Nim’s XormeAI Enhancer and Balance
My personal tweaks that focus on enhancing the AI and balancing the gameplay based on Xorme’s AI mod. The mod also implements and integrates a bunch of nice lightweight features from other great mods which i think should be presented in vanilla. The mod aims to keep the Xorme AI’s aggressiveness and difficulty while maintaining the vanilla flavor as much as possible. This mod should be load after the Xorme-AI mod. RECOMMEND TO USE THE MOD IN THE HARD DIFFICULTY SETTING WITH XORME’S DYNAMIC CHEATING SINCE IT’S BALANCED AND TESTED IN THIS SETTING.
######### What’s New #########
v2.15
1. Write new ai opinion logics to guide them find potential strategic partners. So they may now learn to cooperate against a stronger enemy. AI may also help their partners more actively to defend their common foe with subsidise, enforce peace action, or even directly send money or manpower through the new "enemy of enemy" event chain. These new features synergy well with the integrated Balance of Power mod.
v2.10
1. add an event for ai colonial nations to let their overlord know they need "enforce peace" to peace out natives.
v2.09
1. Burgundian inheritance event for ai emperor
ai emperor is less likely to demand lowland if the overlord is its ally (or potential ally). ai emperor is more likely to force PU if the overlord is its rival (or potential rival). (in vanilla the emperor always demands low lands and never forces PU)
2. ai Netherland independence
ai is more likely to directly join the ai dutch independence war or guarentee its independence if it’s the overlord’s rival/enemy. (in vanilla it’s a fixed 50-50 probability)
3. Some cheats for ai colonial nations to prevent them from imploding with the RB mod setting, and a decision for them to actively ask subsidies from their ai overlord if they feel necassary.
4. add a decision for ai to focus on recovering economy (cut off some budgets and stay at peace).
5. make ai more willing to wait for more countries to join the religious league before the war starts. (for a more devastating religious war experience)
6. some guidance for ai colonizer to colonize more proper (and maybe historical) regions. E.g., cuba, mexico for SPA, africa, Brazil for POR, and canada for FRA & ENG.
######### Old features #########
######### AI Bugfix #########
1. AI suicide war fix
In vanilla game there are 2 situations that AI will declare a suicide war due to bad game mechanism and bad code implementations. The first is the "succession war" code implementation that makes the ai declares war based not on its military strength v.s. enemies but on an almost fixed probability. So you’ll see e.g. french declares suicide war on the whole europe. The second situation is that the defender leader is vassalized by other tags and then the overlord and all its allies suddenly tear apart the attacker. The ai just doesn’t have the concept to peace out before the overlord joins the war. The mod detects these situations and if the attacker is losing badly, the other side will just accept the "concede defeat" peace term (and of course it keeps its PUs/vassals from the succession war as the reward).
2. AI mercenary disband
3. AI deals with corruption better
4. AI won’t brainlessly waste money on buying indulgence unless they have a cause.
5. AI will better utilize estate abilities and state edicts
6. The "historical luck" modifier is correctly removed via a hidden event on certain countries (SPA, Ottos,…) around 1700, and certain countries (PRU, NED,…) correctly receive the "luck" modifier later as intended.
7. AI will use favors to trade resources and wartime help more and promote trust less.
8. Some minor numerical tweaks & bugfixes in the XormeAI mod. (e.g. DIPLOMATIC_ACTION_OFFER_CONDOTTIERI_DISABLE_VERSUS_PLAYER_ENEMIES, MISSION_PICK_CHANCE)
######### XormeAI Tweaks #########
1. Ideas. The iberians will have a much higher probability to pick the expansion idea group early. Some nations will have a probability to pick the maritime and navy idea (in xorme it’s simply forbidden).
2. AI will use some peace terms when it has nothing else to acquire. (e.g. pillage capital is disabled in Xorme)
3. Remove some features in Xorme mod that may break immersions or vanilla game mechanicsms too much (in my personal opinion). E.g. around 1550 every major power including the emperor gets a mutual -150 relation penalty with all its neighbor to encourage blobing, and a hidden event that England will cede all its mainland provinces to france in exchange to automatically vassalize the Scot. I have great respect for the work of the mod author, and these are just removed to better suit my personal flavor (more vanilla-like).
4. A handful of carefully picked AI cheating modifiers are given to AI in the hard game setting. These modifiers do not aim to make AI unreasonably strong, but aim to make up the shortcomings. For example, the AI always waste lots of mil points to harsh treatment when they can simply wait for the uprise. This part of AI logic is hard coded, so I just give them a deduction in points cost of this action. The Xorme AI mod’s cheats are also tweaked to suit this mod.
######### Integrated Features and Balance Tweaks #########
1. Integrate some of the "responsible blobbing" mod features in this mod. A lightweight mod that gives a reasonable bonus to the small sized country while a penalty to the large country. The modifiers and numbers has been tweaked to better suit this mod.
2. Integrate "The Balance of Power 2" mod’s threat mechanism into this mod. A mechanism that sets a minimum AE to maintain the balance of power and tells the ai who’s the biggest current threat.
3. Military access mechanism. Military access can only be asked to allies or when relations greater than +75. Also vassals cannot ask military access. Ottomans can no longer attack Denmark across the entire HRE.
4. Institutions are more likely generated in historical regions when possible. No more enlightenment birthplace korea or Indonesia in every game.
5. Colonization mechanism. Add a modifier to inland africa and australia to slow down the colonization pace. Battle in the inland africa will take significant attrition.
6. Autonomy mechanism. Add a province modifier that sets minimum autonomy and autonomy_increase in each area. It slowly decreases to zero effect till the age of absolutism. Capital area receives no penalty. Exclave area receives higher penalty. Only affects states. Centralization of power is more important now.
7. Maintenance mechanism. Almost every costs and army/navy maintenance increase with ages. War is costly. Think twice before waging war. Army size is smaller at the beginning and slowly increases. No more medieval opms feed an entire 10k standing army each.
8. Favor mechanism. Calling ally in war now costs 20 favor. 10 favor to use the ai french as your loyal thug is too few. Refuse favor now drop 1 stability.
9. Religious war goal has a higher war enthusiasm to make the war longer. In vanilla it usually ends in 5 years.
10. Native, tribe and minors development restriction to prevent almost half of the north american tribes have their capitals more developed than e.g. Paris, Beijing… You’ll also see an average dev drop in the HRE area since it’s composed of many minors.
11. Specific ai tag buff to aid some superpowers who suffer from version-related issues.
######### Credits #########
1. Xorme. https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2451296932
2. Responsible Blobbing. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2131234936
3. The Balance of Power 2. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2389825193.