@Infinite Pudding - Glad to hear it (:

i'll have another update for the next DLC when it drops to make some further changes.

Hi. This mod is great :) It really does make the AI act like their personality description says they should. Thanks for sharing this.

@White_dragon - I’ll have to update the description on the next update. Thanks (:

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.

@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.

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

@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.

@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.

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

@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.

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

@SexualPenut - Yeah I get that! It’s a brutal map, let me know how you find it (:

In other maps I've found it more managable, but having a full 3 stack of units I just barely beat swoop in 1 turn before I razed one of his two major cities and saved it really killed me for a while lol. Hopefully this makes it feel better to me, thanks!

@SexulPenut - It will make it beatable for sure, you’ll need some decisive victories and good attack timings on cities, but no more infinite stacks spawning. It does as the mod says and removed their cheats, but you can still play on the hardest difficulty and win.

The vanilla AI bonuses I find are too much, like unit production bonuses, upkeep bonuses and more, so it will be much more manageable and fun playing that level, give it a try.

weird question, but do you know what specific changes this has to Turiel in Grexolis? A rather new, and mediocre at best, player, and I was getting so frustrated that taking out his 3 stacks of 3s and 4s just left me open for a second ambush like 2 turns later of an army of the same strength wiping me. I am not built for Grexolis, even on vanilla easy

@Sozinus - interesting findings, as I have not quite had that experience, but I’m no expert.

Depending on how they go in the early game I definitely see the AI get T3-4 out, but it depends how the Human Players play.

So if you turtle up, the AI with hinder itself and if you build one stack of units they maintain pace with their military by X% the amount more based on the difficulty, so higher difficulties are better and they start with some extra army power to clear neutrals. Thats just the way the AI is intended by the devs, but I’ll do another difficulty pass soon have some changes I’ve already tested on my dev version. Thanks for the feedback (:

For those who use this mod I recommend playing on "Brutal" difficulty and give Ai minor advantage. For experienced player still it might be easy game with this mod but Ai doesn't feel so weak while playing "fair" . And it helps them dealing with neutrals and wonders so they dont get delayed so much in development. Without minor advantage they would fall so behind, at turn 80 they wouldnt even produce T3 units. Just T1-T2. Playing with the same Ai factions with minor advantage they manage to produce quite strong armies with T3 and T4 units.

Just started and this is exactly what I was looking for. People say the AI in this game is tough so I started on normal, but honestly the real issue is how spammy they are. They just zerg the map nonstop. I won with an expansion victory and they didn’t even try to cross into my territory to stop it.

Being allied with the AI or even enemies with one of their allies doesn’t really seem to matter. Their behavior barely changes. They just keep zerging whatever’s closest to them like nothing else is going on. Hoping this mod can help fix that. It kind of killed the roleplay vibe for me.

@Leaf - What do you mean? It doesn’t effect the AIR difficulty itself, it just removes some bonuses the vanilla AI would get, best way to get closer to vanilla is disabling the mod. But, there are other mods like “Efficient AI”?

That may be closer to what you’re looking for.

Can you do a version of this mod that does all of this besides the reduced diffilculty settings of A.I?

Thanks again.

@Testi - If you play normal before, normal will be fine again, I play Hard myself so let me know how you find the change for normal in vanilla and the mod (:

@Testi - Hmm not always easier, depending how good you are, I’ve lost a lot of matches against the harder AI when fighting two wars or really losing a crucial battle.

It really takes their egregious cheats away, like XP each turn for all their units, Upkeep bonuses, Production/research bonuses and way, way more, so no more AI spamming stacks of armies each turn.

Best to try it, it’s good for me and my friends as we play alot but we’re not experts.

Just a dumb question. This mods makes the game easier right? How much is it? If you played normal before, do you now play hard or is it not so much difference?

Really loving this mod. I see in your "What's Next" section that you talk about making more changes to the AI personalities. I would love to see a Warlord or similar variant that is focused on Vassalizing conquered cities instead of just razing them.

Right now the closest to this I think would be the Deceptive Spy personality, but that one is less inclined to actually starting or fighting wars from my experience.

either way loving the mod and has definitely made my time with AOW4 way more enjoyable!

Nice and thanks for the help!

Oh yeah of course, they both touch different parts, I use the level 30-2skill points per level without issue.

That level mot needs GlobalSettings_Strategic.rpk.

so I can load the level 30 mod after this?

But if another mod changes that load it after this, having that overwritten won’t affect this mod much at all

@Testi - It may indeed I’ll have to double check today, I think it does for maybe one or two settings

Hi does this mod change GlobalSettings_Strategic.rpk?

@Captain Rex - Haha oh fair enough and that’s great to hear, yeah that’s a vanilla one. Normal should be closer on par just a lot of variables, but I have some ideas to tighten it up I think.

Thank you for looking into it and for the replies, next match i will try Normal AI to see how it behaves, i've been using your mod pretty much since the first upload and i don't even know what is vanilla behavior anymore haha.

@Captain Rex - Hard AI in this mod sometimes will have a lot more options to expand and they take it, especially expansionists if able.

@Captain Rex, I’ll check deeper and perhaps a higher settling value will deterred useless spots.

But I know certain AI personalities will respect distant claims ect meaning they should not settle claimed land, may be an option I can look at and make more personalities to use that more but I’ll have to double check it I’m right. I’ll check though, good points and definitely the forums have some suggestions like you mentioned that need more upvotes

Understandable, and i think all of this would be beyond the mod's scope but i just wish there was something i could do to lower this a bit in an active way that isn't just settle/expand there first or war, maybe something to enforce borders so we could defend from them crossing into our lands to settle there or allowing to destroy outposts while being built without a full blown war

@Captain Rex - Arh interesting, now most of what you described are Vanilla AI and Gameplay stuff, they should be settling or using outposts focused on spots with resources nearby or Wonders ect as that’s more important usually, I’ll test today and probably increase the required site value setting for it, but most of that is a vanilla game issue.

Also if the AI is an expansionists they will focus on locking down any spot with an outpost they think is valuable, usually like the player they will only have 3-5 cities depending, 4 is most players Max as standard.

What you describe is not just the mod is all, on hard they will definitely bully positions if able and try and connect cities via domain.

The previous post is based on my findings on 3 matches in medium maps with HARD AI

The AI feels too aggressive in forward settling, they will look for pretty much any empty spot or gap between your cities and settle there, regardless if it will have any conection with their own empire, they should do something like that only if they hate you or they want war since in this game there is no other way to deal with it then war. Also, it is kind of annoying that they can settle besides my capital and then they complain when i take the nearby sectors, if anything i should be the one getting a Huge grievance for this.

@ Aten - As much as I enjoy playing Age of Wonders IV, this extremely cheating AI takes all the fun out of the strategic map, in my opinion. It spawns heroes and units in no time, even though it should have burned out economically long ago. So, thank you again for this work; something like this should normally be included in the vanilla game... at least as an additional option.

Oh, and thanks for the tip about the scouts. I'll check it out. :)

@Misanthropy - Thankyou for the reminder, the update is out fixing those issues you mention while focusing on keeping things fair for the AI to make use of them, next changes are just values for the strategic AI and personalities, not the base systems themselves (:

Glad to hear it, I usually test a quick game 60 turns or so to make sure before I launch any major changes.

Oh that looks good!

And I think the crashes may have been related to another mod. Haven't had any crashes on the same save file yet.

@Misanthropy - New version has some Imperium fixes inline with base game but that the AI will be able to use, and if they can't they will use their second option, also fixed Spy personality with Independents.

think your right, this will solve it will maintaining what the goal is. DM for any other notices.

@Misanthropy - A great mod by Kaige called Efficient AI may be what your looking for too as an alternative to try, he has afew for AI too and they seem to be quite good.

@Misanthropy - That may change back, do you mean the Migrating cost as that is really the only one, I will toggle back most likely the rising cost throughout the game as that has been in the mod since 2023? It’s mainly so the AI can do that as opposed to never triggering it with fair compensation due to the change elsewhere.

Some crashes will be out of mods control for sure.

Arhh strange, that may be a vanilla bug, as this mod does not use any of those so it should not even check it if is needed to be invalid, the vanilla game will give the AI cheats against independents. I have never seen that one myself hmm.

Do you have mods adding new items by any chance? atleast one of them started causing CTDs after the last update.

I was liking this mod but the most recent changes are too much for me with changing Imperium costs. It's becoming a game overhaul mod now instead of just an AI overhaul.

Also I'm not sure but I've been getting crashes routinely since this mod and one other mod updated (along with the main game) just recently.

"Property World Threat - AI vs Indies Cheat Damage Property - Low is invalid! A linked modifier is invalid!"

@Dr Sinclair - Thankyou, that means a lot. Glad your enjoying it, as me and my group keep playing and testing I have a lot more changes coming, but touching on them slowly as I test some deeper parts of modding.

Yeah I find that thanks to the Devs working on the general AI, if I overextend I find myself getting surprised by them too haha.

The mods my group and I use are, 2-Skill Points Per Level-Up, Starting Transformations, and sometimes the new All Scouts Can Builds Outposts.

Thank you for the mod, absolutely wonderful :)
Not particularly great at the game, but using this exclusively with very hard AI and they surprise me sometimes.

Also thanks for the suggestion on the scouts mod - going to try that one :)