WHEOOHRN - working as planned or exploit?

eris said:

I can't believe someone is talking about getting too much information as if it were a problem. The whole purpose of BUG is to give you information you, as an experienced player, could likely deduce through massive micromanagement. I am of the opinion that the little clues are there because the designers quite deliberately put them there to give people an opportunity to play in differing micromanagement styles, not because of some supposed oversight. Give the designers some credit, here!

There is even a complaint that someone could be "tempted" to look at information because it is there to cheat with. Well, World Builder is always there, and if you can avoid that temptation, then you can avoid others. (The developers do not control your ability to resist temptation. Theoretically, you do.) I like the WHEEOOHRN indicator and its ambivalent information. (Hmmm. They are prepping for war; I wonder against whom.) Contrary to what many seem to think here, I believe it adds value to the gameplay. And BUG just makes it easier, and I like that even better.

SO I think I will have to disagree completely with the points of the OP. No criticism to be implied, just the ability to have different reactions to the same game circumstance.

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Well, responding to the OP question in the thread title ....

Like a poster some time ago said ( Roland Johansen IIRC ) the designers , if they didn't wanted that the players were able to discern the fact the AI were preparing to war, they could simply had mixed the war prep with other already existant response ( like the "we would have nothing to gain" .... ). So, obviously the designers intended that the players knew that the AI was gearing to war ( and gearing to war != going to war, but that is besides the point ). Now on the fact that players use that extensively being forseen by the developers .... well, if you go that way the express propose of the developers in Civ IV was to kill the micromanagement... see where it went If you use that argument to say that the "hands full" warning usage most people do is not intended and that it should be somehow changed, you also have more urgently to find a way to stop people of doing micromanagement in the game

Now obviously, as someone said above, removing the "hands full" warning completely would be a HUGE game change ( would allow the AI to be bribed to a war while preparing other ) and that IMHO is a bad idea.

>>Now obviously, as someone said above, removing the "hands full" warning completely would be a HUGE game change

It has to return some other reject message, like "whatever" we dont care about wars and to return similar reject messages always. So they can't be discerned.

Any reject message would work since the civ itself uses getAnyWarPlanCount() to determine if it s in war mode (and plan wars, etc)

Anyways, like my 1st post stated: it was intended by the developers.

naterator said:

So justinial wasn't in WHEOOHRN but his power spiked? Well then he was preparing for war without telling you. sneaky.
in this case though, your extra knowledge hurt you because you figured that a spike in power w/o WHEOOHRN was less significant than a spike in power with it. He probably would have been in WHEOOHRN alot longer if you had kept up in power, but you snoozed, neglected your military because you had a false sense of security because of the lack of WHEOOHRN, and so at the next impasse, you were weaker and were attacked.

I believe WHEOOHRN only tells you when a civ is preparing for a specific war, you still need to watch out for wars of oppurtunity or spontaneous wars.

i never said that cutting off trade will always put a civ in WHEOOHRN, i said it's a safe assumption, as in it's a dangerous assumption that no WHEOOHRN means no wars on the horizon.

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No, Justinian never declared on me. I was talking about two different games. In the one with Justinian, his power spiked, but he never declared because he was friendly. In another game, the AI (it was the Khmer dude) went into WHEOOHRN, but he did not declare because MY power spiked when I saw that.

Sometimes the AI builds a lot of units when it's not preparing for war - probably because they are afraid you may declare war, or just because they have reached a point in their civ development where it's easier to build better units (he may have researched a military tech that allowed him to upgrade some of his existing units).

Without WHEOOHRN, when you see someone's power spike, you can't be sure if they are planning war or not - maybe they are just afraid of you and planning a defensive war or just improving an outdated military because they can. I LIKE that level of uncertainty, I don't like being able to read the mind of the AI.

As to the person who said that the devs intended this because there are other reasons that can be given - the code that is called that brings up that response is "TOO_MANY_WARS" or something like that. I have a feeling that response was only supposed to be given when the AI was actually involved in a war, but the AI obviously considers itself to be in an "at war" state when it is preparing for a war but before it declares (this makes sense as they will only enter WHEOOHRN at relations where they will declare, but the actual declaration can happen when they are at a level of relations that does not allow war declaration). The choosing to go to war is obviously intentional as it allows the AI to prepare and keeps the player from cheesing the AI by raising relations when they see their neighbor massing troops to stop them from declaring - but the reverse side of that is that the developers obviously intended to keep those war preparations secret, otherwise they could have made the AI simply refuse any diplomatic relations during war preparations that would improve relations - instead they let them pretend to be friendly.

katipunero said:

but see, the OP only stopped at noble or prince (???) coming up from warlord difficulty before deciding the game no longer presented any challenge at all what with the "exploit".

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You are misreading what I said, or maybe I didn't make myself clear. I was at a level of "Usually beating Noble with any settings" and "Sometimes beating Prince with favorable settings" when I got BUG, several months after staring to play CivIV again at Warlord. When I got BUG, within a week, I was at "Always beating Prince easily on any settings".

Yes, I could find a challenge if I raised the difficulty level, but why play above my level if I need to cheat to do so?

@Badtz Maru
Once again even w/o the message it'd be possible to distinct war preparation.
Aside impossible wars (like declaring on your own vassals) or forced peace and so. Excluding the known attitude, there is only one deny reason: power. So if you know the power and the AI still refuses it'd be preparing for war.

{extra info: "no gain" and stuff is available only if the AI has not enough power}

To avoid all that jazz and to make testing easier (I presume as well) and to make it user friendly (more stuff telling -> more human alike/role playing opponents -> considered good) the developers decided to disclose the info.

Although you got a valid point if the information is displayed when a contact is not possible. That would be a bug in the BUG mod.
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Btw, did you know that having nukes ensures that only civilaztions that are in war w/ can bribe others to declare on you.

Badtz Maru said:

No, Justinian never declared on me. I was talking about two different games. In the one with Justinian, his power spiked, but he never declared because he was friendly. In another game, the AI (it was the Khmer dude) went into WHEOOHRN, but he did not declare because MY power spiked when I saw that.

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Nonsense. The AI will NEVER get out of it's war preparations because you spiked your power. Read this, the author is far more eloquent than me

Badtz Maru said:

As to the person who said that the devs intended this because there are other reasons that can be given - the code that is called that brings up that response is "TOO_MANY_WARS" or something like that. I have a feeling that response was only supposed to be given when the AI was actually involved in a war, but the AI obviously considers itself to be in an "at war" state when it is preparing for a war but before it declares (this makes sense as they will only enter WHEOOHRN at relations where they will declare, but the actual declaration can happen when they are at a level of relations that does not allow war declaration). The choosing to go to war is obviously intentional as it allows the AI to prepare and keeps the player from cheesing the AI by raising relations when they see their neighbor massing troops to stop them from declaring - but the reverse side of that is that the developers obviously intended to keep those war preparations secret, otherwise they could have made the AI simply refuse any diplomatic relations during war preparations that would improve relations - instead they let them pretend to be friendly.

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You are close of awnsering yourself in here. As any player knows, a war in any strategy game needs a preparation phase to be minally effective ( even more for the AI, that is pretty bad dealing with sudden stuff ), and ,regarding the code that governs the AI warfare, it is clear that the preparation phase is considered by the AI as a part of the war itself. The "too many wars" in fact means " I already have a war ( where the preparation is included ) going on, don't bother me with your schemings!"

About the second issue... well, I'm still to see where it is written the rule that the AI can't declare at a certain diplo status And if the devs really, but really wanted to hide the fact that the AI is preparing a war, the simplest thing the could do was what I said in previous post: simply mix the denial in going to war because of the war preps with some other denial in a way that you could discern if the AI was preparing a war or simply not being interested enough... it would even give less work to the devs ( we are talking of the same guys that introduced that quote of the designer acheiving perfection when there is nothing to be taken away ). The simple fact of the separate response existing in the context we are talking about is proof enough that it was intended IMHO....

bestsss said:

@Badtz Maru
Once again even w/o the message it'd be possible to distinct war preparation.
Aside impossible wars (like declaring on your own vassals) or forced peace and so. Excluding the known attitude, there is only one deny reason: power. So if you know the power and the AI still refuses it'd be preparing for war.

{extra info: "no gain" and stuff is available only if the AI has not enough power}

To avoid all that jazz and to make testing easier (I presume as well) and to make it user friendly (more stuff telling -> more human alike/role playing opponents -> considered good) the developers decided to disclose the info.

Although you got a valid point if the information is displayed when a contact is not possible. That would be a bug in the BUG mod.
---

Btw, did you know that having nukes ensures that only civilaztions that are in war w/ can bribe others to declare on you.

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I don't believe it was intentional that the AI would give the WHEOOHRN reason when there were other reasons - I'm pretty sure that was a mistake as the fix described above (moving it to the last reason given) makes a LOT more sense and provides useful information. If the question is why won't the AI allow itself to be bribed into war and there are multiple reasons, the more obvious reasons should be given first - "I don't like you enough", "They are too powerful", "They are our friends".

The root of the issue appears to be two headed - first, the code treats "planning war" the exact same as "at war" when in diplomacy when it comes to war bribes. This leads to the priority of reasons given (with "At war or planning war" at the top) being illogical. Now, if "WHEOOHRN" was only given when an AI was actually at war, the current order would make sense - if you wanted to bribe an AI that was at war, a "We don't like you enough" could be considered less than optimal answer because that might lead new players into thinking they could get them to go to war if they made them like them more, which is untrue. But when "WHEOOHRN" is given at war planning stage and not just at war, this makes no sense - any reasonable civ engaged in diplomacy would just say "We don't like you enough". And really, the first method would make sense as well - ask someone to go to war with you who doesn't like you and is involved in a war or planning one, they say "We don't like you enough". Then, if you made them like you, it would be like they trusted you with their REAL reasons. It would add a bit more depth to diplomacy, where you have to make friends to discern motivations.

r_rolo1 said:

Nonsense. The AI will NEVER get out of it's war preparations because you spiked your power. Read this, the author is far more eloquent than me

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I know this - in the original post about that point, I mentioned that it was the longest I had ever seen an AI stay in WHEOOHRN - I saw he was going into war planning mode, knew I was the target, and I spiked my power. This stopped him from declaring war, but he never left WHEOOHRN. Then, much much later in the game (at least a hundred turns) when his power grew closer to mine, he then actually went to war with me. He never stopped preparing for the war, but he delayed it because I spiked my power. I exploited my knowledge of his planning to delay him from declaring war for a very long time.

Badtz Maru said:

The root of the issue appears to be two headed - first, the code treats "planning war" the exact same as "at war" when in diplomacy when it comes to war bribes. This leads to the priority of reasons given (with "At war or planning war" at the top) being illogical. Now, if "WHEOOHRN" was only given when an AI was actually at war, the current order would make sense - if you wanted to bribe an AI that was at war, a "We don't like you enough" could be considered less than optimal answer because that might lead new players into thinking they could get them to go to war if they made them like them more, which is untrue. But when "WHEOOHRN" is given at war planning stage and not just at war, this makes no sense - any reasonable civ engaged in diplomacy would just say "We don't like you enough". And really, the first method would make sense as well - ask someone to go to war with you who doesn't like you and is involved in a war or planning one, they say "We don't like you enough". Then, if you made them like you, it would be like they trusted you with their REAL reasons. It would add a bit more depth to diplomacy, where you have to make friends to discern motivations.

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Well, this probably has a lot to do with some civ series :

In civ III you have some animated cartoons making the paper of advisors in the screen, that give some info like ( I will pick military examples ) "There are barbarian villages near X city" or "Our military is small! We need more troops...." . Most of the lines said in the Civ IV diplomacy screens by the AI seem to be thinked as if in fact they were said by the Civ III diplo advisor that also appeard in the diplo window ( oh , the glorious days where the diplo advisor would actually tell you if a certain deal had chances of being acepted before you asked the AI .... ). If there was a animated character saying in the top right corner of the Civ IV diplo window "There are rumours that they are in war mobilization, so they should not acept our proposal " things would look far more immersive than putting it in the mouth of the AI leader, right? But by some reason they decided to scrap out the advisors in Civ IV, so this became a little in the air ....

Now, on changing the order of the war denial responses ... well, probably you have a point in there, suposing that you in fact are talking with the AI leader ( and not via some kind of embassy / advisor/ whatever ). If you are in fact talking with your minister of foreign affairs or similar ( well, it is the more reasonable explanation ... since when a RL leader of a country has the power to summon other leaders at will ? ) and using him as a proxy with the other leader, you don't ....

Badtz Maru said:

I know this - in the original post about that point, I mentioned that it was the longest I had ever seen an AI stay in WHEOOHRN - I saw he was going into war planning mode, knew I was the target, and I spiked my power. This stopped him from declaring war, but he never left WHEOOHRN. Then, much much later in the game (at least a hundred turns) when his power grew closer to mine, he then actually went to war with me. He never stopped preparing for the war, but he delayed it because I spiked my power. I exploited my knowledge of his planning to delay him from declaring war for a very long time.

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This is not consistent with the code in the thread DanF posted in...

I agree with Badtz Maru that the game would be more interesting if the player couldn't get a warning when an AI civilisation was planning to go to war. War would be more of a surprise when you didn't scout well or when the AI attacked from an unexpected angle (more likely with oversees invasions).

Of course, many players are very used to this mechanic now, so we can't go back anymore with the core game. It would lead to massive protests when such a change was for instance made in the unofficial patch. Of course, mods which change the game rules could change this.

wow... mount molehill continues to grow. considering that you have to either install a mod or relentlessly check everybody's diplo screen every turn to exploit this, i would go back to the "don't do it if it upsets you so much" argument. Getting upset that others use in-game exploits will only give you ulcers.
Yes, you can exploit this ruthlessly if you choose, but familiarity with any game involving AI will lead to exploits as you learn it's tendencies. And really, it's not as unfair as knowing everybodies personalities before you meet them. Even if you don't dive into the leaderhead XML, if you meet gandhi and shaka in 3500 BC, you strategize accordingly. Monty loves to war, Cathy can't be trusted, Mansa is the tech monster, we know all about them the second they come out of the fog whereas they know nothing about us. This can be exploited alot more reliably and with better results than WHEOOHRN but nobody calls it a cheat to leave "random personalities" unchecked.

^^And... ?

"Random personalities" is such a misleading name ... What you get is mixing the current XML defined personalities with a diferent face. Ok, you don't know that Mansa will be a tech whore in the moment you see him, but in the first 100 you can say exactly whose personality is behind each face in 90% of the games. If you don't believe me , just check MadScientist game with 7 Sury ( one human ) and random personalities ( especially the posts by Dresden ) ....

r_rolo1 said:

^^And... ?

"Random personalities" is such a misleading name ... What you get is mixing the current XML defined personalities with a diferent face. Ok, you don't know that Mansa will be a tech whore in the moment you see him, but in the first 100 you can say exactly whose personality is behind each face in 90% of the games. If you don't believe me , just check MadScientist game with 7 Sury ( one human ) and random personalities ( especially the posts by Dresden ) ....

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I know how Random Personalities works, and it usually makes the game easier as most civilizations are designed with a syngergy between their traits, uniques, and their traits. It makes it so that your Aggressive civs do not necessarily build lots of units and declare easily. There MAY be some personality/civ combinations that are harder than their original (though none spring to mind), but having Aztecs with the personality of Gandhi or Indians with the personality of Montezuma makes the game easier.

naterator said:

wow... mount molehill continues to grow. considering that you have to either install a mod or relentlessly check everybody's diplo screen every turn to exploit this, i would go back to the "don't do it if it upsets you so much" argument. Getting upset that others use in-game exploits will only give you ulcers.
Yes, you can exploit this ruthlessly if you choose, but familiarity with any game involving AI will lead to exploits as you learn it's tendencies. And really, it's not as unfair as knowing everybodies personalities before you meet them. Even if you don't dive into the leaderhead XML, if you meet gandhi and shaka in 3500 BC, you strategize accordingly. Monty loves to war, Cathy can't be trusted, Mansa is the tech monster, we know all about them the second they come out of the fog whereas they know nothing about us. This can be exploited alot more reliably and with better results than WHEOOHRN but nobody calls it a cheat to leave "random personalities" unchecked.

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"If you don't like cheating, don't do it" is not a valid argument in a game with multiplayer or where the community compares player skill by what difficulty level they play at.

And as I mentioned above, I use random personalities to make the game easier. I'd rather that a non-Aggressive civ has Montezuma's personality.

r_rolo1 said:

^^And... ?

"Random personalities" is such a misleading name ... What you get is mixing the current XML defined personalities with a diferent face. Ok, you don't know that Mansa will be a tech whore in the moment you see him, but in the first 100 you can say exactly whose personality is behind each face in 90% of the games. If you don't believe me , just check MadScientist game with 7 Sury ( one human ) and random personalities ( especially the posts by Dresden ) ....

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YEs, but you have to spend the time figuring it out at least, sometimes 100 turns with an unknown warmonger is a bad thing. I know it's a separate issue (and i too wish they were truly random), but i'm just saying that there's always going to be exploits that come to the surface when you spend enough time with the game. The Op's problem began when his familiarity level with the game increased to the point where WHEOOHRN was no longer a cryptic phrase but a cut and dry statement meaning "war's a coming".

@Batz - the playing field is equal for multi, and if you're worrying about what the forum thinks of your skill, download BUFFY (disabling the WHEOOHRN thing of course) or HOF, your games will be accepted at face value, and YOU will sleep better at night knowing that you hold yourself to a higher standard than the rest of us. That's really about all you can do. Stressing over the fact that a bunch of people you'll never meet think they're better than you think they are is an exercise in futility.
Also, a non-aggressive monty is nice, but an aggressive hannibal is not, luck of the draw can help or hurt the AI. I know i wouldn't want to face Shaka's crazy brain in Boudica's sexy body (and traits), especially if she vassalized darius with mansa musa's brain.

Badtz Maru said:

I don't believe it was intentional that the AI would give the WHEOOHRN reason when there were other reasons - I'm pretty sure that was a mistake as the fix described above (moving it to the last reason given) makes a LOT more sense and provides useful information.

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Well, you don't get that this reasoning depends on the amount of the available targets, do you?
If you have enough targets (make it infinite) it will >fall< there no matter what, if you have the attitude to ask for war. Imagine you give the AI free technology and they tell you... up to the moment we didn't wish to tell ya but see now (since your lavish gift) we are getting to kill ya, capish?

So the developers preferred a deterministic approach.

bestsss said:

Well, you don't get that this reasoning depends on the amount of the available targets, do you?
If you have enough targets (make it infinite) it will >fall< there no matter what, if you have the attitude to ask for war. Imagine you give the AI free technology and they tell you... up to the moment we didn't wish to tell ya but see now (since your lavish gift) we are getting to kill ya, capish?

So the developers preferred a deterministic approach.

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That's not true. If the civ does not like you enough to accept bribes against ANYONE, there is no reason why you should get the WHEOOHRN. Likewise, if all the other civilizations are too powerful for that civilization to be bribed to attack, and you are the only one it would consider attacking, it should not give you WHEOOHRN.

naterator said:

YEs, but you have to spend the time figuring it out at least, sometimes 100 turns with an unknown warmonger is a bad thing. I know it's a separate issue (and i too wish they were truly random), but i'm just saying that there's always going to be exploits that come to the surface when you spend enough time with the game. The Op's problem began when his familiarity level with the game increased to the point where WHEOOHRN was no longer a cryptic phrase but a cut and dry statement meaning "war's a coming".

@Batz - the playing field is equal for multi.

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The playing field is not level in multiplayer unless there are no AIs at all in the game - as I understand it, not everybody has to have BUG to join in a multiplayer game. If I am playing in a multiplayer game with 3 humans and 4 AIs, and the two other humans have BUG, they will know in situations when I cannot when AIs are planning war (they will also have access to knowledge that civs they are not talking to are willing to trade with me, and have access to detailed war weariness information that is not available in the unmodded game).

Badtz Maru said:

The playing field is not level in multiplayer unless there are no AIs at all in the game - as I understand it, not everybody has to have BUG to join in a multiplayer game. If I am playing in a multiplayer game with 3 humans and 4 AIs, and the two other humans have BUG, they will know in situations when I cannot when AIs are planning war (they will also have access to knowledge that civs they are not talking to are willing to trade with me, and have access to detailed war weariness information that is not available in the unmodded game).

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First off, your trade advisor can tell you when an embargoed civ wants to trade techs, so that's not BUG specific.

The rest is not really an issue in multiplayer. For one thing, if i'm playing civ with strangers then i don't want to waste time with AI to begin with, the game is just too long as it is; and if i'm playing with friends then i can simply ask them to turn their BUG off.
Disregarding that though, how much of an edge are you really gaining? If you leave your backdoor weak enough for an AI to attack on multi, then the other human will certainly beat them to the punch. Humans are ALWAYS in WHEOOHRN, so you'll be dead before it comes into play anyway. Also, since the only time this info is wrongly available is when an AI refuses to talk, which is a tiny fraction of the overall turns in a game, so even if it comes up, you have only to wait a few turns and that info will be available. Again, if that makes or breaks your multiplayer, then the other human should have little trouble finishing you off.
I'm not much for multiplayer, but i have a suspicion that the AI's plans are largely irrelevant with multiple humans on the board.
I'm sure you could cook up a specific scenario where this could make an impact in multi, if 2 humans were on diffenent continents, but if you're going to spend hours conquering AI before you even meet the other player, then it's probably your buddy your playing against so you'd know if he had BUG (and if he were honest enough to not use it if you asked)

And AI war weariness is irrelevant in single player anyway, more so in multi. The bonuses they get generally make it so that WW is far worse in your civ than the AI, so if you're planning on starving them out with WW, even with the statue of zeus, you're only hurting yourself.