I'm not discounting any practical issues - take Total War campaign map VI or even CK campaign map VI - they try to approach a simulacrum / emulation of what a "living organic" human would do - be as it may, TW doesn't show any concern about doing so - much of the VI in BL, in fact the entirety of it is 100% of the time behaving like a bot, at face-level. This shouldn't be. Now, independently of how many parties, BL does have the capacity of supporting such a emulation of behavior, they even have the foundations laid in-game with thing such as personality traits (that are theoretically meant to govern AI behavior / decision making) and they do have the hint of info gathering even within in-game quests.
Would it be difficult to implement? Idk - didn't delve with the game's limitations - but it has been done before. Even if they hit walls on limits it is possible to be creative to, again, emulate these things - doesn't matter if the AI knows, what matters is how it responds to things.
If you take a closer look the entire game AI works like that - flawless and relentless like a bot - even in those bad board games they've added... I even mentioned in another topic that most of these games work like tic-tac-toe (# game) where there are draws/stalemates and the game doesn't read those unless there are zero movements left - this means in some you'll play forever because the AI doesn't bulge nor you - or you are forced to forfeit because there's absolutely no way of beating it due to how the game works and how the AI behaves. - transfer that to everything else and you'll see the pattern - AI armies will switch targets on the fly even if they have absolutely no way of knowing there were reinforcements placed somewhere - they'll dance around constantly with backdoor sieging - so on so forth...
Take that further and start watching AI vs AI and you'll see why the game feels so uncanny. All AI does is play numbers game and act accordingly - as such the game doesn't present a proper atmosphere, breaks immersion and detracts any possibilities of their NPCs feel organic or their world feel "alive"... It's in the core of it all and the main reason why the game feels dead unless we're distracted with mechanics that work like mini-games (leveling up - leveling up companions - gathering numbers as in renown, relations, troops, cash, etc) - it's not like say CK where we can find enjoyment at watching the AI - beefs among dynasties developing, characters acting out on very human reasons as declaring wars due to rivalry, murdering others, etc... In BL it's basically "does faction X have low relative numbers?" "if yes declare war, if no don't declare war" - "is random_fief_300 with low garrison?" "if yes siege, if not don't siege" - what should go on instead would be something like "do I have a rivalry with this faction? Does this faction own lands of my culture? can I take them on?" "weight answers - if mostly yes, declare war - if none are true, no war" so on so forth. Sure it could become stale overtime but that's the reason why adding meaningful relations and non-battle features to the game would be quintessential - as such beefs could arise from numerous elements that are already in-game - like a guy stealing away another lord's 'love' - having village disputes - having crimes* (which's the reason why I got excited about gangs - in the end they are just there for no reason) - having lords develop beefs due to raiding - etc... basically adding actual medieval politics into the fray + "human relations" among all NPCs. Without that the game's completely pointless.
In WB we had something of the sorts going on the background - it was never enough or really flushed out, but it was there, in BL there's absolutely nothing of the sorts...
Anyway - I hope I was successful at making my line of thinking clearer.
TLDR: AI should act on a simulation of personality and reasoning - not numbers and anti-player. Without that the game's bad and will remain bad until it changes.
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