Civ 6 diplomacy is the same as civ 5 vanilla

[Furycrab]

That's understating the situation. What we saw in Marbozir was Greece having a overwhelmingly positive modifier when he declared war. It wasn't "just a few". You would think that would factor into the AI's decision-making. Then there's Victoria, who declared war on him in an earlier game only one or two turns after he entered a Joint War with Victoria. It's irrational.

In any case, my suspicion is that this is actually due to the fact that the AI is not correctly evaluating the Joint War trade option. It seems very eager to engage in a Joint War.

But was there a Declaration of Friendship? If the AI is willing to break those... I see a problem. If it has the ability to actually pick a side in a conflict where it just likes both sides but one side approached them first... It's kinda human.

 

[Magil]

But was there a Declaration of Friendship? If the AI is willing to break those... I see a problem. If it has the ability to actually pick a side in a conflict where it just likes both sides but one side approached them first... It's kinda human.

Yeah, and we've established that the AI are not meant to act "human". As in cut-throat players bent on winning. That's kind of the point of the agenda system, to give them an identity beyond "rival out to win the game at all costs".

As far as I know, there was no "Declaration of Friendship".

 

[Furycrab]

Yeah, and we've established that the AI are not meant to act "human". As in cut-throat players bent on winning. That's kind of the point of the agenda system, to give them an identity beyond "rival out to win the game at all costs".

As far as I know, there was no "Declaration of Friendship".

It's kinda where I go back to: Not everyone is going to be happy with the AI no matter what... I want an AI that knows how to play the game, and the agendas to be flavors to give you a relative idea of why an AI might make a decision. Mostly I want the difficulty from going higher to not just come from handicaps and bonuses that warp the game to the point where it isn't recognizable because the player is able to dodge the wrath of the AI by hiding behind positive modifiers and driving the other AIs into each other.

In an ideal world, the AI would be so good it wouldn't need handicaps and it would require pristine strategy that you could use in multiplayer. We've established that realistically it won't be close, so we will settle for bonuses. However, it would still be fun if the AI wasn't so easy to manipulate into not trying to slow you down or stop you, and for it to know how to do certain basic things like attack a player who is being too greedy on infrastructure, or knows how to pick a side in a particular conflict to get some spoils.

I honestly wouldn't mind if in 6, an important thing was to be more proactive about your "friendships" by either pushing to get them to actually declare as friends, or pushing them to go to war with other people that hate you already. There's a certain level of cutthroat moves I don't think the AI should be allowed to try, mostly because it'll likely fail miserably and look silly, like going to war just to steal a worker, but ganging up on someone is the best tool to deal with a runaway, the AI shouldn't be averse to doing so (both with or against the player) just because it has a few positive modifiers.

 

[Atlas627]

But was there a Declaration of Friendship? If the AI is willing to break those... I see a problem. If it has the ability to actually pick a side in a conflict where it just likes both sides but one side approached them first... It's kinda human.

In Civ6, DoF is also a non-aggression pact. No idea if this works for Joint Wars as well.

 

[Gedemo]

Each time they released a new Civ game, they said there would be a brand new diplomacy system...and finally we have always the same poor thing. They do the same type of announcement for the "moddability", each time you think "this time I will have a custom civ easily" and it takes you years to build one.

 

[ThERat]

There is only ONE answer to the abysmal AI especially with regards to diplomacy. Always War, THE way to play a civilization game properly

 

[AinEiken]

The "new" system might not be ... well, new - but it definitely is more transparent. The main flaw in CiV (at least for me) was the seeming randomness of AI-reactions: Last turn Best Friends, this turn - WAR!

But it has room for improvement. And there will be add-ons (there isn't even a diplomativ victory in place yet). So I'm optimistic.

 

[Xyriach]

To be fair, when has anyone ever admitted to an AI civ that the massive army on their border is actually going to attack them?

We lie, the AI lies, everybody lies.

In terms of a realistic interpretation of international diplomacy, I'd say it's pretty good.

Equally however, Civ has always struggled to balance AI in diplomacy, I don't recall any version where it was really a good indicator of anything. The only thing I hope they've fixed is where the AI, after 3,000 years of happily trading of Gems for Sugar, randomly decides that in order to get Gems, it wants all of your luxury resources, strategic resources, all of your gold and a city in return...despite you having an army large enough to crush them into submission.

At which point of course they sue for peace and offer you half their empire anyway...

 

[blackcatatonic]

I'm not sure but it looks like the only way to make joint wars is through trade, you can't directly ask an AI to declare war on someone like in Civ V, so every joint war is a trade. Considering this, I think the problem might be on the trade system, not on the diplomacy system itself. The AI is accepting some crazy deals and giving questionable value to things (selling too cheap), so I think it's totally possible that Germany bought a joint war from Greece and Greece sold it like it was nothing because trade is messed up, but diplomatically Greece was friendly and wouldn't declare war if it wasn't for the trade system. They asked for peace quite fast after that and though they was unfriendly right after the peace deal, the status changed back to friendly later.

Basically Trade is unbalanced and bugged in this demo. Since Joint War is directly linked to trade, it's equally unbalanced and buggy. Greece just sold a joint war cheap, completely disregarding his relationship with Marbozir. If someone with access to the demo read this, try to buy a joint war of one AI against another AI he is friendly to, see how much they will ask for such a deal.

This is how I read the situation in the video as well. On one level it's encouraging because it suggests that the diplomatic AI may not actually be that bad (it does look like an improvement on Civ 5 in other footage I've seen, but still with plenty of room for improvement), but on the other hand, if the AI's valuations of trade deals is so skewed, that alone has the potential to wreak havoc with any attempt to build diplomatic relationships with it. You can't establish any kind of relationship with an AI who will trade away its cities so cheaply.

This absolutely must be fixed, and soon - if not by release, then in the first patch.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It's kinda where I go back to: Not everyone is going to be happy with the AI no matter what... I want an AI that knows how to play the game, and the agendas to be flavors to give you a relative idea of why an AI might make a decision. Mostly I want the difficulty from going higher to not just come from handicaps and bonuses that warp the game to the point where it isn't recognizable because the player is able to dodge the wrath of the AI by hiding behind positive modifiers and driving the other AIs into each other.

In an ideal world, the AI would be so good it wouldn't need handicaps and it would require pristine strategy that you could use in multiplayer. We've established that realistically it won't be close, so we will settle for bonuses. However, it would still be fun if the AI wasn't so easy to manipulate into not trying to slow you down or stop you, and for it to know how to do certain basic things like attack a player who is being too greedy on infrastructure, or knows how to pick a side in a particular conflict to get some spoils.

I honestly wouldn't mind if in 6, an important thing was to be more proactive about your "friendships" by either pushing to get them to actually declare as friends, or pushing them to go to war with other people that hate you already. There's a certain level of cutthroat moves I don't think the AI should be allowed to try, mostly because it'll likely fail miserably and look silly, like going to war just to steal a worker, but ganging up on someone is the best tool to deal with a runaway, the AI shouldn't be averse to doing so (both with or against the player) just because it has a few positive modifiers.

Positive modifiers work fine as long as there are negative modifiers (you are upsetting the balance of power) for civs that are getting to powerful

 

[MadDjinn]

But was there a Declaration of Friendship? If the AI is willing to break those... I see a problem. If it has the ability to actually pick a side in a conflict where it just likes both sides but one side approached them first... It's kinda human.

Yes, if an AI can break a DoF/Alliance/whatever via joint war, then that would be buggy.

else, the AI should also weigh out the relative strength of relations between the two parties. If it really likes you, but not a friend, it should require really liking the other civ as well as having a reason to fight you (except for Gilly who loves to joint war) - and ofc, increase the cost to burn their relationship with you. And even then, it would need viable targets. If it's too far from you and/or just can't reach you, the answer should be 'no' anyways.

I'd almost suggest that the AI should not want to join a joint war with someone they dislike (sub-neutral relations) unless it's against someone they were probably going to fight anyways due to major hate.

That's understating the situation. What we saw in Marbozir was Greece having a overwhelmingly positive modifier when he declared war. It wasn't "just a few". You would think that would factor into the AI's decision-making. Then there's Victoria, who declared war on him in an earlier game only one or two turns after he entered a Joint War with Victoria. It's irrational.

In any case, my suspicion is that this is actually due to the fact that the AI is not correctly evaluating the Joint War trade option. It seems very eager to engage in a Joint War.

yeah, also sounds buggy. Being in a joint war should pretty much prevent back stabby wars. Ofc, it's plausible that the system still gives warmonger hate to Vicky when Marb declared the joint war, despite the fact that Vicky also declared war at the same time. But some overriding controls to keep the AI from being that dumb would be good.

 

[pietro1990]

Yeah, and we've established that the AI are not meant to act "human". As in cut-throat players bent on winning. That's kind of the point of the agenda system, to give them an identity beyond "rival out to win the game at all costs".

As far as I know, there was no "Declaration of Friendship".

No there was a decleration of friendship check the video again marborzir made a DOF with greece makes it even more broken that he joint war

 

[juanpavo]

...the AI's valuations of trade deals is so skewed, that alone has the potential to wreak havoc with any attempt to build diplomatic relationships with it. You can't establish any kind of relationship with an AI who will trade away its cities so cheaply.

This absolutely must be fixed, and soon - if not by release, then in the first patch.

Yes, it is a disaster how this currently works, as shown (and exploited) in Marbozir's videos.

 

[Tatran]

I've no problems with a DoF backstab as long there's a penalty involved.
A backstab may never occur during an alliance.

 

[Furycrab]

else, the AI should also weigh out the relative strength of relations between the two parties. If it really likes you, but not a friend, it should require really liking the other civ as well as having a reason to fight you (except for Gilly who loves to joint war) - and ofc, increase the cost to burn their relationship with you. And even then, it would need viable targets. If it's too far from you and/or just can't reach you, the answer should be 'no' anyways.

It should weigh both relationships as to not just go for the first guy to declare, but I don't think it should be "that" hard or expensive to persuade an AI to pick a side when it hasn't declared for someone. I wish the game had better ways to communicate with your AI partners as to what you would like them to attack(and vice-versa), but I don't think they should say "no" categorically because it made the strategic assessment that it can't really help. The real world equivalent would be to asking a friend to stop trading, pick a side, and treat any troops traveling near their borders as hostile. If real players were on board, eventually everyone comes to hate the guy who tries too hard to be Switzerland.

 

[pietro1990]

I've no problems with a DoF backstab as long there's a penalty involved.
A backstab may never occur during an alliance.

Not a single AI denounced greece. Which is annoying

 

[Tatran]

It was very early in the game and in civ5 a backstab doesn't always result in denouncements.

 

[pietro1990]

One week before release i doubt this will be fixed if the AI doesn't count youre relationship in a joint war why bother with diplomacy

 

[King Jason]

One week before release i doubt this will be fixed if the AI doesn't count youre relationship in a joint war why bother with diplomacy

Except that the issues being addressed are not one week before release. The footage people are making these assessments on are from a build that's over a month old. It's obvious that A.I. do not have the logic to weight trades accordingly in this build. As you can take everything they have for just one luxury. Anyone who think's that's working as intended is just being silly.

I suppose that's the flaw with offering so much pre-release footage to the public, I guess. People jump to conclusions. These aren't review builds. They're preview builds. Some of the people that have access to civ6 right now are absolutely horrible at the game. Which means, if the game were actually difficult they probably wouldn't be able to experience all of it. The game may as well be on settler.

 

[leandrombraz]

Yes, if an AI can break a DoF/Alliance/whatever via joint war, then that would be buggy.

...

IIRC the option is excluded from the trade page. If you try to ask a Civ to declare a joint war against their ally, the Civ they are allied to won't be in the list.