Attention modders!

• NEW: Many AI tweaks are now available in: defsdifficulty.in2 and defsglobals.in2 ([AI] section).

Fixes

• FIX: AI marshals now recruit siege squads.
• FIX: AI now imports exotic goods if it can afford them, so it can gain access to kingdom advantages.
• FIX: AI squad-buying code is reworked. Now AI marshals hire more mercenaries and more often disband weaker units to free slots for stronger ones.
NOTE: Crusader armies don’t recruit new squads by design. Their existing squads are periodically refilled (the period is tweakable).
• FIX: AI now uses the correct (read: higher) caps for the number of the invading armies when attacking the player at ‘normal’ and ‘hard’ difficulties.
• FIX: AI now requires its armies to be fuller when sending them to invade or defend provinces. The exact threshold values are tweakable.
• FIX: Fixed an issue with the morale of Byzantine armies.
• FIX: AI marshals that are returning defeated (with few soldiers left) from a conquest no longer try to attack enemy armies on their way to the homeland (but may still decide to reinforce a battle).
• FIX: Fixed a glitch that sometimes caused sailing AI armies to get stuck at sea.
• FIX: Camping/fortified AI marshals now consider reinforcing nearby battles.

New features

• NEW: As the player’s kingdom grows, neighbouring AI kingdoms now get more hostile to the player and friendlier to their other neighbours (tweakable).
• NEW: Mercenary camps are now visible on the minimap (light grey squares with a black dot in the middle).
• NEW: When building town improvements, entries with unsatisfied requirements other than gold are now shown in red (instead of being darkened). A darkened item now means that the only unsatisfied requirement for building it is gold (such items weren’t marked at all until now).
• NEW: Added tweaks for modifying AI’s and player’s gold income. The default values in the data files are:
o for the player: 100% at all difficulty levels
o for the AI – 100%, 125% and 150% for ‘easy’, ‘normal’, and ‘hard’ respectively
NOTE: The change is not visible through the interface, it affects directly what is added to the treasury.
• NEW: Reuniting events now may define the titles in the resulting country (for the ruler, the ruler’s wife, the knights and the country itself).
• NEW: Top five most powerful AI kingdoms have defence bonus when fighting on their own territory.

Changes

• CHANGE: Increased reinforce radius for AI armies.
• CHANGE: AI marshals no more blindly chase an enemy army into a castle but give themselves a chance to reconsider.
• CHANGE: Reduced the income from traders. If a trader from kingdom A trades with kingdom B, the new rules that apply are as follows.
o Trade goods and exotic goods owned by A but not B no more affect profits.
o It is no longer the sum of all of B's towns levels but the average town level, that gets added to the profit.
o Markets and merchant guilds of B now affect the profit more.
o ‘Silk Route’ kingdom advantage still doubles the profits as before.
o All traders now receive a fixed bonus of 10 gold (by default). It is applied before applying the trader’s level.
o The influence of a trader’s level over his profit is now greater.
• CHANGE: Lowered the direct gold income from the king’s economy skill.
• CHANGE: Increased gold bonus of merchants’ guilds.
• CHANGE: Decreased the ranges of longbow men and ballistae.
• CHANGE: Increased the ranges of crossbow men and heavy crossbow men.
• CHANGE: Slightly decreased the ‘base chance to hit’ value for all bow/crossbow units.
• CHANGE: Decreased bonuses from Ballistics skill.
• CHANGE: ‘No friendly fire’ marshal ability (Archer master, 3rd level) no longer eliminates losses from friendly fire but instead halves them.
• CHANGE: Colouring of religions in the political map has been improved.
• CHANGE: The icons of available princes/princesses are now shown together with the royal wedding icons in the political map.
• CHANGE: Changed the priority calculation for the ‘reinforce battle’ action of AI marshals and made it tweakable. Priority for reinforcing a battle at a castle has an additional weight bonus (also tweakable).
• CHANGE: ‘Night march’ morale penalty for armies is removed.
• CHANGE: AI now also appoints family members as knights.
• CHANGE: The starting cost and activation time of importing goods have been reduced.