*The following comes from the main Jester.per file which is included in the download*
JESTER.AI Created by ScreamingKoos
Version 2.3
Release Number: 9
Release Date: January 29, 2025
;==========OVERVIEW FOR BOTH AI's:==========
- Jester & Forthwind are two separate RM (random-map) ai's created by me.
- Jester can play any civilization in the game up to "The Mountain Royals" DLC (up to AND INCLUDING Armenians & Georgians). Jester can play as or counter any of these civs.
- Forthwind can play any civilization up to "The Lords of the West" DLC. This EXCLUDES: Armenians, Bengalis, Dravidians, Georgians, Gurjaras, and Romans. Forthwind will is not optimized to play as the new civs.
- Jester is stronger, more updated, and less random than Forthwind.
- Forthwind will tower-rush, build walls, and not play as competitively as Jester. Both ai's are, however, quite silly and fun to play with.
- Both ai's can play land maps (like arabia), connected water maps (like coastal), and separated water maps (like islands). They perform best on land maps and the least on island-style water maps. They do have basic water map rules for ships & economy for compatability purposes.
- They both can also play any nomad-style maps (where there is no town-center or lumber-camp to start with and they must start from scratch).
- Please note, both ai's are not tested to play the following map-types: Migration, "Nothing" style maps (like forest-nothing), and Michi style maps.
- Both ai's are aggressive. They have many different strategies that are initially randomly generated at the game start, and improve over time as the game plays. You will experience a different game every playthrough even if they use the same civilizations. You never know what to expect!
- Both ai's are fun to play with as allies, enemies, or even just spectating them fighting other custom created ai's.
- Jester gets his name from having a humorous twist on all things he does! (Forthwind is humorous too).
- Jester & Forthwind are only tested on and work for Age of Empires 2 Definitive Edition (No wololo-kingdoms, or HD editions sadly).
- I am not currently working on new updates for Forthwind (but may in the future), so for this reason the following below is mostly referring to Jester, although many of it still applies to Forthwind:
;==========DID YOU KNOW? (quick facts)==========
- Jester can play nomad style maps (land or water just not migration-types), and has rules to always prioritize either a lumber-camp, mule-cart, or town-center when his last tc is destroyed (or the game starts without one!)
- Jester will automatically sling extra resources to any allies that are low on resources. You can still use taunts 3 - 6 for a more manual way to ask for resources (player or computer allies).
- Jester will always mirror your diplomatic stance. Comes along with some chats for every type of stance change during the game. There is NO tricking this guy!

- Jester responds to several taunts in the game and depending on the age may respond differently. Most taunts work when Jester is set as an ally. Taunts are listed below:
;==========;TAUNTS:==========;
; Use taunts 3 - 6 to ask for resources.
; Taunt 31 - Attacks immediately if he is able to (not under attack and has reasonable military).
; Taunt 32 - Pursue default aggressive strategy for current age (dependent on civ-selected).
; Taunt 33 - Pursue economy strategy for current age (boom).
; Taunt 36 - Disable attacking rules (use taunt 31 to re-enable afterwards).
; Taunt 37 - Build a wonder (imperial-age only)
; Taunt 43 - Current strategy information.
; Taunt 44 - Current resources & population information.
; Taunt 45 - Temporary retreat back to main town-center.
; Taunt 50 - flare a location on the map and send this taunt for a chance of Jester to build a tower, donjon, krepost, or castle at the location.
; Taunt 52 - flare a location on the map and then send this taunt for a chance Jester will build a market at the flared location.
; Taunts 61 - 68: Jester will temporarily target the numbered player (this taunt now works as intended, only resets if Jester is under attack or the target-enemy dies).
; Taunt 69 - Deletes the object at the flared location.
; Taunt 72 - Pursue militiaman-line (infantry) strategy.
; Taunt 73 - Pursue melee cavalry units strategy. (knights, shrivamsha-riders, savars, battle-elephants, steppe-lancers, camels, etc.). This is dependent on the current civilization and only works for that current age. Use these in imperial-age for a more permanent strategy.
; Taunt 74 - Pursue archer-line strategy (foot archer only).
; Taunt 76 - Drush the enemy (must be early dark-age to work).
; Taunt 104 - Fully turns off all resign rules (when taunting either enemy or ally Jesters).
; Taunt 105 - Revert back to default resign rules after taunt 104 was issued.
; Taunt 150 - Resign immediately (when spectating as Jester, useful for casting games).
; Taunt 151 - Resign immediately (when taunted to an ally or enemy Jester, useful for a stubborn opponent or casting games).
; Taunt 250 - Chats current Jester version.
; Taunt 251 - Chats certain testing strategic-numbers (I use this for testing Jester, but feel free to use it too lol).
; Jester also responds to some other taunts, but not in a way you would expect! (example: Taunt 69).
;==========UPDATES for Jester Version 2.3:==========
- Hey all! It's been a long time since I've updated old Jester! So here you are, get this update while its fresh! ;D
- This is a smaller but effective update aiming to make Jester more efficient and help eliminate the worst bugs from the previous version. Includes some much needed DUC bug fixes (that would make Jester act very odd!). The new banter chats in this update make the download worth it alone

;====================================================
- Fixed a serious bug where Malay Jester's could sometimes get stuck in the dark age FOREVER if feudal-age was available too quickly in rare situations.
- NEW When attacking, Jester now uses backup DUC rules to send units that used to sit at home into the frontlines where they belong!
- All the proper units now retreat from enemy tower-class arrow fire (all units except infantry, cavalry & some siege units will not retreat anymore as originally intended). I appear to be using up-exlude-filter incorrectly or else it may be bugged! **thunder noises**
- Fixed a bug that would sometimes allow Gurjara Jesters to wander across the map at game start to allied/scouted berry bushes far outside of his town (Thank you distance-filter!)
- Jester now takes into account sn-defer-dropsite-placement making the mid to late game less likely for him to bug out when a camp was half built then destroyed.
- Fixed a bug where Jester would retreat every single time he prepared to attack. This was greatly worsened if there were any enemy buildings inside sn-safe-town-size (causing an endless retreat loop).
- Fixed a bug where Jester units would freeze when trying to avoid arrow fire from any building close to the map borders (still happens in rare cases but mostly fixed now).
- Fixed a DUC bug that would cause Jester's scout to occassionally retreat to the main TC if other military units were getting lured from his town.
- Removed some DUC constraints on pocket Jester's so that they can freely attack again without getting confused. (Pockets were repeatedly retreating when trying to attack with smaller numbers of military).
- Added a nice bug fix to allow Jester to play on all map-sizes again. This is especially true for world maps or any other custom maps. Jester no longer gets a game-start error because of map-sizes!
- Made some efficiencies/improvements to mule-cart building rules, includes favoring gold/stone piles more in the mid to late game.
- Jester can now properly research ri-siege-onager.
- Simplified Nomad scouting rules, although scouting sn's or other rules may be bugging this still...
- Updated MANY of the chats that Jester likes to send at different times (added new ones and provided improvements). Also fixed many of the "banter" chats so they send at the proper timings and should make more sense now (they were getting sent very randomly before).
- Other small bug fixes/improvements that I forgot what they were.
;----------END OF GENERAL UPDATES:----------
;==========CONCLUSION:==========
- Jester can be a fun ai to play with or against in team games, use in custom games (scenarios), or is commonly used for testing against other ai's.
- It is by no means a perfect ai, sometimes has bugs, and uses minimal DUC. But Jester has been an amazing project to work on for many years at this point (since the AOE II HD days).
- Please leave a comment of your experience on the ai scripters website, AOK Heaven website, or in the ai scripters discord group about your experience and if there is anything you'd like to see added/improved or just your general experience!
- Thank you for playing with Jester! GL & HF!!!
Your Pal, ScreamingKoos
;==========INSTALLATION:==========
- Simply download & unzip the Jester V 2.3.zip file and drag and drop everything into your AOE2 DE ai folder (the .ai file, the .per file, and the Jester folder).