Unofficialcrusaderpatch: Different Castle Build Intervals dependent on AI Characters

[DarkThief-Darek]

So I just realized that the AI characters can have slower intervals between build steps from the AIV file (castle blueprint) - dependent on the AI character.

I created the exact same castle and let the rat and the wolf built it with the same starting conditions at the same time, see the image below.

The castle has many walls and quite a few towers (but cheap ones).
With starting gold 2000 for the AI it is really visible that the rat build the castle walls in light speed, whereas the wolf has a cup of tea in the meantime. Even with the free wall costs for the AI the wolf needs so much more time than the rat.

If they both have more starting gold, the wolf is as fast as the rat initially. I took the screenshot from a match with 10000 starting gold for the AI. The wolf is left and the rat is right. You will notice that the rat finishes the castle faster at the end, even tough they both ran out of money at around the same time and are relying on their economy to build the rest (fear factor, chapels etc.)
The wolf has a way stronger economy but hasn't finished the castle yet. He even needs wall segments the rat already built, because the wolf has this slow intervals between build steps again like with starting gold 2000.

So the wolf has a build in handicap which let him built way slower, even free wall segments. The rat has non of that. I wonder how all other AIs are affected by this. But this should definitely be considered for the upcoming AIC patch.

[Rakso69]

This comparsion is strange. It's obvious Rat is going to build up faster because he's selling 99% of in-game resources and uses cheaper troops. Other than that he doesn't build iron mines at all, and just a single stone quarry, meanwhile Wolf does more farms, more quarries and atleast 3 iron mines.

[DarkThief-Darek]

@Rakso69 I think you didn't understand my actual point. The main point wasn't the economy of the AI,

The point is, that the AI build slower overall if low on gold and has this sort of handicap, like the wolf. You need to understand how AIV works. The castle blueprint has a certain number of steps to fully complete all walls, towers and building. And the AI waits between each of these steps a certain amount. This amount is pretty small by AI characters like the rat. They will build everything pretty fast, as long as they have the resources. Because walls are free, the rat will build a huge castle with many walls in no time.

On the other hand you have the wolf, which has this handicap, that he waits pretty long between each AIV step, when he is low on gold. This includes the free walls. So the wolf with a huge castle will need forever to actually reach the last AIV step, while the rat is already finished.

Maybe Firefly made it so that it seems the wolf needs a lot of time to build a huge castle. Every player knows he needs a lot of time to build it, especially if he is low on gold. This handicap is the reason. It's another character parameter somewhere in the code which would be nice when we can change that in the future with updates like the AICE.

[PitchNeeded]

Well I notice that Saladin and Phillip take ages to fully build their vanilla castles because of the delays in building in the AIVs. With Phillip's biggest vanilla castle, if he starts on 2000 gold, it can be ages before he even builds one stables.

[Sh0wdown]

I found an aic parameter which I named BuildInterval. If the AI has less than 5000 gold it governs how fast the AI builds stuff. Rat f.e. has a value of 1, Sultan a value of 5.

[Truetobi91]

@Sh0wdown
I wish this finds its way into the AIC Editor