AI should eventually give up on fruitless wars

[MeowTau]

Playing my first diety game with 6 civs. I killed two of them, and got a lot of nice cities from Askia. This just got my score even with 3 of the top AI civs. But they get all aggro about in and in the space of 20 turns I am now at war with all 3. I have not ever seen the AI gang up like this on another AI who happens to be infront.

Not very satisfying honestly to see the Arabians march halfway across the world just to kill me. I have 2 very nice choke points blocking everyone so I will eventually kill them all. I thought maybe I could taker a breather and get the forbidden palace. No wait this is Civ V...

The war cutoff point is ridiculous. Unless you go inflict some serious pain the AI will just remain at war indefinitely. But this is hardly intelligent. Suiciding units into my ballistas is not a good use of resources. But for some reason despite killing troops by the hundreds my advisors think I am losing and the AI is winning. I'm not saying the AI should rollover and give away all their cities. But perhaps offer a reasonable peace treaty with the intent to find a softer target, and maybe try again later with better troops. Otherwise it just results in this cascade where one AI after another declares war and it is not possible to make progress against them, even if they cannot kill any of your units or take your cities.

I certainly see the AI make peace deals with each other when it is a stalemate and nothing has happened. Whatever. Time to go kill everything.

 

[King Jason]

It seems a bit hectic, but I've definitely had many an occasion where the A.I. makes peace with me after I brutally slaughter their advance.

It could possibly be because of the difficulty level. The bonuses on Deity are steep and even though they're suiciding their units against you, it probably isn't affecting their game all that much. Look at some of the screens from Deity games it's obvious the A.I. has units to spare.

I think with the new nature of the game, a lot of it is about surviving an onslaught from the A.I. ~ also, They gang up whenever huge gains are made through conquest and I actually think they do do this to eachother. It's how, through conquest, some civs just snowball into bigger and bigger empires... not because they're set to conquer the world (like siam). but instead as they grow bigger and bigger, other, smaller empires declare war on them to "try and stop them" and ultimately get assimilated.

At least that's what I've noticed.

 

[Syiss_]

I've seen it both ways. I've gone to war with the intention of only taking a juicy city or two, but after murdering his troops without a single loss and taking two cities, its another 30 turns before he will even talk about peace (at which point he offers ALL his other cities, ALL his resources, and ALL his gold). I've also been declared on, sat at a choke point and killed 4-5 units, and got a quick peace offer a few turns later.

From what I can tell, the AI's willingness to end a war isn't linked at all to his likelihood to win it. Willingness to end the war seems to be linked to his overall attitude towards you. The more they hate you, the longer they will wait to enter into peace talks, regardless of how well the war effort is going. Likelihood of winning the war is only linked to what he is willing to offer you for a peace treaty (or what he wants to demand of you). In short:

Attitude determines when peace talks are available, ability to win (or continue) the war determines what gets offered during peace talks.

There may be other factors as well.

 

[Martin Alvito]

I agree that leader stance seems to have a lot to do with it. If it hates you, it won't resolve the war peaceably until things get really dire.

As for dominant AIs continuing to dominate - I think that the problem is that the AI is programmed to prey upon the weak. This is intentional; coding this way precludes optimal buildup by the human player, who is always weak early on. The AI also expects you to respond optimally to its DOWs. Two AIs have a hard time forging a coalition to defeat a third strong AI because the AI that does not receive the DOW figures you will do the sensible thing, hit it while its guard is down, and cripple it. So it fails to declare or instead tries to prey upon the weak target itself. Presumably, it realizes that it can call off that war at any time if necessary, but it will not be able to do so if it attacks the strong civ.

The AI's path makes sense until the game is reduced to three players. The AI should recognize at that point that the best thing to do is band together to defeat the strong civ. It should immediately try to forge a Pact of Cooperation and a Pact of Secrecy with you if you are not in the lead, as well as a Defensive Pact if available. In my experience, it does not.

 

[Show]

Depends on the AI personality and how the war is going, if your always entrenched in your territory, they are less likely to ask for peace than if you are in their territory taking out their cities and defenses and it sure makes a lot of sense to me.

As for deity, they have a lot of units but they do offer all they possess for peace just as in other difficulties, especially if you start taking their cities out.

 

[dannythefool]

I've seen it offer peace when it wasn't going anywhere before.

Problem is just that it doesn't necessarily take its defeats into account. It almost looks like it just bases the offer on a comparison based on strength, so in games where I defend myself successfully with two or three units, the AI will eventually offer peace, but also normally wants everything I have in return.

 

[Syiss_]

I've seen it offer peace when it wasn't going anywhere before.

Problem is just that it doesn't necessarily take its defeats into account. It almost looks like it just bases the offer on a comparison based on strength, so in games where I defend myself successfully with two or three units, the AI will eventually offer peace, but also normally wants everything I have in return.

This is a function of what I described above. The AI doesn't necessarily hate you so much that he wants to continue the war and hes not on a path for domination victory, so he is willing to talk about peace. However, even though you have thoroughly stomped him with an inferior force, if he still has more units than you he will consider himself the stronger party, and demand concessions from you for the peace treaty.

What I think would go a long way towards making AI war behavior more logical (and beneficial to them) is if they would take into consideration their victory path. Obviously some AI's only get into a war because they were bribed by another party or you made them mad with a series of hostile behaviors (settling too near to them, army too close, befriending their ally city state, general closeness of borders, etc). This would allow them to get out of a losing war or a war that isn't generally in their best interests even if they have more total power than you.

As it stands, when an AI declares war, basically the only way they are getting out of it is if you destroy their army and take a city or two. At that point, they are basically out of the running for winning the game. It doesn't help that the AI will just sit and spam more and more units the entire war no matter little progress they make. This means that even if you DONT eventually attack them back, they will continue to waste hammers and gold on you, when they could be pursuing a different victory path.

 

[MeowTau]

Well count me impressed.

I played out the game and hunkered down with my ill gotten gains. I upgraded my 6 legions to longswordsman and 2 catapults to cannons (I could only find 8 iron!! so frustrating). Without inflicting any damage whatsoever other than their units slowly crashing against my cities, the AI players simultaneously asked for peace, and offered some decent gold and resources (though no cities, which is a good thing).

So low military might, and too much gain seem to be a trigger for war - everyone hated me within a few turns of me jumping from 4 to 10 towns. But the cooler thing is increasing military power appears to be a trigger to end the war even if I cannot thrash them. Next time I'm in this situation I'm going to build half a dozen cavalry even though I didn't have much use for them. And I may itch to upgrade my powerful UU's a bit earlier than necessary as I have a feeling the AI probably just values them as regular swordsman or catapults.

The more I play this game the more polish I feel beneath. Now if the AI could just make war decently we'd be set.