Hey all, I was wondering if there was a way to make the ai pagans reform instantly to give the game some other blob potential in the old gods start. It has become predictable and boring without a strong power in the north/east of the map and I would like to see some change there.
Also is there a way to increase the overall aggressiveness of the ai in expanding in general? I find the norse never really expand more then a couple provinces (200 years) and If charlemage forms a super blob it just stop expanding. I want an AI that is more aggressive, doesnt need to be more dynamic, is there any modifiers in the files to change that???
Regarding aggressiveness in general, yes, there are good ways to improve how aggressive the game gets. As a default, we shoot for a level of aggressiveness which will tend to lead to "more" historical outcomes. E.g., Christians have shit for CBs. And reforming pagan religions is hard. And the AI will obey certain plausibility restrictions with regard to their traits when it comes to war. Etc.
Personally, I'd like to add a customization decision or two to EMF that would ahistorically increase the amount of mayhem that's going on around the world as well as increase your casus belli options (particularly for Christians).
Regarding pagan reformation, I suppose that, as a scenario customization decision, we could railroad something such that a random independent ruler of each major pagan faith gains all the holy sites for their religion, boost their religion's religious authority to over 30%, and give them 500 piety (or whatever cost it is). That should make them reform pretty much instantly. However, wouldn't it be cooler if they had custom CBs to duke it out over their holy sites or something (again, as a non-default customization decision)?
On the other hand, we could just give regular pagans access to the holy war CB (though probably not crusades, which are kind of a joke for pagans anyhow) if the 'Extended Casus Belli' scenario customization decision was enacted. Any input on such scenario customization decisions is highly welcome, as there is little limit to what I'm willing to offer as a customization decision in EMF (as long as they're kept as simple as possible to understand and control-- 5000 options at startup may be a bit much to handle), and I'm highly motivated to provide such stuff to our players.
Finally, regarding pagan aggressiveness in general, there is one thing that we could do in the default EMF CBs that would increase the likelihood of pagan reformation: currently, there is a holdover from PB in the claim CBs that makes it very unlikely for AI pagans to push claims (fabricated or inherited or de jure) against other AI pagans. I think that I'd like to remove this restriction, because while historically pagans didn't conquer large amounts of other pagans' land through claims (unlike Christians), they certainly DID recognize the concept of a claim to land. Indeed, they recognized claims as property themselves (kind of like a future in economics)-- something that not all of the Catholic world was willing to openly acknowledge as valid until later in the period. Thus, since plausibility does take precedence over historicity in EMF, AI pagans ought not have any special restrictions upon using the claim CBs. I'm still debating this, though: I may remove these restrictions in the EMF beta and observe the results in a few test games before deciding.
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