AI declares war at 'Pleased'?

[Knayr]

Is this something that happens in RI? I know it couldn't happen in BTS.

We were just playing a duo game 2v2v2v2v2v2, and both had 'Pleased' status with both of the partner nations on our Western border, but they backstabbed anyway.

What gives?

 

[Shuikkanen]

Sure they can. It depends on the personality of the leader. Some people will never attack anyone at 'Pleased' status. Some will never attack anyone at 'Friendly'.
And some, like say Stalin, I suppose, will happily backstab their best buddies in the back.

What would the point of defining their personality be if this weren't possible, really?

 

[Knayr]

Alright, thanks for the reply.

Sucks to have a game implode because of two war declarations within a dozen turns of each other from opposite sides when one clearly had amiable diplomatic relations. Particularly when around turn 200 there's no way you can have the economy needed to field enough units to stay at military strength parity against an AI who doesn't really have to pay maintenance. We were both over our standing army limits by several units and still couldn't break ~.7 or so.

Monarch.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Monarch.

Well, yeah, <iAIUnitCostPercent>95</iAIUnitCostPercent> on Monarch (just copied directly from CIV4HandicapInfo.xml) does give AI that huge 5% advantage.

Most likely the difference was due to indirect stuff like the number of cities / economy size and the non-unit stuff affecting military strength, like doctrines/traditions founded.

BTW, AI could definitely attack in vanilla on pleased too. Neither the AI war declaration algorithms, nor the vanilla-available leader personalities have been tweaked in a major way in RI. One thing players (including myself!) definitely need at this point is a way to appraise AI personality in-game in any other way than by trial and error. I am thinking of including some key leader AI personality facts in their pedia pages.

Edit: sorry, I actually re-checked, and as far as unit upkeep is concerned, AI at Monarch indeed has a more sizeable 20% advantage. <iAIUnitSupplyPercent>80</iAIUnitSupplyPercent> (though a defensive war at 0.7 is in my experience very winnable).

 

[Knayr]

Thanks for the info.

I agree that a defensive war at 0.7 is winnable. We had just crushed the first army from the east in about seven or eight turns. They wouldn't talk peace, though, and while we were committed on that front got backstabbed from the west by our quadruple-pleased neighbors. We could not stop them, too, and got rolled up.

Both were defensive wars. The frustration stems from having an otherwise very favorable map, doing everything in our power to make friends and stave off aggression, and being completely unsuccessful. My friend and I have thousands of hours in BTS, and probably another thousand in RI since we discovered it last year. Quite a few games. We're not new. We played BTS on Emperor (because Immortal+ is just outrageous) and play RI on Monarch.

We just really don't like it when conditions align that make the game unwinnable no matter what we had done. If there's no way to secure a reliable diplomatic relationship on one front and it's economically impossible to have enough forces to fight both, how are you supposed to handle opponents on both sides? They had a total of three nations on the continent to our two, and brought offensive stacks of eight and ten, respectively from the east and west. Both armies exceeded rural logistics.

I'm obviously a bit salty, but please don't take any of this as an attack on the balance of the mod. It's a true delight, and has become the measuring stick for any future offers. V and VI are of almost no interest now because of the relative absence of real depth.

The same thing happened with XCOM: Long War. Goddamn is that mod amazing.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Lately I've been thinking a lot about how diplomacy in Civ (in all of the series) is extremely approximate. Where in all other areas players have access to all of the relevant data, diplomacy leaves them basically blind. After Paradox streamlined their diplomatic feedback in their titles starting with EU4, I saw that this "blind" approach to AI diplomacy isn't necessary, nor does it add anything meaningful to the game. Unfortunately, a lot of diplomacy-related stuff in Civ is hard-coded, but at least more feedback can probably be managed.

 

[plasmacannon]

Reminds me of a game with raging barbarians turned on. Fighting stacks of 4 is fun.
Somewhere on the maps there is usually a hoard of 20+ units running around.
When it spawns near, look out! LOL!
Early on it can be a civ killer.

 

[2popbulb]

In my last Noble game aztecs DoWed on me while being at pleased and they were already at war with mongols. I easily defended myself but war never ended because they were much more powerful than me(0.5) I don't understand how could they produce so many units,have so many cities(35+ cities on 4 continents) and a vassal without crashing their economy? I had 14 cities and there was no way I could outproduce them. Maybe I should play with "high sea level" on so AI's can't have too many cities.

 

[Shuikkanen]

Short answer: There's a point where, if you get past it, your economic growth surpasses the economic drawbacks of acquiring new cities because the *relative* increase in costs gets smaller. Then you can just sort of snowball.

 

[2popbulb]

Research cost increases if you build/conquer more cities(unless you turn that option off). I gave up on this game because i couldn't research everything in time to build spaceship. And my bpt wasn't bad,it was more than 2000 bpt. Maybe I should try to play without that option on.