Hi, welcome to this post, We’ll discuss the Age of Wonders 4 – AI Information Guide in this post, and we sincerely hope you find it helpful.

 

Omnious AI

The AI/NPC opponents in Age of Wonders 4 are basic, with highly restricted “personality”-priority sets. However, it is necessary to take a step back and stress that the AI lacks any kind of strategic reasoning. It operates on a very basic level, focused exclusively on making the “best decision possible at the moment,” without considering the long-term logical perspective that a human would emphasize. For example, even if the AI’s ideal choice is to create a gold mine, despite the need for mana for a successful move, it will still build the mine since it cannot anticipate ahead. It has no memory, no dreams, and no ability to plan. Being aware of this inherent constraint is critical when examining the AI’s dubious decisions resulting from its primitive nature.

At first, this may appear repetitive and uninspiring when considering what an AI offers. Indeed, this may be partially true, yet adding “personality” priority sets adds an element of enjoyment – not only can you identify core behaviors of each AI faction, but you can also recognize personality patterns based on its culture, origin, or even luck; for instance an AI ruler hailing from barbarian origin with a raiding mindset is likely to adopt warlord “personality” patterns; conversely one from the noble origin with unifying intentions would more likely embrace diplomat patterns compared with one hailing from barbarian origin with aggressive raiding tendencies;

These patterns only influence AI aggression and decisions on an informal level, yet can dramatically affect your experience – with many potential variations to choose from! Furthermore, each AI attempts to achieve victory through strategies aligning with their personality as defined by default victory conditions.

A few AI personalities you might come across often ~

Does the AI cheat?

Contrary to popular perception, AI receives all its advantages depending on the difficulty level it is set at exclusively in the form of discounts. As its AI cannot create units out of thin air or possess unlimited resources like human players do, no handicaps apply exclusively to AI players like those applied against human players; without these discounts, the AI would often find itself under economically disadvantaged against human players who employ foresight during gameplay.

The reason is, even the most advanced AIs capable of playing chess rely on the same basic behavior, and their access to data allows them to calculate numerous possibilities for many moves ahead. Chess being significantly more straightforward than modern computer games makes this possible – imagine calculating every potential next move, considering multiple players, random probability seeds and human behaviour’s infinitely variable deviation potential!

Overall, AI performance falls far short of expectations in this game… Thankfully, multiplayer support makes up for any shortfalls…

If something surprising appears from the AI, such as it seemingly conjures units from nothing, just remember that whatever they can do you can too – they get a discount instead of God mode! Additionally, illusion of units appearing out of nowhere may simply be due to concealment effects.

Since AI cannot plan or trade realistically, it employs pre-defined templates to equip its heroes. While players might use Ancient Wonder rewards or quest rewards to equip and skill their heroes individually, while AI only has access to specific hero builds with specific item sets – leading them to equip multiple identical heroes throughout their game experience and equip multiple armies with concealment rings (which may result in unexpected encounters with similar items throughout gameplay). You can view this YouTube video for further discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcesu9ukMnI

Beginners often mistake a video demonstrating camouflage as evidence that AI units are cheating into existence; in reality, AI must follow all rules set forth for humans when playing by them.

Trivia

Your PC’s setup has also an influence on how the AI behaves.

It is often observed during multiplayer in form of desynchronisations.

Whether the AI is set to Relaxed, Easy, Normal, Hard or Brutal, the AI’s behaviour is indifferent across the board, as it is completely limited to its scripts when making decisions.

The only difference is artificially created by giving the AI economic discounts.

Whether you take an Easy AI or a Brutal AI – if they both have the same resources and the same prices, they are going to do exactly the same thing in the same situation. A higher difficulty will not make the AI any smarter. It just gives the AI more options due to the discounts.

Setting a global difficulty, rather than an individual ruler AI difficulty, as you are limited to for Story Realms, will affect all AI rulers. For example, if you set the AI to earn less income and the world threat to be less aggressive, this will also affect your AI allies.

Resulting in… undesired AI bnehaviour.

Discounts for the AI

How do we know about these?

The game comes with modding tools that can be accessed through the Paradox Launcher. All we have to do is analyse the file that determines the role of the AI. It is fairly easy to read too!

But here you get it even easier:

Relaxed

• +10 Souls per Turn
• +20% Pronouncement Cost
• -25% Imperium Cost for founding Cities
• -25% Food Cost for Population Growth

Easy

• +10 Souls per Turn
• +10% Pronouncement Cost
• -25% Imperium Cost for founding Cities
• -25% Food Cost for Population Growth
• -5% Gold Cost for Recruitment
• -5% Draft Cost for Recruitment
• -10% Souls Cost for Recruitment
• -5% Units Upkeep
• -5% Mana Cost for Spells
• -10% Souls Cost for Spells
• -5% Hero Recruitment Cost

Normal

• +10 Souls per Turn
• +20% Gold income
• -25% Imperium Cost for founding Cities
• -25% Food Cost for Population Growth
• -20% Gold Cost for Recruitment
• -20% Draft Cost for Recruitment
• -33% Souls Cost for Recruitment
• -20% Units Upkeep
• -15% Mana Cost for Spells
• -33% Souls Cost for Spells
• -15% Hero Recruitment Cost
• -15% Production Cost for City Structures
• -15% Gold Cost for City Structures
• -30% Production Cost for Town Hall
• -40% Gold Cost for Town Hall
• -10% Research Cost
• +2 Tier II Starting Units

Hard

• +10 Souls per Turn
• +20% Gold income
• +20% Mana Income
• -25% Imperium Cost for founding Cities
• -25% Food Cost for Population Growth
• -33% Gold Cost for Recruitment
• -33% Draft Cost for Recruitment
• -40% Souls Cost for Recruitment
• -33% Units Upkeep
• -33% Mana Cost for Spells
• -40% Souls Cost for Spells
• -33% Hero Recruitment Cost
• -34% Production Cost for City Structures
• -34% Gold Cost for City Structures
• -50% Production Cost for Town Hall
• -50% Gold Cost for Town Hall
• -15% Research Cost
• +1 Tier II Starting Unit
• +1 Tier III Starting Unit
• all Units start with +1 Rank
• -10% Pronouncement Cost
• -20% Pronouncement Upkeep
• +20% Grievances Gain against Humans
• -15% Grievances Gain against AI

Brutal

• +10 Souls per Turn
• +20% Gold income
• +20% Mana Income
• -25% Imperium Cost for founding Cities
• -25% Food Cost for Population Growth
• -50% Gold Cost for Recruitment
• -50% Draft Cost for Recruitment
• -66% Souls Cost for Recruitment
• -50% Units Upkeep
• -50% Mana Cost for Spells
• -66% Souls Cost for Spells
• -60% Hero Recruitment Cost
• -50% Production Cost for City Structures
• -50% Gold Cost for City Structures
• -60% Production Cost for Town Hall
• -60% Gold Cost for Town Hall
• -20% Research Cost
• +2 Tier II Starting Units
• +1 Tier III Starting Unit
• all Units start with +2 Ranks
• -20% Pronouncement Cost
• -40% Pronouncement Upkeep
• +40% Grievances Gain against Humans
• -30% Grievances Gain against AI
• Throne City starts with +1 Population

 

Cheats for Humans

The cheats console can be opened ingame by pressing CTRL+ALT+C

Cheats cannot be used in multiplayer.

Using cheats disables Pantheon features permanently for the game session.

A reload of an earlier savegame will not cure that, as the session will remember if you cheat.

Cheat	Effect
allheroes	adds all offmap heroes to the recruitment pool
barentz	explores the entire map and toggles vision over it
coehoorn	breaches the walls of the selected besieged city
cruijff	toggles infinite move points
demonen	adds -20 alignment
dokterwie	increases the turn counter by 1
eendracht	increases the Build the Beacons of Unity counter for Expansion Victory
eenheid	fulfills the Occupy Provinces objective for Expansion Victory
engelen	adds +20 alignment
freepop	adds +1 population to the selected city
genhero	generates a random offmap hero
gencrypthero	generates a random hero in crypt
genprisonhero	generates a random hero in prison
hauer	levels up all heroes and units in the selected army
hein	triggers victory
huygens	unlocks empire development if not already unlocked and gain one level in each affinity
iamgod	toggles auto-win in auto-combat
ikbedoelalles	toggles knowing all spells
improverelation	advance to the next allegiance level with the selected free city
instantskills	toggles instant research
leeuwenhoek	finishes the current research
makeally	forms an alliance with the selected city’s empire
makeangry	adds -100 relations for 20 turns with the selected city’s empire
makecoop	sets relation with the selected free city to Pact of Cooperation
makehappy	adds +100 relations for 20 turns with the selected city’s empire
makeintegrated	integrates the selected free city
makeloyal	sets relation with the selected free city to Pact of Loyalty
makeneutral	ends war with the selected city’s empire
makevassal	the selected city’s empire becomes a vassal
makewar	starts a war with the selected city’s empire (war justification balance effects apply)
martin	toggles 999 hero cap
masterskills	researches everything
oldenbarnevelt	gives 100000 imperium
optimalprime	toggles instant spell casting
philips	toggles instant production
questmaster	toggles quests
rallythelieges	starts the next Rally of the Lieges
rembrandt	gives 100000 gold and mana
ruijter	adds one of each hero item
spaargaren	unlocks empire development if not already unlocked
tasman	explores the entire map
unexplore	unexplores the entire map
verdoemenis	increases the Build the Affinity Province Improvements counter for Magic Victory
voorhees	toggles infinite skill points
warlord	declares war on all factions
willem	triggers defeat
demo	activates masterskills, philips, and rembrandt at the same time
flyingdutchman	activates cruijff, barentz, and rembrandt at the same time
defeat1	triggers defeat
defeat2	triggers defeat
defeat3	triggers defeat
defeat4	triggers defeat
defeat5	triggers defeat
victory1	triggers victory
victory2	triggers victory
victory3	triggers victory
victory4	triggers victory
medic	heals the selected army (does not work at the moment)
switch_tm	switches between classic and simultaneous turns (does not work at the moment)

 

Recommended Mods

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975040668 – [steamcommunity.com]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2979968862 – [steamcommunity.com]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2975631217 – [steamcommunity.com]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2976639030 – [steamcommunity.com]

It was a pleasure for us to walk you through the Age of Wonders 4 – AI Information Guide, and we sincerely hope that you found the information beneficial. Please let us know in the comments section below if you see any mistakes in this piece or if you have any suggestions for how we can improve it. A tremendous amount of gratitude is for your time and effort, and I hope you have a good day today! A big thank you to アンジェル for his post that inspired this guide. If you liked this post, you should check back regularly because we publish new information every day.