AI Mod Compilation: How to make the AI competitive into the late game
This is going to be a long post i have been wanting to make for a while, i always see people on this subreddit talking about how the AI becomes too easy to run over after you have a few hundred hours under your belt. The early game is usually a decent challenge, but after you have overcome the initial challenge, you start snowballing, even on Legendary difficulty.
The AI still runs around with crapstacks during the mid- and lategame and you can just autoresolve your way through, usually at this point you start zoning out and abandon the campaign, there is no risk of losing, even if you actively try to do so.
But shouldn't the AI become more challenging to face the longer the game goes on?
In Warhammer II the AI would have large empires during the late game, there was always a faction that ended up having a mega empire by the time you were done conquering your part of the map.
I love playing Warhammer III but these things have always bothered me, so i went through the majority of the AI mods on the workshop and tested a lot of them to create a playlist of AI mods that complement each other and keep the AI competitive during the course of the game. It took me around 300 hours of playing around until i was satisfied since there is such an absurd amount of AI mods.
**A few things before i start listing the mods:**
\- Normal campaign difficulty is slightly higher than Vanilla Legendary with these mods, seriously, don't crank the difficulty to Very Hard immediately unless you are into BDSM..
\- **Don't use other AI mods with the ones listed below** unless you know what each of them does and you are absolutely sure they aren't going to break eachother, overhaul mods like SFO also won't work. In general if it isn't a UI or Graphic mod i would not use it.
\- 3 or 4 settings need to be changed with the Mod Configuration tool, they will be listed below.
\- No AI mod will ever make the ai "smarter", modders only have access to tables or can create scripts, but they don't have access to the games source code to actually make the ai act like a human, it is what it is.
**Anyway, here is the list:**
**1. (Mod Configuration Tool)** [**https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927955021**](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2927955021)
A lot of you will probably already be using this mod, this is needed to change a few settings.
**2. (Stronger and fairer AI)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792395073](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2792395073)
Probably also somewhat known, however there is a hidden gem inside this mod that makes it the most important one to run, **if you open the mods configuration with MCT go to the right side and enable "Ai Army Cleanup", also change the required province level to 4 and lower the required income to 3500**. This little script the lovely mod author made simply starts deleting early game units from AI armies once you enter the mid game and prevents the AI from running around with crapstacks, it works extremely well.
**3. (Zach's AI army upgrader)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3768702328](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3768702328)
Works extremely well in tandem with the Stronger and fairer ai cleanup script, the cleanup script removes early game units while this script slowly upgrades AI units that are left over.
**4. (AI declares war)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3057019745](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3057019745)
A lot of times 2 AIs will be sitting next to each other while having diplomatic relations of -300, this little script simply makes it so there is an increasing chance for a declaration of war starting at -100 relations and becoming 100% at -200. This one is really good because it somewhat stops the AI settlement camping, the AI needs at least one war or it simply becomes inactive. **Go to MCT and untick the box that makes the script declare war on you the player, we just want it to be AI vs AI to prevent staring contests.**
**5. (Force AI Agent Embedding)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3279560220](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3279560220)
Another lovely mod that significantly improves the efficacy of AI Armies, now you will have AI armies with actual useful Heroes inside of them instead of them wandering around the map aimlessly.
**6. (Unshackle AI Recruitment)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2858804223](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2858804223)
Mod hasn't been updated in a while, but i have been using it for 300 hours, it works perfectly fine. This fixes the AI sometimes not having access to certain units because it just doesn't erect the corresponding building, very important mod.
**7. (Unshackle AI Recruitment DLC patch)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173831041](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3173831041)
Simply adds recent DLC units to the former mod.
**8. (Better AI Army Builder)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3617312541](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3617312541)
Another good one, there are lots of AI Army Composition mods, but in my opinion this is by far the best one, the author put in a lot of effort and made hundreds of army templates for every major faction. Throgg for example will have monster and troll armies, Bretonnia will no longer have peasant armies during the late game but instead you will be facing Grail Knights. This one + the army cleanup and upgrade scripts makes for some really good AI late game armies.
**9. (AI Skill Selection Tweaks)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2909055000](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2909055000)
Just a small mod that makes the AI pick skills for its lords and heroes better.
**10. (More Occupation AI)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837648822](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2837648822)
Little submod by Hecleas, makes it so the AI occupies settlements when it makes sense instead of simply razing them to the ground senselessly.
**11. (Ultra Aggressive & Smart AI by Hecleas)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797826270](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2797826270)
This submod simply adds the AI behaviour from the main Hecleas AI overhaul mod without all the other changes, that is nice because the actual overhaul interferes with the other listed mods, but we still want some of his changes.
**OPTIONAL:**
**1. (Regiments of Renown Compilation)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029586263](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3029586263)
Not an AI mods in a strict sense, however this provides a lot of CA quality level RoR's that are nice to use as the player and let the AI have more diverse armies.
**2. (No Siege Battle Autoresolve Bonus)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2880448348](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2880448348)
**(No Minor Settlement Autoresolve Bonus)** [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2881527875](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2881527875)
These 2 mods are a bit special, i personally do not use them, when i played with them enabled the AI empire and kislev owned half the map by turn 60 and were monstrosities, a large part of why the AI simply doesn't have huge empires in WH3 is because of the autoresolve bonuses defenders get when sitting inside of cities, so the AIs keep each other in check by grinding each other down or simply not attacking certain settlements due to the autoresolve bonus. With the bonus removed the AI becomes more aggressive and it can lead to a crazy snowball.
In the end you do not need a ton of AI mods or huge overhauls to create a more formidable AI just some mods that complement each other.