The A.I. is unable to form Portugal

[Hexis]

The decision to form Portugal for AI is a mission impossible:
- To form Portugal, the AI must be of count or duke rank. So a king cannot make the decision.
- To form Portugal, the AI must have four duchies in its name (Porto, Coimbra, Beja, Algarve)
- The AI has a very very high propensity to form a kingdom, if it is independent, as soon as it has two de jure duchies and 500 gold.

- By having these four duchies, the AI will have a very strong propensity to create/usurp the titles of Kingdom of Galicia and Kingdom of Badajoz, it will NEVER form Portugal so...
- Let's say the AI is under the suzerainty of a king (say the King of Galicia), it will never form Portugal either. Fate of Iberia has added the possibility to form Portugal even without being independent, as long as you are in the opportunity phase (which is a very, very good mechanic, thanks developers).
HOWEVER this option is OFF for the AI!!! The 00_major_decisions_iberia_north_africa.txt file contains a line that literally says

    ai_potential = {
        # Only for the AI if independent ruler
        is_independent_ruler = yes
    }

And this is a very big mistake.

In my opinion, the AI should be perfectly able to make the decision in the opportunity phase, it's hard enough for it to conquer all the way to the Algarve, FORCING it to be independent to form Portugal MATHEMATICALLY prevents it from doing so, as the AI that owns those four duchies will seek to form the Kingdom of Galicia or Badajoz first.

Please make it so that the AI can form Portugal a bit more frequently, there I never see it on the map.

 

[Viridianus]

Imagine you don't know our actual history. What would be your motivation to create a new title instead of resurrecting an already-respected one? Indeed, AI doesn't want to form Portugal - why would they? The only reason to form a new kingdom is if you can't form an already-respected one. The historical ruler did that because he wanted to avoid the rule of the actual king of Galicia (and the king of Castilia and Leon, too), if he could form Galicia he would do that instead. Note that he effectively first achieved independence in 1128 and was only crowned in 1139.

 

[Hexis]

Imagine you don't know our actual history. What would be your motivation to create a new title instead of resurrecting an already-respected one? Indeed, AI doesn't want to form Portugal - why would they? The only reason to form a new kingdom is if you can't form an already-respected one. The historical ruler did that because he wanted to avoid the rule of the actual king of Galicia (and the king of Castilia and Leon, too), if he could form Galicia he would do that instead. Note that he effectively first achieved independence in 1128 and was only crowned in 1139.

A poor excuse to justify a game design error.

If the decision is so respectful of history, why does the decision-maker have to be the holder of the southern duchies including Algarve when this was not the case in either 1128 or 1139?

 

[Viridianus]

Because every decision is a balance between historicity and gameplay. Presumably they found in testing that three duchies is too easy a condition.

And it's not "respectful of history" - it's not like one of the cases I bitch about where people want things happening like they happened in our history because it happened that way. Quite the opposite: it's consciously complicated according to the general logic: it's effectively a new custom kingdom mangling de-jure and providing you with a free culture change on top of that. It should be more complicated then the default "form a custom kingdom", not less.

 

[Hexis]

Because every decision is a balance between historicity and gameplay. Presumably they found in testing that three duchies is too easy a condition.

And it's not "respectful of history" - it's not like one of the cases I bitch about where people want things happening like they happened in our history because it happened that way. Quite the opposite: it's consciously complicated according to the general logic: it's effectively a new custom kingdom mangling de-jure and providing you with a free culture change on top of that. It should be more complicated then the default "form a custom kingdom", not less.

You totally missed the point. The problem is not that it is complicated for the AI to make the decision. It's IMPOSSIBLE mathematically and logically because of conflicting in-game mechanics.
The developers didn't want to prevent the AI from making the decision since they have a line to put into the decision code, but instead the developers provided conditions for the AI to form the kingdom. Except that everything that was provided for the AI in this code is useless because it is DOES NOT WORK because the AI will ALWAYS choose to usurp the de jure kingdom rather than make the decision.
It's not HARD for the AI, it's IMPOSSIBLE. 0% chance. Simply allowing the AI to form Portugal in the opportunity phase, as the player already can, would allow it to appear at least a few times rather than NEVER.

You are disrespectful when you say I don't know history, and you are irrelevant about the changes I have suggested.

 

[Viridianus]

I never said you don't know history (why would I? You clearly demonstrate some knowledge of it), the "imagine you don't know our actual history" was a genuine counterfactual suggestion. AI will not always be able to usurp de jure kingdom, there is a number of restrictions of usurpation (hostile faith, the holder of the kingdom being at war...), so it's not "impossible mathematically and logically", it's just heavily disfavored.

 

[Ilya Belkin]

It would be great to see AI controlled Portugal a bit more often, enabling forming it during Opportunity phase of struggle for AI seems reasonable. I wonder if it was just overlooked.