AI Attitude Reference Visuals

Morgawr

Civ Fanatic
Joined
Apr 6, 2007
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As I've been playing Civ 4 I've found it helpful to have a few tables and charts to refer to before making some important decisions. I tend to ge a peaceful player and use a lot of diplomacy in my games. I have learned that it's important to know how the AI's will behave not only towards the human player but also to one another from the very beginning of the game, especially on higher difficulty levels. This makes gameplay more enjoyable for me. I know that there are players out there who would consider this 'spoiler' info as it reveals maybe too much about AI behavior, but I will go ahead and share them here since there's bound to be some who will appreciate them.

All of this info is from the BTS xml file. I would like to give credit to ori's Warlords AI Leaders Personality Matrix & AI Attitude Explained posts as they were the sources of my initial inspiration for digging into the xml during Warlords and later doing the same for BTs. So my value added here is basically understanding the data and putting it into a compact table/chart form for easy viewing and printing. I have been using these for a while now and recently updated all of them after I got BTS. Note that these tables are not meant to have every bit of info. I only showed those metrics I personally find interesting or useful. I'm posting 4 files:

1. Deals

This one is pretty dense but I wanted to show all on one page what deals the AIs will be willing to make. The letters correspond to the minimum attitudes that are required for that deal. (e.g. A = Annoyed)

Legend-2.jpg


One exception is the "3rd party" columns for going to war and cancelling trade - here the attitudes are the maximum attitude they can have towards the 3rd party. The color coding is indicative of the easiness of that deal.

Deals.jpg


Example: Alexander will go to war for you if he's cautious or better towards you. At the same time, he needs to be pleased or worse towards the AI that you're asking them to go to war with. Pericles, on the other hand, needs to be friendly or better towards you to go war, and annoyed or worse towards the 3rd party. Therefore, Pericles in this case is more difficult to convince to go to war relative to Alexander, which is why I color coded those deals red and Alexander's yellow.

Alex_vs_Pericles.jpg


Note that this table only reflects the attitude requirements for the deals. There are other factors that will affect the deal too of course, such as power ratios for wars. Or, if you're someone's worst enemy, they will never do anything with you. I find this table useful mainly in deciding when/who to bribe. For example, if I want Ragnar to trade me a luxury resource, but he's cautious with me right now, I will not bother to bribe or be nice to him because it's a long way to get him to friendly to trade that resource.

2. Attitude increases

Shows the maximum positive attitude you can expect from shared religion/civic/war. The colors are there to rank the values and simplify reading. Note that I only put these three metrics and left out ones such as open borders, years of peace, etc. attitude bonuses because they do not vary across AIs and thus are not interesting enough.
Note: Add +1 to share religion attitude if AI has holy city.

attitude-3.jpg


3. Tech trade

Summarizes the tech trading preferences of the AIs. I use mainly the first column here as I'm not totally confident about the rest.

tech_trade.jpg


The required % of players with tech comes from iTechTradeKnownPercent and is directionally indicative of how soon the AI will trade a tech, but in my games in does not 100% correspond with when they will trade it. Example: I've seen AI's with a low % value who would not trade the tech even though everyone else had it. I've also seen AI's with high % who would trade it even though according to the % they should't have been.. if anyone out there knows the formula please enlighten me. Btw, if an AI is friendly with you he'll trade anything so these no longer apply. "Too advanced" likelihood compares the iNoTechTradeThreshold values from xml. This is indicative of how likely the AI might say "We're afraid you're geting too advanced", but I'm not sure about the exact formula.

4. Peaceweight

I use this chart to see how the different AI's will 'naturally' get along before any religion or other modifiers. It's a visual representation of how they cluster in terms of their peaceweight. I tend to glance at it to see where an AI stands as opposed to using it to calculate the exact numbers. Basically, every AI has a peaceweight value, and the closer together this value is to another AI's peaceweight value, the better they naturally get along, and vice versa. Their peaceweight attitude modifier towards another AI is 4 minus the absolute value of the difference of the two values. In visual terms, if two leaders are four squares apart, they don't give any peaceweight modifiers. If they're on the same square, they give each other +4. If they're further than 4 squares apart, they give negative values.

The color coding is the base attitude which shows the 'friendliness' of the AI, which is another attitude modifier. There's also warmonger respect which is shown by thick or dashed borders. The lower of the two warmonger respect values are an additional attitude modifier for both AIs. Please note that this is not a comprehensive list of all attitude modifiers for the AI - just the ones that I feel are important because they're invisible but yet inherent in every game.

peaceweight.jpg


(Example: Zara Yaqob vs Ragnar. Their peaceweight adjuster is 4-(6-0) = -2. Furthermore, Ragnar has +2 warmonger respect and Zara has +1, so the lower of the two is +1. Finally, the base attitudes: Ragnar has -1 so for him this makes -2+1-1= -2 towards Zara. Zara has +2 base attitude which makes -2+1+2= +1 towards Ragnar. Like I said before, I don't typically bother to make these calculations, which is why I made this chart to make it easier to visually see where they stand.)

Enjoy!
 
Hey, these are great!

For iTechTradeKnownPercent, I think it used to be always true in Warlords, but there's definitely other factors (I don't know what, and perhaps a random element?) in BtS.

I think the "too advanced" works as: for every tech you obtain by trade, each AI that you've met will increment his counter. If the counter is above that AIs threshold, all techs become redded out with "We fear you are...". Threshold is 5/10/15/20 depending on leader (so Mansa is 20, most the warmongers 5, etc) times a difficulty factor (1.2 for Deity, 1.3 Immortal, ..., 2.0 Settler ). The counter can also decrement spontaneously, so it's possible to get out of WFYBTA after a while, but you'll only get one more trade before you're back in it. Someone correct if I've got this wrong, but that's how I think it works....

Thanks for the helpful charts,
lilnev

edited to correct numbers
 
this is the best explanation of how WFYABTA works in vanilla/warlords that i know of.

i haven't opened your charts, since i'm finding it cool meeting leaders that i don't know inside and out. in warlords, even playing random personalities i sometimes know which personality they got :crazyeye:, so it's fun to have some of that suspense back. but thanks for making it, i'm sure i'll use it someday. i bet hubby'll use it his next game :)
 
Thanks, now it makes sense!

(In the chart the 5/10/15/20 thresholds correspond to the High/Medium/Low/Very Low WFYABTA likelihoods.)
 
Great refference! Wow, very nice work! COngratulations! :goodjob:
 
Do peaceweight calculations work the same way if one of the people involved is human?
 
I don't understand. Could somebody help me out here?

Right, I'm having trouble with Mao. I'd like to get him to attack Hammurabbi. He is Pleased with me, and Cautious towards Hammurabbi, so, according to the reference chart, I should be able to bribe him to war.

But, no, this option is redded out in the diplo screen.

So what's wrong? Are there maybe "hidden" attitude modifiers which are not reflected in the Pleased/Cautious ratings? Maybe he considers that I'm too big and powerful, so it's better for him not to join the war on my side? (Balance-of-power) But then, how do these considerations work?

And one final noob question: what the hell is WFYABTA? I've tried to find a description, but couldn't find any.

TIA!
 
We Fear You Are Becoming Too Advanced = you have traded so many techs from us that you might be trying to exploit our poor judgement in what constitutes a fair trade.

Why something is redded out can be found by hovering cursor over the item. What does it say?
 
Exactly. If you hover over the reddem item in the diplomacy screen you will see why. My guess is it says "We would have nothing to gain", meaning Hammurabi is too powerful for him to attack, even though he likes you enough to go to war for you. (If he were less than Pleased with you, he would say "We just don't like you enough" regardless of whether he would gain from attacking Hammurabi)
 
Very good charts!

@Colee: Is he at war with someone else? What is his explanation when you hover over the option?

@OP: I think Huayna Capac's max + relations for civic is higher. I have experienced +7, atleast before BTS
 
First of all, thanks for all the answers! I'm sorry I didn't get back earlier.

The thing is, the hover-over text is exactly "We just don't like you enough", while, I repeat, he is Pleased with me. According to the chart, he should like me well enough at Pleased to go to war for me. Possibly a bug?

Maybe I really should try to invest into bringing him up to Friendly, and see what happens then...

And no, Mao is not currently at war with anyone.

I would need Mao's help, because although I am leading the game in terms of score, in military power rating Hammurabbi is the strongest, I am second, Mao is third.
 
Do you have any vassals? Does he have any vassals? If it's the case things get more complicated. If you have a vassal and Mao is Cautious with him then the two attitudes would average to Cautious (rounded down) and that would explain why he doesn't like you enough.
 
This just blows my mind. This is probably the solution!! I do have a vassal in fact, guess whom: Isabella. :lol:

I'll have to go home to check this, but this is probably it. How logical and obvious, I just never thought about it.

I'll probably just dump Isabella, I need Mao much more then her tiny little empire.

Thanks a lot man!! :goodjob:
 
Except... that I can't get rid of Isabella. :(

She is my colony, I created her. Do you know of any way to grant full independence to her, i.e. to cancel the vassal agreement with her?

When I go to the diplo screen with her, I click on the Vassal Agreement, but the game says this deal 'cannot currently be canceled'.
 
You can never cancel vassal agreement. The vassal may, depending on conditions, request independence - and you can trigger war then.
 
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