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squarian
Brigadier General
Posts: 485
Joined: Thu Aug 07, 2008 7:41 pm
Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

AI: fixing "leader misuse"?

Wed Sep 07, 2011 3:07 pm

In this thread, several of us have been discussing common problems with the AI, and the one that seems to come up most is "leader misuse": the AI's habit of assigning leaders (especially the top brass, including Washington) to very small or inconsequential stacks. Usually in my experience this happens after a major defeat; Washington in particular will generally stay with the main force (i.e. the Continental Army) until it is annihilated, but afterwards he'll turn up almost anywhere, often leading ridiculous little bands of Indians or militia.

I am a complete novice when it comes to modding, but I began to look at the AGEwiki sections on AI modding and noticed that there is a command for a leader's troop-type preference. I'm wondering if this command could be used to help reduce the "leader misuse" problem.

AFAICT, there is no way to adjust a leader's preference by size. But to my inexperienced eye it looks like it might be possible to set Washington's (and other high-ranking leaders) preference for raiders, militia and other riffraff very low, while setting preferences for infantry very high, in the hope that main forces are more likely to be made up mostly of infantry.

I'd be grateful for any pointers, especially regarding the files and necessary changes to try this experiment. Anyone care to steer a newb in the right direction?

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lodilefty
Posts: 7613
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2007 3:27 pm
Location: Finger Lakes, NY GMT -5 US Eastern

Wed Sep 07, 2011 5:09 pm

The Database file needed will be Models (or you could direct edit the mdl files. If the world loves your work, it must be in the DB format to become official). The column DA is labelled AIAffinity

Remember to delete [color="red"]Model.Cached [/color]file (in /GameData/Models), the restart the game for your changes to take effect.

To create new Affinities:
You need to edit [color="red"]AI.opt [/color](in /Settings): note the Affinity naming syntax must be used (AIAffinity5, AIAffinity6...).
I've found it best to create an Alias to help remember the affinity. Edit [color="Red"]AI_Affinity.ini [/color](in /Aliases)

Good luck! Keep us posted! :love:

(I will edit the Wiki to clarify the method I have described!)
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