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@redrum Ok. I believe that, beside politics, the only 2 major issues are (about as important) the tendency to lose huge amount of TUV to kill super-stacked "Minor Clans" territories (probably the AI should just check if the player has a "Conduct Combat" phase, and treat it as a Neutral if it doesn't) and the fact that it buys very few Ashigaru (the best unit in the game). If only these two would be fixed, then the AI would become a true nightmare, on that map, without politics.
I think the ability of receiving support should be valued just as much as the ability of giving support. It is really next to irrelevant who is giving and who is receiving: the precious one is whatever of the two that is in the shortest supply. So, practically, what the AI should do is to see what are the units that are going to be bought in the biggest numbers, between givers and receivers, then give the support bonus value to the other one (no matter if a giver or a receiver). For example, in the basic games, we have infantry 1/2 cost 3 and artillery 2/2 cost 4. In this case, the infantry is better than the artillery on the basic stats, so the artillery gets a bonus value for being able to give support. However, if the infantry would be 1/2 cost 3 and the artillery 2/1 cost 3, then the bonus value (to buy some more of them) should be given to the one that, on basic stats, you would buy the least (in this case depending if you need defence or offence). For example, if you need offence, thus are buying many more 2/1 artilleries than 1/2 infantries, then the infantries should receive a value bonus for being able to receive support. As you can see, if you have more artilleries than infantries, each new infantry you by is practically a 2/2 unit, while each artillery you buy is practically a 2/1 unit. In this case, actually, it should never happen that you buy more artilleries than infantries, no matter how much you are attack oriented (because, as long as you have more artilleries, infantry is just the same as artillery, but with more defence for free).
Of course, the AI should see who is in the shortest supply with reference to how many can be supported. The Daimyo is a good case, since it supports a virtually infinite number of any other units. Thus it is the other units that should receive a value boost for being able to receive support (as they are surely the ones in the shortest supply, since the Daimyo can always support more) and, amongst them, the boost should induce the AI to buy more Ashigaru than other units, since 1 Ashigaru is just as good as using the available support, while it costs less, thus you can get more support bonuses, for the same TUV.
I definitely not suggest changing the AI as to make it more fodder oriented, as I see, on other maps, the AI rather buys too few pricey units. So, here, it is just a matter of not valuing the ability of receiving support, which matters thrice (!) over for the Ashigaru (since they receive by other units and by daimyo and by castles, all these 3 supports stacking).
The main way I usually use castle, there, is, for example, by having 1 castle and 3 ashigaru in a territory next to a huge stack of mine that is able to deadzone the territory with the castle. This way, the enemy cannot go massively into it (the AI will not do it) and, at the same time, taking it with limited forces, especially in dice, is a really bad deal, because, even on a 95% success or so (and if it fails it is terrible), you would have to use way much more TUV than the TUV value of the defending units, just to, then, getting killed back by the nearby stack. So, that, in a FFA, basically should assure that no rational player will take such a territory, under these conditions, therefore I can keep the precious production and slowly edging up on TUV (that is most of what this game is about), while, meanwhile, the AI keeps attacking and counter-attacking each other, thus progressively getting behind me in TUV, until I got enough superiority to go for killing some capital.
On the other hand, putting castles in your capital is usually something that you do after you messed up something, as, next to your capital, you really need eventually to deadzone, not turtle behind castles (but I change the game by editing +2 castles in each capital, to make it better playable).
As I said, this is only beside politics, because, if you play with politics, you can just spam your politic actions to get the AI you want to Allied and, once they are allied, it is maybe something like 1% that they ever downgrade from Allied (why is the AI coded so strongly against downgrading from Allied), so you have these Allied players, that play like it is not a FFA at all (they clearly play like they are forever Allies, like in 2 sides games), and, at the right moment, you can build up on their capital and go to war and take the capital and easy destroy them, while they are afar fighting your wars. This game was a challenge because we went no politics (all war) (with the edits, since this is not actually an option). The game is way easier if you can take advantage of the AI dumbness in navigating FFA politics. Really not even a challenge at all, with politics on, unless you are a huge noob.
