As a result, all of their army skills will get picked randomly which obviously hurts their performance quite a bit.
Those races are fully covered with this mod and all other races got several improvements a well. Lords will now prioritize two to three essential army skills that buff their most important troops. This will affect their frontline infantry a lot of the time. Skills that affect very few units and/or have a weak effect will be avoided. The AI will also always prioritize at least one skill that buffs rank 7+ troops.

Magic: Several Lores of Magic have (almost) no rules in vanilla: Vampires, Runic, Deep, Wild, Ruin, Plague, Stealth, Little Waaagh and Big Waaagh.
I’ve added rules for those and made improvements to the rest. The AI will avoid spells that it has trouble using, like wind or breath spells and prioritize the ones that are powerful and easy to use. Caster lords will invest fewer points than caster heroes into magic because they have a lot of other useful skills.

Legendary Lord unique skills: In vanilla several of the newer LL had no rules for their unique skills. The other LL had most of their unique skills prioritized, even though a few of them are pretty weak.
I’ve covered the LL missed by vanilla and examined each skill individually and picked based on the strongest effect and broadest application. The weak ones will get avoided to free up skill points.

Mounts: AI lord in vanilla generally prioritize every single mount, which leads to wasted skill points for those with lots of mounts.
Now they will spend a maximum of three points on mounts. Caster and missile lords will get a fast mount early, while melee lords will get a durable mount early. Then they will all save up for their most powerful mount.

Miscellaneous skills and personal combat skills: AI lords and heroes will no longer spend points on several weak skills. This includes: minor increases to missile and magic resistance, leadership aura size, leadership, speed and charge bonus.
Certain powerful and unique skills which were missed in vanilla will be prioritized.

Campaign skills: This one is tricky. Many of them are outright terrible, others are pretty weak for the AI because their “cheats” already provide a much stronger version of the same effect. Some are still useful so I use the skill synergy system (see below for an explanation) to favor certain skills like ambush success chance without making an outright priority.

Skill Synergy System: Warhammer 2 has a barely used system where it’s possible to create skill synergies. If there’s a positive synergy between skill A and skill B then the AI is more likely to get B if already has A. I’ve expanded the amount of synergy levels and used this system in a variety of places to move the AI into certain directions and away from others. The goal is to allow for more granularity than the vanilla “prioritize or avoid”.
Just don’t expect any miracles.

Compatibility
Not compatible with major overhauls like SFO or mods that completely change skill trees.
Compatible with smaller skill mods that add a couple of AI skill utilization hints.
Can be installed and uninstalled at any time. For the biggest effect if should be enabled at the start of a campaign.