Question: How does game find startup AI files?

[LM+]

I could perform extensive and tedious testing ... or I can ask people who already know. Publicly, so others can read the answers too.

The 1936 campaign game has no lines (that I could find) that explicitly attach a starting AI to a nation. My best guess is that the game "automagically" searches for "afg_1936.ai", etc. in the folder "/ai".

1. Is this assertion correct?
2. Can one override this system and use, say, a different AI folder or a different AI naming system?

How about the other campaign games? Take the 1938 scenario for example: What AI files get automagically loaded at startup, before any AI switch events apply? Is is still "afg_1936.ai", etc. in the folder "/ai"?

 

[e-stab]

1. Yes.
2. Partly.

When searching for the starting AIs, the game looks for [TAG]_[YEAR].ai in the /ai/ folder. When there's no such AI file, as far as I know it'll decrease the year one by one to see if there's an AI named like this. E.g. for Afghanistan in the 1938 scenario, it'll look for afg_1938.ai (none), then for afg_1937.ai (none) and then for afg_1936.ai (found!).

You can specify different starting AIs in the .inc files belonging to the scenario though.