avl8
Prince
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2010
- Messages
- 364
There is secret dimension in single player games which is very fun to uncover.
This is hidden agenda game mechanic.
Every AI has a visible agenda that everyone knows about. And also a secret one that is a secret at the start of the game. Both agendas affect relations with other AI, and more important, AIs' relations with a human player.
And if you know both agendas, you can play around them and get a long term advantage. If you need it, of course.
The main game aspect about uncovering agendas is diplomatic visibility (DV). It is your ability to gain access into a civilization secrets. You can gain more access to AI' secrets during the game via special actions.
Diplomatic visibility is displayed as a part of Intel report interface when you come to talk with the AI. It is called "Access level" there. So DV and access level are actually the same thing.
There are 5 levels of diplomatic visibility:
None. You start here with every AI when you first met them. Without any investment you will know if AI will use a weapon of mass destruction, declare war on someone, conquer a city or found a religion.
Limited. To gain this level and levels below you need to make some investments. You gain knowledge when AI gain an alliance, change government, denounce someone, found a city, make a trade deal or reneged from one.
Open. You will know when AI construct some district, start a wonder, reveal a secret agenda or recruit a great person.
Secret. You will know when AI send their envoy to a certain city-state, trained settlers and finished research of civics and technologies.
Top secret. You will know when AI get a mass destruction weapons, change their entire game goals, prepare for war, launch an actual attack and start projects.
Reaching a certain access level provide knowledge of every level above. So, when you gain top secret level you still know everything from Secret and Open access levels.
Bad news are currently gossip system interface is poorly implemented. There is no ingame united log of events and these events are spammed and dissapear during AI's turn. So if you miss some information, you can access it in a gossip section of each AI, which is kinda awkward.
For example, if you want to know if some AI started a crucial wonder you must scan through all gossip sections in AI interface.
I hope devs will make game interface better in the future (and probably fire its current developing manager).
Good news are all that information is merely a shadow of a true gameplay advantage of playing by both AI agendas: shown and hidden.
As you might notice, you need "Open" level of diplomatic visibility to uncover AI's secret agenda.
How you gain such access?
There are several methods to raise access level, each provide +1 level:
1. Send a delegation to AI. It costs 25 gold on standart speed. The trick is on higher difficulties you can easily miss that opportunity. You have to send a delegation on the first occasion or AI wont accept it. Delegation will also raise AI's opinion on you by a small margin. Which has some long term consequences.
Also, when you research Diplomatic service civic, you can offer AI 50 gold for a permanent embassy, which is working the same way as delegation. And your delegations are gone obsolete by this point (gotta confirm that).
2. Send a trade route to AI. It has opportunity cost of not having an internal trade route. And its actually a strong investment into building good relations with AI Id recommend for every peacemonger if you choose a path of diplomacy.
3. Send a spy on Listening post mission. This is a strong midgame tool, which is available after you research a Diplomatic service civic (renaissance era) and build a spy. Or just play Catherine, she gets her first spy capacity upon researching Castles technology (medieval era).
4. Become an ally of AI. This is a very strong advantage and a source of inspiration moment. Its available when you research Civil service technology (medieval era).
5. Research Printing press technology (renaissance era), which provide +1 access level with every AI civilization in game.
6. Recruit and expand Mary Katherine Goddart, a modern era great merchant. She provides +1 access level with every civilization.
7. Play Catherine de Medichi. She got nice Catherine's Flying squadron signature ability which provides +1 access level with every civilization from the very beginning of a game.
As you may see, early in the game you can uncover a hidden agenda by 1) sending delegation to AI, 2) sending a trade route to AI.
What benefits you gain out of these investment?
1. Bonus influence with AI, good for relations and future trade and research agreements.
2. AI less likely declares on you. You can have less military, less unit maintenance and can focus on expansion and infrastracture. Especially good if you have Classical republic government with no military policies available.
3. You can gain an early friendship declaration, which ensure they wont declare on you until it ends (gotta confirm this one)
And, finally, by raising access level to Open you know what exact hidden agenda AI has.
Here is a list of known hidden agendas:
Air power. AI will build planes, lots of planes. They will like you if you have many planes yourself. Or dislike you if you have less planes than themselves.
City-state ally. AI likes you if you dont compete for the same city-state allegiance. AI will hate you if you get a suzerene status with city-state they are suzeren of. They will love you if you invest envoys, gain bonuses but wont get a suzeren status.
Exploitative. AI will clear tile features, tend to improve tiles. AI will like you if you have a high percentage of improved tiles (more than 50%?) or build a national park (Conservation civic, modern era). You can chop everything, they will love you for it.
Populous. AI will grow its cities to a maximum size. AI will like you if you also have high population (or many medium size cities?). AI wont like you if you play small.
Devout. AI will focus on generating faith. AI will like you for your high faith output. Or hate if you have no faith output.
Heavy industry. AI will focus on production. You already got it: he will like/hate you depending on how much industry you produce.
Ideologue. AI will like others with the same type of government. They won't like if you have a different government and will hate you if you have a different government from the same tier it has (Oligarchy when they have Classical republic).
Money grabber. AI will focus on gold generating practices. They will like others who gain large sums of gold per turn (higher than themselves?).
Environmentalist. AI will build national parks and grow forests (late game feature!). They will hate others who clear tiles out of features and chop forests. Beware!
Civilized. AI is fond of killing barbarians. They will like other barbarian hunters. They will not like others who ignore barbarian encampments.
Additional hidden agendas on behalf of CaiusDrewart:
An another fun find by Roxlimn:
Each hidden agenda at the moment have its unique complain/compliment text. So AI will come to you to compliment or complain with the same exact text which is a function of their hidden agenda. You can find a number of these useful quotes found by BBInMass in his great posts below. Or you can learn the quotes by playing alot with AI.
Id like to add more agendas to the list. Feel free to post more hidden agendas here!
Here are some final thoughts, guys.
First, learning about agendas is useful for any kind of single player game. It is a strong option for peaceful players who wants to focus on building things and invest into infrastracture. If you like playing peacefully, you can try it and will probably like the way it is implemented (or will be balanced in the future).
Second, playing with hidden agendas is not a fun for everyone. If you like playing Grommash/Gilgamesh games with fast rushes you wont like this kind of stuff. Agendas, diplomacy, soft power, trading, building relations has its fans however.
Third, the agenda game mechanic has a great potential for single player. At the moment its interface is not a friendly one. It is playable but not intuitive. I hope devs will make it better in a balance patch or in an expansion. Im pretty sure they will add more agendas and balance current ones. Or our modders do it
And finally, playing with agendas will get you a special achievement Secret Service. You need a top secret status with 5 other civilization.
Guys, I hope you get a useful insight on hidden agendas. Please comment, argue and make suggestions. Have a nice day!
This is hidden agenda game mechanic.
Every AI has a visible agenda that everyone knows about. And also a secret one that is a secret at the start of the game. Both agendas affect relations with other AI, and more important, AIs' relations with a human player.
And if you know both agendas, you can play around them and get a long term advantage. If you need it, of course.
The main game aspect about uncovering agendas is diplomatic visibility (DV). It is your ability to gain access into a civilization secrets. You can gain more access to AI' secrets during the game via special actions.
Diplomatic visibility is displayed as a part of Intel report interface when you come to talk with the AI. It is called "Access level" there. So DV and access level are actually the same thing.
There are 5 levels of diplomatic visibility:
None. You start here with every AI when you first met them. Without any investment you will know if AI will use a weapon of mass destruction, declare war on someone, conquer a city or found a religion.
Limited. To gain this level and levels below you need to make some investments. You gain knowledge when AI gain an alliance, change government, denounce someone, found a city, make a trade deal or reneged from one.
Open. You will know when AI construct some district, start a wonder, reveal a secret agenda or recruit a great person.
Secret. You will know when AI send their envoy to a certain city-state, trained settlers and finished research of civics and technologies.
Top secret. You will know when AI get a mass destruction weapons, change their entire game goals, prepare for war, launch an actual attack and start projects.
Reaching a certain access level provide knowledge of every level above. So, when you gain top secret level you still know everything from Secret and Open access levels.
Bad news are currently gossip system interface is poorly implemented. There is no ingame united log of events and these events are spammed and dissapear during AI's turn. So if you miss some information, you can access it in a gossip section of each AI, which is kinda awkward.
For example, if you want to know if some AI started a crucial wonder you must scan through all gossip sections in AI interface.
I hope devs will make game interface better in the future (and probably fire its current developing manager).
Good news are all that information is merely a shadow of a true gameplay advantage of playing by both AI agendas: shown and hidden.
As you might notice, you need "Open" level of diplomatic visibility to uncover AI's secret agenda.
How you gain such access?
There are several methods to raise access level, each provide +1 level:
1. Send a delegation to AI. It costs 25 gold on standart speed. The trick is on higher difficulties you can easily miss that opportunity. You have to send a delegation on the first occasion or AI wont accept it. Delegation will also raise AI's opinion on you by a small margin. Which has some long term consequences.
Also, when you research Diplomatic service civic, you can offer AI 50 gold for a permanent embassy, which is working the same way as delegation. And your delegations are gone obsolete by this point (gotta confirm that).
2. Send a trade route to AI. It has opportunity cost of not having an internal trade route. And its actually a strong investment into building good relations with AI Id recommend for every peacemonger if you choose a path of diplomacy.
3. Send a spy on Listening post mission. This is a strong midgame tool, which is available after you research a Diplomatic service civic (renaissance era) and build a spy. Or just play Catherine, she gets her first spy capacity upon researching Castles technology (medieval era).
4. Become an ally of AI. This is a very strong advantage and a source of inspiration moment. Its available when you research Civil service technology (medieval era).
5. Research Printing press technology (renaissance era), which provide +1 access level with every AI civilization in game.
6. Recruit and expand Mary Katherine Goddart, a modern era great merchant. She provides +1 access level with every civilization.
7. Play Catherine de Medichi. She got nice Catherine's Flying squadron signature ability which provides +1 access level with every civilization from the very beginning of a game.
As you may see, early in the game you can uncover a hidden agenda by 1) sending delegation to AI, 2) sending a trade route to AI.
What benefits you gain out of these investment?
1. Bonus influence with AI, good for relations and future trade and research agreements.
2. AI less likely declares on you. You can have less military, less unit maintenance and can focus on expansion and infrastracture. Especially good if you have Classical republic government with no military policies available.
3. You can gain an early friendship declaration, which ensure they wont declare on you until it ends (gotta confirm this one)
And, finally, by raising access level to Open you know what exact hidden agenda AI has.
Here is a list of known hidden agendas:
Air power. AI will build planes, lots of planes. They will like you if you have many planes yourself. Or dislike you if you have less planes than themselves.
City-state ally. AI likes you if you dont compete for the same city-state allegiance. AI will hate you if you get a suzerene status with city-state they are suzeren of. They will love you if you invest envoys, gain bonuses but wont get a suzeren status.
Exploitative. AI will clear tile features, tend to improve tiles. AI will like you if you have a high percentage of improved tiles (more than 50%?) or build a national park (Conservation civic, modern era). You can chop everything, they will love you for it.
Populous. AI will grow its cities to a maximum size. AI will like you if you also have high population (or many medium size cities?). AI wont like you if you play small.
Devout. AI will focus on generating faith. AI will like you for your high faith output. Or hate if you have no faith output.
Heavy industry. AI will focus on production. You already got it: he will like/hate you depending on how much industry you produce.
Ideologue. AI will like others with the same type of government. They won't like if you have a different government and will hate you if you have a different government from the same tier it has (Oligarchy when they have Classical republic).
Money grabber. AI will focus on gold generating practices. They will like others who gain large sums of gold per turn (higher than themselves?).
Environmentalist. AI will build national parks and grow forests (late game feature!). They will hate others who clear tiles out of features and chop forests. Beware!
Civilized. AI is fond of killing barbarians. They will like other barbarian hunters. They will not like others who ignore barbarian encampments.
Additional hidden agendas on behalf of CaiusDrewart:
An another fun find by Roxlimn:
Each hidden agenda at the moment have its unique complain/compliment text. So AI will come to you to compliment or complain with the same exact text which is a function of their hidden agenda. You can find a number of these useful quotes found by BBInMass in his great posts below. Or you can learn the quotes by playing alot with AI.
Id like to add more agendas to the list. Feel free to post more hidden agendas here!
Here are some final thoughts, guys.
First, learning about agendas is useful for any kind of single player game. It is a strong option for peaceful players who wants to focus on building things and invest into infrastracture. If you like playing peacefully, you can try it and will probably like the way it is implemented (or will be balanced in the future).
Second, playing with hidden agendas is not a fun for everyone. If you like playing Grommash/Gilgamesh games with fast rushes you wont like this kind of stuff. Agendas, diplomacy, soft power, trading, building relations has its fans however.
Third, the agenda game mechanic has a great potential for single player. At the moment its interface is not a friendly one. It is playable but not intuitive. I hope devs will make it better in a balance patch or in an expansion. Im pretty sure they will add more agendas and balance current ones. Or our modders do it
And finally, playing with agendas will get you a special achievement Secret Service. You need a top secret status with 5 other civilization.
Guys, I hope you get a useful insight on hidden agendas. Please comment, argue and make suggestions. Have a nice day!
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