I've been playing Sigvald on Very Hard/Very Hard difficulty. Currently turn 120.

The AI seems to be more aggressive than before and not only towards the player, AI factions will declare war between each other more often from what I have noticed. Surprisingly Valkia got quite strong while I was finishing the faction I start at war with, she recruited multiple stacks and those armies were kinda decent. She manage to take out Hellebron before I got the opportunity to vassalise her. I ended up making peace with Valkia which seems to have broken her AI, she's been sitting in the same spot for over 40-50 turns now.

I'm not sure what's triggering this behaviour but I've also noticed it in another Elspeth campaign, Drycha was sitting next to a neutral settlement and stopped doing anything.

N'Kari managed to survive on Ulthuan until Malekith and Morathi started an invasion of Ulthuan, N'Kari then vassalised Malekith which was the second most powerful faction at the time. I'm usually never seeing N'Kari survive in my campaigns on the live version so this is good. 

The AIs seem to be better at forming big empires, the most powerful factions in my campaign is quite varied and there has been some surprises like Louen Leoncoeur or Skrag which managed to confederate Golgfag. The Empire is in the hands of Skrag and Louen which have been fighting each other for quite some time, about 30 turns or so. 

In terms of difficulty the campaign was quite good, the AI was decent at defending its territory and it recruited good armies. Kislev loves to recruit doomstacks, not a fan of this personally as I find doomstacks tedious to fight but I guess that's another topic. Would love to see some optional unit caps system added to the game at some point.

Sometime the AI will still park multiple armies on a single settlement and they won't move them unless there is an army nearby, it's a bit less passive than the live version at least.

As a Warriors of Chaos faction I have found my vassals to be a bit more active. They always actively take the ruins without me asking them to and they'll be more likely to attack. They don't seem to recruit good units however.

Finally I'd like to add some ideas for further AI improvements in the future:

- The AI should be able to use the Sea Lanes. Currently only the player can and I'm not a fan of this, I'd like to see Naggaroth try to invade me using the Sea Lanes when playing Cathay for instance. 

- The Changeling and Beastmen aren't doing anything. I understand they would be frustrating to deal with if they got powerful and I'm not against some limitations to prevent them from getting too powerful, however I do feel it's too extreme currently. The Changeling is doing nothing but raiding. Beastmen will sit in their Herdstones and that's it. They don't recruit new units. You never get to fight Beastmen much in the campaign currently and when you do it's always the exact same army compositions.

- The AI vastly overvalues the settlements you trade them. You can easily turn your worst enemy into your military ally or even a vassal by simply giving them a minor settlement, it's even easier if the settlement has a military building.

- Maybe you could introduce some sort of templates when it comes to recruitment for the AI. Like trying to always have X amount of melee infantry, ranged infantry, cavalry, monsters, etc. To help avoid doomstacking from the AI. I'm all for more difficulty in the campaign but I don't find fighting doomstacks fun to fight and I like to build balanced armies. 

Lastly I would like you to consider not closing the beta after the two weeks of testing. This version of the game is so much more fun than the live version, while the AI does have some issues in the beta it is overall making the campaigns a lot more enjoying to play, especially in the mid/late game. You are on the right path with those AI changes, keep them coming.

Very good points. Especially the beast men. They're completely useless they just sit there. Idk what ca was thinking 

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Neodeinos#5871 wrote:

Finally I'd like to add some ideas for further AI improvements in the future:

- The AI should be able to use the Sea Lanes. Currently only the player can and I'm not a fan of this, I'd like to see Naggaroth try to invade me using the Sea Lanes when playing Cathay for instance. 

- The Changeling and Beastmen aren't doing anything. I understand they would be frustrating to deal with if they got powerful and I'm not against some limitations to prevent them from getting too powerful, however I do feel it's too extreme currently. The Changeling is doing nothing but raiding. Beastmen will sit in their Herdstones and that's it. They don't recruit new units. You never get to fight Beastmen much in the campaign currently and when you do it's always the exact same army compositions.

- The AI vastly overvalues the settlements you trade them. You can easily turn your worst enemy into your military ally or even a vassal by simply giving them a minor settlement, it's even easier if the settlement has a military building.

- Maybe you could introduce some sort of templates when it comes to recruitment for the AI. Like trying to always have X amount of melee infantry, ranged infantry, cavalry, monsters, etc. To help avoid doomstacking from the AI. I'm all for more difficulty in the campaign but I don't find fighting doomstacks fun to fight and I like to build balanced armies. 

I like all of these points. Please, CA consider this feedback.

AI settlement evaluation really needs to be fixed. Right now you can get out of every war you don't want and make any faction your ally by just giving them some backwards podunk in the middle of nowhere. And please, no one come with "don't like it don't use it". One, don't bother telling people they should play with missing features just because you like your cheesy AI exploits. Two, it robs the campaign of any feeling of risk or excitement because you know you are never in "real" danger.

My idea is that you can only trade settlements with either trusted allies with a special currency or as part of a peace settlement. No trading with neutral factions at all.

This is a good feedback.