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
The problem is it DOES assess that "data".. it just can't assess it for a human player, who can actually use the units effectively.
(It seems reasonably successful at dealing with other AIs)

The terrible inability of the tactical combat AI makes the strategic AI overestimate its military strength compared to a human.

Saying that it actually does assess that information, makes it even worse off than I thought. Thats means its twice as stupid, and playing to lose, not to win. The AI is also not all that effective against itself. I have seen it try and try again to take a city from itself, and not even come close. If it had only attacked with all available units surrounding that city, it would have taken it. Instead it attacks piecemeal, a unit here, a unit there, perhaps one ranged unit will fire when it has five available. The whole thing is ridiculous. I have never seen such a bad AI as this one.

Anyway, I am sure we will be hearing from Dennis Shirk about new AI changes. there has been a million questions posted to him about that. Hopefully since he knows about historical tactical boardgames, maybe he can help improve the AI. IDK we'll see.

Also, diplomacy will certainly be different than it is now with the changes coming in G&K. The AI may not be smarter when it fights, but perhaps it will better organize its forces, making it harder to take advantage of. Hopefully it chooses its battles more carefully with the SP and itself. Attacking from a position of strength, not weakness. Fighting with much mor resolve, in order to accomplish its objectives, and with the ability to hold on to those objectives.
 
You probably got lucky and scraped by the early game without being picked on. I've ended many games, even on emperor, just because I couldn't catch a break diplomatically. Most posters naturlaly would prefer not talking about that or how many false starts they've had before finding that winning game. Lo..

Sure you aren't making mistakes? There are couple of simple rules:

Don't denounce anyone. Probably never worth the cost
Don't join any war when requested
Don't attack a CS that is protected by someone or conquer any CS
Don't declare a war to a Civ you have a DoF with

Early DoF isn't 'easy' as you noted, it's a sign that you fell in the right clique likely due to your position on the map, immortal difficulty ensuring you're bottom of the pact in the early game maning none of the peaceful AI civs saw you as much of a thread, and random luck in who you drew near you. Nothing to do with your skill at all. And they protected you.

Cliques are a CIV thing. On CiV you can have DoFs with two civs that are in war with each other without any problems. AI behaviour just doesn't make sense. If you act like it would, you probably just make things to go worse.
 
Sure you aren't making mistakes? There are couple of simple rules:

Don't denounce anyone. Probably never worth the cost


1) Why not? Factions form in the game. Sure there are no buckets like a religion to put them in, but depending on Civ mix, you either have the builders DoF and scheming against the warmonger or you have two factions forming. The early and early mid game is quite dynamic.

Don't join any war when requested

2) I join when it suits me, decline when it doesn't. You only get digned diplomatically if you agreed to join a co-op war in 10 turns and when the time came change you mind.

Don't attack a CS that is protected by someone or conquer any CS
Killing CS, especially with no provocation carries a lot of negative penalties and it is by design. That said, I have conquered CS before when it was in my way and allied to an annoying warmonger who kept DoW on me. I didn't have to DoW since it was already at war with me. So I avoided some of the penalties there.

But I'm not getting why you need to conquer CS. You can reduce their number in settings if you feel they get in the way. Personally, I play with max (20) on my large pangea games and I leave them alone usually. When gold starts rolling in, I start buying up the ones close to me and co-opt them into my empire. That's kind of the point of city-states. The game mechanics is such that owning a City-state as your own city is often less profitable than getting the city-state bonus.

I personally quite like the very though decision needed whether a CS should be killed or not. That creates real trade offs, as opposed to bean counting marginal benefits. I tend to see them as secondary actors and pawns. Which was their intent.

Don't declare a war to a Civ you have a DoF with

And why in the world would you do that. After the middle to late classical, with a few wars declared and DoF going around, it's fairly easy to spot where the cliques are forming and who the warmongers are, *assuming you've met most civs* (I know some maps are just damn hard to meet most civs this year just because of barbs and mountains)

Fake friends usually can't wait to DoW or backstab you right away; those further away from you usually have less of an incentive to backstab that early and you can milk their fake friendship well into industrial.


Cliques are a CIV thing. On CiV you can have DoFs with two civs that are in war with each other without any problems. AI behaviour just doesn't make sense. If you act like it would, you probably just make things to go worse.

They're in Civ5 as well. I guess with religion and the new order/autocracy/freedom biases coming in the XP, there will be formal buckets to put them in, in the near future.

The best way to view cliques in Civ5 is that they don't last forever and are dynamic, though I've kept friends for entire games after the April 2011 patch. There's inflection points throughout the game when interests diverge and you find your old friend legitimately no longer wants to be your friend because you guys are now competing over land, city states or something you did annoyed them and vice versa. That's of course not the same as fake friends.

Your early-game alliances usually start to wear thin by the renaissance and if you didn't piss off the entire planet by playing like a warmongering dork, you can usually find someone else to DoF with, and they will bring their friends along to fight your new enemy /old friend. There's usually a third set of alliances by industrial but that's situational.

The late game is usually just playing out the trajectory of your industrial era alliances. By this point AI victory goals are clear. The builders would have completed apollo's and warmongers are trying to conquer their side of the map. Since the human player is still in, the assumption is, you control your side of the map and AI domination victory is unlikely, but that then sets you up for a massive world war in some games.
 
The way I see it, Civ4 BtS left out more things that were critical - like hexes instead of tiles, 1upt instead of combat stacks, social policies instead of civics, better leader traits instead of the generic ones and the elimination of religion, espionage and corporations. :D

What the hell are you talking about? :crazyeye::crazyeye:
 
I voted yes. That doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy it. But not fixing diplomacy when it's the biggest flaw of the game, would indeed mean they failed at chosing the expansion features.
 
Saying that it actually does assess that information, makes it even worse off than I thought. Thats means its twice as stupid, and playing to lose, not to win. The AI is also not all that effective against itself. I have seen it try and try again to take a city from itself, and not even come close. If it had only attacked with all available units surrounding that city, it would have taken it. Instead it attacks piecemeal, a unit here, a unit there, perhaps one ranged unit will fire when it has five available. The whole thing is ridiculous. I have never seen such a bad AI as this one.

Anyway, I am sure we will be hearing from Dennis Shirk about new AI changes. there has been a million questions posted to him about that. Hopefully since he knows about historical tactical boardgames, maybe he can help improve the AI. IDK we'll see.

Also, diplomacy will certainly be different than it is now with the changes coming in G&K. The AI may not be smarter when it fights, but perhaps it will better organize its forces, making it harder to take advantage of. Hopefully it chooses its battles more carefully with the SP and itself. Attacking from a position of strength, not weakness. Fighting with much mor resolve, in order to accomplish its objectives, and with the ability to hold on to those objectives.

If the AI isn't suppose to attack when his military strength is twice yours and your empire is stretched thin, then when is he suppose to attack? Attacking IS the right choice in this situation. Yes he failed because you are "smarter" with your units, but it was still the right choice.

The wrong choice would be to allow you to continue your reckless expansion. Once your cities get up and running, you can focus on your military. Why would he want to let you do this?
 
1) Why not? Factions form in the game. Sure there are no buckets like a religion to put them in, but depending on Civ mix, you either have the builders DoF and scheming against the warmonger or you have two factions forming. The early and early mid game is quite dynamic.

Because it potentially has a massive cost with only very uncertain and mild positive effect. If the civ you denounce turns to hostile, which usually is quite permanent state, you lose thousands of gold and science beakers from trading and RAs. The only thing you get back is a mild positive modifier to denounced civs enemies, which in practice is probably almost meaningless. Negative modifiers tend to last longer than positive ones, and you can get civs friendly or to even declare friendship without denouncing their enemies.

2) I join when it suits me, decline when it doesn't. You only get digned diplomatically if you agreed to join a co-op war in 10 turns and when the time came change you mind.

Declaring war probably has a even bigger negative modifier to the target than denouncing.

Killing CS, especially with no provocation carries a lot of negative penalties and it is by design. That said, I have conquered CS before when it was in my way and allied to an annoying warmonger who kept DoW on me. I didn't have to DoW since it was already at war with me. So I avoided some of the penalties there.

Killing CSs seem to have some kind of global negative modifier. That is conquering a CS annoys every neutral Civ. If this is true, it's a very bad thing to do.

And why in the world would you do that.

Well, I've done it for a mistake. :lol: Destroys your diplo for the rest of the game.

They're in Civ5 as well. I guess with religion and the new order/autocracy/freedom biases coming in the XP, there will be formal buckets to put them in, in the near future.

The best way to view cliques in Civ5 is that they don't last forever and are dynamic, though I've kept friends for entire games after the April 2011 patch. There's inflection points throughout the game when interests diverge and you find your old friend legitimately no longer wants to be your friend because you guys are now competing over land, city states or something you did annoyed them and vice versa. That's of course not the same as fake friends.

"Dynamic cliques" are more or less the same as no cliques. Negative modifies can be quite permanent (so there are long lasting "cliques" where everyone hates the human player), but positives are not. That's the reason why you shouldn't try to join any dynamic clique: it's likely you will make permanent enemies, but it's unlikely you will make long lasting friend.

Another thing to notice is that there probably is an anti-Human bias in diplomacy. It seems that for AI civs negative modifiers vanish much quicker. At half game, just about every AI probably has denounced and/or declared war to every other AI, captured a city state etc. Still they are making research agreements with each other. If human tries to join to "dynamic diplo" of the AIs, he soon ends on situation, where he can't make any RAs and barely gets half the money from trades.

Trading is easy on CIV5 as there seem to be only very mild "you traded with our enemy" -penalty. On CIV4 that penalty was substantial and forced you to think who you wanted to trade with. Generally diplo on CIV5 is much easier to handle than it was on CIV4. Now actions either have drastic negative consequences without much positive (denouncing, declaring wars, capturing CSs) or have virtually no effects on diplo (trading, choosing SPs). If you struggle with diplo on CIV5, you are probably doing something wrong.
 
Your argument for not denouncing is that you lose out on opportunities for RA and trading. I agree, RA are too strong and you can rape a Civs coffers via trading if you so feel like it. These 2 things should be adjusted so that there is more incentive for denouncing.

I know alot of people don't like to hear this, but if you make artificial rules for yourself, like "I won't sign RA with enemies", you might have more fun with this game. No, you shouldn't be forced into doing so, but it is what it is.

And negative modifiers can disappear over time just like positive ones. The problem is that the human is usually so high in score in the late game, dominating land%, tech%, wonders, CS alliances that there really is no reason for any Civs to stop hating you. They think they want to win and liking you, the dominant leader, will not help their cause.
 
Because it potentially has a massive cost with only very uncertain and mild positive effect. If the civ you denounce turns to hostile, which usually is quite permanent state, you lose thousands of gold and science beakers from trading and RAs. The only thing you get back is a mild positive modifier to denounced civs enemies, which in practice is probably almost meaningless. Negative modifiers tend to last longer than positive ones, and you can get civs friendly or to even declare friendship without denouncing their enemies.

Or alternatively, you'll get into an RA and they DoW on you and you lose your gil and beakers. You seem to have a pretty black and white view of every issue we've discussed. But diplomacy delves into shades of grey.

If you're idea of denouncing is randomly popping up and denouncing real friends because you plan on attacking them soon and want cover for your warmongering, then that's a problem with your playstyle.

Denouncements act as signals to the world community on 1) how trustworthy one of you are 2) who you dislike and alternatively who you could possibly work with against a common enemy 3) how trust worthy you are.

If you get backstabbed and don't denounce, which I believe is the issue that started the discussion on denouncements, then no one would know and you wouldn't get brownie points.

Declaring war probably has a even bigger negative modifier to the target than denouncing.

Again, it's not black and white either/or. Depends on the situation. In the context of your comment, you're talking about joining in co-op wars, and I'm saying you don't get digned by your friends if you don't join.

Now, in situations where one friend is asking you to declare on another, especially with DoF active, I naturally decline. But I get plenty of co-op war requests on real pariah states.


Killing CSs seem to have some kind of global negative modifier. That is conquering a CS annoys every neutral Civ. If this is true, it's a very bad thing to do.

For the third time, killing a CS = killing off a Civ (ie: wiping out a civ from the game, every last city) So yes, it has a negative modifier.

You can get away with killing 1 CS just as you can get away with killing 1 civ in most games and play like as if nothing happened, even if there is a penalty against you in the background. Naturally you need to be able to defend yourself regardless of what you do, or you'd get picked on sooner or later even if you don't kill anyone.


Well, I've done it for a mistake. :lol: Destroys your diplo for the rest of the game.

That's a backstab and the AI will denounce you for backstabbing them ,which turns the world against you as untrustworhy. This Goes back to my earlier point about denouncements as useful signals in the game.

Only the victim of the backstab gets the 'you've been backstabbed' diplomacy message so if you don't denounce, the one doing the backstabbing essentially got away with it.

And yes, in some situations you CHOOSE not to do it for other reasons, like maybe you want to get more gold from them. That's what diplomacy is, a set of choices. Not black and white absolutes that you keep going back on. Never denouncing and giving trade as a flimsy excuse is not an optimal strategy. Most of the time, the AI doing the backstabbing aren't a good trading partners anyways.


"Dynamic cliques" are more or less the same as no cliques. Negative modifies can be quite permanent (so there are long lasting "cliques" where everyone hates the human player), but positives are not. That's the reason why you shouldn't try to join any dynamic clique: it's likely you will make permanent enemies, but it's unlikely you will make long lasting friend.

A clique is a clique. I used the word dynamic to describe the changing interests and groups as the game progresses. Grouping come and go in this game. The clique itself is what it is, civs with a close relationship you can count on as friends. Continuing to insist it doesn't exist does underline perhaps why you're having so many problems with the AI?


Another thing to notice is that there probably is an anti-Human bias in diplomacy. It seems that for AI civs negative modifiers vanish much quicker. At half game, just about every AI probably has denounced and/or declared war to every other AI, captured a city state etc. Still they are making research agreements with each other. If human tries to join to "dynamic diplo" of the AIs, he soon ends on situation, where he can't make any RAs and barely gets half the money from trades.

Play with infoaddict. There's a global relations web showing what the AI think of other AI civs. The assertion of an anti-human diplomacy bias doesn't hold water in this regard. But then again, every Civ game has had people say there is a bias against human players, until of course the bias is clearly for human players, at which point the human player says the game is 'fair'. Goes to show our own biases in subjective readings of the AI and RNG results.


Trading is easy on CIV5 as there seem to be only very mild "you traded with our enemy" -penalty. On CIV4 that penalty was substantial and forced you to think who you wanted to trade with. Generally diplo on CIV5 is much easier to handle than it was on CIV4. Now actions either have drastic negative consequences without much positive (denouncing, declaring wars, capturing CSs) or have virtually no effects on diplo (trading, choosing SPs). If you struggle with diplo on CIV5, you are probably doing something wrong.

Trading penalties is there, but what drives diplomacy are the dof and denouncements.
 
If the AI isn't suppose to attack when his military strength is twice yours and your empire is stretched thin, then when is he suppose to attack? Attacking IS the right choice in this situation. Yes he failed because you are "smarter" with your units, but it was still the right choice.

The wrong choice would be to allow you to continue your reckless expansion. Once your cities get up and running, you can focus on your military. Why would he want to let you do this?

Wow, you really like this guy. Were you mates way back or something? LOL! Well he is finished, but he has one city left. And as far as my reckless expansion goes, thats the name of the game in domination. Its conquer or be conquered? Right?

Whatever his choice was really is mute. He had horses which I needed to build my camel archers. So the point is that he had a real big red target on his turbaned wazoo anyway. He simply had to go and there was nothing we could do about it.

Although, he does have one city, which is a size 16 and a port, named Erdine. If I take it and destroy him, which is what I would do in Empire Total War, I get a huge diplomatic penalty. Which is stupid, because any fool knows that you do not leave a potential enemy in your rear. You should be able to conquer your enemies and see them driven before you. Thats how I see it. And the developers of total war see it that way. Hopefully with G&K, CiV changes to a more realistic way of conquering. Conquereors do not care about leaving a city to the enemy. Ever here of Joshua and the story of Jericho. He took the place, burned it to the ground, while killing every single living thing. So he could replace the populace with his own people. Do you think a diplomatic penalty even came into effect? Laughable, can you imagine telling Joshua he now has a diplo penalty for finishing off a civ? He'd probably say, "Well you haven't seen nothing yet!" :lol:

Down with the diplo penalty for finishing a civ! This is the first civ game in which I dare not kill off an enemy. In domination the rules for this should be changed. Besides the AI has no compuction about finishing off the SP or the AI civs, each other. They get no diplo penalty. The whole thing makes no sense whatsoever.

BTW my empire was not stretched thin. I had more military potential than he did, because I could build better units faster than he. I was not weak, at that point I simply did not need a large standing army. However the thing I did was engineer my empire for that inevitability. And that is why that AI was a fool to attack me. I simply was a wolf in sheeps clothing. The AI needs to learn to pick out the wolves among the sheep or this game will continue to stink to high heaven. :rolleyes:
 
Wow, you really like this guy. Were you mates way back or something? LOL! Well he is finished, but he has one city left. And as far as my reckless expansion goes, thats the name of the game in domination. Its conquer or be conquered? Right?

Whatever his choice was really is mute. He had horses which I needed to build my camel archers. So the point is that he had a real big red target on his turbaned wazoo anyway. He simply had to go and there was nothing we could do about it.

Although, he does have one city, which is a size 16 and a port, named Erdine. If I take it and destroy him, which is what I would do in Empire Total War, I get a huge diplomatic penalty. Which is stupid, because any fool knows that you do not leave a potential enemy in your rear. You should be able to conquer your enemies and see them driven before you. Thats how I see it. And the developers of total war see it that way. Hopefully with G&K, CiV changes to a more realistic way of conquering. Conquereors do not care about leaving a city to the enemy. Ever here of Joshua and the story of Jericho. He took the place, burned it to the ground, while killing every single living thing. So he could replace the populace with his own people. Do you think a diplomatic penalty even came into effect? Laughable, can you imagine telling Joshua he now has a diplo penalty for finishing off a civ? He'd probably say, "Well you haven't seen nothing yet!" :lol:

Down with the diplo penalty for finishing a civ! This is the first civ game in which I dare not kill off an enemy. In domination the rules for this should be changed. Besides the AI has no compuction about finishing off the SP or the AI civs, each other. They get no diplo penalty. The whole thing makes no sense whatsoever.

BTW my empire was not stretched thin. I had more military potential than he did, because I could build better units faster than he. I was not weak, at that point I simply did not need a large standing army. However the thing I did was engineer my empire for that inevitability. And that is why that AI was a fool to attack me. I simply was a wolf in sheeps clothing. The AI needs to learn to pick out the wolves among the sheep or this game will continue to stink to high heaven. :rolleyes:

I agree the "warmonger" should not be based on eliminating a civ... it should be based on ANY cities obtained in war (besides your own)
so something like:

DoW: 10 points

Cities taken from the enemy
your original city: 0 points
liberate the city: 0 points
puppet/annex the city: 2 points
destroy the city through razing: 1 point (instead of the 2 if you hold onto it)
Capital: 5 points


I don't think the AI gets no penalties for finishing off an enemy.
 
I hate the way people throw around the word fail these days.

Instead of having some sort of objective definition like, I don't know, being a best seller or one of the most played games on steam, a fail has simply meant "i have some things to complain about."
 
I agree the "warmonger" should not be based on eliminating a civ... it should be based on ANY cities obtained in war (besides your own)
so something like:

DoW: 10 points

Cities taken from the enemy
your original city: 0 points
liberate the city: 0 points
puppet/annex the city: 2 points
destroy the city through razing: 1 point (instead of the 2 if you hold onto it)
Capital: 5 points


I don't think the AI gets no penalties for finishing off an enemy.

I like this in concept but keep in mind you only get -35 for DOF, and there's the risk of double dipping on the penalties. ie: They hate you for conquering a city then also hate you because they covet your new lands. I'm also pretty sure there are other things going on in the background, like your score growth that will alarm the AI.

I am more or less satsified with the less direct link between AI attitudes of your conquests from a single long war and warmongering. The game also more or less fairly measures warmongering as repeated acts of agression, not a singular act of agression or perhaps even defensive wars that turn into long conquests.

You also want the AI to be concerned about capital capture as it is one of the VC requirements.

to avoid confusion positive numbers are bad/negative numbers are good.

What I would suggest are two things

Decay to bad modifiers
- Set decay values for diplomatic faux pas that are mild, but noticable over a long game. ie: no decay first 30 turns, decay of 1 every 5 turns in the next 60 turns, decalu of 1 every 2 turns in the following 60. Decay however cannot bring down diplo penalty to 0 however and must be 1 (or 2 for more serious offenses). So penalty remains, but it's mild. Repeat offenses can only reduce to minimal value of twice the previous value 2 (or 4) and so on.

This should help alleviate early game mistakes, but not let people totally off the hook. And most of their mid-game shenanigans will still be inplay later in the game.

Alow new ways to add modifiers that cover up these penalties.

"We're at peace" modifier
A modifer for extended period of peace to max -10 points (-1 earned on the first 30 turns, and 1 point earned every 10 turns thereafter. Going to war sets this value to +5

"We have open borders" modifier
-1 base bonus to max -5 ; 1 point is earned every 30 turns.

"We have traded recently" modifier
This wording is in-game but describes a good deal given to the AI. We should reappropriate it to mean what it should mena. Active engagement.

Max -5 , -1 is available every 10 turns. So you can't just spam treade and get the max bonus. will take minimum 50 turns of trading to earn full points.

"You have been generous" modifier
Max -50; currently this value is set to -30. And is under the "we have traded recently" label, which is somewhat confusing

"We are your vassal" modifier
Flat -50 for 30 turns then decaying over-time. .XML already have capitulation wording, and essentially the game treats the 30 turn deal you have with the AI as their capitulation period. When they capitulate the AI will go to the table with their cities and all /most of their gold plus GPT.

This modifier simply formalizes it a bit more and makes them less angry at you.
 
Decay to bad modifiers
- Set decay values for diplomatic faux pas that are mild, but noticable over a long game. ie: no decay first 30 turns, decay of 1 every 5 turns in the next 60 turns, decalu of 1 every 2 turns in the following 60. Decay however cannot bring down diplo penalty to 0 however and must be 1 (or 2 for more serious offenses). So penalty remains, but it's mild. Repeat offenses can only reduce to minimal value of twice the previous value 2 (or 4) and so on.

I'm very much for decays
But decays should be more random, not this straightforward IMO
I liked the way they set it up in Civ IV
 
I'm open to rng affecting value of decay but random black box stuff would just generate the same complaints about the current diplo and I'm not in favour of showing the actual modifiers as they have in civ4; the systems aren't the same anyways. Civ4 relies almost entirely on those values to run diplo. A lot more is going on in civ5

What you currently see is just a summary .
 
I'm open to rng affecting value of decay but random black box stuff would just generate the same complaints about the current diplo and I'm not in favour of showing the actual modifiers as they have in civ4; the systems aren't the same anyways. Civ4 relies almost entirely on those values to run diplo. A lot more is going on in civ5

What you currently see is just a summary .

Of course, and I generally agree
Btw, I didn't mean exactly the way it was in Civ IV, just that some kind of randomness in the system would be neat
 
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