Difficulty Enhancement Mods for Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients

Vae Victis - A More Veteran AI

This mod changes some AI configurations in the globals.xnt, that should make for more capable AI opponents.

For all difficulties:

- the AI's threat evaluation should scale up more rapidly relative to the player's faction size
(i.e. it will put up better defenses)
- the AI is allowed to have more active goals to pursue in mid-late game
- the AI is allowed to build city walls earlier
- more AI factions are allowed to become hostile to the player
- the AI is allowed to conquer player cities right from start

Changed AI aggresiveness for all difficulties:

- on "Novice" difficulty the AI wil be as aggressive as in Vanilla "Normal"
- on "Normal" difficulty the AI wil be as aggressive as in Vanilla "Expert"
- on "Expert" difficulty the AI wil be yet more aggressive

THE AI RECEIVES NO BONUSES

This mod may not be compatible with mods that also change the globals.xnt.

A.E.P.V. - The AI Cheats

Avida est periculi virtus, et quo tendat non quid passura sit cogitat (Seneca) - Virtue despises danger, and considers not what it may suffer, but what it may accomplish.

While I'm not a fan of AI cheats, they do add to difficulty and can make a game more engaging. Therefore many games increase difficulty by spoon-feeding the AI additional resources and abilities. However, I'll rather try to create a level playing field for the AI against the player instead. To this purpose, this mod adds two cheats for the AI based on my preliminary understanding of its shortcomings.

The AI will get additional resources in case it needs them. However, these resources do not come from thin air, but for every resource the AI gets, it loses another one that it has enough of. This tries to simulate how a player would reallocate and adjust his/her economy if in need of a particular resource, which the AI is unlikely to be able to do quite in the same way.

The AI will get additional generals based on the number of its cities. The exact formula is based on the square root of the number of cities it controls, so e.g. with 25 cities under its control, the AI will be given 5 generals. This is based on my understanding that often the AI has only 1 general avalable even with a big empire, most likely due to not having the same access to events and quests a player has. (I'm not fully convinced the AI actually uses the additional generals to the best of their potential, though.)

Working on the mod, I have realized, that AIs do not assign (get assigned) a new capital city once they lose their original capital. As this interferes with the logic of the mod (resources like food and wood are exchanged in the capital city) and also placed the AI at an unfair disadvantage (it won't receive the +50 faction morale in capital), this mod also assigns a capital for AIs that lose their original one.

A.E.P.V. - The AI Cheats Even More

In contrast to my other mod A.E.P.V. - The AI Cheats, in this mod the AI gets an unfair resource advantage. The exchange rate is changed from 1:1 for all resources to 1:5, i.e. the AI gets 5 times the resources it pays.

Please do only install either A.E.P.V. or A.E.P.V.+

Permadeath

Defeated combat brigades will not return to their home city but will suffer a permanent death.