Hi Heclear. If you find time please take a look at the first 5 turns of the Malakai campaign at Very Hard difficulty with and without your AI mod. The "new" vanilla AI is much more aggressive in its campaigning for Skrotz.

- Both new Vanilla AI and Hecleas AI have Skrotz kill the Druzhina stack and take over Fort Straghov in round 1.

- New Vanilla AI then takes over the Druzhina capital in round 2 with a 18 unit stack (Goritch not embedded). Druzhina had no time to recruit a new army at that point, so only defends with the garrison + 1 new lord.

Result: Druzhina removed, Skrotz with a full 20 unit stack + another stack building up and being moved to old Druzhina capital to enforce against me. As a result it is much harder for me as Malakai to get rid of the Skaven. My whole campaign gets stuck because the troll declares war from the north after a few more rounds while I am still busy with Skrotz.

- Hecleas AI instead keeps Skrotz garrisoned in Straghov and then has Konstaltin besiege him and later destroy the Skaven stack and take over the town. Meanwhile Druzhina can rebuild its army and later moves towards the Skaven capital, just to have Konstaltin attack and take over the Druzhina capital.

If I - as Malakin - declared war on Skrotz then he digs an army under the mountains, takes over one of my small towns, just for Konstaltin to move in and take over said town in my province. It's all rather messy.

After trying some AI mods the "new" vanilla AI is consistently having Skrotz take out Druzhina by turn 2 instead of uselessly staying garrisoned in Straghov. Army Tasks & Strategy also seems to accomplish this. Hecleas only did this once and another time in the 3rd round, but kept Skrotz garrisoned all the other tries, just like DeepWar does.

BUT: I did more campaign starts with Hecleas AI and at least one time Skrotz *did* capture Druzhina in turn 2.

Hey, some feedback on AI's diplomacy/aggressiveness: I have noticed that AI neighbours which are hostile/neutral to the player would consistently declare war on the player even when it's clearly to their own detriment (e.g. when they are already stuck in one or several other wars).

To illustrate this: in my Imrik's campaign Kugath and Ghorst declare war on me the moment I dicover them. On paper this should create more challenge for me, except Kugath is still sieging down its starting lizardmen (and will proceed to do so dor the next few turns) while Ghorst is still at war with ogres to the north. Because of the war declaration I'm basically warned in advance that both of these factions are planning on attacking me next. So, while Kugath is busy I destroy Ghorst's armies, peace him out (the latter's settlements are then taken by the ogres) and then take out Kugath without much struggle. Were they to actually finish their respective wars first and go straight for my settlements while I was busy dealing with charfs or skaven - that would have been a different story entirely.

Then the same happens with Queeq and Tretch where they would declare war on me while stuck in their respective wars, proceed to do nothing against me for the next few turns while allowing me to build up my defences/reroute my main army and then get crushed. What is worse, I'm not sure if the AI is even capable of fighting several wars at the same time: it seems that they tend to redirect their attention to the player while allowing other AI they are at war with to take over their settlements. Happened to both Queeq and Tretch (via greenskins and charfs respectively).

I'm sure that the AI actually runs some sort of calculation of whether its current power level outweighs the combined power level of the faction it is already at war with and the palyer. The issue is that when it comes to the palyer the power level calculated by the game is not reallly representative of their threat to the AI: any capable player is able to destroy multiple AI stacks with its main army alone (and this gets worse the further into campaign we are). The easiest way to address this would be to limit the AI's ability to attack the player while this AI is already at war (unless we are talking about a regional superpower against some minor faction, at which point it is likely capable of sustaing multiple wars at the same time). Of course, they could still get attacked by their neigbours after the declaration, but this is just how diplomacy works, so I could live with that.

I only just learned that (German) Skrotz is named (English) Throt of clan Moulder. Sorry for the confusion.

I have Teclis and other army stuck sieging a broken settlement with one wounded defender :-) It is continuous 4 turns remaining and Teclis is awfully confused. I cannot think of many mods affecting this... Nerfed autoresolve sets -0.3 to autoresolve bias but that is not AI facing...

Here's screenshot and save file: https://1drv.ms/f/s!Amb6QEXGD712hbAng0odfmpXBhdM3g?e=vWZQyM

AI seems to have a bad habit of retreating and leaving their last settlement undefended.

When playing as Greasus on Hard/Hard, Ghorst will have 3 full stacks by turn 12. Possible bug?