AI Questions

[Archonsod]

Should work for all nations. Items are drawn from a common pool after all. Unless you're willing to get incredibly detailed you won't perhaps see the greatest combinations, but you'd still see an improvement in the quality of the AI commanders. Pretty much any forged shield is going to be an improvement (in some respect) over the basic shield a commander comes equipped with, regardless of nation.

The database doesn't have to be huge, bearing in mind that the AI doesn't understand how to use many items (like the Chalice for example) there's no reason to include them in the database. It could simply be a case of setting a flag on a specific set of items (differentiate between wizard and fighter equipment for example) and then force the AI to only forge from those lists, and only equip the items on a commander of the requisite type. It's more restrictive, but it would at least deal with the 'superfluous items equipped' complaint.

Of course, you could also use a similar model as the spell casting AI and simply have it run simulations of the best possible item to equip (presumably either from the lab inventory or from all currently forgeable items, depending on how cruel you want to be) based on a simple criteria, e.g. what provides the biggest stat increase. Again, you'll not see it make full use of combinations or the like, but you will see a general improvement in the quality of commanders it fields.