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Is the vanilla AI ruining your immersion by wasting its treasury on buildings in low-control provinces for 0 ROI, picking useless government reforms and estates privileges, relying entirely on peasant levies rather than a proper regular army, and creating horrific bordergore?
REAI (Rational Empire AI) is a comprehensive script-level overhaul that forces the AI to manage its empire like a calculating, logical state. By utilizing custom script injections and strict logic gates, this mod ensures the AI prioritizes a professional army of Regulars over weak levies, maintains a rock-solid manpower reserve, manages its government reforms optimally, and dictates clean, strategic expansion.
REAI isn't a "magic buff" mod. It doesn't hand out free population or hidden tax cheats to the AI. In the first few decades, the AI is simply laying its foundation—revoking bad reforms and picking better ones.
The real snowball effect kicks in during the mid-to-late game. Bad AI nations will still fail, but the smart ones will slowly build a rock-solid economy and a battle-ready professional core. Give it time to cook.
- Control-Based Building: AI refuses to waste money in low-control provinces, instead consolidating wealth in high-value heartlands.
- Infrastructure Priority: Temples, bridges and pound-lock canals are marked important for the AI; AI burghers get road-building rights on the first day.
- Estate Construction: Estates may build irrigation systems and pound-lock canals, which vanilla keeps for the crown.
- Treasury Management: Keeps a smaller cash reserve than vanilla (a 10% surplus target instead of 25%) and invests the rest.
- Age-Manager Bridge: AI prioritizes Crown Power and Tax Efficiency, selecting optimal reforms based on the current Age.
- Auto-Clutter Removal: Removes outdated or inefficient reforms to free up slots for stronger upgrades.
- Estate Logic: Smart privilege management maximizes crown power without destabilizing the nation.
- Clean Borders: In peace deals, adjacent land gets a 100x bonus and other land a 100x penalty (vanilla 5x), avoiding nonsensical land grabs.
- Regular Army Focus: AI maintains a higher ratio of professional regular troops instead of over-relying on peasant levies.
- Strategic Military Balance: Calculates military needs based on actual tax base and manpower limits.
- Focused Engagements: Actively consolidates military into main, powerful armies instead of splitting into vulnerable stacks.
- Bankruptcy Logic: Prioritizes long-term repayment (180 months), avoiding endless civil wars.
- Satisfaction Safety Net: Weighs estate satisfaction with Quadratic Utility (Quad=4, vanilla 1) before raising taxes.
- 1.3 Ready: Fully compatible with the latest EU5 updates.
- Few Conflicts: Mostly injections into vanilla entries; it replaces one action (Call Parliament) and copies 17 vanilla capital events.
- Save Compatible: Works with ongoing saves (fresh start recommended).
- REAI: Army & Manpower Overhaul (AAMO) - Highly recommended sub-mod!
- The Prussian Destiny