The Dawnless Days Official Submod: Campaign AI Testbed

I am one of the newer members of the TDD team and have (mostly) self-assigned myself to debugging and system design. Currently, my main project is an overhaul of the campaign AI which divests us from reliance on Vanilla AI presets, so that the campaign AI may be fine tuned specifically for use with our campaign. The AI systems which I was working on (those pertaining to strategic decision making and task handling) were slated for 1.0.1 but could not make it in due to testing constraints. So, now that 1.0.1 is released, the current set of AI changes is being hosted publicly by myself in order to ensure that everything is ready and working as intended for 1.0.2.

IMPORTANT: The contents of this mod will change, possibly several times a day when I am actively debugging. It should remain safe to use in this event, but if you see an update, I request that any new feedback be held off until you start a new campaign with the new version.

ALSO IMPORTANT: This is compatible with 1.0.0. as well. Please do not provide feedback if you decide to use this with 1.0.0, as the AI behaves radically differently with 1.0.0’s overall balance.

Simply hit the download button and place this mod at the very top of your mod load order.

The list of individual changes is far too long to enumerate here, but here is a general list of AI systems touched and what to expect from these changes:

• Complete rebuild of the Task Management System (TMS). This generates tasks for the AI’s armies. There are many goals associated with this rebuild, however, the main aim is to provide a less peaceful experience on the campaign map and provide greater control on a faction-level basis on our end. Overall, the Forces of Shadow are designed to be more aggressive and the Forces of Good are designed to be more focused on defense.
• Complete rebuild of occupation decisions. These handle AI decisions when it wins a siege attack. The current aim is to improve the variety of actions taken by the AI when occupying.
• Complete rebuild of AI personalities. These handle how specific systems and components are arrayed in order to create an "AI" for a faction or group of factions. There are a lot of goals in regards to this, but suffice it to say, each faction should have a more pronounced and unique set of behaviors when in the hands of the AI.
• Bug fixes: Various issues such as infinite raiding/sacking loops, refusal to attack settlements, and other such annoyances present in 1.0.0 are (to my knowledge) all fixed. However, if they aren’t and you find them, you can help make sure they never crop up again.

There are a lot more systems which will likely be touched in some capacity Soon™.

These include:

• Army templates: These provide guidelines for what type of units the AI places in armies.
• Budgetary components: These tell the AI what to purchase and when to purchase it. Our current budgetary components are already pretty good, but some more performance can be squeezed out of them.
• Construction templates: These tell the AI what to build, where, in what order, and in what quantity. Some improvements are desired here due to the poor economic growth currently exhibited by the AI and other minor issues.
• Diplomatic components: These tell the AI how to manage diplomacy with other factions. Again, only minor changes are likely to be made here.
• Technology templates: These tell the AI what to research and (roughly) in what order. This will likely be done once the tech trees are finalized (whenever I have time to do so).

In order to gather and make use of feedback as efficiently as possible, I have created a survey that focuses on various potential issues and areas of improvement. Please fill it out if you have time. If you do not have time or are not willing, please instead post feedback either here or – preferably – on the submod thread in the official discord server.

The link to the survey is as follows:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeIlvHm5OlvjCHr-42biRYlvkJI1Iy-y2xTRlgHns4LZ-dJqQ/viewform?usp=dialog

Q: How do I use this?
A: Did you read the installation section? Place this mod at the very top of your load order. Refer to the screenshot at the top of the mod page.

Q: I found a bug/issue/etc.!
A: That is not a question. Please provide feedback in one of the locations provided.

Q: This is horrible! You’re horrible! Everything is horrible!
A: Again, not a question. Also, it is known.