Is there any logic to an AI DoW?

I'm in the midst of finishing up a game on the second run-through. I got stuck on a decent-sized continent with Ragnar and the other six civs sharing two bigger ones. The first time through I thought I was doing decently enough until he DoW'd and totally spanked me. Since I had slacked off on my military the first time, the second time through I made a serious effort to keep my power rating up and made really nice with him. I had him up at Friendly and kept him there (Open Borders, Brothers and Sisters of the faith, fair trade, helped us - the whole shootin' match). Not a single negative diplo aside from the usual borders penalty. The RNG actually behaved on the random events until late in the game when I got the jilted bride with Zara. Then a couple of turns later he just up and DoW'd me. As soon as he did, I checked to see if it might have been some other civ being an instigator, but I was the only civ he had contact with at that point. Does the AI just sit back and go, "Hmmm. It's 1300 AD and I haven't pillaged anyone yet. Think I'll go do something about that." Or is Ragnar just another psycho like Monty?

The outcome of the second go-around was that I spanked and vassalized his hairy butt and left him with a couple or three cities out on some islands that it wasn't worth the hassle to take. If I can figure out how to get a foothold on their continent and take three or four good cities, I think I'll gift those to him and let him go after Zara and/or Augustus. But as it stands, I'll probably get a culture win before I can see whether that will work - bummer.

Ragnar is simply a psycho of Montezuman proportions.

Mayhaps he dropped to pleased for one measly turn and on that very turn decided to go to war with you. Even if he was bumped by up to friendly immediately afterwards, the decision was already made.

Ragnar and Shaka are much more dangerous than Monty. They both build a formidable army before attacking, Monty just attacks whenever he sees a fairly lightly defended city.

Whatever logic is used, it's flawed. I've seen AIs declare on other AIs with a fraction of their power (less commonly declare on me) and get stomped. Why would you declare with a tech deficit and a smaller army?

Well, the only logic behind a player DoW is "more land", even if it means betraying a friendly AI, so I'd be grateful that there's any logic at all behind AI DoW's and that AI's are at least semi-trustworthy.

Strangely enough I always get along with Ragnar.

Monty and friends declare war when the angle between the moon and a pickle jar is right.

Others declare because they don't like you, and thus want you to come and kill them.

That's the logic.

I had reason to look into this recently. If you're not a player in SGOTM07, you can click here to read about it. Once that game is officially over I may just turn it into a strategy article.

EDIT: Caveat - this is all based on Vanilla, and may well have changed for BtS.

Well:

-Ragnar is a quite agressive dude. Not as much as Shaka or Monty, but his blood boils fast ( I would compare him to Napoleon ) and IIRC he can plan a war being pleased with the target.
-You were his only possible target.

What were you expecting?

And I see that you treted him accordingly

Niklas said:

I had reason to look into this recently. If you're not a player in SGOTM07, you can click here to read about it. Once that game is officially over I may just turn it into a strategy article.

EDIT: Caveat - this is all based on Vanilla, and may well have changed for BtS.

Click to expand...

I think they have a bit. I was playing with my friend on monarch and we watched Sitting Bull DoW a technologically superior and CONSIDERABLY more powerful Peter. Neither of us bribed him, and the other remaining AIs didn't have anything they could have given him that I'm aware of. Nobody in the world was at war either so no dogpile threshold. Also, they were on separate continents. With Sitting Bull having a .6-.8 of Peters power rating if the functionality you describe in that thread were true he wouldn't have any chance of being the aggressor at all (though Peter might). That's why I was so surprised to see the weaker AI declare.

In any event, not much happened in that war...couple sunk ships and eventually they ended it without a city captured on either side, but I think this suggests the code was tweaked in the expansions, or at least in BTS.

Interesting you should bring that up - it actually fits perfectly with what I described. Why? Because checking up the XML, Sitting Bull is an oddity:
Apparently Sitting Bull has no qualms ever about attacking powerful overseas opponents. So there you have your reason.

Haha I see. So in BTS the code might not be different, but at least one BTS leader had his values set within it sufficiently to do erratic things. Makes sense then.

Who cares? Sitting bull is a rock.


A 500 ton rock.


Made out of concrete.



RE-BAR concrete.


Anchored to a landmass.

Situation: Monarch, Napoleon. Sharing continent with Cyrus, Alex and Montezuma. At the earliest turns, I declared war to Alex and Cyrus twice just to steal them two workers each, leaving them furious for the rest of the game if it wasn't for the fact that they became my vassals shortly later on. (That worker theft really weakened them bad, btw!!). I established my empire up north, sharing the continent with Montezuma, to whom I had been able to steal only one worker very early inthe sqame way.

So now then: Montezuma never declared war on me ever again. Possible reasons are the following:

However, I have the feeling that there is a game modifier for Diplomacy that makes certain Leaders really appreciate only strength, rather than anything else. Being friendly with those leaders (Ragnar, Napoleon, Montezuma...) is of no particular meaning unless you've shown some strength earlier, or simply have a strong army now, only in which case their being friendly or pleased actually would mean something. God knows Gandhi would hardly attack you if he's pleased, regardless of your strength..that's not the case with those other "psychos".

But Again, in my game, Montezuma turned out to be quite a predictable, pleased friend with the following circumstances given:


I'm not sure if the "declared war to him first" factor exists in some hidden way, but the fact that I never opened my borders to him may well have played an important role, leaving him never too sure of how strong I really am.

Conclusion: I believe showing mistrust to those psychos leaves them pleased with you. I really wouldn't be surprised if there's a computational implementation to this inthe game, since it is a frequent character trait in real politics: some leaders respect strength and realism, rather than idealsit optimism.

Situation: Monarch, Napoleon. Sharing continent with Cyrus, Alex and Montezuma. At the earliest turns, I declared war to Alex and Cyrus twice just to steal them two workers each, leaving them furious for the rest of the game if it wasn't for the fact that they became my vassals shortly later on. (That worker theft really weakened them bad, btw!!). I established my empire up north, sharing the continent with Montezuma, to whom I had been able to steal only one worker very early inthe sqame way.

So now then: Montezuma never declared war on me ever again. Possible reasons are the following:

However, I have the feeling that there is a game modifier for Diplomacy that makes certain Leaders really appreciate only strength, rather than anything else. Being friendly with those leaders (Ragnar, Napoleon, Montezuma...) is of no particular meaning unless you've shown some strength earlier, or simply have a strong army now, only in which case their being friendly or pleased actually would mean something. God knows Gandhi would hardly attack you if he's pleased, regardless of your strength..that's not the case with those other "psychos".

But Again, in my game, Montezuma turned out to be quite a predictable, pleased friend with the following circumstances given:


I'm not sure if the "declared war to him first" factor exists in some hidden way, but the fact that I never opened my borders to him may well have played an important role, leaving him never too sure of how strong I really am.

Conclusion: I believe showing mistrust to those psychos leaves them pleased with you. I really wouldn't be surprised if there's a computational implementation to this inthe game, since it is a frequent character trait in real politics: some leaders respect strength and realism, rather than idealsit optimism.

^^All of the above is not true. None of the default AI leader will plot a war vs another player if friendly. All the rest resumes to probabilities modulating diplo stats and actual strength ratios

(with rolo)

I'm playing the noble's club Catherine game, and Ragnar DOWs me out of nowhere. He's completely boxed in by Shaka and Pacal, and I have the highest power rating and a tech lead. WTH Then it dawns on me: although all of them are pleased with me (I founded confucianism and everyone adopted it), they're all in HR and I'm in rep. Apparently the fav civic modifier trumps any sort of reasonable logic for these aggressive AIs (Pacal is very weak - Ragnar could have rolled over him with no problem at all). Now, I don't mean that fav civic BY ITSELF prevented him from DOWing Shaka or Pacal - obviously, it put him at friendly with them vs pleased with me. But that just seems like weak logic to me with regard to a psycho like Ragnar. I would think that the close borders modifier (with Shaka and Pacal) combined with Pacal's low power and my high power would make Pacal the more logical target. Obviously, it's not coded that way.

At the time, I was just getting ready to take Shaka out, so Ragnar's DOW was an annoyance. Now I have all of their capitals and they're my vassals.

What rolo said. Check the link I posted earlier in this thread for the full story.

^rolo,indeed, it might be helpful to add:

- Ais don't decide to declare at friendly, however they can declare at friendly in 2 cases that i know of:

- They were not friendly with you at the time they decided to declare on you (wheooh).
- You have vassal(s) toward whom they're not friendly, in this case they really have some averaged attitude towards you and the vassals, don't know the formula for this attitude.