AIs almost never fight each other

[Grimus]

If the AI's went at each other aggressively, they would just weaken each other and make it easier for the single, human player to take advantage of.

I think the AI being less aggressive towards each other is a good thing (with the AI implemented now).

 

[OTAKUjbski]

If the AI's went at each other aggressively, they would just weaken each other and make it easier for the single, human player to take advantage of.

I think the AI being less aggressive towards each other is a good thing (with the AI implemented now).

You are correct in saying "With the AI implemented now."

Unless the AI is insanely more advanced than their opponent or has them massively outnumbered, they don't win wars -- they just weaken themselves and their opponent.

I have seen very few games in which the words "... civilization has been destroyed" has followed any military action other than my own.

What it really comes down to is that the AI is just plain stoopid.

Not sure how much it'll help, but I posted a similar rant here:

Can a non-cheating AI be made?

If the AI could be taught how to defend itself and maybe even how to destroy and assimilate other civilizations, then AI versus AI warfare would no equate to 'helping the humans'.

 

[Spitefire]

if you set the ai number to max on a duel sized map pangiea style and use the world builder to set all AIs to war with each other and you and just turtle for several turns with a warrior and the AIs will let themselves be killed by exploreing warriors from other civs (after i did this myself i ended up with just one enemy left with one city).

 

[Yeosol]

I Think in general the AI dose tend to war less then it should. However as said before if you are playing against the right Civs you will see alot of war. In my most recent game I put all the crazyest leaders I could think of (huge, Pangea, Epic, Prince, 14 civs,<--Couple extra civs for closer borders) Alexander, Gengis, Ragnar, Shaka, Brenus, Stalin, Mahmed, Isabella, Ramsees, and of course Montezuma. Then a few peacful ones for them to pick on, Louise, Wang Kong and Bizmark. I played rome.

The game recently exploded into the most agressive game iv seen. (at around 400ad right now). Alex and Louis are fighting Mahmed. Shaka and Ragnar were fighting wang kon, beat him to one city left then kon vassalized with bizmark making it a 2 on 2. Gengis is at war with Stalin. And I took out monty .
Alex had also fought wang kon before and Ragnar had fought Louis.

As much fun as this game is it's also prity intense and one minded. With so much war the powerlevels are out of control. I just fought a succesful war against monty and even with all thouse pratorians leftover my powerlevel is one of the lowest. Also if you wanted to play a more peaceful stratagy in this game you would trouble because in order not to be under constate attack you need to maintain a huge army.

I am running betterAI so that might also factor in.

 

[DilithiumDad]

These complaints are totally opposite of my experience in Warlords! I play at Prince level, standard fractal map, standard number of random AI, all other settings on medium. The AI always fight, and usually this means that one will arise victorious into one huge mean tough AI civ that then goes after me! It's reminiscent of Alpha Centauri where The Hive or The Drones would create a vast AI empire, except the AI is much superior to Alpha Centauri.

I really have no idea what the compaints are about?

 

[Naismith]

I am running betterAI so that might also factor in.

I think it does, at least in terms of how many units the AI's build. I only played one game using BetterAI, but that was the main thing I noticed - the AI's building more military.

 

[Moon Pine]

If the AI's went at each other aggressively, they would just weaken each other and make it easier for the single, human player to take advantage of.

I think the AI being less aggressive towards each other is a good thing (with the AI implemented now).

Montezuma had vassaled all the civs around me by war before I could do something with him in last Monarch Test.......And when I tried to attack Viking, he offer vassal to Montezuma and the all the other civs on the damned Continent declare war on me

 

[Arkatakor]

These complaints are totally opposite of my experience in Warlords! I play at Prince level, standard fractal map, standard number of random AI, all other settings on medium. The AI always fight, and usually this means that one will arise victorious into one huge mean tough AI civ that then goes after me! It's reminiscent of Alpha Centauri where The Hive or The Drones would create a vast AI empire, except the AI is much superior to Alpha Centauri.

I really have no idea what the compaints are about?

How many games have you played? My settings are pretty much all default (7 civs, fractal, standard map, Prince). I have played 100's of games on Warlord alone (no joke). I would say based on my experience that:

1) 70% do not have ANY inter AI wars in the ENTIRE game. 70% is HUGE. It should be like 10% or less as it was in Civ3.

2) 20-30% of my games might have a couple of wars between two particular Civs. The rest of the Civs will remain at peace for 6000 years of course. 20-30% is minority. That should not be the case.

3) About 5-10% of my games have multiple wars going on between multiple Civs.

4) About 1-3% are games where an entire Civ gets destroyed (!!). Hell, this used to happen at least 50% in Civ3.

It took the thread starter only 1 game in 6 months to be reminded why he quit, which was because of the AI passiveness. This has also been my experience.

Finally, as stated before, I dont want to have to tweak my settings by increasing difficulty, or choosing aggro civs or smaller maps / pangea to see wars. The default settings for AI inter-diplomacy need to be tweaked.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

In addition to what Arkatakor said above, I'd like to present an addition war-related percentage in the form of two questions. I'm hoping your answers bring into perspective why this topic is so important.

How often can you win without waging war?

How often can the AI win without waging war?


I think you'll find your first answer to be significantly less than to the second.

 

[T.A JONES]

If the program could focus on less pillage and more city attack that would help more then one might realize.To many pillage partys going on for my liking, but I always liked Civ3 pile ons.

I mean how coulda Hitler been ousted with just 2 or three countries. Truly, team ups are kinda real and pillage instead of plunder ain't so much. AN AI civ profits large from payments received on these cross continentail "support' bribes and in terroty gained.
So as you can see, the pillage party in CIv4 have no real benifits for the AI that compare, upfront or down the road.

Can't blame those who disagree. but It is hurtin your game and you just can't see. Root cause? A Civ3 deprivity.

 

[KMadCandy]

If the program could focus on less pillage and more city attack that would help more then one might realize.

yeah. i'm playing an SG now where bismarck and cyrus (with brennus as cyrus's vassal) are my neighbors. i'm at friendly with both, they were at pleased. i had DPs with them both. bismarck started showing "we have too much on our hands." i didn't want to get into a big fat mess, so i told cyrus "you're a great guy, but ..." and cancelled our DP, so that i'd not have to go to war, since i figured bismarck would declare on him, and not cross the ocean for his war.

the good news is, the AIs did fight. bismarck declared on cyrus, even at pleased. it was the first AI war of the game i think, we'd had one with brennus, and cyrus declared on us, but no AI ones.

the bad news is, it was the typical "pillage stuff, a city or two changes owners maybe up to four times but ends up back in the same hands at the end" type war. and that was particularly bad since i wanted to profit from the war while staying safely out of it ... i had my combat settlers ready and waiting for any open spots that appeared, praying that they'd raze cities!

the other continent has serious culture pressure issues. at least one city has flipped culturally, and it looks like 2 more will soonish i think. but they never fought, even before i met them, no "you declared war on us" shows up on the diplo screen for any of the 3 of them.

sometimes i do see effective AI vs. AI wars that lead to serious takeovers of territory, once in a while complete eliminations. but, all too often, it's this type of little squabble really, more than an all-out war.



mind you if i'd not seen it coming to be able to break the DP pre-emptively, and i'd had to actually fight in it, i'd likely be glad it was the type of war that was over quickly. i wasn't ready for a war at the time . and i really do like the new options we have to manipulate them into wars and stuff. but it would be more exciting if they'd start stuff up more between themselves without me encouraging it.

 

[ConanKND]

Not really, you know. On the game I'm currently playing, I sailed to another continent that has 5 civs. Brennus is JC's vassal, Hannibal is Huayna Capac's, and there's Monty. Suffice to say that I had an interesting time paying my buddy JC to make a world war.

 

[Arkatakor]

Hey guys, do any of you know if Firaxis even reads these threads? To the extent that they dont, then this thread among all the others would have been a waste of everybody's time.

 

[KMadCandy]

i don't think firaxis reads these threads. but i don't think it was a waste of everybody's time, i found the conversation interesting.

if you did uninstall the game and are counting on them to read a particular thread and make changes to get you back, then yeah, i think posts on these boards will likely be a waste of time in that sense. i don't know what to recommend there.

 

[ButSam]

Duplicate post -- delete.

 

[ButSam]

Supposedly, the new expansion (BtS) will help fix this. It is stated implicitly as: The AI will now seek all paths to victory. If this is true (and it is at a competent level for all paths to victory, of course) then this will be the single biggest improvement I look forward to in BtS. This will also require the AI to fight each other to the death in an intelligent manner (at least when seeking domination or conquest victories).

Sam

 

[Naismith]

Supposedly, the new expansion (BtS) will help fix this. It is stated implicitly as: The AI will now seek all paths to victory. If this is true (and it is at a competent level for all paths to victory, of course) then this will be the single biggest improvement I look forward to in BtS. This will also require the AI to fight each other to the death in an intelligent manner (at least when seeking domination or conquest victories).

Sam

My interpretation of this statement: They are including the changes made in the BetterAI mod. I've seen speculation about this on other threads, but I don't know if it's been confirmed or not. I've only played one game using Better AI, but in terms of AI vs. AI wars, it seemed like there was still some work to be done. (Zero AI vs. AI wars were declared in my game. Stacks of units sat passively in the cities.) It was a small inland sea map, normal speed, default number of Civ's plus one or two.

 

[cliffjs]

I completely disagree with the fact that the AI's never go to war. I'm playing a fractal map as Ramesses II with 9 opponents, Prince difficulty. 8 of us started out on one continent and there has been about 15 war declarations that weren't mine (i've started two and had one declared on me). It always depends on the setup. I've got Huayna, Ghengis, Hannibal, and Tokugawa now. I had Wang Kon, Mansa Musa, and Saladin (i killed Saladin and Wang Kon). Ghangis catipulated Wang Kon before i destroyed him (Ghengis started a war with Wang Kon, catipulated him, then declared war on me). Huayna has been crazy this game. He killed Mansa Musa, and has catipulated Ghengis and Tokugawa. Shaka and Asoka are on their own little islands and are struggling to get catupults (1500 AD and i've got physics and biology, had them since 1450). Anyway, i'm rambling now, but it's about the setup. I always let the AI's get a bunch of religions between them after i found one, as they are more likely to hate each other that way.

 

[Naismith]

I completely disagree with the fact that the AI's never go to war. I'm playing a fractal map as Ramesses II with 9 opponents, Prince difficulty. 8 of us started out on one continent and there has been about 15 war declarations that weren't mine (i've started two and had one declared on me). It always depends on the setup. I've got Huayna, Ghengis, Hannibal, and Tokugawa now. I had Wang Kon, Mansa Musa, and Saladin (i killed Saladin and Wang Kon). Ghangis catipulated Wang Kon before i destroyed him (Ghengis started a war with Wang Kon, catipulated him, then declared war on me). Huayna has been crazy this game. He killed Mansa Musa, and has catipulated Ghengis and Tokugawa. Shaka and Asoka are on their own little islands and are struggling to get catupults (1500 AD and i've got physics and biology, had them since 1450). Anyway, i'm rambling now, but it's about the setup. I always let the AI's get a bunch of religions between them after i found one, as they are more likely to hate each other that way.

I'm not sure anyone is saying the AI's never go to war. Instead, we are saying most games consist of very few war declarations between AI's, and very few cities exchange hands in those wars.

Are you saying that most of your games have this much action? If so, I'd like to figure out what settings you use. You mention you played a fractal map - what size? What speed? Was Aggressive AI checked?

My guess is that maps that have less water (more land borders between AI's) would encourage war. I believe Aggressive AI being checked also encourages wars (even between AI's). Also, playing a slower speed and crowding in more than the default number of AI's on a map. A good mix of aggressive and more passive AI's would also help.

I've basically tried all of the above - except I don't play marathon speed. It's just too slow for me.

 

[occam]

Hey guys, do any of you know if Firaxis even reads these threads? To the extent that they dont, then this thread among all the others would have been a waste of everybody's time.

Arkatakor,

Re-check your assumptions. I propose to you that many who posted to this thread were happy with the results and would not be surprised or alarmed that their post was not specificially read by a Firaxis employee.

Plus, I find your post to be a meta-waste of time.... it's kinda like you wrote a message on a brick and threw it through my window - and the message says "I live in a glass house."

- O