Game mechanics

[Nibiru]

Is the generation of AI wizards in a new game effected by any of the player choices ? 

For example, does selecting Life books makes generating AI wizards with Life books more likely ?

Does difficulty influence the (personality/objective) of generated wizards ? If not can it be done ?

It makes sense that on higher difficulties you would get more aggresive wizards, also I find the evil realms much more difficult to deal with early game with all the volcano/corruption spamming than say a Life/Nature wizard.

[Nelphine]

On master/lunatic, all the different personalities/objectives/realms have their own difficulties. Letting a peaceful life/nature wizard expand results in archangels with iron skin that are virtually impossible to kill.

I'm not exactly sure the point at which peaceful stops being easy and switches to sleeper dangerous AI. I do agree a peaceful death/chaos wizard ai is at a disadvantage due to not using curses.

[Nibiru]

What advantages does a Peaceful AI has over say an aggresive one ? Being less likely to go into war with another Ai and forming Aliances could be one. But then the Ai do get diplomacy bonuses when dealing with each other if i,m not mistaken.

I cannot see any advantage to an Ai being peaceful at higher difficulties, letting an agressive Life/Nature Ai expand is as dangerous if not more dangerous than letting a peaceful one do.

There are synergies between a realm and Ai personality as you mentioned, I,ve quit games for being drowned with volcanoes by 2 Maniac Chaos wizards, I think it would have been very different if they were peaceful.

[Nelphine]

An aggressive will attack the human, and the human will fight back. The more aggressive the personality, the earlier the conflict will happen, the less time the AI has to build up resource advantage due to difficulty bonuses.

[Seravy]

Advantages for Peaceful
-the human player will not attack them first, so they have time to develop.
-they are unlikely to fight wars against other AI so this development is fast - no resources wasted on combat spells.
-During the peace, the troops don't die and keep accumulating, so when war does start, they'll have way more units
-During peace, stacks don't attack targets, and can take the time needed to build them up to perfection, for example gather those 9 Great Wyrms on one tile. Doomstack will also be "perfect" and ready, not just the continental stacks.
-As they usually have allies, even if someone declares war on them or those allies, much less resources are lost in the war because multiple players fight the enemy so the share of battles on the peaceful wizard is less. Also, their wars are likely to be shorter.

[Nibiru]

Advantages for Peaceful
-the human player will not attack them first, so they have time to develop.
-they are unlikely to fight wars against other AI so this development is fast - no resources wasted on combat spells.
-During the peace, the troops don't die and keep accumulating, so when war does start, they'll have way more units
-During peace, stacks don't attack targets, and can take the time needed to build them up to perfection, for example gather those 9 Great Wyrms on one tile. Doomstack will also be "perfect" and ready, not just the continental stacks.
-As they usually have allies, even if someone declares war on them or those allies, much less resources are lost in the war because multiple players fight the enemy so the share of battles on the peaceful wizard is less. Also, their wars are likely to be shorter.

Does the Ai not have bonuses for diplomacy ? I recall they were made to be more friendly with each other which kinda offsets the advantage of being peaceful.

And regarding the player selection of books, does that influence the generation of Ai wizards in any way ?

[Seravy]

They have some but Peaceful is still very relevant.
No, player books, portraits, or retorts have zero effect on AI wizards.

[Nibiru]

They have some but Peaceful is still very relevant.
No, player books, portraits, or retorts have zero effect on AI wizards.

I see, I had some some doubts but thanks for the confirmation.

I,m still not so sure about Peaceful relevance for certain Personality/Objective combos.

Do you not agree that for a mono-chaos Ai wizard, being peaceful and perfectionist simply does not utilize the strengths of the realm ?

[Seravy]

I don't agree, in fact it's the exact opposite. Chaos is a "strong late" realm, so peace benefits it the second most, Sorcery being first, but after we finish rebalancing Sorcery, Chaos will be tied for first place at the very least.
Once Chaos has all their very rares, almost nothing can beat it. Perfectionist on top of that makes sure they'll have a high casting skill and strong economy to support all those spells.
Oh, and Call the Void adds enough priority to be cast a lot of "city curse" spells even if peaceful.

..Life benefits least from Peaceful because the AI doesn't have a very good late game with Life, although it's far better than it used to be. Death is in the middle, I think Nature is second least optimal for it.

[Nelphine]

Perfectionist will give a lot of their troops buffs. Halfling slingers with flame blade are amazing. Peaceful will mean few if any corruption's or volcanoes, which is a huge loss, but it also means they are most likely to build up armies of summons. Since chaos summons are generally the highest strategic value, this will help clear the medium high lairs and nodes and towers. This also means there's a good chance the human will be busy with other wars, and seeing the army strength of the peaceful chaos will put off attaching them longer - which means closer to getting very rare globals that are so dominating. Just because they won't summon volcanoes doesn't mean they won't use Armageddon.

However, it does mean they won't use chaos rift or call the void, which I think is a travesty. (While they add to curse priority, by that stage a lot of other things also add to spell priority, so while they will cast some, they won't cast a very large amount.)

I do think personality has too much effect on spell choice, and should be primarily limited to diplomacy choices. However, when we revamped curse priority (which are the only spells significantly negatively impacted by personality/objective) Seravy was insistent on keeping the difference there. While I don't agree I do understand.