If diplomacy and AI is basically unchanged, will G&K be considered a fail?

If diplomacy and AI is basically unchanged, will G&K be considered a fail?

  • Yes

    Votes: 116 62.4%
  • No

    Votes: 70 37.6%

  • Total voters
    186
I'm not a fan of civ v diplomacy. I tend to find I must war with my neighbours, we can never have a lasting peace.

Even when they have only 2 cities left they will fight me.

If I sign a defensive pact, the ai doesn't understand - it acts as no deterent.

Firaxis know this is broken, they have already said they will be improving it.

They have known its been broken for a long time, hence the minor improvements over time. Remember the pacts of secrecy and cooperation.

If Gods and Kings only fixed diplomacy, I'd still be a happy bunny!
 
I'm not disagreeing with you on the one free war thing, it's something I can imagine them doing, but you haven't really responded to my question of where you sourced it from. If its too hazy, it could be old information or worse, wrong information.

IDK read through the threads there are too many to list, this argument has gone back and forth like a seesaw. :)

My biggest concern is that the stuff they felt they had to add for the expansion pack will screw things up and makes things worse. None of the previous Civ games were perfect and people are talking about G&K had better be perfect...OR ELSE??

Well then its amazing, I really thought I'd tell you the wonderful news. Yes its great! You don't have to buy G&K. Besides the stress of a real finished game might be too progressive for you to take on. I know you have enough on your hands at your university for educating CiV delinquents. :lol:

Gee I wonder how he will like that post? LOL!

Keep in mind even if it is bad, its a huge step in the right direction. The thing is all that stuff, as you regard it, should have been there in the beginning. If it was what ever would you have done?
 
I've heard this before, maybe it was you saying it, but what is your source for the 1 free war thing?

There are the .XML categories for AI's opinion on warmonger status. It is NOT an on-off switch.

The higher the number the more they hate you.
Code:
Warmonger (They believe you are a warmonger)
Critical 100  Severe 70 Major 40  Minor 15 None

There are also specific opinion modifiers like capturing capitals +80 enmity, and reckless expansion +35 enmity (though this could also be related to settlement)

I don't doubt the game could keep track the number of wars you start. But it's certainly not an on-off switch.

Also, using a defensive war to expand, which was a popular exploit from Civ3/civ4 days as the human wouldn't get dinged with a warmonger penalty, no longer works. As you capture more and more cities, you could acquire land the AI wants and they will still hate you for it.

Code:
Land   (They covet our land)
Fierce   30    Strong 20  Weak 10  None -6

Oh and maybe people weren't aware of this. Killing a city state is like eliminating a Civ. It's never practical to kill more than a few. In most games I kill none.

as for your comment of the AI not following 'rules' play a game with info-addicit mod. It has an international diplomacy tooltip that shows you the AI's opinion on each other, and they very clearly follow the same rules.

On topic. Where's your source for the 1 free war in Civ5? There's nothing in the .XML as of last August, and we havent had a major patch since.

Here's my study of the .XML
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=439101


This thread has made it amply clear that people continue to use Civ4 logic to judge Civ5 diplomacy. Which while not perfect and needs work in several areas, is being vastly undersold.



First of all, AI is a broad subject. combat/economic/diplomacy. Thread title is vague and people are generally complaining about everything. And this isn't new. I've been writing about AI since Civ3 days and ways to improve it.

combat AI for Civ has always been terrible, I think the difference is you have a group of people looking back at the old games with rose colored glasses thinking grass was greener. It wasn't. Civ4 was just a very refined game with the stacking system with a lot of limiting rules to hide the AI's weakspots. I suspect Civ6 , if 1upt is kept, will add new restrictions on how units can be used/moved to hide AI's weakness in this area.

Diplomacy is just different. I don't really blame people for not getting it, Firaxis has done a poor job of documenting it through interviews/previews and the in-game tooltips suck. They need to get infoaddict style features into the expansion. I recommend people play a game or 2 with infoaddict mod, the game keeps track of a lot of things, behind the scenes and the mod shows you that data. None of it will give you an advantage. Just more graphs and charts rather than the game's vague default tools.

The problem is that everything is hidden under the code there are a lot of modifiers that show up and the player doesn't know what triggers them its really anoying especialyl for beginner player's

A other problem is that these modifiers are extremely sensetive once you settled a few cities you get the settle penalty same with warmonger penalthy you sometimes get it even when you don't beeing a warmonger at all...

you sometimes get a modifier when it isn't true like you are building new cities to fast just because you conquered 3 new cities ...

A lot of these modifiers need to be reworked or at least don't make them that sensetive.
 
I'm not a fan of civ v diplomacy. I tend to find I must war with my neighbours, we can never have a lasting peace.

Even when they have only 2 cities left they will fight me.

If I sign a defensive pact, the ai doesn't understand - it acts as no deterent.

Firaxis know this is broken, they have already said they will be improving it.

They have known its been broken for a long time, hence the minor improvements over time. Remember the pacts of secrecy and cooperation.

If Gods and Kings only fixed diplomacy, I'd still be a happy bunny!

Well I am not the only one Allah be praised! :D
 
The problem is that everything is hidden under the code there are a lot of modifiers that show up and the player doesn't know what triggers them its really anoying especialyl for beginner player's

I agree and advocate them revealing more to players in a UI upgrade, but I think the bigger problem is the diplomatic lexicon players use.

We're used to the exploits and lexicon from Cvi3/4 diplomacy

oscillating wars ; attitude/reputation modifiers being used as a proxy for long-term memory ; AI not knowing or caring too much where you settle ; basic concepts of enmity related to shared borders (flat modifier ) ; no penalties for defensive wars that turns into world conquests; no penalties for wonder spamming; no penalties from the runner ups for trying to win

Civ5 turns all those in its head.
- AI's remember exactly what you've done for the entire game and remember past incidents.
-AI now wants certain tiles and they care about it if they don't get it.
-Some AI will care if you're trying to win in the same way as them.
-AI will care about wonder spamming
-AI's can no longer be fooled by defensive wars of world conquest. It's not the war dec that matters now, but how many cities you take and civs you've eliminated.

If you play with those in mind, it's not hard to have a reasonable diplomatic game.
 
Keep in mind even if it is bad, its a huge step in the right direction. The thing is all that stuff, as you regard it, should have been there in the beginning. If it was what ever would you have done?

I agree, all of the hundreds of features from the Civ4 patches as well as from Warlords and Beyond the Sword should have been in the game since the initial release of Civ4. :lol:
 
I agree and advocate them revealing more to players in a UI upgrade, but I think the bigger problem is the diplomatic lexicon players use.

We're used to the exploits and lexicon from Cvi3/4 diplomacy

oscillating wars ; attitude/reputation modifiers being used as a proxy for long-term memory ; AI not knowing or caring too much where you settle ; basic concepts of enmity related to shared borders (flat modifier ) ; no penalties for defensive wars that turns into world conquests; no penalties for wonder spamming; no penalties from the runner ups for trying to win

Civ5 turns all those in its head.
- AI's remember exactly what you've done for the entire game and remember past incidents.
-AI now wants certain tiles and they care about it if they don't get it.
-Some AI will care if you're trying to win in the same way as them.
-AI will care about wonder spamming
-AI's can no longer be fooled by defensive wars of world conquest. It's not the war dec that matters now, but how many cities you take and civs you've eliminated.

If you play with those in mind, it's not hard to have a reasonable diplomatic game.

Yeah but The problem with the : "-AI now wants certain tiles and they care about it if they don't get it. "

Is they see the entire continent as their land THis really needs to be fixed as I said some options are to sensetive. Or do you have a other opinion about it?

Same with warmonger hate its to sensetive
 
Yeah but The problem with the : "-AI now wants certain tiles and they care about it if they don't get it. "

Is they see the entire continent as their land THis really needs to be fixed as I said some options are to sensetive. Or do you have a other opinion about it?

Same with warmonger hate its to sensetive

Why is it a problem, You see the entire continent as your land.

You get nervous when an AI becomes "runaway" killing several others.

Shouldn't the AIs be concerned about a runaway human player?

Warmonger hate is an excellent addition, although it can use some enhancement... ie say +2 points per city taken -1 if you raze the city to the ground (no points if the city was founded by you)
 
This. Ironic when one considers the unpredictability of individual AIs.

So the old method of /random RNG rolls affected by broad 'aggressiveness' modifers subbing in for real in-games reasons to attack you wasn't predictable?

Ultimately no AI systems are perfect, but the one in Civ5 is, in its process, far superior to what we had.

It's also kind of strange that the new complaint now is that the AI is too predictable. Before it was "I can't understand what it's trying to do"

Yeah but The problem with the : "-AI now wants certain tiles and they care about it if they don't get it. "

Is they see the entire continent as their land THis really needs to be fixed as I said some options are to sensetive. Or do you have a other opinion about it?

Same with warmonger hate its to sensetive

That's a gross generalization. AI's have 2 tacts to hate you on your expansion.

-Those close to you who want your land will specifically say "covets your land" and this usually involves taking specific tiles the AI wants. Maybe a good city placement, or a natural wonder. I've had the AI go to war with me for a city by floodplains. The AI of course was Napoleon.

-Those far away who think you are getting too big for them to feel comfortable will say you are "recklessly expanding"

Those are not the same things.

It's rare that an AI will 'covet your land' if they're not near you. Open borders/scouting by the AI may cause them to want your land, but more often than not, an AI that is far-ish away coveting your lands is just being a dick and will most likely be a warmonger.
 
I completely agree with Dexters on this subject. The diplo in Civ V, IMO, is better than Civ IV's.

If you have trouble keeping friends in this game, then you are doing something wrong.
 
Yes, you are absolutely right, if you do a certain thing, the switch goes on and you become a dreaded warmonger. However the switch only turns on for the human player, not the AI. It can attack as many city states as it wants, and declare as many wars as it wants too, WITHOUT PENALTY. I have seen it in my games time and time again.

This too. I think some confuse the issue of individual AI diplomatic behavior with the issue of the overall game AI diplomacy. The Civ4 AI permitted the SP to play in a limited AI diplomacy fantasy world, while in the background it sought to prepare a killer AI to confront the human player. It would even try this with several AIs simultaneously in the hope that the human player couldn't knock them all down, and would fall back to the next best candidate for killer AI. Overall, a fairly intelligent approach to game diplomacy for a commercial production.

It's a myth that Civ4 AI did not play to win. It did, just not on the level of every individual AI, no matter how beaten down or pipsqueak. A beaten down AI that is allowed to live should know that it now doesn't have a chance in Hades to "play to win", and settle down to life as a vassal to somebody.

It is this DESIGN FLAW that has left such a bad taste for so many. OTOH, you know the average individual AI in good health is totally insincere when they call you "friend", because, well you know the story by now...they PTW. OTOH, some pipsqueak you just brought back to life in a "liberation" acts with a petulant arrogance as they make the human player the center of their hate world because - you know the drill, PTW. I just had this experience again when I brought Suliman back to life in a tiny tundra border town he had founded originally, because I didn't want to own it (and you know why, oh how the flaws of CivV pile upon each other), and the first thing the ingrate does is pop up to warn me against settling too many cities too close - cities founded 100's of turns ago who had not pushed a single culture hex! Hey Suli: I settled YOU in your present digs! Does the player experience have to be full of such mechanically gratuitous insults? Sorry, not well thought out at all.
 
This too. I think some confuse the issue of individual AI diplomatic behavior with the issue of the overall game AI diplomacy. The Civ4 AI permitted the SP to play in a limited AI diplomacy fantasy world, while in the background it sought to prepare a killer AI to confront the human player. It would even try this with several AIs simultaneously in the hope that the human player couldn't knock them all down, and would fall back to the next best candidate for killer AI. Overall, a fairly intelligent approach to game diplomacy for a commercial production.

It's a myth that Civ4 AI did not play to win. It did, just not on the level of every individual AI, no matter how beaten down or pipsqueak. A beaten down AI that is allowed to live should know that it now doesn't have a chance in Hades to "play to win", and settle down to life as a vassal to somebody.

It is this DESIGN FLAW that has left such a bad taste for so many. OTOH, you know the average individual AI in good health is totally insincere when they call you "friend", because, well you know the story by now...they PTW. OTOH, some pipsqueak you just brought back to life in a "liberation" acts with a petulant arrogance as they make the human player the center of their hate world because - you know the drill, PTW. I just had this experience again when I brought Suliman back to life in a tiny tundra border town he had founded originally, because I didn't want to own it (and you know why, oh how the flaws of CivV pile upon each other), and the first thing the ingrate does is pop up to warn me against settling too many cities too close - cities founded 100's of turns ago who had not pushed a single culture hex! Hey Suli: I settled YOU in your present digs! Does the player experience have to be full of such mechanically gratuitous insults? Sorry, not well thought out at all.

An AI that can no longer "play to win" can still not be helping the winner win. (which settling down as a vassal does).. Settling down as a Switzerland might be the better response.. focus on a 'losers club' where the beaten down help each other out, but not the big boys.

Now that doesn't mean they should declare wars that will hurt them much more than it hurts the winning player.

It also doesn't mean they should give up.. the tide may turn.

(now a "liberated AI" should behave drastically differently.. ie it really shouldn't play to win, unless it really gets ahead somehow)
 
BTW I know full well how to work CivV AI. ToFs were patched to allow temporary masking of warmonger hate. So if you judiciously set up your ToFs with the right AIs you can at least avoid a dogpile.

But there is really little else in diplomacy options for the human player. And, off the diplo topic but not unrelated, the modern era game is totally broken, stealth bombers, the UN, nukes, GS bulbs and all, as Wainy's America game shows. The One True Path To Victory is PorkTower + Rationalism RA + GS bulb to stealth. That means I just Tall Turtle until then, greatly simplifying the diplo game as I only need enough military to repel my inevitably hate filled neighbors (Hey guys, don't you see that I don't covet your lands, I've never started a war, no passive aggression - I don't want their cities! - etc. In fact, my future stealth bomber strike force (+ Paras, MA, RA, escort destroyers as necessary) covets the lands of that other guy on the other side of the world, but hey, he's OK with that, he doesn't hate me like You Whose Lands I Really Don't Covet does.)

Then when I get the strike force together it's like, "ARRROUGH (King Kong chest thumping)! I know all you have been secretly waiting to hate me! Well, bring it on, each and every one of you (and you know each and every one will)! ARRROUGH!"

Game over:lol::lol::lol::lol:
 
Well it would help if you didn't get the first thing wrong after saying you understand civ5 AI.
AI players do not offer DoF if they dislike you. Even friendly civs with concerns about your rep may still not offer DoF either.
 
BTW I know full well how to work CivV AI. ToFs were patched to allow temporary masking of warmonger hate. So if you judiciously set up your ToFs with the right AIs you can at least avoid a dogpile.

But there is really little else in diplomacy options for the human player. And, off the diplo topic but not unrelated, the modern era game is totally broken, stealth bombers, the UN, nukes, GS bulbs and all, as Wainy's America game shows. The One True Path To Victory is PorkTower + Rationalism RA + GS bulb to stealth. That means I just Tall Turtle until then, greatly simplifying the diplo game as I only need enough military to repel my inevitably hate filled neighbors (Hey guys, don't you see that I don't covet your lands, I've never started a war, no passive aggression - I don't want their cities! - etc. In fact, my future stealth bomber strike force (+ Paras, MA, RA, escort destroyers as necessary) covets the lands of that other guy on the other side of the world, but hey, he's OK with that, he doesn't hate me like You Whose Lands I Really Don't Covet does.)

Then when I get the strike force together it's like, "ARRROUGH (King Kong chest thumping)! I know all you have been secretly waiting to hate me! Well, bring it on, each and every one of you (and you know each and every one will)! ARRROUGH!"

Game over:lol::lol::lol::lol:

Fixing RAs and Great Scientist bulbs

and also

The combat AI in general + modern combat balance (Stealth and nukes should be good v. cities, bad v. units)

is definitely necessary.
 
I agree, all of the hundreds of features from the Civ4 patches as well as from Warlords and Beyond the Sword should have been in the game since the initial release of Civ4. :lol:

Indeed your right. Why did they unlearn what they learned from the last game? There was a thread saying that when they developed CiV, it stated that they left a lot out that was supposed to be added to the game, because of time constraints. This happens to games time and time again. Money is the deciding factor, not quality. All of this has been speculated over time on here. Its hard to say what is true or not. I remain skeptical about all these rumors. I do know there is an expansion coming out and some basic details. At least that I can depend on. Your point is certainly valid and well taken however. :)
 
It is this DESIGN FLAW that has left such a bad taste for so many. OTOH, you know the average individual AI in good health is totally insincere when they call you "friend", because, well you know the story by now...they PTW. OTOH, some pipsqueak you just brought back to life in a "liberation" acts with a petulant arrogance as they make the human player the center of their hate world because - you know the drill, PTW. I just had this experience again when I brought Suliman back to life in a tiny tundra border town he had founded originally, because I didn't want to own it (and you know why, oh how the flaws of CivV pile upon each other), and the first thing the ingrate does is pop up to warn me against settling too many cities too close - cities founded 100's of turns ago who had not pushed a single culture hex! Hey Suli: I settled YOU in your present digs! Does the player experience have to be full of such mechanically gratuitous insults? Sorry, not well thought out at all.

In my current game I have had two declarations of friendships which I agreed upon. One by the Ottomans, the other Spain. Four turns later the Ottomans starting dogpiling units in my territory, here take a look at this.http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=11289813&postcount=17

Then later Spain declares war as well. I am not even the aggressor the Ottomans are. The reason I am showing the thread about my game is to prove that the AI does the things people on here do not believe it does. The other fishy thing is that the Ottomans attacked blatantly. Then all of the sudden they want me to give them peace after they sack my city of Najran. They were saying if I keep fighting them the world will grow to hate me. What else is new? LOL! Its crazy they are the bad guys not me. As for Spain they had no backbone either and asked for peace 4 or 5 turns later and we went on trading as if nothing happened. If you talked to Spain now they would not remember us fighting at all. The current AI remembers everything my eye. I am glad they are fixing diplomacy. What a headache its been.
 
So the old method of /random RNG rolls affected by broad 'aggressiveness' modifers subbing in for real in-games reasons to attack you wasn't predictable?

Ultimately no AI systems are perfect, but the one in Civ5 is, in its process, far superior to what we had.

It's also kind of strange that the new complaint now is that the AI is too predictable. Before it was "I can't understand what it's trying to do"



That's a gross generalization. AI's have 2 tacts to hate you on your expansion.

-Those close to you who want your land will specifically say "covets your land" and this usually involves taking specific tiles the AI wants. Maybe a good city placement, or a natural wonder. I've had the AI go to war with me for a city by floodplains. The AI of course was Napoleon.

-Those far away who think you are getting too big for them to feel comfortable will say you are "recklessly expanding"

Those are not the same things.

It's rare that an AI will 'covet your land' if they're not near you. Open borders/scouting by the AI may cause them to want your land, but more often than not, an AI that is far-ish away coveting your lands is just being a dick and will most likely be a warmonger.

Where did you get the information that warmonger hate is related to capturing cities because a other poster on this forum posted a big post that warmonger rate is only related to 2 things:

declaring war and eliminating civs. did you experienced it in you're game differently?

this is the post :

Here's how the system works (based on XML variables and study of logs):

Civ B is evaluating Civ A's actions and assigns them a warmonger score. These scores are dependent on Civ B's personality as follows:

temp = 5 * (declarations against majors) + 10 * (majors conquered) + 5 * (declarations against minors) + 10 * (minors conquered)

WM score = (B's warmonger hate) * temp

Notice that the only actions considered are declarations of war and the final blow in conquering a civ. I am certain that these are the only two things considered, city conquering if it is not the last city does not make any difference at all. Also notice that Majors and Minors are considered exactly the same. These actions are only considered if B knows A and the third party at the time the event occurs I believe. Defensive pacts, coop declarations, who they're at war with - all of those things are irrelevant currently, your warmonger rating goes up regardless.

Leader warmonger hate variables range from 1 (Monte) to 8 (Ramk), with a mean and median of 5. Including all DLC, the current distribution is really just limited to 4 through 7:

1: 1 leader
2: 1
3: 1
4: 6
5: 5
6: 5
7: 4
8: 1

"Defenders of the Free World" (7 and up): Ramk, Gandhi, Elizabeth, Washington, Kamehameha
"Do what you like" (3 and under): Montezuma, Alexander, Napoleon

In any given game, these warmonger hate variables are adjusted up or down by up to 2 points (as are all AI personality variable). Then, the WM score above is compared against a series of thresholds to determine the effect on Civ B's opinion of Civ A.

Critical: WM score >= 200 --> -100
Severe: >= 150 --> -70
Major: >= 100 --> -40
Minor: >= 50 --> -15

For reference, a Declaration of Friendship is worth +35, so once you get to Major you will have a very hard time keeping your friends. The "warmongering menace to the world" label will appear for any of the above levels, even Minor. It is not necessarily shown by all leaders who think it, certainly not by deceivers and maybe not by friends.

So, on average, a typical leader with a WM hate of 5 will just reach Minor if you:

1) Declare war twice, or
2) Conquer a CS or civ

Double either the above actions or do both and you get to Major. You really have to play very very nice to avoid getting this label completely.


That's what I understand of the current implementation. I really really hope they address this as part of diplo tweaking in a patch soon ... as it is, it's a real pain and WAY to sensitive for even standard size maps.
 
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