As it often happens when I start digging in the AI code, the scope of the update grew a lot larger than I originally expected, with major changes in three of the AI pillars (attack planning, high level strategy and diplomacy). But at this point it’s starting to all come together pretty nicely! Aiming for public beta next week if everything goes smoothly. For another small sneak peak at the progress continue here.

Last weeks theory is this weeks practice! Here’s little showcase of the configurable AI playstyle as discussed in the last blog post. Lots of kinks still need to be ironed out, but most of the time it already works pretty well!

Just in case you’re curious, I’ll also add a little info about the remaining AI traits shown in the gif - these are planned, but not yet wired up at the moment. (for the meaning of expansion and disruption see the previous blog post.)

• honor will control how much the AI pays attention to the approval towards each faction - honorable AI will never backstab you (how boring!)
• income will control how much the AI tries to maintain a healthy income
• hoarding will make the AI keep more unspent gold in reserve
• winning affects how much the AI worries about the overall balance of power - how eager it is to turn against players that begin to dominate the map

There will most likely also be at least one trait that more directly controls the AI difficulty level. If you have any suggestions on what other aspects of the AI behavior would be nice to have configurable, I’ll be happy if you let me know with discord/email/twitter or the ingame feedback button.