Skymods

Age of Wonders 4 Mods Catalogue

Fairplay AI

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Author: Slavy

Last revision: 10 Mar at 01:58 UTC (20)

File size: 2.59 MB

On Steam Workshop

Description:
  • Overview

    Please Note – 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 can use it should they like. This mod is quite simple and makes changes to the AI to play in what feels like a more "Fair" way across the board, along with modifications such as reworking the over the top cheats/bonuses the AI receives across difficulties. It also changes other aspects that are listed below and further changes were made to make the difficulty levels chosen still matter. It won’t make the game harder if you’ve mastered beating the AI in the vanilla game on max difficulty. Make sure to use the Advanced Options in your realm setup to adjust the difficulty to your liking.

  • Features
    • AI bonuses across all difficulty settings have been removed or greatly reworked depending on difficulty, and the AI now plays closer to the players experience while making sure it can still use all it’s features, making it feel more fair. However, the difficulty still dictates behaviours allowed to the AI and how they try to keep pace during the game and modifiers they get.

      The highest of difficulty levels give the AI a starting army value bonus and minor eco changes based on the chosen difficulty. These help the AI remain competitive without relying on blatant cheats. Compared to the vanilla game, where the AI received turn-by-turn bonuses, such as extra city-production, draft, research, unit XP, imperium and many other bonuses that led to constant stack-spamming and worse. With this, the higher difficulties offer a more fair challenge for both regular and more skilled players, while making AI economies matter.

    • Changed the difficulty-based hostile bias against human players, the AI rulers now treat human players based on their alignment/affinity/threat level and their current likes/dislikes of the players actions, regardless of whether it is another AI or human player. The highest difficulties make it more difficult for Human Players as expected.

    • AI personalities are now more in line with their descriptions. Isolationists focus less on expansion than an expansionist for example, while their likes/dislikes are also adjusted to be more in-line with their personalities. The AI is now also more inclined to make use of outposts even into the later game stages.

    • Changes to AI strategies during war, ranging from preferring to raze or migrate to enemy cities. The manner in which they deal with free cities is also more inline with their traits and personalities.

    • Penalties for migrating have changed, it is now a flat cost with more population loss and without alignment loss. This helps the AI keep their city count, military and heroes of their primary race, while still maintaining vassals. Now, worn torn cities suffer larger pop losses as expected for the frontline, and with this, influence is now put to far better use for the AI. The AI on higher difficulties can maintain a city over their city-cap, which is another natural challenge.

    • 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 an added challenge or role play. 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.

    • Notes – It is always more fun to fight battles manually for a higher stake game. There are a lot of vanilla AI nuances to be mindful of that this mod tries to make clearer, and these have been noticed with repeated testing. Long story short, play the game and play it openly and you’ll find it far more fun. If you don”t turtle-up with one stack, and you’ll find the AI plays better as they try to scale with the strongest human player and based on it’s chosen difficulty.

  • F.A.Q
    • Load Order

      Best results by having this last in your load order, works in multiplayer games.

    • Compatibility

      I have tried to overwrite the fewest PAKs possible in making the mod, 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, but load other mods after this to give them priority.

      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.

    • What’s Next?

      Some more testing and further adjustment and changes to make the game feel abit better with the AI, and making the harder difficulties feel like more of a natural challenge, as well as improvements to the AI personalities and strategies. The latest major update and DLC have already added some great AI Adjustments in game that work nicely with this mod.

      Originally posted by Slavy:
      Authors Note

      This mod was made originally for my friends and I 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 thematic and fair role-play-style game with the AI. While battles still feel more crucial for Players and AI alike, making it have more meaningful outcomes and making the AI economies matter, with fair changes to help them. But, I might just be getting too old and needed to make the game play a bit differently.

      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

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