Campaign AI Overhaul – Alliance Blocs

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Author: A Paper Clip

Last revision: 3 Feb, 2025 at 20:08 UTC

File size: 1.17 MB

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Description:
Description

This campaign AI mod overhauls the traditional gameplay of Warhammer III with the defining feature of AI factions forming "Alliance Blocs" against their enemies. The landscape of the world will become much more complex with political implications regarding allies, neutrals, and enemies.

The gameplay will revolve around coalition battles involving a large number of armies in the same area. The goal is to provide the landscape required for players to engage in battles involving 160 active units.

In addition, there are many general campaign AI improvements that turn them into competent foes through intelligence rather than artificial cheats.

Treaties

→ AI conducts more treaties with…
+ Same subculture
+ Factions with common enemies
+ Allies of allies
→ AI is more open to upgrading their treaties/relationship
→ AI is less likely to conduct treaties, excluding trade with factions that are far away
→ This leads to alliance blocs with strong interrelations, these blocs have a tendency to severely gang up on factions without allies, and/or factions that have neglected diplomacy/politics.
→ Eventually 2 alliance blocs will declare war on each other leading to massive combined troop movements and battles

Teamwork

→ AI neutral armies will participate in sieges against common enemies (-5 to +10 logic rating)
→ AI allied armies will participate sieges more often
→ AI will siege with multiple allied armies as reinforcements
→ AI will group up their armies with allies during travel
→ AI will group armies near allied settlements
→ AI will form larger groups
→ AI readily follows war coordination orders

Logic

→ Adjusted behavior and decision making of AI factions to make them better coordinate attacks, defenses, raids, various things
→ AI building choice overhauled, they will build settlement infrastructure akin to players leading to strong economies
→ AI region profiles unrestricted, they may choose to expand in any direction
→ AI is more likely to conduct lightning strike battles
→ AI is more likely to embed their agents into their armies, no more 5 loose enemy agents following you
→ AI is more likely to perform vassalization occupation decision
→ AI will not retreat armies to areas solely to recharge "Winds of Magic"
→ AI will no longer discriminately target player armies, agents, and settlements
→ AI will use commandments appropriate to their circumstances
→ Agents will scout provinces for ambushers

Threat Analysis

→ AI will initiate battles with much greater intelligence, no more suiciding armies such as Khazrak One-Eye. Armies that initiate attacks will have very good reason to do so
→ AI assesses movement range of threatening enemy armies with greater accuracy
→ AI will retreat from disadvantageous battles, learn this trick, "Zone of Control Locking" to counter it. You can also trigger a retreat, go next to or in their ZOC, end turn, and let your allies’ armies attack the army on their turn for an allied battle
+ Note that "Use Worldroots" or "Underway" can be used by the AI for a % chance to escape ZOC locking
+ You can go into a enemy settlement’s ZOC to make your ally’s armies get closer to reinforce

Diplomacy

→ Adjusted base cultural aversion and equalized attitude multiplier
+ Factions are more open-minded to treaties and becoming friends with other races
+ Expect to see much more diverse relationships
→ Battle support relationship is greatly improved for both AI and player, help out neutrals and allies in battles and sieges that they initiate to become friends
→ AI will no longer discriminate against the player with diplomacy/war declarations

Beastmen

→ AI minor Beastmen can now muster troops
→ AI Beastmen will employ guerrilla hit and run tactics
→ AI Beastmen prioritize building siege defense debuff building
→ AI Beastmen occupation decision improved

→ A tip when playing with this mod is to focus on completely eliminating factions. Do not try to kill multiple factions at once, try to focus down one faction in order to eliminate their base income or else the game will become much harder.

Guide: How to do 80 vs 80 battles

Why you should use "No Diplomatic Confederations", "No Join War", and "No AI Potential/Equalized Base Income" mods

→ Confederations seem beneficial, but are very detrimental. You and all of the members of the alliance bloc will…
+ Lose +3000 base income of ally (7 allies = +21,000 income per turn)
+ Lose trade benefits of ally
+ Lose all allied troop recruitment
+ Lose all Outposts
+ Lower Threat/Respect rating of outsiders towards Alliance Bloc
+ Lose "Friend of Friend" + relationship bonuses, fragmenting the integrity of the Alliance Bloc
+ Lose potential diplomatic buffer states
+ Lose the ability to sometimes make safe territorial expansion via allies who capture regions and are only partially at war with the opposing alliance bloc (less counter-attacks)
+ Lose relation through "Imperium" penalties
+ Lose Vanilla AI cheats/bonuses if not using other mods
+ Game becomes x10 easier fighting 1 big confederated faction vs many small factions who are allied together
+ Political landscape and intrigue is boring/not interesting with only 1 faction per race due to confederation spam
+ Alliance blocs will only expand in one direction without multiple factions having their own motives/goals
+ There won’t be enough factions to form "Alliance Blocs" with confederation enabled, often each sub-race only has 1 mega confederated faction in the vanilla game

→ Join War is unintentionally exploited by AI and players alike…
+ By using join war, factions can bypass declaring war on the Alliance Bloc, only declaring war on a single faction
+ This is bad for many reasons, and it also harms potential relationship gains

→ You must also download "No AI Potential/Equalized Base Income" or else allying with minor factions is extremely weak as they have severe auto resolve penalties and have no money

→ In conclusion, these three mods above are essential to the core gameplay of this mod, otherwise the "Alliance Blocs" feature won’t work correctly

Recommended mods

No Confederations
No Join War Button
No AI Potential/Equalized Base Income
Restricted Auto Resolve 85/40
No AI Cheats/Human Discrimination
Lightning Strike Rebalanced
Remove Minor Faction Battle AI Nerfs
Loreful Strategic Threat
Technology Affects Allied Recruitment
Trading Colonies