Total War: Warhammer III is undergoing a massive change. From today, a new beta will begin that'll allow players to collect feedback for and have a look at some upcoming major alterations to the game's AI.
As outlined in a post on Creative Assembly's site and explained by principal technical designer Radoslav Borisov, the AI changes will focus on three key areas. The Query System, which tweaks how AI responds to enemy agents, Aggression, which adds more nuance to the AI's aggressiveness, and Faction Potential, which focuses on AI to AI interactions in parts of the map you've not explored.
For Query, this will result in the AI not always running home and defending settlements when enemy forces are nearby, instead using other tactics to be less predictable. For Aggression, CA wants to improve how the AI assesses the strength of another faction, and will incentivise more warring between AI factions. Finally, in Faction Potential, Creative Assembly has made five tweaks, including: Increasing major AI faction strength versus minor AI factions, increasing faction potential's weight in auto resolve calculations, lowering the minimum faction potential minor factions can have, increasing the maximum faction bonus for AI in areas you've not explored, and increasing faction potential based on your difficulty level.
The first beta runs from now until the 26th of February, and another beta test is planned for Spring.