"That would go against everything we stand for!"

Hello dear fellow Fanatics!
I'd love to hear your opinion on an issue I brought up in this thread in the Civ4 - Unofficial Patches sub-sub-forum where it (IMHO) does not get the attention it might deserve.

The title of this thread is certainly well-known to everybody here; this is the denial type an AI gives you when you try to ask them to switch civics for a price, but they are currently in their favorite civic. My complaint (yeah, I'm always complaining) is that this rigorous unwillingness of the AI to even consider any offers is not restricted to the civic category of their favorite civic--they will always redline all civics in their trade screens.

So for instance this makes it impossible to ask Hatshepsut to switch from Slavery to Caste System (category Labor) to improve her relations with Wang Kon in order to establish a nice diplo triangle whenever she is in her favorite civic Organized Religion (category Religion).

After inspecting the SDK I surmised that this is an oversight by the developers which can be fixed/modified by just 2 lines of extra code (for an example check the above linked thread). Solver however assumed, this AI behaviour might be intended to reflect the AI's satisfaction with their current civic choices.
But the fact that the AIs will also redline the inferior starting civics like Despotism and Barbarism with this type of denial appears contradictory. I also consider this a pretty hard restriction of the player's possibilities to shape the diplomatic situation in a game.

So what do you guys think about that, would you like to have it changed? Remember, that the change will only make the AIs consider an offer, they will of course (as usual) come up with a pretty decent price for switching their civics.

Just as in real life, people don't always do what you want when you want it.

If I had my way strategically, I'd bribe the Democrats to bring in Hillary after all instead of Barack, and the UK Tories to bring back Michael Howard instead of that useless nuisance Cameron, but sadly that option is redlined at the moment...perhaps it's a code oversight!

I think you might have to get round it another way. Just like you probably normally ignore any and all requests from an AI to change your civics, thus they can and will do the same thing regardless of how much it would suit you.

I don't think you understood the problem, crownqueen....

Dan : Hey hatty, what do you think of switching to Caste system?
Hatty: That would go against everything we stand for! we're running Org Rel....
Dan: But you would not have to leave Org Rel to switch to Caste...
Hatty: That would go against everything we stand for, I already told you! Now how about I give you gems for free ?

Clearly a oversight.

, good one r_rolo1!

The situation is even more unfair cry when it comes to these demands. I as the human player do not get the kind of protection from such demands by adopting my leader's favorite civic. Instead I receive drops in our relation of up to -2 by denying to adopt civics that "all the cool civs are running".

I think it's an oversight of the developers, but not a big one.

Off-topic: What's the thing with sea patrol, I saw a thread about but it's very long I don't want to read all the way through it.

When an AI ship pillages a tile which is patrolled by your ships, there is a possibility that it "attacks" one of your patrolling ships each time it attempts (but fails) to pillage. It looks like the Blitz ability but it is just the way the Patrol function is implemented in the game.
Not important to me, how often does that happen? The AI ship may get sunk in the first attempt to pillage anyway.

Fistleaf said:

Not important to me, how often does that happen? The AI ship may get sunk in the first attempt to pillage anyway.

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I wonder whether starting a poll about how other players think about this might be a good idea. And a poll about the free spreading of forests from preserves over roads/railroads. And one about Collateral Damage on Tanks, no wait, we already had this one! Maybe I should start a poll and ask what poll to start--poll spam! j/k!

I personally would love to see the Sea Patrol function turned into something useful = buffed, and suggested to disallow a non-Blitz aggressor that already fought a combat during its turn to attempt to pillage protected improvements, others think this would be overpowered... Any comments/suggestions/insults please in sirsnuggles' thread.

Voted beaver's tail.

1. Having AI change civics is not that useful; sure, it would improve things for awhile, but then they would just switch back to where they were.

2. As in real politics, it doesn't have to be REASONABLE! Being unreasonable (and what PLAYER has not been unreasonable!!) gives more immersion into the illusion of real-life simulation. Should NOT have too much predictability in the game.

Back to the main topic, if a change is to be made, the AI needs to know how to take into account the production loss from anarchy and the 5 turns wait time to switch again.
The human can exploit this by gettiing the AI to do an insignificant civics change (Serfdom?) to slow down AI wonder completion, delay tech research, delay civics tech implementation (e.g. AI is 1 turn from getting Emancipation, but now has to wait 5 turns after researching it).
This may take a lot of coding, quite complicated to implement.

The issue is:

When the AI is not using its favourite civic, then it is willing to change civics in various civic categories if the offer is right. When the AI is using its favourite civic, then its unwilling to change civics in any category, even civic categories totally unrelated to the civic category of the favourite civic.

It's weird that whether the AI is using its favourite civic influences its willingness to change completely unrelated civics in different civic categories. It seems more logical that the AI would not be willing to shift out of its favourite civic but be willing to change other civic categories (if the offer is right).

This is not just a human - AI issue. It's also an AI - AI issue. It hampers all diplomacy about civic use in the game.

with above post.

It's probably an oversight, but the potential abuse a human might cause to the AI makes me hesitate to vote "Fix it!". I don't know how the AI evaluates offers on civic switching, so I don't know if the AI will be able to weigh any "filibuster" offer.

Yes, Roland puts it into the right words (as usual). I just wonder why this was not noticed before, apparently.

I agree with Roland to a certain point, but then again some civic's go together better than other. So depending on their fav civic this may then determine some of their other civic's. If you get what i'm trying to say :S

I voted for the first option, but my real vote is "I want this changed regardless of whether it was the developers' intended behavior or an oversight." It makes no sense to me, and I've hated this since the first time I saw it; Roland summed up the problems with it already. If it doesn't make it into a patch (official or unofficial) then it's something I'll consider patching on my own copy once I learn to recompile the DLL.

Once i was declared war on, and i just changed to theocracy - and what happens? WANG KON, my vassal demands of me to change to Vassalage (which i just got the ability to change to).

Hmm... Do i let him tell me to do what im going to do anyway, when i need the diplo buff with him so i can start "subsidizing"?


I noticed the same with religion. My friend gets polluted with christanity after i gift him the holy teachings of Hindu. The christans had 2 countries (him as the new third) and there was one more hindu nation.

He converted when one of his cities (via church of nativity) obtained the christanity.

ALL of his towns had hinduism (all 7) and he refused to ever change back. Curious, i use worldbuilder to look at his cities and he already built hindu temples and monastaries in most of his area.

Why would he betray us to a false god? Now, my one-time best friend may become my worst enemy as he is always knocking on my door trying to get me to accept his magazine and convert.

Worst yet, he converted from the religion chose by nations 1-2-3 on the scoreboard to join the religion of 8 on the scoreboard (12 altogether) and he is number 5.



I think the AI should not redline its favorite civic - unless it knows why you want it on its favorite civic and it is strategicly denying a bonus. I like an AI who knows it is against his interest to use his favorite civic when it is not the one that fits his needs (but i would like it even more if it considered his diplomatic needs as well)

WANG KON, my vassal demands of me to change to Vassalage (which i just got the ability to change to).

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:what: Wang Kon's favourite civic is Caste System. He couldn't have asked you to change to Vassalage, right?

It's a pain. I have seen people unwilling to swap out of theology when it wasn't their favorite civic and wondered about it. I wind up having to use spies constantly in my AP games - very annoying.

I did notice a "that will go against everything" message occurring way too often - I guess this explains it.

I'll just add to the discussion by saying that you can always change vassal civics for a price, so it's an option if you force capitulation though of course that's not always possible.

TheMeInTeam said:

I'll just add to the discussion by saying that you can always change vassal civics for a price, so it's an option if you force capitulation though of course that's not always possible.

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Yes, thanks for that info TMIT. They will even change back to the inferior starting civics. And all of that for only half of the price you'd need to pay, if they were not your vassals.

BTW the price is calculated as:

SwitchPrice = 2*(TheirPop+OurPop)+2*(BestCivicValue-OfferedCivicValue)

with the CivicValue = function(a huge number of factors/modifiers) .

I agree completely with Dresden - this should be fixed, regardless of what the developers originally intended. It can't be anything but a bug, and it's really annoying. And I suspect many of those who vote "I don't care" just don't play diplomatically tight games very often...