AI and Banning Luxuries at World Congress

Has anyone experienced the AI being adamant about banning luxuries?

I was the host and Inca were second. And they could make proposals. Each and every time they proposed banning luxuries.

The ban would fail because I and (everyone else) voted against it.

And next time around, the Inca would propose another ban.

I have seen this in at least a half-dozen games, and I just don't understand it.

I swear to God the Incas proposed at least five or six luxury bans right in a row.

EDIT: I'm playing Prince level, standard speed, standard map, and I was Polynesia.

Thoughts?

By the end of my last game, there were a total of 5 luxuries banned by the WC. It was kind of ridiculous. Most of the AIs would always vote yes, too.

Banning luxes seems like the AI's default proposal. It's VERY annoying.

my very first game that reached the WC, the first two measures proposed for voting were banning luxuries and both were luxuries that I had multiple copies of both. Fortunately, I was able to convince enough people to vote against and both failed. The next session had one more proposed luxury ban that did pass for something different.

They always ban luxuries, no matter how high your Happiness seems to be. They won't raise army fees or whatever.

I was honestly surprised when Washington proposed Arts Funding today. (Doubly pleasant since I was Brazil.)

The AI seems to like to do this. The second person, no matter who it is (it's been 100% in my game time) proposes to ban a luxury.

I think they wrote the AI the way they write a lot of the AI, with the intent to make it harder for the player to win. Barbarians will prefer to attack the player over the AI, fail to pillage the AI when it could, fail to capture AI workers when it could, etc, as well. In this case, they've written it so the AI slowly attempts to turn the screws on your happiness and therefore your growth. It doesn't seem so focused on winning as much as it does on making you lose.

I find that this makes the World Congress another mandatory "option". It is not possible to simply ignore it because it will be used to kill you. Especially if you're warmongering, and already fighting the happiness fight and the diplomatic fight, and sacrificing your culture and CS love, this becomes a real pain in the toucas mechanic.

If you're playing the religion -> culture VC game, this is simply another easily adoptable tool to manipulate to your ends. You'll have the money for CS allies for your votes. You'll have the DoFs to buy more votes. You get what you want fairly easily.

Personally, I think this mechanic sucks because it is so biased to one style of play the way it's currently implemented.

Is there a case for promoting the banning of luxuries to knobble the AI?

I personally can't stand the bans because I'm usually struggling, with everything.

It calls for a mod as is.

What I thought was ridiculous is how much of hypocrites the AI is about it. In my most recent game, Germany proposed banning Marble. Then a turn later, he asked me to give him marble because I was his friend and he needed it. I was thinking

InsanelyApple said:

What I thought was ridiculous is how much of hypocrites the AI is about it. In my most recent game, Germany proposed banning Marble. Then a turn later, he asked me to give him marble because I was his friend and he needed it. I was thinking

Click to expand...

Give it to him and see if he will vote against his own proposal then

Maxym said:

Give it to him and see if he will vote against his own proposal then

Click to expand...

They do -.-

Greece proposed banning I think Marble or Cotton.

When the Proposals goes through I see "4 Nays from Greece".

Yeah I thought the would they are not that stupid

I've seen several proposals

In my most recent game, the second proposer suggested embargo: Morocco which passed.

A bit later in the game, they proposed Embargo: Celts (which was me) not too long after everyone in the world declared war on me at once (I had made peace with some but my popularity was in the gutter). That sucked by I managed to shoot it down with some careful dealing on WC votes (thanks to them declaring war I ended up capturing a lot of puppets which gave me a lot of duplicate luxuries to trade).

In my previous game I saw the second proposer propose the World Games (which passed and I managed to get Gold).

I've also seen them try to repeal my World Religion.

So yeah, they can pretty much propose anything, although the do seem to like proposing luxury bans more than anything else.

TheKingOfBigOz said:

They do -.-

Greece proposed banning I think Marble or Cotton.

When the Proposals goes through I see "4 Nays from Greece".

Click to expand...

I think this depends on the level of your diplomat although I'm not too sure how it works, I haven't played with the mechanics too much (I only really use diplomats for trading WC votes, and the AI votes are usually common sense), but sometimes it lists how committed the AI is to that proposal,

e.g. it'll say "weak YEA on...", "strong NAY on..." which indicates which proposal they are more likely to vote on. This is fairly useful because the only thing you can't really read from the AI is how it'll split its delegates between proposals (as a general rule the AI votes yes if it benefits them and no if it hurts them and votes on the other proposal if it doesn't affect them either way).

If I lack a luxury and I'm done expanding or the places I have goals to expand into won't have a luxury it isn't rare for me to try to ban it but it does depend on the game and what kind of power I have in the WC.

The most annoying part of it all is that they get angry at you for your 'transgressions' in making it fail... they're the ones who are suggesting hostile proposals that would negatively affect you. You should be able to set what your opinion in proposals are so that the AI has to make a decision to play nice or expect for the human player to start targeting them. It just feels really frustrating to have random AIs gun for you even though you've had no real interactions so far. I take extra pleasure in nuking people who suggest these annoying proposals.

But I too notice way too many 'ban luxury x' proposals. Additionally, it seems absolutely noone likes to vote for science funding unless Hiawatha is in the game. It's pretty much always concluded that arts funding will pass unless you have a monopoly on votes.

It also doesn't really know how to split votes accordingly. Me and Babylon had a monopoly in votes that would force our Order ideology onto all the other civs that were all Freedom/Autocratic... yet Babylon felt the need to dump 80% of his votes in World's Fair and only 3 to the ideology vote... and I've never seen the World Fair fail to be enacted.

I have noticed that banning luxuries was the most common proposal by the AI. I don't like the way AI handles the World Congress. If you vote against an AI proposal they give you a nasty message about petty politics.

Another option I would like to see is abstaining from making a proposal. After several congress sessions banning luxuries or embargoes are the only choices left.

I had an AI propose to ban Ivory in my last game. Being the smart guy that I am, I figured I would trade my ivory for one of his resources even though I only had one copy. Now that he was getting ivory, he should want it.

Yeah he still voted for the ban.

I played on Immortal and passed 3 WC. So far there is no Luxury Banning from AI ...

Yeah, AI does a lot more then Lux Banning. Seen it sporadically. World Fair, World Religion, Embargo: Current Warmonger, those all seem perfectly acceptable options to the AI as well.

Personally I think there's not enough options to vote on, there needs to be more.