Who's winning the war?

As far as I can tell, the formula that the AI uses to offer peace treaties is totally broken and needs to be redone entirely. I've had multiple games now where the AI refused to sign a clean peace treaty for more than 100 turns while simultaneously never bothering to attack me because I had destroyed his initial army. A few times, I've even gone and taken one of their cities just for fun, but that doesn't seem to work, either.

I assume that they have a vast military sitting somewhere out of sight. Maybe they're attacking another player where I have fog of war. Maybe they have a giant navy that can't touch my landlocked cities. I don't know. Regardless, the AI is terrible at war and worse at peace treaties.

I'm still in favor of introducing some form of "war weariness" like Civ IV had as a factor to mitigate these never-ending wars. No, it probably wouldn't work as an unhappiness bonus with the massive happiness bonuses that the AI gets. But maybe it would work as growth penalties, diplomatic penalties, gold penalties, ...?

Anyway, the AI needs more factors to evaluate when deciding to declare war, to end war, and to accept a specific peace treaty.

Cyberian said:

A mechanic that should be easy to implement would be:

When DOW happens count the total combat strength or hammers of all available units.
AI: has 12 Pikemen, 4 CBs and 6 Catapults = 1830 Hammers
Player: has 4 CBs and 2 Knights = 540 Hammers

Then at a later time or when the player asks for peace count again and compare.

AI lost alot of units and built some new ones:
5 Pikemen, 2 CBs, 2 Catapults = 750 Hammers

Player bought and upgraded units but lost none:
5 Xbows, 2 Knights, 3 Pikemen = 1110 Hammers

Ratio from start to end of war dropped from 3,4 to 0,7 lets say within 15 turns.
From these numbers it is clear the AI should ask for peace. If the AI still had more total hammers he could still wage war for some turns but it should take into account the trend of his W/L ratio of units for peace negotiations.

Click to expand...

The issue with this is that the AI (like many historical empires) tends to ignore losses when it can/will secure a military goal...so even in a successful war, the AI is likely to lose more units than its human opponent.

An alternative might be to look at the length of the war vs. any territorial gains (or losses)--i.e., after 25 turns of war you're still fighting to a standstill and losses have been heavy, it might be time to offer peace on even terms. The issue with that is in situations where you've got the AI offering you a fair peace literally on the turn where it was all but assured of finally capturing your city.

I think that part of the problem is that the AI does not seem to have a clearly-established goal when it goes to war, other than completely wiping out its foe. A human player, for example, might go to war with only the intention of capturing one city which holds a crucial resource or a highly strategic location...the AI doesn't ever seem to consider this option. It would take quite a bit more programming, but if a realistic (and not necessarily genocidal) set of goals were developed by the AI prior to declaring war, then the peace terms would be a reflection of whether or not those goals had been met (and at what cost).

Part of the problem is the calculation that leads to the "Soldiers" number under demographics. The AI will spam out Pikemen against your 4 Infantry units and still think it has a chance to winning because its military numbers are so high from unit spam. The AI needs to modify its calculations based on if units are obsolete.

Another good idea would be to have the ability to select from different treaty lengths. I'd be much more likely to give up a city, for instance, if I knew you would leave me alone for a good chunk of the game. As it is, 10 turns is just enough time for you to go home, rest up and attack me all over again.

Ritzy Cat said:

I remember I had played a war on one map, I managed to conquer just about all of his cities. Only his Capital remained, and the military adviser still told me the war does not look good. and I sent a caravel over to attempt to take it by sea. I was met by incredible amounts of naval forces, who I had not seen throughout the entire war (this was on a terra map, all of his cities were coastal.)

Click to expand...

You took A caravel to attack a capital???? How did you think that was gonna go...


Anywhoo, a lot of people seem to think the AI takes it's cash reserves into consideration when offering/not offering peace without any evidence to back up that claim.

While I don't have any counter evidence and won't dispute the claim, I would just like to say that if the claim is true, then it's a really bad parameter for the AI to make war/peace decisions on. I say this because even when the AI has 20k in the bank, it doesn't rushbuy units hardly ever. That goldis essentially useless except for a bargaining tool.

I can't understand why the devs would make gold a parameter for war/peace decisions if they didn't code the AI to rushbuy units to save itself.

China DOWd me at 0 AD and wouldn't make a fair peace deal until I got destroyers and battleships and rammed them down her throat in 1930. I had to take Beijing before she understood that she wasn't getting anywhere.

Once, I made the ire of Runaway Austria by stealing techs from her. She DOWed me, then bought off every CS in the entire world.

Once, she sent her Austrian Keshiks and Minutemen in droves, with frigates and Privateers and escorts. But because they landed on the wrong side, where there was nothing but jungles and hills (and a waiting Gatling gun), she never took any of my cities.

From then on, for hundreds of years, she did nothing but refused any offer of reasonable peace.

Not even after I conquered an entire continent of AIs... first with artillery, then Bombers and rocket artillery.

At that point, I wanted to take the war to her personally. But nope, the short route to her "homelands" was blocked off by my recent victim the Carthaginians (naturally they refused Open Borders) and the long way was fraught with a ring of Austrian CS cities.

So I had to settle a city at an isthmus so my fleet was able to move to the other side quickly. I offered her peace, she still refused.

Then my atomic bombs ushered in an era of radioactive holocaust for that Central European empire. Nope, she still refused.

Then I sent in my melee ships and my ground forces, and employed even more atomic weaponry than in WWII, and it was only after I had taken those irradiated Austrian cities. did she begin to realize that I was out for her blood entirely, and that the only way to appease me was to pay me everything she had.

Got 22,000 gold out of that peace deal nicely.

Still, she was arrogant enough to keep telling me that "my military force was a joke and someone would put me out of my misery." So when I was about to take my last capital city, I nuked her again and again and again and again...

Like a chain rolling mantra.

Just played one of the more enjoyable games I've started lately, as Babylon on a small Pangaea map with 19 AIs & 4 city states. Towards the end as I was pumping out space ship parts (I actually only narrowly beat the Mayans, who were 8 turns away from completing Utopia) it was just a string of DoWs from the AIs neighboring me. Quite entertaining to see their great war infantry trying to swarm my cities (all 4 of them--2 puppets) while I picked them off with stealth bombers & rocket artillery.

It actually really demonstrated what we're talking about in this thread, though--when they'd DoW they usually outnumbered me in terms of sheer units by at least 5:1, but as soon as I'd wiped out their standing armies & started bombarding cities they were willing to empty their treasuries in order to get peace. It's just a shame that the AI isn't capable of figuring out that I could one-shot-kill most of their units with the stealths, and pretty much anything if it wandered within range of one of my cities, so 5:1 isn't gonna work.