I don't understand this.

Isabella declared war on me for no apparent reason, ok no big deal, I'm weaker than she is.

Problem is that she's across the map. Not even close. Still, no big deal. Maybe she'll try a naval attack.

Nope. It's been over 500 years now, and all she's sent is a trireme that killed one fishing boat and an empty transport.

I mouse over her leaderhead. It says "-8 - This war spoils our relationship."

Uh, you declared it, sister. That gives me no insight into WHY she declared it and WHY she won't end it. Every few turns I try to offer peace and she says No way.

Seriously, this is a major problem. How can people consider this mod good if this happens? I read at apolyton that this is fairly common AI behavior. And yes I have the recent build.

That has nothing to do with the Better AI. That's how the regular AI is too. There's a good chance Isabella will declare war on you if you're not her religion and you are weaker than she is. It is also difficult to get the AI to settle for peace if you have not killed any of their units. The AI will likely accept peace after you have killed a unit or two of theirs.

*nod* -- the question isn't "why war", but rather "why peace".

I think you're wrong there.

A- She'd get a good amount of trade from me, in addition to being able to spread her state religion that she founded.
B- I think I should know WHY war is declared. In history, few wars are declared for no apparent reason whatsoever. The only modifiers I had with Isaeblla previously were positive. The only ones I have know are "This war sucks" and an astronomical -8 for that.
C- She has no reason to want to stay in war, at all.

I am new to Warlords, and I have only played 2 Civ 4 AI's - the vanilla 1.61 version, and the Warloards with better AI.

Did warlords make this change to the AI, or is it Better AI? Because in 1.61 there was a time limit. After a while of nothing happening the AI would figure out it wasn't getting anywhere and resume normal, albeit somewhat testy, relations.

Aside from this problem, I think the mod is great, but I really think this is a big problem.

No, I'm pretty sure that even in Vanilla Civ4, the AI won't make peace before you destroy some of their units. Maybe if you have enough to give them, they will.

efore Firaxis made it more difficult to steal the AIs workers by not allowing them to move until the next turn, I used to always use this tactic at the beginning of monarch and above games. But I realized that sometimes the AI would refuse to make peace with me after the usual 10-20 turns, and then I noticed that the AI would not make peace until I had killed one of its units, which would often take some time before I would get units that could kill a fortified archer.

But the point is, the AI won't make peace with you until you destroy one of its units. If the AI is declaring war on you while you have good relations, you are not building enough units. Pay close attention to how you compare to the AIs in the power rankings...

I think you're wrong there.

A- She'd get a good amount of trade from me, in addition to being able to spread her state religion that she founded.
B- I think I should know WHY war is declared. In history, few wars are declared for no apparent reason whatsoever. The only modifiers I had with Isaeblla previously were positive. The only ones I have know are "This war sucks" and an astronomical -8 for that.
C- She has no reason to want to stay in war, at all.

I am new to Warlords, and I have only played 2 Civ 4 AI's - the vanilla 1.61 version, and the Warloards with better AI.

Did warlords make this change to the AI, or is it Better AI? Because in 1.61 there was a time limit. After a while of nothing happening the AI would figure out it wasn't getting anywhere and resume normal, albeit somewhat testy, relations.

Aside from this problem, I think the mod is great, but I really think this is a big problem.

So I have to kill a unit or two to get peace?

How does that make any sense?

You're telling me the AI will get into a war - and stay in it, no matter what the reason, until I kill a unit, regardless of any tactical considerations, such as trade, diplomacy, etc?

That's just dumb, no matter who programmed it. And I think its unique to warlords or this mod, because I know for a fact the 1.61 AI would throw up its hands after a long period of inactivity in war.

Hell the Civ2 AI did that. This is a surprising regression.

That is NOT true!

In vanilla Civ, there is a certain time after which peace is sought. The behavior described here is one of Better AI's many bugs (or imbalances or whatever you feel like calling it) still left.
Believe me, Better AI may be nice at first glance but if you play it more you'll notice a lot of game breaking things like these and you'll wish Firaxis had refrained from putting it in their patch. At least I do. It *is* a great mod but it's also unfinished and since development stopped, we are stuck with a broken game. I am *so* looking forward to BTS so I can play again.

That is NOT true!

In vanilla Civ, there is a certain time after which peace is sought. The behavior described here is one of Better AI's many bugs (or imbalances or whatever you feel like calling it) still left.
Believe me, Better AI may be nice at first glance but if you play it more you'll notice a lot of game breaking things like these and you'll wish Firaxis had refrained from putting it in their patch. At least I do. It *is* a great mod but it's also unfinished and since development stopped, we are stuck with a broken game. I am *so* looking forward to BTS so I can play again.

Right, there are still some bugs left in BetterAI but compared to the vanilla Warlord 2.08 AI, it is still a major improvement. I would never go back to the old AI just because I had to kill one unit unnecessarily every once in a while. ;)

Well I killed a unit (Two actually) and she still won't take peace.

Pretty major error, since this is my second game with Better AI, it must be a common glitch.

To the person who asked "why not war?!"

Well, I'm pretty sure Isabella doesn't understand she can never reach me. She's probably building military units but isn't sending them over properly.

In which case, this war is just draining her resources.

If she's not building up militarily, then she's still missing out on trade.

Dumb AI.

You are missing out on trade too.

AIs refuse to trade with their worst enemy, and you are probably hers (with that -8 wartime penalty). If you gained stature, she would refuse to trade with someone else. So that is a wash.

She also gains a relationship bonus with anyone who goes to war with you.

You lose your peacetime war weariness bonus: so long as you are at war, your war weariness doesn't fall as fast. So by going to war with you, she reduces your ability to expand.

So long as she doesn't need the peace-time war wearyness recovery, I maintain she isn't being harmed by being at war with you.

I'm just started a new game and sure enough, I'm in a war with Montezuma that will not end. (He wants one of my cities for a cease fire...after about twenty-five turns)

The weird thing is, Montezuma does not seem to have any interest in really attacking me. We're on the same continent right next to each other and I haven't had any troops sent my way in a long, long time.

It seems the AI is just declaring and maintaining war while not even trying to attack me.

To respond to your reasons this would benefit the AI:
Montezuma, in my new game, is way way behind me technologically. He could benefit quite a bit from tech trading with me. Isabella in the other game could have used 2 of my techs at one point far into the war (later she surpassed me though).

I know that Isabella and Montezuma are both warlike, intolerant civs. Fine. But having them hate me with like -20 modifiers for the entire duration of the game is just silly. If you're going to make them want to destroy me, make it so they attack. But idle war cripples their research and trading ability.

The original AI would have tried to attack me as Montezuma or Isabella, and , if it failed, sue for peace and GET TECHS.

Tech trading is vital, and they can't do it when they are in war.

And the war weariness penalty? I'm not completely sure on that -- am I gaining unhappiness because of this cold war? If so, how much, and does it stack?

I think that's a dumb move on their part because she/he is losing the bonus too...

I only half-remember the WW math, but it goes something like this:

You only get WW when you fight in land that isn't culturally yours.

You lose 1 WW point every turn.

Every turn you are at peace, you lose 1% of your accumulated WW.

This means that your WW goes down slower if you are in a state of perma-war, even if that war is a cold war. If you have no WW, it doesn't hinder you.

That war also hurts your ability to grow and trade techs, right?

By any chance, is Monty's power graph doing anything interesting?

He is the most powerful civ on the planet according to my powergraph. By comparsion, I am #3-4 of 5.

Again, his logic for war is fine -- I don't share his state religion, he's a bastard, and I'm weak and right next to him.

However, the problem is that he is remaining in the war and not doing anything productive. He's not sending troops and neither did Isabella, but neither leader has wanted to end the war.

This is ridiculous now. He has a stack of 5 war elephants and several horse archers and they aren't even moving towards my cities. Each of my cities has only one phalanx in it.

I think there are 2 different problems here:

1) Isabella -- declared war on me, without reason or provocation, from across the world and had NO way of taking my lands. I was roughly equal to her on the power graph and was more advanced. Still, no dice.

2) Montezuma game -- declared war on me with plenty of opportunity to take me out, and with reason, but still is not mounting any kind of attack.

Also, in terms of score im #2 and montezuma is last.

Why?

Because of this dumb war, he has no techs.

To be fair, I gifted him 2 techs and he ended the war.

But is the military AI in betterAI broken for anyone else? Eg does it not attack when it should?

Also, what's an assert error? I got one but it went away when I hit ignore..?

Also, what's an assert error? I got one but it went away when I hit ignore..?

Just a diagnostic message. IIRC you can download the latest build without asserts if you want or you can post details of the assert in the bug report thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204045)for anyone interested.

Blake and Iustus were trying to get the bugs out which is why they had a normal build and one with asserts.

To be honest, this isn't a bug with BetterAI, it happens all the time with just Vanilla civ and Vanilla Warlords. However, I do agree that it seems to be worse with this mod, but only slightly...

Never happened to me in 1.61

Edit- to be fair, the AI never won a cultural victory in 1.61 either, which is just did with BetterAI.

If you put chipotle in your ini file, you can hold down the alt key to gain some insight into how an AI is valuing a war.

info about chipotle mode in BetterAI (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=204063)

If you look at the middle picture here, it shows the values of peace for each side.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/uploads/95686/warinfo.JPG

BetterAI removed the automatic peace after 50 turns, but an AI will still seek peace once it feels it is losing. If an AI believes it is winning, it will continue the war. Destroying even a few units may be enough to turn a war from winning to losing if no fighting has occured yet.

BetterAI could probably use a feature that caused AIs to seek peace in wars that have had almost no activity and have been going for many turns, but BetterAI has many things which make it unlikely for it to declare war in the first place on a distant enemy.

-Iustus

why remove the 50 turn thing? big mistake.

The LAST thing I would want is to be able to count 50 turns & know that a war would end. At least make it variable so it might be in the 45-55 turn range.

Don't change it at all. It's good as it is now.

I observed something similar in my game (2/12 build). I declared war on Mansa because Monty asked me to join. I didn't share borders with Mansa (as a matter of fact I didn't even know where he was on the map) and there weren't any units killed on either side. After 10 turns Mansa started talking again but kept refusing to make peace for many turns. I checked every turn and sometimes he asked for one of my cities.

Now here is the part which I think might be a BUG: when I asked to trade a cheap tech to end war, he accepted! (Although when I asked HIM "What's the price for peace? he asked for a city) Without the mod (in Warlords 2.08), the AI would always ask for the cheapest thing (gold if you have it, then techs, if that's not enough then cities). Which I think makes sense because it simplifies life for the human player and we don't have to keep starting low and increase the amount by trial and error like in old versions of civ.

Is this a bug?