Store Page
Age of Wonders 4
All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos Workshop News Guides Reviews

Age of Wonders 4

Store Page
Age of Wonders 4 >  Workshop > Aten's Workshop
403 ratings
Fairplay AI
Description Discussions0 Comments290 Change Notes
10
5
9
6
3
3
3
4
2
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
Tags: Mod
File Size
Posted
Updated
2.586 MB
May 24, 2023 @ 1:36am
Apr 16 @ 7:30pm
47 Change Notes ( view )
Created by
Aten
Offline
See all 675 collections (some may be hidden)
23,697 Unique Visitors
10,194 Current Subscribers
941 Current Favorites

Subscribe to download
Fairplay AI

Description
  • Overview
    This mod was originally for my friends and I to use together in multiplayer or single player, and I thought I would upload it so anyone else could enjoy it. This mod makes changes to the AI to play more fairly across the board, along with modifications such as removing over the top cheats/bonuses to the AI received across all difficulties. This aims to make the Factions/Races/Alignments role-play their part better alongside the player, while making the difficulty levels still matter.

  • Features
    • AI bonuses across all difficulty settings have been changed and greatly reduced, and the game now plays closer to the players rules while making sure the AI can still use all it's features. However, the difficulty will still help dictate certain behaviours allowed to the AI and how they try to keep pace during the game.

      The hardest of difficulties apply some of the above while only giving their starting army a value boost and a income-multi based on their difficulty to make sure they don’t run into deficits at the game start, and to stay competitive without cheating against the player, nothing else is added. Unlike in the vanilla game where the AI got massive production/research boosts and a lot more over the top bonuses which meant spamming stacks and worse.

    • Removes the difficulty based hostile AI bias against human players, the AI Rulers now treat all players based on their alignment/affinity/threat level or their current likes/dislikes of the players actions regardless of whether it is another AI or human player. The highest difficulties have some changes to make it more difficult for Players in border tension if unliked.

    • Improvements to AI personality/strategies to be more in line with their descriptions. Things such as isolationists focusing less on expansion than an expansionist player are already improved, with the AI now more inclined to find higher value city sites to lock down with outposts, with the AI making use of more outposts to hold land even in the later game stages.

    • Changes to AI personalities, this ranges from preferring to raze or migrate to enemy cities during war, along side their likes/dislikes making more sense and been more thematic as expected.

    • Penalties for migrating have changed, it is now is at a flat cost with more population loss and without alignment issues. This helps the AI keep their city count, military and heroes of their primary race more often while still maintaining vassals, while also been fair for the player, are worn torn cities suffer large pop losses as expected, with influence put to better use for AI. The manner which they deal with free cities is also more inline with their traits and personalities. This may change with balancing in coming updates.

    • Smaller changes and tweaks in line with the above points - In non-story realms you can still add manual advantages/handicaps to chosen AI rulers for the added challenge and role playing. Battles are now more crucial for Players and AI having far more decisive ramifications, making for a far more fun push and pull during war.

  • F.A.Q
    • Load Order
      Best results by having this last in your load order, works in multiplayer games.

    • Compatibility
      I have tried to make the mod overwrite the fewest PAKs possible, so it should be compatible with most mods without issues. It is also achievement-compatible. It may not play nice with mods that also make changes to the AI.

      Save-game compatibility between updates has been good. However, if you run multiple mods, etc. I can't guarantee they won't break saves and updates will keep coming.

    • Issues/Suggestions
      The mod gets updated regularly; unsubbing/resubbing can also fix problems with Steam Workshop or by verifying the game files. You are welcome to DM me for any bugs or balancing suggestions, and I'll do my best to see what I can do.

    • What's Next?
      More testing, which takes some time alongside balancing the AI. Major changes will come focus on the AI personalities/Variations and more, but usually after the major DLC I have issues as they break most mods, so it takes time.

      Originally posted by Atenvardo:
      Authors Note
      This mod was made originally for me and my friends as mentioned in the overview, the icon and art are AI generated as I needed something placeholder for the mod. The mod tries creating a more immersive gameplay style, a more role-play-style game with battles been more crucial for Players and AI alike, making it have far more decisive outcomes. It becomes a far more fun push and pull during war, with defenders using the upkeep to rebuild and push back while defences matter more.

      I will keep the mod up-to-date and as compatible as possible while making any necessary changes with the upcoming DLC and patches.

      Leave a like if it's also helpful for your experience, it's appreciated!

      Age of Wonders : PlanetFall - FairPlay AI Mod
      https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2979960215
290 Comments
< >
Infinite Pudding 5 hours ago 
Hi. This mod is great :) It really does make the AI act like their personality description says they should. Thanks for sharing this.
Aten  [author] Jun 6 @ 3:18pm 
@White_dragon - I’ll have to update the description on the next update. Thanks (:
White_Drag0n Jun 6 @ 6:18am 
Well I haven't noticed that part in the description but wanted to mention that the cost is decreased for Human players too which feels like an unwanted side effect of the mod.
Aten  [author] Jun 5 @ 2:14pm 
@White_Dragon - Changes have been made for migration true, also the alignment cost is removed for it so good AI with more Warlike Personalities don’t turn themselves evil, it says such in the description. This is to help the AI also be able to migrate to cities and still spend imperium elsewhere, and to not fall behind in cities it has under its control.

I have another updating coming on my Dev version that increases the scaling cost of it for each use, but from my tests the lower amount helps the AI early game.
White_Drag0n Jun 5 @ 2:01pm 
Using this mod caused migration to cost 100 imperium instead of 200. Do you have any idea why would that happen? I'm migrating a free city if that matters
Aten  [author] Jun 5 @ 1:00pm 
@Sozijus - There are ways to add more affinities to their combinations but I have not played around with it. With affinities they usually go one or two mains, some characters do more. Also when a character gets to the Pantheon when you win a realm as them, I was told it saves your tome choice so you can kinda set it up.

For personalities you can make more, but I haven’t gone into that, it’s just a bit too easy breaking a mod sometimes haha. But they’re on my to do list, but if I do it will be a light add. There are some other mods you could load after this that could do that.
Sozinus Jun 5 @ 5:54am 
@Aten, is it possible to make Ai use more variations of Affinities or Personalities not force Ai to go only one route? I dont know anything about Ai design etc but it seems this mod goes good direction and game feels more natural than just playing against cheating Ai. If you need some feedback or help I would gladly help somehow.
SexulPenut Jun 4 @ 8:18pm 
I did enjoy that the difficulty instead came from taking too long to get to Fangir, so he had defenses that felt more naturally built up and large due to being the lord with the least interaction. Will have to see how it feels on custom realms, but glad my friend recc'd this
Aten  [author] Jun 4 @ 5:50pm 
@SexualPenut - Awesome to hear, the AI works strangely in the sense that if you play better and build more stacks ect, they will based on their difficult try to match or outpace you by X%, so a lot of people who find it too easier usually use one powerful stack or only turtle and play on normal so the AI won’t do as well.

But changes are coming, I think I can improve this behaviour for more of a challenge for some, but I still lose myself to surprise attacks or a decisive battle lose and struggling to recover haha.
SexulPenut Jun 4 @ 5:36pm 
well, I decided to just hot foot it to his capital with a full stack of skellys and my starting units, found it basically unguarded, only gaining a tier 4 unit and a few tier 2s a little later for a full stack, found him and a tier 4 and 2 tier 1s sneaking into my base where I had a 5 man army with 1 tier 3 and 2 tier 2s, and by a miracle of autobattle eliminated him. So I feel I was right in all my complaining that he was way too souped up cause this felt way more balanced for an easy run. He had some tier 4s early, but despite his cities and the starting units in those vassals, yipes, it felt more fair and balanced. I really appreciate this mod, thank you very much