Why do AIs love to embargo the city states?

It happened to me again last night. I'm friends with everyone except Shaka*. We're even-exchanging luxes, or they're buying them for 7 GPT or 240 cash. We have research agreements, and in some cases open borders.

I'm 5 policies into Freedom and was planning to take Treaty Organization next. (weird mix: Honor, Piety, Rationalism, Freedom) Someone proposed embargo CS's. I have as many votes as anybody else but haven't really made my move yet. I cast all my votes against it and it passed anyway. I can still do a hostile takeover of the world congress using a combination of Arsenal of Democracy and Heathen Conversion, and I've already started that, but it's tedious. Also I was really pushing my religion with trade routes, and now I can only make money sending caravans to AI cities that already have a religion.

The other time this happened was also when I went Freedom but did not have Treaty Organization yet, and once again my "friends" were the ones that rammed it thru. Are the AI's smart enough to do that if the human takes Freedom? Or is there some other politics going on between themselves and it has nothing to do with me?

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*I paid Shaka to declare war on my friend and too-close neighbor Pocatello early in the game. 200 turns later, they were still fighting. Shoshone were down to just one city, Moson Kahni (full of wonders), and Shaka couldn't capture it because it was defended by 3 galleasses and a trebuchet, plus he had to attack over a river -- and he was sending his cannons in 1 at a time so they got killed as the set up. I really wanted Moson Kahni; I needed a coastal city and I wanted those wonders, but didn't want the warmonger penalty for taking it. Finally (and I made sure our DoF was expired) I declared war on Shoshone and used my artillery to kill his galleasses and weaken the city enough for Shaka to take it, then I peaced-out with Pocatello and started trading with him again and waited.

As soon as Shaka captured Moson Kahni, everybody denounced him, and I declared war. I captured Moson Kahni and razed another crappy little Zulu city, and then liberated a very nice little Shoshone city that has lots of oil. There are 2 more Shoshone cities and at least 1 CS that I can liberate to keep the other AI's from hating me as I push for Ulundi.

I'm pretty sure they suggest things completely randomly. They absolutely cannot take into consideration if they're helping friends or foes, only if they are helping themselves.

This is the pattern I found:

- They will upvote projects and like the proposal ( station,game,world fair )
- They will upvote their ideology/religion ( if their capital has a religion they will vote for it)
- They will always downvote Natural Heritage Sites ( culture from natural wonders )
- Half of them will hate or love everything else you propose ( cultural heritate sites, science funding, art funding etc. )

Any civ that is behind in tech will hate science fundings and love arts funding and vice-versa, so there's always an angry one.

As for embargos, they seem to upvote any embargo if they don't have trade routes to it, and downvote it if they do. So most of them will vote favorably on embargos since most of them won't have trade routes with the civ that is being voted to embargo.

They suggest civs to embargo usually based on how much they hate them, but it's sometimes quite random. They'll vote to embargo you even if you were never at war or denounced just on the basis that they have no trade routes with you or that your score is too high.

The AI is not good at congress basically.

So Shaka would vote for my world religion because his capital and most of his cities have adopted it, even tho' he hates me? And Pocatello's city is my religion... This could be interesting. The religious AI's on the other half of the world would then denounce me, breaking the DoF's (but not the research agreements) and getting them a backstab penalty.

I propose Natural Heritage Sites whenever I have to offer up something and there's nothing good available. They all hate it, but they don't hate me for making the proposal.

I proposed Arts funding once when science was the only victory option. I had plenty of scientists already (and I could buy more.) That really riled 'em up. All of 'em.

zxcvbob said:

So Shaka would vote for my world religion because his capital and most of his cities have adopted it, even tho' he hates me?

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My guess would be yes.
Sometimes I vote against AI proposals and then they say "Don't expect our delegates to support your proposals in the future" but I never checked if they actually wouldn't vote for something they like just to get back at me.

It can be kind of random, sometimes the World Fair doesn't pass, seemingly as if the AI randomly vote on some issues.

If you have a diplomat in their capital, you can also buy their vote and if they have a diplomat in yours, you can sell your vote. Often you can sell them your vote for something you proposed or were going to vote for anyway. Free gold yay.

Why don't you like the embargo CS? That's because trade route with CS is crappy. You rather have TR with AI to get more gold, and this embargo forces that to happen. The freedom t3 is pretty much garbage since it's rather slow and it's much better to trade gpt for lumpsum gold and buy the CS near the end.

zxcvbob said:

Are the AI's smart enough to do that if the human takes Freedom?

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No, we could only wish the AI were programmed to be that clever. I play the ideologies about equally, and CS Embargo is proposed in the vast majority of my games. It usually passes unless I have enough votes at the time to stop it.

Or is there some other politics going on between themselves and it has nothing to do with me?[

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The AIs are very short sighted. If they cannot spot a lux or enemy to embargo, they will propose to embargo the CS. It is like their default fallback choice. They figure no harm. Because they are stupid.

Sclb said:

Why don't you like the embargo CS?

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Because then (the normally easy) CS trade route requests clog up the CS quest queues. It is so annoying!

I disagree....I think the AI knows what it's doing most of the time. I think the scenario you are talking about relies on the idea that the AI does not trade with Cs's...they either trade among themselves or trade internally. I find that they usually ban luxury resources when they do not have them themselves. They will definitely vote for your religion if the majority of their cities have your religion...even if they have their own religion. If they have 5 cities with your religion and 2 cities with their religion, they will go with yours instead. It's because if the majority of their cities have the world religion, then they get the benefits of the congressional vote. I think it was programmed to vote in a way that benefits them, and I think they can even see the right time to embargo certain civs.

Emphasis added…

Special Places said:

I think the AI knows what it's doing most of the time.

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I think that is wishful thinking!

I think the scenario you are talking about relies on the idea that the AI does not trade with CS's...they either trade among themselves or trade internally.

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Right, just like human players. Fair enough. But the difference is that in single player it never makes sense to propose CS embargo. The AI is too short-sighted to known that.

If they have 5 cities with your religion and 2 cities with their religion, they will go with yours instead.

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I have never seen that. And my experience is that the AI, even if they have not founded, has to like you to vote your religion as world religion even when it would benefit you too.

The lux bans and AI embargo voting is fairly sensible, I agree.