Better Mechanics : AI Research

Supported HOI4 version: Any, the mod is always compatible.

Are you frustrated with the AI researching silly techs instead of the ones that actually matter? Better Mechanics : AI Research radically rewires the AI’s technology priorities so that it focuses on researching important techs at the right time instead of wasting its precious research slots on nonsense it doesn’t need!

Below are the technologies the mod makes the AI prioritize. Naval techs are not included, but the AI DOES NOT ignore navy! The AI will still research naval techs but will typically give priority to land/air/industry techs.

• INDUSTRY AND SYNTHETIC RESOURCES: AI will always keep up with prod efficiency, industry and construction techs. Majors will research rubber/oil processing techs if they have refineries.
• INFANTRY, ARTY AND SUPPORT: AI will rush 1939 guns and arty and will otherwise keep up with infantry and arty/aa/at techs. For support companies, AI will prioritize keeping up with engineers and recon techs, then field hospitals and logistics. On top of that, majors will research maintenance (up to level 2 to grab easy maintenance for tanks) and signals. Majors also research armored engineers and military police if they are occupying states.
• ARMOR: AI will rush mech in 1939 and will keep up with all light and medium chassis techs. AI will research heavy tanks if it has enough mils.
• AIRCRAFT: AI will grab all important plane modules in 1938 and will rush fighter 2 in 1939. If it is running the strategic destruction or operational integrity doctrine, the AI will keep up with strategic or tactical bombers respectively.
• NICHE TECHS: Just for fun, the AI will research the following techs under certain advanced conditions: katyusha, railway guns, amphibious tanks and mech, armored cars (yes).

This mod is just made up of ‘research_tech’ ai_strategy scripts and it does not alter the ‘commontechnologies’ folder at all, so it is compatible with all other mods that do not radically change the vanilla tech tree.

The mod now uses an internal campaign elapsed-time counter instead of checking vanilla calendar dates directly. This means AI research priorities are unlocked based on how long the campaign has been running, not whether the game date is literally 1937, 1939, 1941, etc.

Because of this, the mod should work much better with total conversion or overhaul mods that keep vanilla-like technology IDs but use different start dates.

Compatible. But why aren’t you playing Enhanced AI instead?

Compatible. Even though the 1936-45 tech tree is a little different, there shouldn’t be any issues because the techs have the same variable names as in vanilla.

Compatible, provided the tech mod keeps the base tree from vanilla or doesn’t change it a lot.

Improved compatibility. Mods such as Collapsing World: Rise of Radicalism or Equestria at War may use vanilla or vanilla-like techs while having non-vanilla calendar years. AI Research now handles this better by using campaign elapsed time instead of hardcoded vanilla dates.

Not fully compatible. If a mod radically changes the vanilla tech tree or replaces vanilla technology IDs, AI Research may not be able to prioritize those techs correctly.

If you would like to support our modding work, please consider donating to our team members! Just click on any of the contributor names below to visit their support pages.
Omar[www.patreon.com]
Amine Alkaline[tiptopjar.com]

Thanks to the Better Mechanics team for their collaborative efforts in developing AI Research!

I’m centralizing everything for my mod collection on a new Discord server. I’ll not respond to comments, bug reports, or suggestions here. Please use the Discord Server[discord.gg] for all future requests. Comments have been disabled for efficiency and compliance.