Everyone stays neutral

VainoValkea said:

By my experience, they have issues starting the wars they should be starting. I had Huns next door and they did bring in two customary invasions as expected, yes, but I haven't seen any meaningful attempt by the AI to stop my cultural or diplomatic victories through military force.

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Yeah, pretty much. There's probably a buggy / inappropriate check just before they DoW. It happened in some Civ 4 versions too.

I also agree the AI should try stopping the guy who's about to win more, at least when they can.

If somebody is close from domination, ally armies against him.

If somebody is close from diplo win, buy city states or attack him.

If somebody is close from cultural win, up your culture or bring down his tourism (breaking modifiers like ideologies / open borders / trade and so on...), or attack him

If somebody is close from science win, bomb its capital, attack...

AI doesn't do that enough in my opinion... They should react earlier and assess victory status earlier and better.

Indeed. I've said this a million times already, but I won a cultural victory with almost no army at all as Morocco - the world's resident warmonger Assyria wouldn't do anything to stop me except denounce me a few times. I was going for a diplomatic victory, and he had several of my unguarded CS allies well within reach, but he wouldn't attack them anyway.

The AI should so its best to prevent the player from winning. Diplomacy modifiers come second - I'd expect even my friends embargoing me to prevent me from winning.

In my current game (as Korea, King), there's been a fair bit of war early on. I've just entered the Renaissance (the first civ to do so). I had a very fortunate start along a coast on a Terra map, with a large swath of desert to act as sort of a natural border between the area I wanted to set up shop, and the rest of the AIs, save for Maria I.

Most everyone's been pretty friendly with me, except for a handful of those that are staying at Neutral (Sweden won't budge, despite us trading and the occasional gift I give them to try to butter them up). Maria was friendly (we had trade routes together, and she's vastly weaker), until we started competing for religion. She just went Guarded after I Prophet-bombed her capital.

William went on a war path early, taking Isabella's capital. This caused EVERYONE to hate him, and he's just been wiped from the game. Rome's sparring with a the Huns and Boudicca. There are definitely factions forming.

I think it's as others have said: early aggression has been toned down some. Wars have definitely picked up as time goes on. You do see that the AI has less money on lower levels, typically begging for cash. No money = no army.

Cymsdale said:

In my current game everyone is declaring war on everybody. It's not true that the AI never starts wars.

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Thats the misunderstood opinion (sometimes I dare to say on purpose) most use in the defense of the AI. Its not that the AI does not declare wars, it does not declare on humans mostly half the game. And never (4 games at least for me) on sea maps.

klokwerk said:

I also agree the AI should try stopping the guy who's about to win more, at least when they can.

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I just won a cultural victory as Elizabeth against the new civs. I went Freedom, as did Venice and Morocco. Poland went Autocracy, and Poland, Shoshone, Zulu, Assyria and Brazil went Order. Indonesia had not got that far, but went Freedom. The Order and Autocracy all were hit badly because of their ideology, and two eventually changed to Freedom.

When they could have caused me a lot of issues by attacking me, all of the Order and Autocracy decided to attack Morocco. At that point I was clearly going for the Cultural Victory, but still had a 100 or so turns to get there - getting past Brazils Carnivals took time and two Great Musician concerts. By that point I was also going for a diplomatic win.

I did have a large army, thanks to the CSs but out of date, but an attack by 6 civs would have been difficult to deal with and probably enable Venice to get a space win or Shoshone to get a diplomatic win.

My first game as Portugal all of my neighbors except Alexander were friendly fairly quickly. Even sweden, and I plopped a city 5 tiles away from one of his, no more than 12 from his capitol, and stole King solomon's mines in the process. Every time we trade he tells me his people are worried about my expansion, but we're still friendly, so obviously it doesn't bother him much.

Can somebody tell me what I am doing wrong and I cant post a pic? I believe that one will illustrate nicely the AIs new tendencies