Deal AI Development

[Gazebo]

Here's a good example of areas where the "Impossible Deals" just become extremely frustrating.

Spoiler :

View attachment 567645

• I am friendly with Venice (and its Transparent Diplomacy so its not fake)
• Venice is not at War with anyone right now.
• Venice has denounced England (so no love lost there).

And yet a war with England is absolutely impossible? Not for a huge flux of gold? Not for the biology tech?

I could respect that it would take an "unreasonable" offer, but when you keep getting the Impossible stonewall over and over, it just makes you want to stop trying diplomacy.

The reality is that it is 'impossible' because, without 'impossible' checks, the AI will literally bargain with another AI at absurd levels to make trades. It's profoundly hard to edge the line between flexible and 'abuseable' because, at some exorbitant point, an AI must say 'no' not just to humans, but also to other AI (otherwise you'll start seeing more 'phony wars').

G

 

[ElliotS]

The reality is that it is 'impossible' because, without 'impossible' checks, the AI will literally bargain with another AI at absurd levels to make trades. It's profoundly hard to edge the line between flexible and 'abuseable' because, at some exorbitant point, an AI must say 'no' not just to humans, but also to other AI (otherwise you'll start seeing more 'phony wars').

G

I've been thinking for a long time that we need a disabled by default option "Deal-Making Diplomacy" that changes tons of deals from Impossible to "whatever value works in 90% of cases", but only for players when they approach an AI. (So AI can't come to you with a deal currently impossible, or trade among themselves.)

On one hand it totally ignores the "AIs can do whatever the player can" core rule, but I think a TOOOOOON of people want to be able to trade cities with the AI and would rather have the ability to and just not do it if it feels abusive. (Like I won't trade all my strategics to the AI if it feels like I'm cheating by doing so)

There is little more frustrating to me than AI vassals not wanting to be given back their own cities, and I feel like I would enjoy the game more if I could enable that.

 

[Stalker0]

The reality is that it is 'impossible' because, without 'impossible' checks, the AI will literally bargain with another AI at absurd levels to make trades. It's profoundly hard to edge the line between flexible and 'abuseable' because, at some exorbitant point, an AI must say 'no' not just to humans, but also to other AI (otherwise you'll start seeing more 'phony wars').

G

That is fair, but I think there is enough community desire to push that line just a bit. I'm not necessarily advocating for "anything goes", but its clear the AI is in many cases just being stubborn when its clearly receiving reasonable deals that a rationale mind would want to take advantage of.

 

[Gazebo]

I've been thinking for a long time that we need a disabled by default option "Deal-Making Diplomacy" that changes tons of deals from Impossible to "whatever value works in 90% of cases", but only for players when they approach an AI. (So AI can't come to you with a deal currently impossible, or trade among themselves.)

On one hand it totally ignores the "AIs can do whatever the player can" core rule, but I think a TOOOOOON of people want to be able to trade cities with the AI and would rather have the ability to and just not do it if it feels abusive. (Like I won't trade all my strategics to the AI if it feels like I'm cheating by doing so)

There is little more frustrating to me than AI vassals not wanting to be given back their own cities, and I feel like I would enjoy the game more if I could enable that.

The city issue is different from 3rd party wars, it's something I'm working on fixing.

G

 

[Recursive]

The reality is that it is 'impossible' because, without 'impossible' checks, the AI will literally bargain with another AI at absurd levels to make trades. It's profoundly hard to edge the line between flexible and 'abuseable' because, at some exorbitant point, an AI must say 'no' not just to humans, but also to other AI (otherwise you'll start seeing more 'phony wars').

G

I've thought for a while that the way the AI resolves deals with other AI players ("equalizes" them, at least from what I can tell reading the code) is a problematic mechanic, because if one player greatly overvalues or undervalues an item, always meeting at the halfway point is not a realistic or strategic way of handling this, and it's probably causing the bargaining at absurd levels.

I recognize the amount of work required for a rewrite (and you've done a lot already) - but my thoughts are that the AI should have a limit on how much they're willing to pay, at least for certain items like wars and cities. AIs often value third party wars greatly and pay huge amounts for it. This was a while back, but in 2018 I was able to accept a bribe from Arabia, who had a huge military and wasn't at war with anyone, to declare war on their weak neighbor (as in "borders touching") - and in exchange they gave me all of their Gold and all of their GPT minus 2 - with thousands of deal value left to spare. This was highly abuseable, and after destroying Austria I turned my attentions on Arabia itself. I see that a recent hotfix has lowered the value of wars, but I nevertheless think the AI should have some kind of strategic limit to prevent this kind of absurd bargaining. Perhaps it could be calculated based on the AI's existing resources, sort of like peace treaties.

Also, someone else reported that it was possible to obtain small amounts of Gold from the AI for free by repeatedly making trades, which suggests to me that they're isn't a check on zero-value trades - has that been fixed?

In regards to phony wars, I'm working on this issue myself in the diplomacy AI.

 

[azum4roll]

AIs make pretty neat deals between themselves.

 

[Polany123]

Long-time lurker here. I absolutely love this mod, it adds such an incredible amount of complex content to an already amazing game that I've been playing for years. Unfortunately, I just encountered a game breaking exploit that I felt was so broken I had to make an account to share and hopefully get it fixed. I was playing on version 8-23-3 but I am not sure if this exploit was possible before this patch as I had never actually tried it until now. I was about 50 turns in trying to see if I could get a friendly AI to give me some gold to rush a wonder and it turns out I could. In fact, I could get all his gold... every turn. And as it turns out all the other AIs I had declarations of friendship with were also more than happy to give all their gold every turn as well. How I did it is I was able to make nonstop deals with the AIs that I had DOFs with where I would ask for 45 flat gold and offer nothing and they would accept it and I could do this repeatedly every turn until I had taken all the gold from every AI civ I had a DOF with. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed? Anyway thanks for all the hard work you guys put in.

 

[Recursive]

Long-time lurker here. I absolutely love this mod, it adds such an incredible amount of complex content to an already amazing game that I've been playing for years. Unfortunately, I just encountered a game breaking exploit that I felt was so broken I had to make an account to share and hopefully get it fixed. I was playing on version 8-23-3 but I am not sure if this exploit was possible before this patch as I had never actually tried it until now. I was about 50 turns in trying to see if I could get a friendly AI to give me some gold to rush a wonder and it turns out I could. In fact, I could get all his gold... every turn. And as it turns out all the other AIs I had declarations of friendship with were also more than happy to give all their gold every turn as well. How I did it is I was able to make nonstop deals with the AIs that I had DOFs with where I would ask for 45 flat gold and offer nothing and they would accept it and I could do this repeatedly every turn until I had taken all the gold from every AI civ I had a DOF with. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed? Anyway thanks for all the hard work you guys put in.

Yeah, still needs work I guess.

Also, someone else reported that it was possible to obtain small amounts of Gold from the AI for free by repeatedly making trades, which suggests to me that they're isn't a check on zero-value trades - has that been fixed?

^

 

[Polany123]

Ahhh my apologies I missed that one!

 

[DeAnno]

I've thought for a while that the way the AI resolves deals with other AI players ("equalizes" them, at least from what I can tell reading the code) is a problematic mechanic, because if one player greatly overvalues or undervalues an item, always meeting at the halfway point is not a realistic or strategic way of handling this, and it's probably causing the bargaining at absurd levels.

I would say that if the two AIs have a diverged price for something beyond a certain ratio, then they just shouldn't deal. For example, after doing the meet-in-the-middle computation, each AI could check that it's getting a deal that would be at least "Acceptable" if it was dealing with the human. If one or both of them isn't, no deal should take place.

 

[Recursive]

Ahhh my apologies I missed that one!

No need to apologize, you just confirmed the problem was still present. If anything I should thank you.

 

[Gazebo]

I would say that if the two AIs have a diverged price for something beyond a certain ratio, then they just shouldn't deal. For example, after doing the meet-in-the-middle computation, each AI could check that it's getting a deal that would be at least "Acceptable" if it was dealing with the human. If one or both of them isn't, no deal should take place.

When the AI 'deals,' it is not two AIs interacting, it is one singular function that calls on algorithm checks from both sides and attempts to simulate 'trade' by simply adding prioritized items to each side until there's a fair value. It is in no way a 'barter' as humans do it.

G

 

[Stalker0]

Here's an example of a deal that is "unfair" but still "Reasonable".

Spoiler :

Persia is asking for a lot here. For the tech he wants another tech and a boatload of money. But I'm the tech leader, so I respect this is gives me more than it gives him, especially since its a military tech. So its a steep price, but I'm willing to pay. This to me is a "good deal".

 

[Stalker0]

One oddity that just occurred for me. When I first met the Mongols, they did a double resource trade to me for some GPT. They then immediately declare on me on their turn. This seems just a product of timing, the AI was planning an immediate war but the deal AI didn't know that just as I had met them.

The resources did not trigger the WLTKD I had planned for them, so effectively it looks like the deal never really happened.

 

[Recursive]

One oddity that just occurred for me. When I first met the Mongols, they did a double resource trade to me for some GPT. They then immediately declare on me on their turn. This seems just a product of timing, the AI was planning an immediate war but the deal AI didn't know that just as I had met them.

The resources did not trigger the WLTKD I had planned for them, so effectively it looks like the deal never really happened.

AI isn't supposed to go to war immediately after meeting. Were they bribed?

 

[Stalker0]

AI isn't supposed to go to war immediately after meeting. Were they bribed?

I didn't check it specifically, but since he peaced with me pretty quickly I assume it was a bribe.

 

[Stalker0]

A common behavior I've been seeing. Every time I offer my world map the deal switches to Impossible. I can understand it having no value in the deal, but I can't see any reason why the AI would thinking getting more intel would be a bad thing.

 

[Gazebo]

A common behavior I've been seeing. Every time I offer my world map the deal switches to Impossible. I can understand it having no value in the deal, but I can't see any reason why the AI would thinking getting more intel would be a bad thing.

As a note, something I'm working on is specific human handling of these kind of impossibles so that the AI will avoid spamming each other, but will be more open to weird human shenanigans.

G

 

[Zanteogo]

As a note, something I'm working on is specific human handling of these kind of impossibles so that the AI will avoid spamming each other, but will be more open to weird human shenanigans.

G

I would rather have a more open and varied system that can have some human exploits rather than a closed and super limited system that has no ability for humans exploit.

In the end it's a game, and basically a single player game. If people don't want to use some self control not to super obviously exploit the game system it's on them.

 

[CrazyG]

The latest patch has a very weird trait with AI and deals. Their value -50 displays as acceptable, but so does the value they give +50.

So if the value is exactly 50, they'll pay 0 gold or 2 gold, both displayed as acceptable.

Spoiler 2 Gold :

View attachment 568126

Spoiler 0 Gold :

View attachment 568127