[GS] [1.0.0.290] MAJOR EXPLOIT: Endless friendship with any AI empire

When a declaration of friendship ends with an AI, the huge bonus to their opinion of you that comes with being a declared friend lingers for one turn afterwards. This means that as long as you renew the friendship on that turn, the AI will always accept, and will remain your friend for as long as you want.

The major consequence of this is that as soon as you've made all the AIs your friend once, which is easy to do with just a gift of gold, you have total control over whether or not they're allowed to go to war with you for the rest of the game, and can abuse them for favourable deals and alliances.

This breaks the game completely once you know about it. Please fix.

 

I've noticed that things are updated for the AI on their turn, not on the player's. So your declaration of friendship expires on your turn, which is between their turns, so it can't update for them until their next turn, which is after you finish your turn. So it doesn't seem so much of a fixable problem as just the way turn updates work.

 

Of course it's a fixable problem. They made the game! I'm sure it's not intended to work this way. The AI instantly changes opinion of you if you denounce them or declare war on them, right?

 

The problem gets even worse when alliances are brought into the mix. This is what Matthias's opinions of me look like on the turn my alliance and friendship with him ends. Not only is there a lingering +18 bonus for supposedly being an ally with him on top of the +5 for friendship, but there's also a +9 bonus for a nonexistent Defensive Pact as well, even though those are no longer separate from alliances(which they should be, but that's another matter)!



Once the game gets into a state like this, there's just no way any AI will ever refuse anything from me again, and they'll gladly not only tolerate my warmongering, but also pay me lavish gifts just to be allowed to join me in my wars while I destroy them one by one in the order I choose (Mansa Musa is my current target). And it's very easy to get to this point, even if the AI starts out unfriendly. It should definitely be possible to be on friendly terms with all the other civs, but you should have to work for it in that case! And that's how it would be if not for this bug.

 

Okay, turns out it's actually more broken than I thought. I went on a City State razing spree to see if I could get my friends to hate me enough to refuse to renew the friendship. But as it turns out, even with huge negative modifiers cancelling out the friendship bonuses, they're STILL friendly on the turn the friendship ends. They will ALWAYS accept a renewed friendship no matter what you do. Fix fix fix!

 

No, I don't think this is a problem.

If you change it, you will have the opposite problem where a century or millennia long friendship and alliance gets disrupted suddenly one day.

In particular, once you reach the future governments, you get a -40 penalty for having different Tier 4 governments. With the proposal you are making, it won't be possible to maintain alliances with someone with a different government.

 

It would never be sudden, you would still have to do something to offend them. And no alliance in the real world has ever lasted for centuries, let alone millennia, that's an absurd idea. Alliances aren't supposed to be permanent team-ups. Tier 3 and 4 governments might shake things up in the endgame, but the middle ages was the most belligerent era in the real world, so it makes little sense that it's the kumbaya age in the current version of Civ VI.

I agree that a small lingering positive modifier for friendship is a good thing that should remain in the game, but the current implementation isn't that - the AI thinks it's still currently your friend/ally after the deal has ended. It's simply far too easy to keep that going forever with any AI you want, which does break the game since you're guaranteed not to be attacked and don't even have to build a military.

I'm not saying that Firaxis should go back to the schizophrenic backstabber AI from the launch of the base game, but there has to be a middle ground somewhere.

 

What happens in your examples, if the human player simply would become inhibited to do diplomacy with this AI on that turn? ("leader is indisposed at the moment and won't receive you")

Perhaps design intention is like you want it; implementation timing is sometimes tricky - my first civ4Rebels were quite evilly: they were generated & moved first and hit 'out of the sun' poor human player before he had any chance to see them ...

 

Well, on the following turn their opinion of you is adjusted to what it should have been, which usually means they're still friendly towards you but not automatically so. Montezuma in that last example remained willing to sign another friendship declaration on the next turn, but his opinion was down to neutral rather than friendly.

A solution like you suggest would be a bad fix though, because players usually want to renew the friendship or alliance immediately if possible.

Ideally, friendships and alliances wouldn't be on a set timer at all, and would last indefinitely until cancelled by either party at will(perhaps with a few turns of delay afterwards before being allowed to declare war). That's how it works in games with better diplomacy, like Civ IV. Forced unbreakable friendships are just a huge vice on the diplomatic system in general as they make everything too rigid.

 

I see. Wanted just to be sure, that in the next turn the leaders are proficient to do their job alias having a "free will".

So can it be interpreted, that in reference to the ability of the leaders to make up their mind, the notification / dialogue for the human player regarding the end of declaration of friendship is premature, 1 turn too early?
Maybe it would help to delay that by one turn (including renumbering / rewording in which turn of the deal it is / respectively it begun).

 

It has nothing to do with the notification. You can't renew a declaration of friendship until it has expired. All delaying the notification would accomplish is annoying the players, who now have to keep track of when they have to renew the deal on their own to make sure they get it in the turn when the AI always says yes. You're suggesting workarounds to a problem that needs to be FIXED, not worked around. Firaxis has to make the AI immediately update its diplomatic opinions at the time when the friendship ends, it's that simple. Oh, and remove the Defensive Pact opinion bonus if they're going to keep them inextricably linked to alliances.

 

Without seeing the source code I'm not going to make any statement on how "simple" this may be.

That can enforce large modifications depending on how the existing code is structured.
Furthermore it may be even near impossible to do it now in THIS TURN, because it would depend on data updated later in THIS TURN (eg. behaviour of other Civs) - perhaps the reason why it is yet done in the NEXT TURN (what you also criticise as too late).

Just in case it was not clear: I would shift the _whole_ friendship treaty one turn into the future (from the point of view of the human player, ie. shift turn number & year of the end of the declaration of friendship). When in the NEXT TURN the AIleader is updated and able to act, the human player receives the notification and can renew the declaration of friendship immediately, (but not earlier, because it can't be renewed until it has expired).

.

 

I want to point out that in Civ V you could renew a Friendship while it was already active (it was just add on to the current Friendship duration). I do not recall people complaining about how that was a problem.

Allowing the current Friendship relationship to determine whether or not the AI wants to renew a friendship is really not that different than what was done in Civ V.

 

I also see no problem per se as long as the AIleader can (and sometimes, given the appropriate circumstances) does decline the prolongation of the friendship treaty.

But if the AIleader cannot decline the prolongation of the friendship treaty on the very first turn after the old treaty expired and does (has to) accept then ALWAYS __unconditionally__ the human proposal, it doesn't feel right to me:
"But as it turns out, even with huge negative modifiers canceling out the friendship bonuses, they're STILL friendly on the turn the friendship ends. They will ALWAYS accept a renewed friendship no matter what you do."
"The AI thinks, it's still currently your friend after the deal has ended. It's simply far too easy to keep that going forever with any AI you want, which does break the game since you're guaranteed not to be attacked and don't even have to build a military."
This even happens, if you don't know about it - if you just often renew the treaty immediately because that is convenient. And then complain "the AIplayers are passive lazybones" ...

I don't think, this is a good reason to abuse the timing of the negotiations, ie. the 'coma state' of the AIleader. If it shall 'be possible to maintain alliances with someone with a different government' perhaps the amount of the '-40 penalty' should be lower?

.

 

Oddly, I've experienced exactly the opposite. With friendships and alliances both, if I try to renew them the turn they expire, or the turn after, I get an automatic refusal. I usually have to wait for the AI to ask to renew it, because they'll refuse me every time.

 

Can you look at the AI opinion modifiers when this happens? It sounds hard to believe based on my experience. I've yet to see an AI refuse a renewed alliance in the current patch.

 

There seems to be a minor undocumented improvement to this issue in the latest patch: The AI no longer gets a separate opinion bonus for Defensive Pact on top of the Ally bonus.