Insane AI is growing on me

[wurstburst]

Call me strange, but I'm starting to enjoy the insane "diplomacy" exhibited by the other civs. Now I piss them off intentionally, just to get some interesting action going.

Currently playing a game as China, pangea, emperor. Took out France and Germany early. Rome is near me where Germany used to be, Persia and Iriquois are on another border and America is around, but not explored yet. There's another civ, but I haven't met them yet - probably boxed in by America somewhere off the map.

Anyway, as I continued my horse war, I DoW'ed on Rome - my third DoW of the game. Predictably enough, America, Persia and Iriquois all DoW'ed me within the space of a few turns, despite me having good relations with all of them up to that point. I'm sure half of them hated Rome, Germany and/or France.

I was in 4th place on military behind all the other civs and fighting a 3 front war and trying to protect my maritime CS ally at the same time. Got Rome to concede a fair peace, after taking 2 of it's cities and finally passing it in military. Got some swordsman and archers out to support the happy horsemen. About 8 turns away from popping to industrial and taking communism - then ballistic!

I'm having a great time.

 

[Jaycob]

I agree, I like that the AI plays to win and starts plotting wars when you threaten their position in any way.. I don't see what difference being able to see their relations to you is however... either the AI is likely to declare war on you or not. There is no magical secret to the AI system, the AIs are psycho

 

[testdummy653]

I agree, I like that the AI plays to win and starts plotting wars when you threaten their position in any way.. I don't see what difference being able to see their relations to you is however... either the AI is likely to declare war on you or not. There is no magical secret to the AI system, the AIs are psycho

There is a pattern, it just require a little write down of the AI threats....


Take a look at this thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=397736
I wrote down all the AI threats PoS, DoW, you can see a pattern on when and how the AI decides wars. It's a little off the topic of the original thread, but it also has some interest things to help understand the game.

Edit: I should specify that you would want to look at Greece: Who threaten me (a few times before going to war) and have a look at Aztecs and the Ottomans (they too ask for PoS against each before war).

 

[Jaycob]

Well certainly there is some logic to who the AI declares on. Asking for a pact of secrecy and their comments when you speak with their leader are obvious giveaways. The reason I call them psycho is because they can turn on each other and you at the flip of a coin. It is common for a relationship to deteriorate from "Greetings, great leader!" to "What do you want?" in less than 10 turns.... and war shortly thereafter. And given the lack of production in this game, you better have a military ready to deal with any possible backstab.

 

[testdummy653]

Well certainly there is some logic to who the AI declares on. Asking for a pact of secrecy and their comments when you speak with their leader are obvious giveaways. The reason I call them psycho is because they can turn on each other and you at the flip of a coin. It is common for a relationship to deteriorate from "Greetings, great leader!" to "What do you want?" in less than 10 turns.... and war shortly thereafter. And given the lack of production in this game, you better have a military ready to deal with any possible backstab.

Think of this way....

Do you ever declare war on someone in the game for no reason other than for conquest?
Your motives are not known to AI, and neither are their motives known to you.

Also, I would like to point out if you actually visited my experimental thread, they ask for PoS, 3 or 4 times, before going to war, both sides. So the AI does kinda know that they are about to go to war. (And who they are about to go war with).

 

[Jaycob]

I did look at your experimental thread and I'm not sure what you are trying to prove (not that you can prove anything from 1 or even 10 games.) It goes without saying that AIs plan wars.

 

[testdummy653]

Well, this is going to be off topic, a tad..

But your right, it hard to use one game to prove anything. But 10 games, that different story, I'm not very good with stats nor statistical testing.(i had two semester of Stats)

I played at least number 28 games now in 210 hours, from settler to immortal (currently working on beating Immortal). And its safe to say that what occurred in that game is what commonly occurs in most of those 28 games. What wasn't common i pointed out in the thread, such as what AI's I got to play against, having so many Conquest AI's was different then what i randomly get.

The reason, I post on this forum, and I post a lot, is so i can get feedback, on things such as my AI victory condition theory, and my experiment thread, so people can be like your wrong, my games never go like this or they can say that how it happens for me too.

Sorry to throw that wall of text at you.

Back on topic:
The AI of course plans wars, but they also know when another AI is mad, or unhappy with them. For example in my thread/game, i talked about the Ottoman and the Aztecs. The Ottomans put a city on the Aztecs island(that and they were in very close proximity), after that PoS and PoW were flying at me left right from both sides. Both sides knew that war was coming. Of course it didn't help that Aztecs were an Conquest AI....

 

[Jaycob]

The AI does indeed favor some AIs over others due to certain actions. Still not sure what you are trying to prove The thing is though, the AI will often settle right next to you, complain, and then war is likely no matter what you do. In IV, it took a good investment to be safe from war with a Civ. In V, it is impossible to have any semblance of control on the diplo situation. It's like playing aggressive AI in IV with all Montezuma opponents. Every game.

You would think this would make the diplo victory almost impossible. In fact, it is so easy I never even consider diplomacy a valid victory condition. Simply throw money at the CS and you win despite that your opponent (on Deity at least) could buy the entire world but chooses to sit on 5K+ treasuries instead.

 

[testdummy653]

The AI does indeed favor some AIs over others due to certain actions. Still not sure what you are trying to prove

In this thread:
The AI of course plans wars, but they also know when another AI is mad, or unhappy with them.

Overall (in the two threads, i have going elsewhere):

That AI does have its quirks, but it does appear act rationally, in most cases.
Combat not counting, as one of those cases.

The thing is though, the AI will often settle right next to you, complain, and then war is likely no matter what you do. In IV, it took a good investment to be safe from war with a Civ. It's like playing aggressive AI in IV with all Montezuma opponents.

Haha, in Civ III none of the AI would declare war on each other, they would only declare war on me. I don't miss that.... But yes the Conquest AI, and the AI in general is very aggressive in CiV.

In V, it is impossible to have any semblance of control on the diplo situation.

I disagree with you here, you do have control on the situation. A lot more than you think. If i a weaker nation, i usually go for some defensive pact with the non-hostile AIs (this is risky, but it deters attack on me). I trade luxuries this seem to encourage friendship, and provide mutual respect. I do not trade open border, this allow me to hide my no military, play style. (seriously, I won a cultural victory with a warrior and frigate). I avoid planting city near enemy territories. I avoid taking City-states near more hostile AIs. I gift luxury resources to AIs that cannot afford it(yes, i'm bono). I keep up research agreement with those who worst off than me(this also seem to provide an incentive not to declare war).

None of those things really put me in a big disadvantage. And sure you can argue none of those things guarantee protection, but I can say that it does help to hinder wars.

I should mention, that best way in life, and in this game, to prevent a war, is to be prepared for war.

 

[smellymummy]

with logging enabled you can see the AI's changing approaches to other players (human, majors, minors) turn by turn. admittedly i havent looked at it often, but there's some key words to look for when the AI switched on to conquer something, for example this line

107, Songhai, --- Seoul, ** CONQUEST **, ---, , , , TGT Soft, WGL Conquest, , PRX Neighbors, , , ---, Ignore, 9, Friendly, -8, Protective, -25, Conquest, 44

songhai has seoul seoul set for conquering is how i read that (caps ** conquest and then conquest 44 vs friendly -8)

 

[testdummy653]

with logging enabled you can see the AI's changing approaches to other players (human, majors, minors) turn by turn. admittedly i havent looked at it often, but there's some key words to look for when the AI switched on to conquer something, for example this line

107, Songhai, --- Seoul, ** CONQUEST **, ---, , , , TGT Soft, WGL Conquest, , PRX Neighbors, , , ---, Ignore, 9, Friendly, -8, Protective, -25, Conquest, 44

songhai has seoul seoul set for conquering is how i read that (caps ** conquest and then conquest 44 vs friendly -8)

Please tell me how to do this... (if its a mod don't bother, you and I both know i can't download mods)

 

[smellymummy]

its not a mod, you just turn on logging (set the 0s to 1s) in the config.ini file found in your documents/my games/civ 5

logs are then written to the documents/my games/civ 5/logs directory

 

[Bandit17]

Testdummy653: (quote) I should mention, that best way in life, and in this game, to prevent a war, is to be prepared for war.

I would argue that having the means for war can also lead to a more likely chance of using those means. But I understand your point. Having a strong military will deter most civs from attacking. Your other points are also on point even if you can't control how close civs can settle near you sometimes. Very annoying to have Siam drop a city in the middle of your empire! Those damn Siamese...

 

[testdummy653]

Testdummy653: (quote) I should mention, that best way in life, and in this game, to prevent a war, is to be prepared for war.

I would argue that having the means for war can also lead to a more likely chance of using those means.

I agree with you.

But I understand your point. Having a strong military will deter most civs from attacking. Your other points are also on point even if you can't control how close civs can settle near you sometimes. Very annoying to have Siam drop a city in the middle of your empire! Those damn Siamese...

Thats when i go to war...

its not a mod, you just turn on logging (set the 0s to 1s) in the config.ini file found in your documents/my games/civ 5

logs are then written to the documents/my games/civ 5/logs directory

Ahhh that doesn't work either.....

 

[smellymummy]

too bad theres alot of ai diplo stuff that gets logged

 

[boehj]

It gets worse. I recently played a Emperor game and Washington was close by. I think turn 6 his scout showed up and said hello. So I dialled him up to see if I could swing a PoC. He was already listed as 'HOSTILE'. About turn 12-15 he pipes up with 'Your egregious acts of agression have not gone unnoticed' or some such. And that was it. He DOW'd my ass.

No rhyme nor reason to that exchange that I could make out.

 

[testdummy653]

too bad theres alot of ai diplo stuff that gets logged

I know: It would help so much.

Off topic:
I figured out the problem to my mods and why I can do stuff, though: I run steam, and CiV through the Administrator, the files are saved on that account, and i can only access those files when i run CiV. I'm not sure why mods, won't download, and the saves will be saved and kept in that account. But i can't access any of the games logs, because it tied into that account

If i decided to run it normal, the game won't update itself (when needed), nor will i have access to all my saves and stuff. Sometimes other games won't run with being run through the admin account.

Edit: There is a master password for the account, which i do not know.

 

[wurstburst]

That AI does have its quirks, but it does appear act rationally, in most cases.

You know, I find it admirable that you are spending the effort to attempt to figure out what the AI is doing and why. But really, this is like trying to figure out the thought process of Charles Manson. You can think you understand. He can hand you his diary (log) and you can read all the explanations. But in the end, he's still a nut case and you don't understand anything.

Examples: In this game America threatened me for massing on his borders. My troops were too close to his civ, I guess. A perfectly rational reason him to like me less, you might say. However, at the time, I still had not discovered the location of his civ and the source of the threat was that one of his units was scouting out MY territory. So, now the AI gets mad at you for having the nerve to be walking around near your own territory when they scout you out.

In another game, I did one early DoW against a close neighbor. I had PoC and good trading agreements with everyone else. In the span of a few turns, I had 4 firm friends DoW on me (none of whom were particulary close and 2 of whom I had not yet located). THEN, to top it all off, for the rest of the game, it was ME labeled as a warmonger, for having the nerve to get gang DoW'ed by the loonies.

During a war, I had an AI demand all my cities, luxuries and gold from me to settle for peace, even after I knocked out tons of their units and taken several of their cities. And then, the very next turn, they do a complete turnabout and they settle for peace, giving me a dozen cities.

We all know about the AI threats that occur for settling too close, when THEY settle too close to YOU from half-way across the world.

I've had the AI settle a city right between 2 formations of my army, during the middle of a war with me. There was literally just enough space to fit in a city, without having one of my military units actually inside their new borders. Needless to say, the city (and the newly garrisoned swordsman they left there) lasted a total of 1 turn.

So, now I just go with it and assume they are all crazy. Much less stressful.

 

[boehj]

So, now I just go with it and assume they are all crazy. Much less stressful.

You know what I like? That you can still set 'random personalities'. They seem pretty random as is!

 

[wurstburst]

Another insanity example from my current game.

America along with 3 other civs is at war with me. During the war, America plants 3 cities. Keep in mind, prior to the war, they were outside my explored region. The first they pass Hiawatha and Persia and plop a city down next to those civs. Then, they go even further, and pass by Rome and plunk one down there. Finally, they go as far as they can go - across the entire pangea map - from end to end, and drop a city right on the doorstep of my capital. Not on the edge of my far outposts. Not near a secondary city of mine. No, that might actually be sensible in some alternate reality. No. In the middle of a war, they drop a city a few tiles away from my well defended capital.

Thanks for the city.