AI initiates war when totally broke?

Hey all,

This is my first post at CivFanatics about my first game of BE. I came into the experience skeptical because of how poorly balanced I thought CivV was, and I'm incredibly frustrated to feel like I'm playing a game where the AI doesn't have to play by the same rules.

So, here's the situation:

I'm at turn 299 of a game. I've been at war with one of the AI opponents for about 15 turns. In the diplomacy menu, I can see that they have zero energy and are running a -21 deficit. Yet, they seem to be able to continue to pump out military units. And high-maintenance ones to boot.

I can't see them getting more energy from other AI players because every single AI is also running a deficit.

I don't understand the logic here. As soon as I run out of energy, my military units start going pop every turn. But the AI gets to carry on like energy doesn't constrain their actions?

OK, something else I just noticed. Turn 300: that AI player has almost 300 energy despite continuing to run an energy deficit. On turn 299, there was NO AI opponent with more than 30 energy.

Seriously, what is going on with this game?

Perhaps agents gathering energy through espionage missions?

The "Syphon Energy" espionage mission pays no attention to how much energy the victim has stockpiled or is producing. It materialises a lump sum out of thin air for the agent's civ, with the amounts getting ever larger the higher the turn number is.

So it's entirely possible by the late game for all civs (including your own) to be running a permenant defecit, but all maintain a positive stockpile by stealing non-existant money from each other.

186F said:

OK, something else I just noticed. Turn 300: that AI player has almost 300 energy despite continuing to run an energy deficit. On turn 299, there was NO AI opponent with more than 30 energy.

Seriously, what is going on with this game?

Click to expand...

I have noticed that the AI's will sometimes hoard energy (1,000+). If so, your opponent may be spending energy reserves to finance the war. Go back in autosaves and see where his energy supply was at the beginning of your war.

A quick followup:

I managed to repel the invasion after losing one city -- the AI decided to raze it. After about 20-30 turns without much in the way of hostilities (every 5 turns or so, one of their units would wander near my frontline defense and get ripped apart), they proposed a peace treaty. Soon after the 10 turn timer, and a quick resource trade, they were Friendly. Magic!

About 100 turns later, and at a point where I was nearing victory, I was invaded by a different AI that had one city on my continent despite being based on the other one. And it caught me at a time when I basically had stripped my military pretty thin, so they ran over one of my cities on the second turn of the war. As frustrating as that is, at least I can understand it -- I was coming up on a Contact Victory, and I was no military threat. Nevertheless, they declared war even though I had 4 favors stored up and a long history of trading. It wasn't until one of my cities had expanded to the tiles adjacent to their tiles that war came (and it literally happened the turn immediately following that).

Is the mere fact of being within range of an AI enough to provoke them into immediate war?

Additionally, I leveraged my newfound friendliness with the AI in the previous situation, which also bordered the second AI opponent and, at the time, was closer to victory than I was by a couple of turns, to get them to declare war. The first turn of their participation, they move literally every military unit backwards toward their territory. A couple of their high-powered units were literally right next to the second AIs units.

I guess, overall, I'm having trouble conceptualizing a strategy that matters beyond Domination. If war is so easily provoked, why not just focus on decimating your AI opponents? Why not just research unit-focused techs and live in a constant state of war? I know it's possible to craft a strategy that achieves one of the other victories, but why would you? 4x games are all about efficient management of your empire -- Domination, under this dynamic, seems like the most efficient path to victory.

I thought the point to deep strategy games is that you could manipulate other players, whether AI or human, into allowing you to pursue the victory you want? What role does diplomacy play in that if hundreds of turns of trading and favor-building are immediately cast aside the minute you share a single tile of border?

Anyways, those are my challenges with this game so far.

186F said:

Is the mere fact of being within range of an AI enough to provoke them into immediate war?

Click to expand...

No, but being within range AND having basically no military provokes war if you don't keep the rest of the world busy fighting each other and declaring war on each other. Just using diplomacy for mutually beneficial things will not keep the AI at bay.

186F said:

I guess, overall, I'm having trouble conceptualizing a strategy that matters beyond Domination. If war is so easily provoked, why not just focus on decimating your AI opponents? Why not just research unit-focused techs and live in a constant state of war? I know it's possible to craft a strategy that achieves one of the other victories, but why would you? 4x games are all about efficient management of your empire -- Domination, under this dynamic, seems like the most efficient path to victory.

Click to expand...

Efficient players can win the game around turn 200 on Apollo, I don't see how a domination strategy would keep up with that on a standard sized non-island-map. But even if that's possible, then that game will take MUCH longer in real time, because you have to move a ton of units every turn.

HandyVac said:

The "Syphon Energy" espionage mission pays no attention to how much energy the victim has stockpiled or is producing. It materialises a lump sum out of thin air for the agent's civ, with the amounts getting ever larger the higher the turn number is.

So it's entirely possible by the late game for all civs (including your own) to be running a permenant defecit, but all maintain a positive stockpile by stealing non-existant money from each other.

Click to expand...

This is pretty much my strategy. Finance the everything with spies and the interest bonus. I run a semi-permanent deficit (down to about -50) and still finish games with thousands in the bank and a huge military. The deficit is a lie!

I have a rule of thumb I use for how deep to run that deficit: If (bank/deficit) > number_of_turns_to_siphon_energy, then I'm okay. The more sophisticated version is when I know that I'll be getting roughly a certain amount every 9 turns. Then, I look to see if I can last until the spies return with energy AND through the next cycle of energy siphoning (is deficit * num_turns < spy_income?). If I can do that, I'm almost certainly running a positive budget overall, despite the deficit number.

I guess, overall, I'm having trouble conceptualizing a strategy that matters beyond Domination. If war is so easily provoked, why not just focus on decimating your AI opponents? Why not just research unit-focused techs and live in a constant state of war? I know it's possible to craft a strategy that achieves one of the other victories, but why would you? 4x games are all about efficient management of your empire -- Domination, under this dynamic, seems like the most efficient path to victory.

Click to expand...

This is true, and Civilization is very much a war game. That can even be said to be doubly true of BE where the relevance of diplomatic relations is completely absent - there's no reason not to kill your opponents, if you can. That is also the answer to your question, though: If you can. The issue is the AI doesn't manage its units well enough to make conquest not viable, especially on lower difficulties. If you simply want to win as efficiently and as easily as possible, Domination will normally be the optimal victory condition. Again, though, realize that this is due to deficiencies with the AI rather than the game rules themselves.

HandyVac said:

The "Syphon Energy" espionage mission pays no attention to how much energy the victim has stockpiled or is producing. It materialises a lump sum out of thin air for the agent's civ, with the amounts getting ever larger the higher the turn number is.

So it's entirely possible by the late game for all civs (including your own) to be running a permenant defecit, but all maintain a positive stockpile by stealing non-existant money from each other.

Click to expand...

This is how the Federal Reserve works, except of course with dollars.

186F said:

Is the mere fact of being within range of an AI enough to provoke them into immediate war?

Click to expand...

I've found that whenever I'm close to meeting any victory condition all of the AI suddenly become extremely hostile. That in combination with the tile buying probably provoked them into starting the war.

186F said:

...

I guess, overall, I'm having trouble conceptualizing a strategy that matters beyond Domination. If war is so easily provoked, why not just focus on decimating your AI opponents? Why not just research unit-focused techs and live in a constant state of war? I know it's possible to craft a strategy that achieves one of the other victories, but why would you? 4x games are all about efficient management of your empire -- Domination, under this dynamic, seems like the most efficient path to victory.

I thought the point to deep strategy games is that you could manipulate other players, whether AI or human, into allowing you to pursue the victory you want? What role does diplomacy play in that if hundreds of turns of trading and favor-building are immediately cast aside the minute you share a single tile of border?

Anyways, those are my challenges with this game so far.

Click to expand...

I've found that, although you can sometimes win quickly through peaceful strategies, domination is really the way to win consistently on all difficulty levels. CivBE right now just provides way too many benefits and far two few penalties that might otherwise stay the hand of a belligerent player in previous CIV games. Once you figure out combat in CivBE, it's actually pretty easy to defeat armies twice the size of yours with a tech advantage to boot.

CivScientist said:

it's actually pretty easy to defeat armies twice the size of yours with a tech advantage to boot.

Click to expand...

This is nothing new in Civilisation games. Tech advantage has always, and will probably always, rule supreme. Sometimes Virtues / Ideologies / etc provide a bit of an edge in a specific situation (same for Promotions), but the tech advantage is generally it.