I am really bummed about the lack of relationship modifiers information

The idea is to make the computer opponents seem as much as possible like human players. Displayed modifiers don't make any sense in that light. If you're playing against me, you've got no way of knowing how I'm going to react to your diplomatic overtures, after all.

When you bribe citystates, it DOES tell you exactly how much influence you'll gain.

King Jason said:

The only situation where an A.I. shouldn't attack you or attempt to beat you is if you'll obviouslly kick their ass.

...

I'm going to go out on a limb and say the real reason we don't have the A.I. modifiers on display is because the A.I. aren't governed by them. Thus, the information is moot.

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In other words, diplomacy with AI civs will be meaningless. If the AI is "not governed" by previous deals and interactions, then it does not matter what actions you take, that AI will always do exactly what it was going to do anyway. Both good and bad. Therefore you should never make any deal or concession to an AI -- ever -- because it can not help you in any way. Zero thought required, zero choices and trade offs, zero strategy.

Yeah, that sounds like a wonderful idea.

The idea is to make the computer opponents seem as much as possible like human players.

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That's the problem. This is a terrible idea.

Maybe they can use bluffs to test you?
They can say they have Panzers when the are five turns away, and you can try to counter bluff (That's Not True!) slicker up to them (Nice!) Nuetral (Ok.) Defensive (Watch where your pointing.)
Then they will analyze: was your response a bluff, the truth? Are you a real friend?

They can also tell the truth and see your reaction.

They should also test you as a friend by asking for free stuff before sharing a plan for conquest for example. (Actual plan for initial division of tiles, ect.) Or to gang up on city states of another nation to peel them away from the third nation.

Ahriman said:

That's the problem. This is a terrible idea.

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It would be if they were trying to make the AIs "beat the player" and nothing else, but that's not what they're doing. They're trying to make the AI less predictable, less like a math equation, and more "realistic" in their actions. The idea is it doesn't matter how much you've buttered up a civ if they see you as being too good of a treat to pass up (obviously depending on AI, I doubt Ghandi will be doing this much). And also, having a game where the AIs can win, instead of Civ 4, where the AI can make the player lose.

It's far more like how real nations act: Long term relationships do make people more friendly, but hostile actions (like mobilizing troops on their border, or blocking their expansion), will not be ignored. Leaders will vary in how they behave like Civ 4, but unlike civ 4 you cannot absolutely predict their actions since the modifier system is gone, and the AIs have shifts in their flavors between games. If you refuse to help a civ when it is being attacked, then they aren't going to treat you as a friend any more (Although I expect that you could repair relations given time).

Is it more difficult? Yes. Will the AI gang up on humans? No.
Will the AI act according to the reality of the situation combined with their personality? That's the idea at least.

Ahriman said:

I want to play a game which makes me feel like I'm playing a version of history, not to be constantly reminded that its a game where the AI acts like a deathmatch bot.

And: the whole idea of something being a "gamble".... if you want something to be random, fine, then show me the probabilities. I can't "gamble" in a rational fashion if I don't know anything about the odds.

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Checking the "does he like me" box makes you feel like you're playing a version of history?

I also don't think there are probabilities for randomness, or it wouldn't be... random. That aside, you can gamble in a rational manner (never forgetting that it's still a gamble) by looking at the right odds. These are no longer the overly determined modifiers. They seem to be opportunity factored with (according to the designers) a shifting but consistent strategy aimed at winning.

bjbrains said:

It would be if they were trying to make the AIs "beat the player" and nothing else, but that's not what they're doing. They're trying to make the AI less predictable, less like a math equation, and more "realistic" in their actions. The idea is it doesn't matter how much you've buttered up a civ if they see you as being too good of a treat to pass up (obviously depending on AI, I doubt Ghandi will be doing this much). And also, having a game where the AIs can win, instead of Civ 4, where the AI can make the player lose.

It's far more like how real nations act: Long term relationships do make people more friendly, but hostile actions (like mobilizing troops on their border, or blocking their expansion), will not be ignored. Leaders will vary in how they behave like Civ 4, but unlike civ 4 you cannot absolutely predict their actions since the modifier system is gone, and the AIs have shifts in their flavors between games. If you refuse to help a civ when it is being attacked, then they aren't going to treat you as a friend any more (Although I expect that you could repair relations given time).

Is it more difficult? Yes. Will the AI gang up on humans? No.
Will the AI act according to the reality of the situation combined with their personality? That's the idea at least.

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Haphazard, this seems like a reply to your issues as well.

bjbrains said:

If you refuse to help a civ when it is being attacked, then they aren't going to treat you as a friend any more (Although I expect that you could repair relations given time).

Is it more difficult? Yes.

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No, this still really isn't the case. Examples you give actually illustrate it perfectly. An AI which holds too many grudges and random behavior - without additional specific changes in interaction with the human - is still easily enough abused to just hate other AI. Good human players will figure out eventually how to get the AI to still "trust" them - but if it's going to be random and arbitrary, all too easily one AI will end up hating/distrusting another AI and that will also be exploitable to the end of time.

I don't think the game is really going to be like that though, so I'm not worried - I think it'll be closer to civ4 than some people want but I'm happier with that.

Also, I strongly agree with Ahriman's short post above, that actually surprised me though since I didn't know he felt that way, but I know I've posted many times before my actual preference which I'll just repeat in case anyone was curious in turn - the best way to do things would have been to keep a lot of flavor, personality, and modifiers to AIs and in turn make a human civ more limited by such things as well - your people's happiness and so on being influenced if you did traitorish and backstabb-y things. This would also still be really easy and expand gameplay to tie to civics/now social policy system so a human player still has reigns to attempt what they like anyway (adopt autocratic and propaganda stances so you can do whatever you like without your people/cities suffering consequences)

Ahriman said:

I want to play a game which makes me feel like I'm playing a version of history, not to be constantly reminded that its a game where the AI acts like a deathmatch bot.

[And: the whole idea of something being a "gamble".... if you want something to be random, fine, then show me the probabilities. I can't "gamble" in a rational fashion if I don't know anything about the odds.]

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These two sentiments don't really seem to mesh. In what "version of history" has a world leader known anything about "modifiers" and had an exact mathematical idea of how his actions would be taken by another leader?

Probabilities will become clear with experience playing the game, which is about as close to real life as it can get. The more you play the game, the more you will get a feel for what your effects your diplomatic actions have on your opponents. Is it really going to be such a bad thing if you make some diplomatic missteps at first? Aren't such missteps a part of history, too?

Ahriman said:

That's the problem. This is a terrible idea.

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It certainly is...probably the only thing in Civ5 I have severe reservations about.

Earthling said:

Also, I strongly agree with Ahriman's short post above, that actually surprised me though since I didn't know he felt that way, but I know I've posted many times before my actual preference which I'll just repeat in case anyone was curious in turn - the best way to do things would have been to keep a lot of flavor, personality, and modifiers to AIs and in turn make a human civ more limited by such things as well - your people's happiness and so on being influenced if you did traitorish and backstabb-y things. This would also still be really easy and expand gameplay to tie to civics/now social policy system so a human player still has reigns to attempt what they like anyway (adopt autocratic and propaganda stances so you can do whatever you like without your people/cities suffering consequences)

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This is what I would have liked also.

Earthling said:

I'd also argue this is isn't very accurate, and an AI that behaves more randomly and without set modifiers can often be even more abusable. I have no clue if you were experienced with civ3 for instance - I know a lot of folks really aren't though, but an AI that didn't have obvious modifiers or anything was just as abusable because it was very very easy to exploit them against each other.

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Well, that assumes that they can't evaluate their own strategic situations. They couldn't in Civ3, they simply allowed you to bribe them to fight your wars for them. Hopefully, Civ5 will actually be able to evaluate the current situation. Relationships aren't important, strategy is (in Civ3, it was more or less neither).

What's wrong with you guys? See this is why random events were removed (much to my dismay)... because people thought that everything bad that happened against them were some gigantic conspiracy of AI vs Human that existed for no other reason than to hold back the Human.

You guys want to take all the thought out of the game... play with the numbers and perform a set of predefined actions that would give you the desired result.
So you guys are worried that giving a gift to your AI friend has no effect, just because a little +1 doesn't appear next to their name? Hey, while we are on the subject, how did we even know that the +1 did anything? For all we knew, that number had ZERO effect on the AI's future behavior!!
Why don't you just trust that your gift has an effect? Why do you need that little +1? Are you really that insecure?

I keep seeing the argument that people don't want the AI to try to win the game like a human player, and that is completely ridiculous to me! In previous games, what with diplo modifiers, abusable mechanics and just downright stupid AI, I was able to play at very high difficulty levels for a variety of reasons, not the least being that the AI wasn't even trying to win. Get two legendary cities and smile while they let me culture my third one to the victory without any wars or general interference... Sit back and focus all production on Spaceship parts without anyone trying to take my capital.
In this way, I found that the lategame was ridiculously easy. I found that generally, the game was already decided by the industrial age, and the modern and future eras were just a formality so that your score would be recorded on the hall of fame.
Civs in previous games could only really stumble across victory and so they would rarely actually win.
Rather than opponents, they were obstacles to overcome. This made it generally less satisfying to overcome them, since all you were doing was playing a numbers game and keeping the AI off your back. Very rarely did you need to actively prevent them from winning the game.

With the AI actually trying to win, there will be many more satisfying wins, and it will add a whole new element to difficulty levels.
In previous games, the game had to handicap you and give bonuses to the AI civilizations so that they did a better job at getting in your way. Difficulty levels were about making YOUR WIN more difficult.
In Civ5, the game doesn't need to do it that way. Rather than handicapping the human, they can simply make the AI better at winning. This is a new way to make the game difficult for Civilization and was not possible in previous versions. I mean if you start the game off on even standpoint, you have a pretty damn low win chance anyway (1/8 to 1/12). So rather than the previous way of just making it harder for you to win, they can also make the AI better at winning... hopefully this will replace some of the ridiculously extreme handicaps that were necessary to keep the game challenging and really took a huge amount of fun from the game.

As difficulty levels went up, it became less and less about fighting the AI, and more and more about playing the numbers and fighting your own civilizations handicaps. Hopefully with the AI trying to win, that will change.

Though maybe people enjoyed it that way...

I like making diplomacy feel more like real life: difficult to decipher and maddening at times. It's an aspect that has never had any strong parallels to how diplomacy is actually conducted in the real world, so hopefully removing viewable modifiers will move more in this direction. Is anyone that likes a challenge going to miss the religion "i win" button? If anything, you should be at war even MORE with people of the same religion!

Personally, I don't mind losing the list of modifiers as long as there is some visual way to tell the general opinion of an AI in regards to you... all I really need to know is if they are indifferent, happy, or annoyed with me... as long as that's clear from the diplomatic videos, then I'll be fine.

In addition, I like the idea of the AI players as competitors and not just deathmatch bots and I think Civ5 will continue this since it gives you the chance for a diplomatic victory. If it was impossible to play a peaceful game in Civ5, then why have that option at all? So my hope is that the AIs are trying to win, but that they won't gang up on you just because you're doing well. Instead, they'll have their preferences and as long as you keep them happy (and keep your military decently upgraded) they will weigh the risk/reward of attacking you and only do so when they see a chance for military victory. If they don't see a chance or if they actually like you b/c of past and current deals, then they should actually be okay with you winning if you can beat them to the punch.

Ahriman said:

Define near.
2 tiles? 3 tiles?

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Probably the number of tiles between your closest cities. Don't make this number smaller. I doubt the AI will demand you to not settle close to him if there's huge amounts of room between you.

Ahriman said:

I have to remember some guys demand for hundreds of turns, even if I stop playing and reload the game a week later?

How is that intuitive?

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Write it down I guess. Some Civs will just be more vocal about their disdain for foreign cities on land they perceive as theirs than others or they know they can't back such words up. Put yourself in their shoes if someone encroached on your territory like that. I'm sure these kinds of diplomatic saber-rattling are contextual and it will be pretty obvious when it is and it isn't called for. I can only speculate though.

jaldaen said:

I like the idea of the AI players as competitors and not just deathmatch bots and I think Civ5 will continue this since it gives you the chance for a diplomatic victory. If it was impossible to play a peaceful game in Civ5, then why have that option at all?

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I agree with the overall thrust of what you're saying, but the AI will most probably ll vote against you at the UN. It's the city-states who may vote for you... and it is your relations with them that most closely resembles the CivIV diplomatic system.

The new AIs are supposed to simulate players.

They aren't necessarily supposed to simulate GOOD players.

Diplomacy is City-State centered. The strategy to win is to have more city-state friends than your rival (and, ideally, convert or destroy your rival's city-states). Apparently (if indications are true), a Civilization will vote for you if you liberate their capital. In that sense, there are still game mechanics that separate them from people, but it's limited in its application.

Louis XXIV said:

Apparently (if indications are true), a Civilization will vote for you if you liberate their capital. In that sense, there are still game mechanics that separate them from people, but it's limited in its application.

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That's wrong, that was spoken about city-states.

No Stealth, that was in Greg's stream. There were 4 columns for votes: Self-votes, city states, liberated city states, liberated capitals.