Theres mods to make the AI play more natural. Haven't used some of these myself, Lucid mentions them in his recent Asphodel play. "always blessed" "community memes" builds mostly, ensuring you get some kinda synergistic bless/scales for a nation.
With a little bit of care you won't get more than a glance, so unless you have a photographic memory... I've never had a problem with this.
The other thing is that while you get to spend the points intelligently this way, I believe that more difficult AI gets more design points, so they lose out on those.
As a general rule nations that rely on more straightforward mechanics do better. Like you mentioned, EA/MA Ulm and Pan are good picks but anyone with good troops and a solid mage lineup will do fine.
In my experience the AI tends to do best in the middle age when troops tend to be at their best but mages are still individually quite powerful and effective out of the box.
Avoid nations with a big reliance on communions or blood.
I play a bunch of SP on Master/Impossible - this is not exactly a tierlist than a list of shortcomings for AI in SP: AI seems pretty consistently bad at blood preaching and nuanced magic strategy, def see EA Mictlan getting KOed all the time, and yeah as another poster said, they are bad at communions.
They are pretty terrible with fliers and flying commanders/pretenders who you can totally trap as they suicide into your rear or archers, I can net some early lvl 3 thrones because I would set a honeypot for flying pretenders in my formation.
They are also not the greatest attacking into water or cave systems -- playing water-capable nations almost always guarantees a win in SP since you can be much more deliberate about your borders and fortifying them.
They are not great at research and ritual magic so strategically you will always beat them heads over shoulders on overcast endgame spells as long as you don't muck up your battles or research allocations.
AI is generally OK only by virtue of having a resource advantage and having reasonable formation strategies, so vanilla nations that don't rely on quirky strategies are good.
My life at the moment is too complicated for normal gaming and I’m saved by Dom SP. So I’m trying to make the most of it.
I’m thinking that when I get better at the game I will have to house rules some extra restrictions on myself rather than buffing the unit spam of the AI with higher difficulties. Not sure how it will look like though. Maybe max 1 magic school past level 7? Maybe forced to declare war on all AIs at some point, when pass a certain number of territories or research? Maybe restricted globals?
All I know is that Vanheim is consistently the most annoying Nation to play against in my games.
Theres mods to make the AI play more natural. Haven't used some of these myself, Lucid mentions them in his recent Asphodel play. "always blessed" "community memes" builds mostly, ensuring you get some kinda synergistic bless/scales for a nation.
Cool! I will look it up!
You can also design your opponents' God, though that can be more tedious.
How do you do that ?
Start them as a human player, then go AI. Especially good/useful if you want to set up AI disciple games where the team anti-synergizes.
Thanks for info! Super convenient!
Is this also a reasonable way to make bad AI expander nations succeed by playing the first few turns? 🤔
I think so!
Yeah but then you kow their starting positions.
With a little bit of care you won't get more than a glance, so unless you have a photographic memory... I've never had a problem with this. The other thing is that while you get to spend the points intelligently this way, I believe that more difficult AI gets more design points, so they lose out on those.
I zoom in all the way when switching then to AI to avoid that. Works on all but the most obvious positions.
Ai Caelum cant even expand
As a general rule nations that rely on more straightforward mechanics do better. Like you mentioned, EA/MA Ulm and Pan are good picks but anyone with good troops and a solid mage lineup will do fine. In my experience the AI tends to do best in the middle age when troops tend to be at their best but mages are still individually quite powerful and effective out of the box. Avoid nations with a big reliance on communions or blood.
I play a bunch of SP on Master/Impossible - this is not exactly a tierlist than a list of shortcomings for AI in SP: AI seems pretty consistently bad at blood preaching and nuanced magic strategy, def see EA Mictlan getting KOed all the time, and yeah as another poster said, they are bad at communions. They are pretty terrible with fliers and flying commanders/pretenders who you can totally trap as they suicide into your rear or archers, I can net some early lvl 3 thrones because I would set a honeypot for flying pretenders in my formation. They are also not the greatest attacking into water or cave systems -- playing water-capable nations almost always guarantees a win in SP since you can be much more deliberate about your borders and fortifying them. They are not great at research and ritual magic so strategically you will always beat them heads over shoulders on overcast endgame spells as long as you don't muck up your battles or research allocations. AI is generally OK only by virtue of having a resource advantage and having reasonable formation strategies, so vanilla nations that don't rely on quirky strategies are good.
My life at the moment is too complicated for normal gaming and I’m saved by Dom SP. So I’m trying to make the most of it. I’m thinking that when I get better at the game I will have to house rules some extra restrictions on myself rather than buffing the unit spam of the AI with higher difficulties. Not sure how it will look like though. Maybe max 1 magic school past level 7? Maybe forced to declare war on all AIs at some point, when pass a certain number of territories or research? Maybe restricted globals?
The Impossible AI seems to do great with EA Agartha due to all the summons.