AI Player Personalities

AI players can be weaker or stronger, but it's not always fun, and not even always clearly defined. Thus, there are AIs that differ from their peers with optimization criteria and biases in decisions, which makes them stronger or weaker than others depending on the situation. Among the other things, AI behaving differently makes each game different, improving replayability, and different behavior makes them more human-like.

Examples of AI Player Personalities include:

Video Games

• Armada 2525 has personalities randomized, but you can use "Set Personalities" option. Personalities have 3 components:

1. Tactics: how they act in a war - Cautious / Prudent / Reckless / Manic,
2. Strategy: overall development - Industrialist / Technologist / Ecologist / Militarist / Expansionist, and
3. Stance: diplomatic inclinations - Peaceful / Isolationist / Defensive / Aggressive / Xenophobic.

• Master of Orion (and Master of Orion 2) has

1. Personality (Ruthless / Erratic / Aggressive / Pacifistic / Honorable / Xenophobic) and
2. Objective (Diplomat / Militarist / Technologist / Ecologist / Industrialist / Expansionist).

• Master of Magic has a similar system - Personality and Objective.
  • Personality influences diplomacy and spellcasting, tweaks decision-making with special procedures and is on the scale of viciousness: "core" diplomatic reaction^[1] to other wizards increases, while hostility (also affected by difficulty setting) and likelihood to declare a war or perform a hostile action (by army or overland spell) decreases; also, Lawful and Peaceful don't perform a hostility evaluation at all no matter Objective and difficulty setting, thus always remain friendly and unless forced to declare war won't "move toward" it.

1. Maniacal: Positive diplomatic reactions have 25% lower and negative 50% higher effect;
2. Ruthless;
3. Aggressive;
4. Chaotic: generally more amenable than Aggressive, but also may declare war without any reason at all;
5. Lawful: 2x penalty from any negative Diplomatic Reaction. An increased chance of Razing a town if the Hidden Relation toward the town's owner is negative (but due to a bug, did this almost always);
6. Peaceful: Never attacks without declaration of war, which it does only in response to aggression or helping an ally.

• • Objective influences preference in building and other resource spending; also, Militarist and Expansionist are more likely to break treaty and start a war unless also have Peaceful or Lawful personality.

1. Pragmatist: baseline balance; (bugged out, but re-enabled by unofficial patches)
2. Militarist: Increased chance of training military units (but a bug broke this) and casting summoning spells; increased chance to research a combat summoning spell; tend to put mana into Casting Skill. Prefers to construct military/naval buildings.
3. Theurgist: prioritizes magic research. Prefers to construct mana and research buildings
4. Perfectionist: increased chance of choosing construction of a Town Building (but a bug broke this), at the expense of training a new unit. Prefers to construct money/production/food buildings. Stockpiles mana. Also tend to buff owned cities with positive enchantments, if any are available.
5. Expansionist: Increased chance of training units (but a bug broke this), 2x chance of building Settlers or Engineers. Tries to spam as many towns as it can. The most likely to move a Settler to other plane. More likely to break treaty and start a war, unless has Peaceful or Lawful personality

• • The primary realm (the one which has the most books and defines Familiar sprite for the human player has greater probabilities of some Personalities and/or Objectives; ditto for "Retorts" (non-book options); an unofficial patch also considers secondary realm to lesser degree).

1. Nature - Lawful Perfectionist (buffs and summons -> less normal units needed, more mana, thus temples; build up, but also squash threats early; use town enchantments, if any),
2. Nature Mastery - Lawful Perfectionist (even more so)
3. Sorcery - Aggressive Theurgist (spells of very different sorts, thus want flexibility rather than random specialization, has cheap combat summons as shock troops, so spam them),
4. Sorcery Mastery - Aggressive Militarist (more spam, more cheap summons, bother with hoarding mana less)
5. Chaos - Chaotic Militarist (attack spells, summons, few buffs, so put them to use),
6. Chaos Mastery - Chaotic Theurgist (same, but with research bonus and reduced costs go for cool expensive spells faster),
7. Life - Peaceful Perfectionist (unit buffs, healing -> less normal units need to be created; town enchantments have multiplier effect and flat cost -> have towns developed),
8. Divine Power - Peaceful Theurgist (more mana from temples -> want to build more temples
9. Death - Maniacal|Ruthless Expansionist|Militarist (don't wait for elite normal units, use summons and combat spells; and undead will make more undead!).
10. Infernal Power - Maniacal (more mana from temples + more Death books with hurty spells -> burn-maim-kill rampage)
11. Alchemy - Perfectionist (normal units automatically with magic weapons + easy mana from gold -> want more food for normal units and more gold)
12. Archmage - Theurgist (better casting skill -> need mana income to actually use it fully),
13. Chaneller - Ruthless Expansionist (no range mana penalty -> bolder about expanding early and having border skirmishes),
14. Conjurer - Aggressive Perfectionist (focus on summoned units -> less normal units, also need mana)
15. Mana Focusing - Theurgist (mana income bonus -> more mana income to maximize its effect, more research since expensive spells are more affordable),
16. Myrran - Chaotic Expansionist (basic units of Myrran races tend to be stronger + population often gives benefits + probably little to no competition early on -> build more towns),
17. Sage Master - Lawful Theurgist (spell research advantage -> more research, greater strength later in the game -> wait for it)
18. Warlord - Aggressive>Ruthless Expansionist>Militarist (units can advance further -> get them some XP).

• Wing Commander pilots have most of the stats to define behaviour: Aggressiveness (more eager to engage, but less resistant to distraction by taunts when already attacking someone), Carefulness (expending energy and ammo, ranging from wasteful to conservative), Courage (whether the pilot will hightail after the first hits or always fight to death), Flying skill, Gunnery skill, Loyalty (willingness to obey in-flight orders, ranging from never to always) and Verbosity (probability of random chat/taunt, and for Human pilots, but not enemies also inclination to fly unpredictably and with more fancy manoeuvres than necessary).
• In Perfect Dark's multiplayer mode offers "normal" personalities on the scale of Artificial Stupidity and The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard as well as a bunch of special personalities. These include one that only uses melee attacks, one that always attacks the last player to defeat it and one that only attacks "weak" opponents among others.
• Pawns in Dragon's Dogma have several mutually exclusive parameters that will influence their personality based on their master's behavior. Unfortunately half the possible personalities are useless. For example "Guardian" pawns stick close to the player to protect them which sounds good, but in practice it means they ignore enemies that aren't directly in front of them.
• Stellaris implements the system (details on its wiki) ostensibly in the style of Master of Orion series, but using full custom profiles with minor variations rather than combinations of basic types. Those also use different variants of dialogue (one of the extreme cases led to "Tsundere <Xenophobic Isolationists>" joke).

1. ↑ value before adjustments for "common interests" or actions, all diplomatic standings slowly move towards this equilibrium value; on [-100..+100] scale