[thejeff]

What it really needs to be able to do is adapt, at least marginally. Your enemy's attacking with fire, give fire resistance a higher priority. Astral mages - boost mr, undead build and send more priests.

Some of this, even within the basic combat spellcasting AI would be possible. "Lightning bolts crashing all around me? Hey, I can cast Resist Lightning!" (This would help the mp game as well, if mages could react to the situation.)

Exploitable by a clever player, sure. But far less than it is now.

Some basic guidelines on gearing/buffing thugs would be nice, again modified by what's been killing them lately. Some awareness of blesses, sacred troops and the need to send priests along with them.

Basic attention in pretender design to scales. Heat preference, age of mages, resources needed for troops, etc. Keep it randomized, but weight things that make sense more heavily. Not predetermined weights by nation, but derived from the actual game data.

None of this is the simple "design a script for each nation" strawman, nor is it build a functioning human AI, pass the Turing test, win fame and fortune. It's complicated, it's a lot of work, but it's not fundamentally a hard problem.

Of course, it's not going to happen. Would require a major rewrite and the devs have moved on.