BTS: Anti Human Bias?

[bonafide11]

It's funny how much people complained about the AI not being able to conduct military campaigns before BTS, and now everyone is complaining that the AI is too good at military campaigns.

 

[Naismith]

One of the reasons people have such widely varying experiences regarding AI vs. AI wars is that your game settings and playstyle have a huge effect.

Encourages more AI vs AI wars, and also encourages more effective AI vs. AI wars: Slower speeds, especially marathon. Larger maps (huge is best, large will do). Especially in BTS, Aggressive AI. Human players that bribe AI's into wars against each other (you would think this would be obvious). I don't think crowding a map makes for effective AI vs. AI wars, although there may be more wars. The default number of Civs works fine on larger maps.

Encourages AI vs. Human wars, tribute demands, etc: Not keeping your power rating up. I know it's not always feasible, but if you want to be left alone, be #1 in power. If you really, really want to left alone, be #1 with a 20% greater rating than the #2 Civ. Tribute demands don't come up as often, and you can afford to ignore them when they do. Even if some crazy Civ does declare on you, it's unlikely you will be dogpiled.

 

[Inky]

I shelved Civ4 / Warlords months ago as I grew sick of game with its anti human bias and serious lack of inter AI wars - i'll elaborate below:

1) The severe lack of inter AI wars have 2 majors factors attributed to them:

i) same religion (the diplo bonuses for religions are totally exaggerated, I agree that they should exist but not to this ridiculous extent)

Not all AIs weigh religion so highly. It is no guarantee of peaceful solidarity.

ii) The single and most undeniable and CRUCIAL fact to the lack of inter AI warefare and why AI's declare wars over the HUMAN player as opposed to each other is that AI's DO NOT DEMAND TRIBUTE TOWARDS EACH OTHER. This means that all AI's never have to suffer ANY diplomatic penalties for not submitting to each others demands, much unlike the human. This allways tips the scale against the human and as a result the human allways gets ganked unless he submits to their ridiculous demands.

I don't know for sure that the AI doesn't make demands, but they definitely do fight wars among each other in BTS. If you haven't tried BTS, you should check it out. The AI isn't too demanding if you have enough power.

Also, not having enough power is a good way to get the AI's to declare war on you, regardless of your relationships. If you have juicy, totally defenseless territory, why wouldn't someone conduct a "hostile takeover"?

Aggressive AI does beef up the warring, both between AIs and against the player.

BTS doesn't have any anti-human diplomatic bias built-in, unlike plain Civ4, where the AI's favored each other.

2) Barbarians targeting the human player over the AI. This happens to such an extent that they will will literally walk thru the AI's territory and leave their developed land unscathed only to walk into YOUR territory and pillage every single square. I can live with this because its only an early game issue but it would be good to fix nonetheless.

The barbarians attack weaker civs first. So if the AI is more powerful than you, they wisely will limit their engagement, and move on to easier pickings. If I can defeat the barbarians easily, they'll leave me alone and mess with the wimpier AIs.

Conclusion: I do not wish to adjust my settings (more aggro AI's, smaller maps) or download any mods for this purpose to alleviate the problem of lack of inter AI warfare. Firaxis can resolve the issues of anti human bias and lack of inter AI warfare by simply introducing a SINGLE concept: AI's demand tribute / favors towards each other as well as the human. This would literally solve ALL problems I have with the game. Thats all I would ask, a simple tweak as such.

Maybe the AI already makes demands, and failure to meet them acts as a war trigger? The AI definitely does have "war triggers" built into it in BTS, and will prepare for war this happens.




I think you'll be pleased with the BTS improvements. Warlords with the Better AI mod wasn't so bad either, but BTS is enhanced even above that.

 

[arstal]

I will say this- there is no excuse in Civ V not to have AI that is as far as GCII's....

 

[50_dollar_bag]

From what I've experienced AI vs. AI wars are a lot more frequent which has lead to a much more fun game IMO. I've seen civs quite horribly dogpiled (I've jumped on the bandwagon too of course) I've seen wars last seemingly forever with no side gaining any ground, and I've seen a rampant Mehmed II vassalizing everybody else on the planet before he finally came after me.
So go and buy it.

My $50.

 

[Arkatakor]

To rephrase: You refuse to play the game as it is. You want change. However, you also refuse to use any and all 3rd party tools to help you get what you want. You feel it is the maker's duty to make the game play exactly as you think it should

Damn Right! It IS their duty to fix this as you say.

Remove the bias by introducing inter-AI demands / favors and the negative modifiers associated with them you have solved most of the problems I and many other people have with the game. This is because fixing this would introduce more inter-AI warfare and more action.

I play on Prince and i need a lot more positive modifiers the the AI's to get in the "friendly" range. Even though thats technically bias, I can live with that, not to mention the human-targeting barbarians because thats early game only. What I cant live with is AI's picking on me instead of each other just coz they got pissed when I do not give in to their ridiculous demands. And nay to the suggestion of giving in to them when they ask me for education and its the only tech they dont have!

As for the arguments that I dont have enough military and whatnot, those are totally off topic. I was referring to the diplomacy bias issue which should be resolved.

 

[aelf]

Next, I would like to address the fact that you're a builder. Maybe you'd like SimCity 4 or Caesar 4 better than Civ 4. Seriously. Civ 4 is a war game, where you pump out units, wipe out all your enemies, and engage in minimal diplomacy or empire-building. The wonders exist only to tempt you into not building up a massive military.

Play SimCity 4 or Caesar 4, if you want to build an city or empire, respectively.

Hey, long time no see... If I'm not still on your cute little ignore list

So you're saying the game is at most half of what it claims to be? Can that be a good thing? Perhaps you're actually a closet builder who is frustrated with the way things are going and chooses to adopt a completely opposite cardboard online persona to let off some steam. I remember you said you are bipolar in one your blatant flame PMs to me about the Better AI. Could that be a hint of what is actually happening?

 

[alpaca]

Could I kindly ask the TS about the difficulty setting you're playing on?
I agree that on low difficulty settings the AI-human bias should be as small as possible. The main "problem" here is as you say the fact that the AI can simply unconditionally demand things of the player which it doesn't do against its kin.

However, since these work in both ways (if you give them tribute, you get a bonus) I think they're quite balanced and make for an interesting choice.

In fact, on the higher difficulty settings (Monarch and above) I believe that the anti-human bias is even too small! I've often played games lately in BtS on Emperor/Normal speed/Normal size/Big and Small map (because I like the additional islands) where the AI would attack another AI instead of me although I had a lot less power than the faction in question and I even bordered the attacking AI. In one case I even had bad relations with them.
In my case what you describe as an unfair bias works to my advantage because I almost always pay tribute (most of the time I don't agree to wage war or stop trading though because you can't talk to the other AI for some time in these cases) which boosts my relations by one or two.

This in turn makes - together with being able to trade techs to the AI's advantage - having good diplomatic relations with all factions really easy if you don't adopt a state religion or even better have the same religion as everybody else.
The only cases where I was attacked by AI factions were warmongers like Shaka or Augustus who already vassalized one or two other factions and then decided to come for me. All the better, I was usually able to beat them through a significant technological advantage I got by teching instead of warring.

Looking at the issue from another angle: The AI is completely short-handed in the brains department. Do you consider having a brain that actually works innovatively and not only adhering to a very small set of pre-programmed instructions as an unfair bias towards the AI? I do, and you should at least consider it in my opinion. The devs need to help the AI in pretty much any way they can through asymmetric features or outright cheats to make it pose any challenge for the player. I doubt you'd like to play a game that's so easy that every session is basically a walk in the park, do you?