[Tris]

Grrrr.... you're too smart for my ideas own good, Mr Parker :-)

I see your point. There would be problems implementing some of the behaviour desirable in following the strategies. I did specify the strategies could be chosen from a pool set for that nation.

A few (non ideal, but hopefully useful, behaviour patterns:

Scout Behaviour - look at all adjacent provinces. Try to move further from your own capital, favouring enemy territories over neutral ones.

Army Behaviour - (if you have a 60% or better chance of beating the largest army your scout has found)

(If not entirely stealthy army)
Look at shortest route to enemy castle. Look at all routes which take up to 20% longer (eg if shortest route is 5, look at all 5 or 6 province routes) Rate according to strength of strongest province. Go via route with lowest high-strength province.

Well, you get the idea. An alternate (and perhaps less predictable) method is to assign "desire values" to each action an army can take, giving each some random weighting, then acting on most desirable. This would let the AI switch between strategies on the fly, expanding its holdings early on, and if it spotted a weak enemy capital close by, sending an army at it.

Eg
If enemy castle found and within 5 turns then desire{push towards castle} = %chance of beating strongest enemy army/10.

If limiting factor on troop deployment at capital is gold then desire{take province} = (gold income of province/20)*chance of winning vs defenders.

and so on. Ok, this would be hard to implement :-) I wish I was an expert programmer - I'd offer my help. As it is

10 print "Tris is cool"
20 goto 10

is about the limit of my coding ability.