AI and expansion

**POLANDjapan** · October 5

Recently posted time lapse shows development and growth of Eurasian and some African civilization. It can be seen that AI had tendencies to expand weirdly and chaotically after some time (eg. Hungary controlling big part of Sahara). I think it'd be great if there was a possibility, that world could be split into continents and regions. Each civilization would be given priority to expand in certain places. For example, Hungary would have priority of conquering in Europe, and much lower in Africa or Americas. By regions, Hungary could have priority of expansion in central and eastern Europe, with slightly smaller interest in western. I think this could be achieved by a hidden modifier between all civilizations, where each country has set certain interest on certain provinces.

What could be also seen, is civilizations migrating quite spontaneously, eg. Castille in megherb removed from Iberia. I think there should be an event reducing it. Such event would be triggered under conditions like country having majority of provinces of different cultures and religions while not having any modifiers for tolerance (if there are such modifiers). Example, France owns 10 provinces out of which 6 are of not tolerated culture/religion, this could trigger an event of a civil war, which would give in this example, France many debuffs including high unrest in entire country. This would be a thing to consider by people, but also it could slightly limit AI civilizations in expanding rapidly and randomly.

**Matvey** · October 5

Your approach is quite practical and I also suggested something similar on the forum earlier.

But. Then there remains the problem of how the AI will form colonial Empires.

I would solve it this way: the AI prefers not to seize lands, but to make vassals in remote regions.
AI aggressiveness is divided into aggressiveness near and aggressiveness at a distance (the emphasis in this case is either on conquering living space on the borders, or on creating colonies and vassals overseas)

You can also add an AI race to expand the list of resources in the country.
Then countries will fight for some pieces of land far from their homeland in a way that will be similar to trading posts in reality

**POLANDjapan** · October 6

19 hours ago, Matvey said:

Your approach is quite practical and I also suggested something similar on the forum earlier.

But. Then there remains the problem of how the AI will form colonial Empires.

I would solve it this way: the AI prefers not to seize lands, but to make vassals in remote regions.
AI aggressiveness is divided into aggressiveness near and aggressiveness at a distance (the emphasis in this case is either on conquering living space on the borders, or on creating colonies and vassals overseas)

You can also add an AI race to expand the list of resources in the country.
Then countries will fight for some pieces of land far from their homeland in a way that will be similar to trading posts in reality

That could work. Conquering priority system would in fact, limit AI's interests and keep them more historical though. Giving Portugal higher priority of expansion in provinces in Americas, and highest being in Brazil (same with Spain, and other civilizations) Would keep game more historical and less chaotic. Vassals further away would also make sense, but still it could end up with minor countries owning vassals in absolutely random places (eg. Bremen in Alaska). I think that the further the province the lower interest ai should have in it (unless it has some historical basis like Portugal>Brazil or UK>India). If AI was simply making vassals if they're far enough, I think vassals shouldn't be simple to maintain too and easy to lose. Also it'd be good if vassal loyalty was affected by distance from lord country. (eg. Spain has two vassals, Portugal and Cuba, both Portugal and Cuba are similar in strength, but because Cuba is further away from Spain, it has lower loyalty and higher chance of getting independence).