Make the cruel AI a bit less cruel - pls help

[Barbagli]

Just a basic modding question (I hope so).
I felt that my campaign at Admiral was getting a bit slow, so I enabled the cruel AI for the first time. At first it was fine, I had to go through many awesome moments in dealing with fleets of World Devastators or 270-something naval power, but after some time I felt overwhelmed by the never-ending attacks by very huge and powerful fleets from each direction - Sovereigns and Allegiances and WDs by the Dark Empire, literally thousands of obsolete-looking stuff by the Corporate Sector (and I'm playing as the PA which is quite easy to handle).

So: I would like to edit my game files to make the Cruel AI less cruel, let's say to reach a half measure between standard Admiral difficulty and Admiral+Cruel AI. It would be great if you can explain the process, if relatively easy (I'm not an expert in any form of modding). Thanks!

[Corey]

The income bonuses cruel gets are defined in DifficultyAdjustments.xml, however I'm not sure if switching the stuff in that file would impact ongoing saves.

[Barbagli]

Thanks a lot. I have to ask some more:
I found the file in Programsx86, Steam, Steamapps, workshop, content, 32470, 1125571106, Data, XML. I guess it's our guy.

I got tree  different sets of difficulty levels: Default, Infrastructure, and Skynet.
Since Hard_Skynet is the one giving the AI a 4.0 multiplier in cash, I guess that's the part I have to edit, right?

Just out of curiosity, can I ask what the other set, Infrastructure, represents?

[Corey]

That is correct. Infrastructure I don't think is actually used anymore. It was for when we were having trouble spawning structures at the start of the GC for certain ones that we set up through LUA, so we gave them a huge budget so they could build structures quickly, but we ended up figuring out the spawning.

[Barbagli]

That is correct. Infrastructure I don't think is actually used anymore. It was for when we were having trouble spawning structures at the start of the GC for certain ones that we set up through LUA, so we gave them a huge budget so they could build structures quickly, but we ended up figuring out the spawning.

Corey, just another question. After applying my modification (2x instead of 4x on AI income), every time I save and quit the game the Cruel AI turns off. To be clearer - I open my saves and I have to reactivate the Cruel AI by clicking on the button. I'm not sure if  the cruel AI is actually working, the enemies don't seem to be stronger than before but I just played some hours and it takes a bit to see the effect of the new income.  I did not touch anything outside that particular string.
Do you know something about that?

[Barbagli]

I've just found out I can click on the button during the game, apparently enabling and dis-enabling the AI at my will. That's weird, I couldn't do it on my previous campaign - that was on the previous patch, this one is on the last one (2.3 if I recall correctly).