Awesome   I look forward to hearing about what/how you improve the AI.  They're always such interesting posts.

I'll post what I've learned playing each faction as I play them, hopefully be a bit helpful for you

I figured out why the AI didn't like building the "Produce Growth" and "Produce Wealth" projects.

If you look at the XML, the labor to build is set to -1 (infinite).  Well, the AI considered that pretty terrible -- why would it build something that could never be finished?

I am grateful to see these updates to the AI you are doing. I expect to see great and horrid things in the future.

I noticed the Sovereigns are back to coveting leggings.  At least they started taking an interest in purchasing Mounts as well

Well look on the bright side, Brad.  You don't have Mutons accidentally teleporting to an invalid location and dying horribly.

Any idea how the AI should tackle player units parking on Durin's Bridge and refusing to budge?  Perhaps giant eagles should swoop down and scatter them about the landscape?

I think it is important to fix the auto-resolve bug where any attack that can target more than one target automatically targets EVERY enemy, greatly handicapping the AI.  See https://forums.elementalgame.com/445327.

Hooray for AI!

Nice!  Look forward to seeing your finished work

Just a couple of AI issues that I've noticed before that I think need to be looked at. I'm currently playing the 1.1 beta.

First, Kudos! I finally had the AI use a area effect spell on me. However, the AI was able to use Freeze several times in one turn and then did the same thing the following turn. That's breaking the rules.

I still find that the AI builds excessive pioneering units and just sends them off by themselves, even late in the game when it appears that there are no places to settle or even place a outpost. 

As mentioned, when you get a sovereign to surrender, often they have something like 10 pairs of leggings and something like 10 horses and Wargs and will still be walking. I think the issue might be with equipping the item. Also they never seem to sell anything, but the AI seems to be rarely out of money, so it's not that big of a issue.

In diplomacy, when I'm at war with a faction, I shouldn't be able to trade with them. A tactic I use occasionally is to trade with a faction I'm at war with and take all their gold, horses/wargs, crystal and metal if I can, in that order. 

The AI doesn't seem to put any thought into building units with increased initiative. Often I have all my units move at least once before the first AI unit gets a chance. This puts the AI at a real disadvantage in tactical battles. Increasing this one issue would make tactical battles much harder for the human player. Along the same lines, AI doesn't use spells that increase initiative either. Rather that using a Candlecloak spell, something that increases the initiative of all units would be a much better spell.

I rarely if ever see the AI with mounted units and the AI doesn't seem to put a premium on finding, exploiting, capturing or destroying warg or horse resources. These resources are the first thing I capture after a shard as the increased movement both stragtically and tactically is a big advantage. The AI needs to build stacks that all mounted units if possible. Also, it seems when the AI does build a mounted unit, it's always level 1 and is usually not that good. Because their war stacks are slow, I can usually use a Freeze or Tremor spell (or a tornado spell if the stack is very powerful) to slow or stop the stack until I can get a army in to address it. 

It might help if there was a counter-spell that can be cast by both the AI and humans that either disrupt or negate the after effects of Freeze, Tremor and Tornado spells - this counter-spell might be unit based so unmobilizing a single unit isn't as costly as unmobilizing a stack of units.

Happy to hear the AI will receive attention! Looking forward to seeing your work bear fruit, Brad.

Good to hear. hope you can get rid of lone AI heroes and fodder armies wandering to close to my borders.

Really good to hear. PLEASE GIVE US MORE.

Of EVERYTHING.

I posted it sometimes, just want to be sure that it gets frog's attention:

Would like to see some diplomacy options implemented... right now AI interaction is rather spotty at best.

1. Ability to 'trade' cities. Say one takes an AI city, one can than ransom it it back to the AI for resources/peace. Or you liberate an ally's city from the enemy, and then have the ability to return it to your ally resulting in a big boost to relations.

2. Ability to mediate for peace between two warring AI factions. This may be harder to implement as you have to see both sides needs. But the AI already has a wage of how much it will expect in exchange for peace, usually the stronger faction is going to require some kind of compensation, if you were to mediate and pay off this value, that is already calculated i believe, then you can obtain peace between two factions. Maybe they can take into account their relationship with you. Its so weird to be allied with two factions, and then have them go to war with each other and have no say in the process.

Both 1-2 should not be too difficult to implement, but to balance the values might take a little bit of experimentation.

3. Ability to make true vassals of nearly conquered AI factions. Essentially if an AI player were to surrender they can instead be made into a vassal state. They would still operate autonomously, and keep their remaining cities, but would cease diplomatic relations. They would assume any treaties/alliances/enemies that conqueror has. and can be requested to paid an indefinite tribute. With 1) implemented you would be able to return some of the vassaled AI's cities to it so it can function properly.

I would like to be able to form an aliance with an AI faction that has a higher power rating than me.

Right now, they'll only form an alliance if you could crush them...which makes an alliance little more than an offshot of a conquest victory.