Are all AI civs untrustworthy in Civ3 - Conquests ?

[Culak]

I am playing my second game of Civ3 Conquests and I am wondering if I can still trust the other civs when I sign a treaty with them.

For instance I gave 531 Gp to the Babylonians to conclude a milatary alliance against the zulus. They accepted the gold declared war to the zulus BUT they signed a peace treaty with them next turn and decared war to my civ!

Severals turns later I signe ROP with the Romans to be able to cross their land to attack the Persians (who declared war to me) but the same turn the romans made a sneak attack on one of my Cities violating the ROP!

I never seen that kinds of behavior in Civ III before, is it normal in Civ 3 Conquest? I normally try to never break a treaty and expect the same from my opponents which was the case in Civ 3 but here every AI civs are very untrustworthy...

PS : sorry for my poor English but it is not my native language.

 

[Pfeffersack]

It happens, but not more than in PTW or vanilla civ in my experience.My advice is only GpT payment for diplomatic agreements and to stay away from MPPs, only alliances(best combined with trade agreements or ROP) - despite, it will happens sometimes, but it minimizes the risk.

 

[dreamvirus]

I have actually found that AIs have borken agreements and sneak-attacked me FAR more in C3C than in Vanilla. I suspect that there may be some kind of internal weighting or value given by the AI to a diplomatic agreement and that the calculation has been altered for C3C. I don't have any evidence for this, just a hunch.

P.S. In my opinion this is not a bad thing, it makes the AI play more like a human

 

[FM_Freyland]

As a side note, I am having a wonderful game right now with the Aztecs of all people religiously holding on to a MPP with me, despite causing us to face off against the Number 1, 3 and 5 Civs. I am the only one on the continent with the Aztecs and they could sneak attack me at any time, and have done no such thing. I really want their land, but my sense of honor prohibits it. So, we're slaughtering the English right now.


Jonathan

 

[Kiech]

I tend to stay away from MPP contracts if possible.

 

[Megabyte]

Hi!
@Culak
Someboy has to say this : Welcome to CivFanatics !

Have fun !

 

[Aggie]

The AI is always untrustworthy and always has been. Don't count on the AI's to always stick to their deals. Especially when they see that they have a stronger military or when you have undefended cities (for example). And they can be bought into alliances and MPP's as easily by other AI civs as by you.

EDIT: Although I noticed that the AI sticks to MPP's and won't sign a MA vs you when you have a MPP. But then again, with MPP's you don't control your wars. When the other civ of this deal gets attacked by a 3rd civ you are at war as well. Multiple MPP's are a reason for the AI to abandon it, because of the forced declaration of war of such a MPP.

 

[Culak]

Thanks for all your answers and thanks to Megabyte for his greetings!

Ok, so it is normal that the AI Civs do not stick to their deals. I will take this fact into account in the future (to avoid to waste my money for treaties that could be broken very quickly).

But I read somewhere in that forum that in C3C declaring war to someone when having already units in his land is equivalent to break a ROP (even if not ROP was signed); so I had perhaps the reputation of someone who "has broken 2 or 3 ROP" in that games, that would explain why every body hated me! Anyway I got a victory by domination, despite my reputation and the huge corruption (I had a unpatched C3C and the FP had negative effect!).

Next Game I will try to really avoid break any treaty to see if it helps or not...

 

[King PJ]

hey Culak welcome to the Civfanatic forums! Oh and Culak download the 1.22 patch. It will help with the corruption.

 

[Mr. Do]

You can never ever ever trust an AI. It's freaking ridiculous. This is one of the main reasons I save and reload- if a backward civ I've been regularly giving techs to and trading with signs a military alliance against me then I have to reload. It is random whether AI will declare war on you. If the war on Iraq had been in civ, then Iraq would have signed a military alliance with Canada against the US, and then Canada would have signed one with China against the US, and so on.

Highlights of my current game: a tiny civ to the north of my territory landed a warrior and spearman in my territory and attacked me, despite the ROP and trade agreements we had. Also a large AI across the ocean landed some cavalry and attacked me, but not enough to make the lost trade worth it.

As you can probably tell, I hate the way the AI works with regards to diplomacy.

 

[dreamvirus]

There are problems with how the AI works out its diplomatic decisions but it is not as random as you make out, Mr. Do - backward civs who you've been generous to signing a military alliance against you IS something that I've had happen to me many times and it's annoying, but mostly it is because they've been bribed to do it by another civ. This is something human players also do - bribe the AIs to declare war on each other. You can't complain about it when it's a tactic that humans make use of all the time.

Also, AIs will very often declare war to get out of an onerous trade agreement - for example if they're almost bankrupt and are paying you 100gpt for a tech or something. Also, even if there are many trades going on, a civ will often declare war simply because he's bigger and badder and thinks he can take you out and have all your stuff for himself Humans will do the same.

You have to balance against this the fact that AIs will also, more often than not, stick to trade agreements, and will rarely declare war on you if they don't perceive you as a threat. If you are weak, they will demand tribute, and if you REFUSE, they will go to war - but give in, and they will leave you alone because they don't see you as worth it. I've found that they only delcare war without warning when you are big and strong. I may not have enough experience to generalize this way, it's just how it seems to me.

I don't like a lot of the ways that AI diplomacy is done - I hate the whole "reputation" calculation, and the way that your rep can be ruined by some other civ cutting your supply line, for example. But I don't think it's as bad as you make out if you think about how complex it must be to try to replicate human-type diplomatic decisions. I think they do a pretty good job most of the time, and if they're a little unpredictable, that makes the game more interesting doesn't it? Humans make mistakes too...

 

[Mr. Do]

Compared to Civ 2, the diplomacy is a huge step backwards. Well, unless I've got my rose-tinted specs on...

 

[Kalach]

I had an alliance with England against the Dutch, The whole time I had been giving all my techs and lots of gold to the english to help their war effort. When It came time to renew the alliance I gave England 3 modern age techs, 300gpt and 10000g, they accepted, but declared peace the next turn
Needless to say I declared peace and allied with the Dutch against them, then proceded to raze all the english cities and execute captured workers . I now understand the true meaning of "Good, they deserved it" when you kill a civ.
Since then it's just been a world war with alliances completely changing every few turns, so you shouldn't put too much trust in the ai.

 

[rysingsun]

: Are all AI civs untrustworthy in Civ3 - Conquests ?

some are worse than others.

most civs would find most players to be untrustworthy.

... so we probably deserve it.

get your culture up. they will be less mean to you

 

[sspanzer]

If you are running an huge and powerful empire ,AIs will be quite obedient.And you will be very willing to see they violate the treaties.
Treaties are used for violating,isn't it?I am pleased to see AI understand this doctrine.

 

[Mr. Do]

Here's an example of something that happened in a game today:
I bought a 3rd age tech off of a neighbour in exchange for a major resource, a luxury, 10GPT and about 700 gold. The very next turn the same civ signeda military alliance against me. I sincerely doubt he was as well paid by his ally as I paid him. But then there's the AI to AI trade binus, that probably messes things up.

 

[dexters]

As far as AI is concerned in diplomacy, the AI is programmed with its own self interest in mind. It breaks deals when it can, and it will keep them and not break them if it is beneficial to it.

One way to turn smaller civs around you into vassal states is to lock them up in luxury/resource trades. These are very hard for the AI to break (as opposed to pure tech for gpt trades although i haven't have too much trouble with these also - admittedly only played up to Emperor at this point)

One you have then by the balls (resource wise), you control their foreign policy to some extent.

More broadly, the only problem the AI runs into is the MPP issue, and short of rewriting AI or putting in some sort of logic algorithm, the AI can still make stupid mistakes (ie: signing up on an MPP with the major rival of its largest trading partner) When the ****e hits the fan and war is declared, the particular AI civ that is so dependent on those trades get hit and their development is unfairly punished. This is something sometimes even a human can miss with our own trades.

The AI issue is more that one one hand it needs to sign MPPs as an internal check against other AI aggressors and I suspect to deter human attack (and MPPs do make a difference is the Humans are a middle power and simple can't afford a multifront war). So it has its uses. On the other hand, the AI could be programmed to never sign MPPs, but I don't think any of us want that. Overall, AI diplomacy in Civ3 is very advanced and written with 'self-interest' in mind.

When you sign a treaty with an AI, think of 17th century europe with all of its intrigue and backstabbing. That's exactly how the Civ3 diplomacy works and that's how it ought to work. Very good job by Soren and Firaxis on this front. The minor logical/heuristic flaws can be forgiven.

FYI - Many confuse diplomacy with emotion. The Civ 3 AI runs on two (known) scales that is key to its decision making. Your reputation bar and its Attitude towards you (polite, cautious, etc). There is no in-game 'scale' for 'gratitude' which is an emotional outcome found in humans.

Thus the Civ3 AI has no memory of past actions, insofar as large sums of gold, techs of cities you gave to the civ or that you saved it. The little element of memory is has is largely residual and based on the attitude and reputational slider. If you've kept all your trade deals and have had friendly relations with an AI, it can be said to 'remember' you are a good friend and ally. Beyond that, memory of specific deeds is simply not a comcept the AI can grasp.

When I see people complain about (oh, I gave it so many gold techs and cities but they still betrayed me!) it is not a function of diplomacy in the game. But of emotion, which the AI in its current incarnation is not capable of handling. As long as players can get past this emotional expectation of gratitude, the Civ3 diplomacy AI is quite rational and you can model your foreign policy actions around it to keep vassal civs and allies nice and docile.

 

[Cedrick]

Actually, you can have memory by the Ai by having an adjustment made to its attitude toward you go positive each turn they trade with you and for each "gift" you give.
MOO had this system very well modeled. Unfortunately, the Civ AI scale appears to be heavily weighted against a human player based on size and strength. For example, a weak civ will become very annoyed with you once you are the most powerful even if they have never had any trouble with you or never shared a common border. No amount of trading appears to overcome this which makes one suspect that the degration in the attitude scale due to your size is such a magnitude that it is pointless to trade with any of the civs once you reach a certain size, score, and power.
That said, the attitude scale does not appear to take the same hits if the bigger civ is AI controled. Hence my comment taht the AI is biased against the human player.