AI doesn't try to stop my diplo victory

As you can see in the attached images, Gajah Mada doesn't try to stop me from winning a diplomatic victory, even though he is swimming in gold (92712 , 838 per turn). I'm currently allied with all the 16 city states, but he does nothing and lets me to win.

I've also attached the savegame.

No screenshots or save games are necessary. We've all experienced it and seen it before. It's one of the many problems with the diplomatic victory that hopefully gets improved in the fall patch.

They do nothing to try and stop a cultural win either. A dozen or two turns from losing, and they're still selling you new open border agreements for 5 gold per turn.

Honestly if they tried to block you from getting those victories you'd be hear complaining about how utterly impossibly it is to get those victories.

troublmaker said:

Honestly if they tried to block you from getting those victories you'd be hear complaining about how utterly impossibly it is to get those victories.

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Yeah, sorta like how everyone complains about the AI building armies and attacking your units when you go to war.

Ramble said:

They do nothing to try and stop a cultural win either. A dozen or two turns from losing, and they're still selling you new open border agreements for 5 gold per turn.

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this is the most disturbing fact about the game currently. Absolutely no awareness about the player seeking a cultural victory.

Especially on higher difficulties, if the AI actually wanted to stop you from a diplo victory, it would be impossible to win.

Be careful what you wish for.

If AI believes it is winning (as in is leading in score) it stops using gold, it's nothing new. Just a mechanic to prevent runaways (whole continent for themselves etc.) from destroying you.

If leading AI would use their cheat-made gold, they would snowball completely out of control. If they be allowed to use all the tricks human do... not sure if you'd like to find all your CSes taken by it few turn before vote by never-ending gold followed by DoW just so they can block you from retaking.

Is Victory Competitiveness trait related to this? Gajah has a rating of 5. Genghis Khan has the highest one in the game along with Napoleon, Alexander and Shaka at 8, so if he was the one swimming in gold it would look a lot different?

I'd like to know what witchcraft occurred to make Gajah the runaway. He's always a very weak AI for me and he appears to share his continent with Gustavus, who's one of the better ones. Gajah's territory should have been turned a dark Swedish blue long before you met him.

troublmaker said:

Honestly if they tried to block you from getting those victories you'd be hear complaining about how utterly impossibly it is to get those victories.

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QFT. I actually thought the patch boosted late-game competitiveness (apparently it didn't) because I had a late-game duel with Polynesia over CSes. I thought I had the game in the bag - but every single turn, he bought at least one, sometimes two, and at one point 3 CSes from me.

I was impressed, to say the least.

Yzman said:

Especially on higher difficulties, if the AI actually wanted to stop you from a diplo victory, it would be impossible to win.

Be careful what you wish for.

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The difficulty level for my current game is Inmortal. I can assure you I'd enjoy so much an AI that would use its gold to bribe as much CS as it could. My preferred style to play is going tall and allying with all the CS I can afford. In Emperor it always work and it seems in Inmortal too.

I would prefer an AI that would employ legal human tactics to win rather than an AI that wins because of overwhelming bonuses. If on higher difficulty levels it would be impossible to win due to an smarter AI and its bonuses, I would simply adjust my default difficulty level.

Pep said:

I would prefer an AI that would employ legal human tactics to win rather than an AI that wins because of overwhelming bonuses

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As said, rush buying cs and DoWing is valid tactic. If AI is allowed to do that it would win every single time if he is runaway purely from economic bonuses he get. This mechanic is build to prevent loosing games that you had no chance to stop. Like on continents where you can't meet other players till ~150 or so, you could find that no matter how well you managed your continent, one AI on other taken it over already and game is down drain without any fault from yourself.

Would it be better if AI actually know what Diplo win is? Maybe. But then you would have to strip all bonus gold it gets from increased difficulty, and then you would probably break economy of warmongers so they could no longer field such huge armies early game and in the you could have even easier game instead.

Pep said:

I would prefer an AI that would employ legal human tactics to win rather than an AI that wins because of overwhelming bonuses. If on higher difficulty levels it would be impossible to win due to an smarter AI and its bonuses, I would simply adjust my default difficulty level.

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This. I'd much rather play a smart AI on prince and win/lose on equal footing then play a super buffed out but ******ed/oblivious AI on Emperor.

Given the ludicrous amounts of gold the AIs have floating towards the end of the game at the higher difficulty levels it would not only be impossible to win by Diplo, you'd basically have to destroy most of the city states before the UN showed up simply not to lose by it. The Ai not doing this is basically a balancing factor to deal with a bad combination of a bonus that snowballs out of control, and it being rather too easy to simply "buy" the votes of city states. Diplo victory as it stands has a lot of issues, but changing the AI behaviour here would basically make them reaching the Atomic age an instant loss condition for the human player on the higher levels.

Nivrax said:

If AI believes it is winning (as in is leading in score) it stops using gold, it's nothing new. Just a mechanic to prevent runaways (whole continent for themselves etc.) from destroying you.

If leading AI would use their cheat-made gold, they would snowball completely out of control. If they be allowed to use all the tricks human do... not sure if you'd like to find all your CSes taken by it few turn before vote by never-ending gold followed by DoW just so they can block you from retaking.

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In my current game I have a DoF with Gajah and both of us share the same ideology (Freedom). I would consider fair that he would use all of his gold to bribe all my CS even though we are friends, preventing me from a cheesy win. What I wouldn't like is a DoW after it (that is what a human player would do).

I think the AI should try to win employing some of the tricks a human would use, but not all of them. I like to play with AIs with their own personality parameters and I don't expect backstabbing (as a human player would do to win at any cost) except if the AI has a high backstab parameter set. I would prefer an AI that treats the rest of players as its equals (not considering if one of them is human or not). So I prefer an AI that would ally with me against other AIs if our relationships have been nice over all the game (by trading, same ideology or religion, etc.). In my current game, I would like that Gajah would try to win by using its current advantage. If he wants a domination victory, perhaps he could finish the Swedes first (to completely conquest its own continent) and then go after the Austrians (who have Order Ideology). To make the game more enjoyable, I would raise the likeness of an AI to backstab you if it and you are the remaining superpowers in the world by far, even if you have been allies during the rest of the game. That is something I think is fairly common on Continents maps.

Pep said:

To make the game more enjoyable, I would raise the likeness of an AI to backstab you if it and you are the remaining superpowers in the world by far, even if you have been allies during the rest of the game. That is something I think is fairly common on Continents maps.

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This seems to be pretty much how it works already. The AI is already immersion-breakingly gamey when it comes to diplomacy. I don't think it needs to be made any worse in that respect.

Pep said:

In my current game, I would like that Gajah would try to win by using its current advantage. If he wants a domination victory, perhaps he could finish the Swedes first (to completely conquest its own continent) and then go after the Austrians (who have Order Ideology).

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His advantage isn't for Domination though. At 70k gold, his closest victory is through Diplo. Just like he would backstab you when you were last capital he needs, he can backstab you now after taking all CS by himself and winning like that. Hell, he don't NEED to war on you, human players always go first so if You didn't DoWed him X turns ago, he can do it just before vote. In fact he can probably put so many influence it's not possible to recover them in time.

The only way to allow AI to take part in DV is to cut their economic advantages. Difficulty level has very little to do with it as it's only thing AI will triumph over you, which means on higher diffs you would always be destroyed by runaway 1k gpt, and on lowers you would roll them whatever you like.

OT but DV really should be remade. I'm ok with it being badly named Economic Victory, but CS shouldn't flip in one turn. If one Civ suddenly got more influence over one, it should either gradually turn in 3-5 turn over (so former leader can work on preventing that) or turn gold gifts into gpt deals to get influence per turn with option to see what Civs are pumping cash into them.

from the games I've played, I do see leading AIs holding on to 2-3 CSs, in which you'd have to dump over 1000 gold to even make a dent. So in a way I think that is an improvement from the past. They do seem to prefer certain Cs and maintain strong alliances with them.

As many people stated already, if the AI used all it's gold to constantly snipe your CSs away, you wouldn't be able to compete, and imo it would be terribly frustrating to make a conscious choice to dump a good amount of gold in a CS just to have it taken away from you straight away...

A good suggestion I've seen on this forum would be to make city states vote for the civ they've spent the largest number of turns allied to throughout the game, not simply the one they're allied with on the turn of the vote. Would get rid of the AI being able to snipe city states on the turn of the vote (with the human then at a big disadvantage by going first in the turn order).