Diplomacy AI Development

[MontyJava]

"Ew, you touched it, I don't want it now. Cooties"

in the other thread they were talking about another city trading bug possibly. Might be connected.

 

[Gazebo]

The point is that AI should choose it's rivals wisely and right now it doesn't because it's opportunistic, universally competitive and has no understanding that pissing off human player is very different from pissing off other AI leaders. What do you mean by 'realistic diplomacy' then? E.g. when Soviet Union fell some countries joined EU, some teamed up into so called boreal forest union and others were left hanging and are now slowly consumed. Vox Populi AI having all the Russia's military might would not bother with diplomacy and just steamroll other countries due to military supremacy and close proximity out of opportunism. Unless there are mechanisms that prevent that diplomacy would not work period because if you go to some war and lose a third of your military power on the other half of the map you will be instawardecced by your neighbor if he's not at war because power balance is constantly in motion so if you base AI decision making off of it without at least 10-20 turn delay or other checks and balances it will be extremely erratic regardless of anything.

I ended up gravitating towards Superpowers + Various Mod Componenets custom DLL and having/writing a mix of diplomacy mods that make AI prioritize rivalry over opportunism, making green and red modifiers grow in power as eras advance, warmonger score overhaul that accumulates slower, does not decrease over time and uses relative calculations.so you are considered warmonger if you have most/90%/80%/70% warmonger score in the game and get warmonger score based on the score other nation has so attacking pacifists gives up to 400% more warmongering and attacking the worst warmongers in the game gives less warmongering etc.

I played like 6 or 7 separate installation Vox Populi games on 5-6 difficulty the last one being on august patch and AI indeed plays the game as a deathmatch with random wardecs across the map for brownies and the only way of being friendly with AI is having no shared borders and bigger army. Maybe just my personal experience tho, but ALL of my 'friends' tried to conquer me randomly from being 'friendly' (Ghandi, Ghengis, Dido, Caesar, Napoleon, Suleiman, China, Casimir) and while it is understandable for leaders with high deceit, for others it made no sense. Yes, I had smaller standing army, but I also had the economic and production potential to triple my military power in 10 turns which I did and chewed all their faces off except my engagement with Caesar because I was greedy, forward settled twice and had no roads to move troops fast enough. A very questionable experience tbh. Player does not need a strong standing army to be very successful in defensive wars and by the time AI can muster together a defensive force it has already lost half of it's cities and is forced into vassalage. Strong military never works as power estimate unless you drastically decrease military unit production speed during war and remove option to buy troops with gold outright.

VMC AI does take player gold reserves and manufacturing into account so while wars are much less frequent, they rarely result in attrition stalemates because AI only goes to war as a last option, it is certain it will overwhelm and win or sees that it failed at it's victory goal and declares a war of despair with a specific 'I don't see myself winning so i can only pray that my armies will succeed' message or just totally hates your guts from diplomatic modifiers.

VMC Diplo AI is virtually untouched from Vanilla, just FYI.

G

 

[Gazebo]

It Seems impossible to trade back cities, (haven,t tried last version.)

Should it be like this? They don't even want their capital back.

If a city is damaged, AI will not accept it in a trade.

G

 

[Tarzan737]

If a city is damaged, AI will not accept it in a trade.

G

nope, i can´t trade cities back to another player, not a single one even if they not damaged.

 

[Recursive]

nope, i can´t trade cities back to another player, not a single one even if they not damaged.

Do you have an embassy?

 

[JamesNinelives]

nope, i can´t trade cities back to another player, not a single one even if they not damaged.

Just to check, what do you mean you can't trade them back? That the deal value comes up as 'impossible'?

 

[Tarzan737]

Yes! Sorry, i mean impossible! And i have embassy or vassal but they never seem that they want cities back!

 

[tommytoxen]

Yes! Sorry, i mean impossible! And i have embassy or vassal but they never seem that they want cities back!

Does it have a courthouse? Not sure if it was coincidence but I was having the same problems.

However after 10-20 turns later when it had a courthouse and a couple other buildings they then accepted their cities back. Very strange.

 

[Tarzan737]

Yes, i annexed the cities, built courthouses and started to rebuild the cities, the only thing can be that it is unhappy but it should get happy to rejoin their original civ?

 

[JamesNinelives]

the only thing can be that it is unhappy

I think that is probably the reason.

 

[Crag Hack]

Not very sure what to think of the defense pacts which involve bilateral pacts. There is a situation when I am in defensive pact with Polynesia, and Polynesia is in bilateral pact with England. I am not in pact with England and I declare war to England. Then Polynesia declares war on me. Hmm

Isn't a defense pact an agreement not to attack each other ? Maybe Polynesia should not declare war on me as I am their ally by agreement. They should stay neutral. No ?

 

[Recursive]

Not very sure what to think of the defense pacts which involve bilateral pacts. There is a situation when I am in defensive pact with Polynesia, and Polynesia is in bilateral pact with England. I am not in pact with England and I declare war to England. Then Polynesia declares war on me. Hmm

Isn't a defense pact an agreement not to attack each other ? Maybe Polynesia should not declare war on me as I am their ally by agreement. They should stay neutral. No ?

Defensive Pact =/= Non-aggression Pact

 

[Crag Hack]

Defensive Pact =/= Non-aggression Pact

Yes I thought so. But because it feels like backstabbing. You know we have Declaration of Friendship before we reach a defense pact. And then they backstab. Betrayal.

 

[Recursive]

Yes I thought so. But because it feels like backstabbing. You know we have Declaration of Friendship before we reach a defense pact. And then they backstab. Betrayal.

DoF is not required for a Defensive Pact, and AI avoids declaring war if it would backstab a friend of theirs.

 

[adan_eslavo]

- Major overhaul of diplo AI interaction logic, including leader dialogue and trade deals (Firaxis logic for this is truly asinine; they didn't even proofread a lot of their dialogue for typos!)

This is what I cannot wait for

 

[SilentReply]

I've got a nice game going so far on the latest beta. Of the players I've met so far, everyone is in close competition with each other.

However the wonder penalty doesn't seem to be working as I would have expected based on the changes. Ethiopia built his third wonder 6 turns ago, to match my total of 3, but still has a -40 penalty. Meanwhile America has not given me a penalty the entire game despite him being Authority with zero wonders. Poland with 2 wonders has been at -20 for some time. These penalties still seem quite punishing when compared to the few positive modifiers such as being trade partners.

When calculating the median number of cities/wonders, is it calculated per player and based only on the opponents that player has met?

Spoiler :

 

[black213]

Could something be done about how neighbour AIs will complain about settling too near to them, even when the settled city in question is not near them at all?

 

[vyyt]

@Recursive Warrior, I am on the latest beta (4-17), playing America, late Medieval, on a continent with Celts and Siam (they are both flanking me).

Siam has been switching between friendly and hostile (nothing in between) attitude towards me every turn or two for like 20 turns already. Even when friendly, I can see some red modifiers, so I suppose he is not deceptive. The divisive modifier which comes and goes with the attitude swings is territorial disputes (our borders touch with 1 tile + there are many near with 1-2 tiles gap). We also have religious disputes and compete for the same CS, but these are constantly present. He probably also sees me as militarily weak. For the record, we used to be allied for whole ancient and classical - he was consistently neutral during that period. Is this back and forth a normal behavior? It actually keeps me on my toes and makes him completely unreadable, which is kind of fun, but is it intended?

Celts had been my besties until I built one more city than them, then they went hostile. Then they caught up with the number of cities and went friendly again (not sure how many turns it took, but not that many). Then I built one more city (now I have 8, they have 7) and they are consistently hostile again (red building new cities too aggressively and religion).

My setup: Huge, Tectonics, 20 civs, 20 CSs, epic, emperor. Score-wise, I am in the middle of the pack (there are still 2-3 civs I have not met), Siam is usually on top (with a huge army, tech lead and like 10-12 cities, authority).

 

[Recursive]

@Recursive Warrior, I am on the latest beta (4-17), playing America, late Medieval, on a continent with Celts and Siam (they are both flanking me).

Siam has been switching between friendly and hostile (nothing in between) attitude towards me every turn or two for like 20 turns already. Even when friendly, I can see some red modifiers, so I suppose he is not deceptive. The divisive modifier which comes and goes with the attitude swings is territorial disputes (our borders touch with 1 tile + there are many near with 1-2 tiles gap). We also have religious disputes and compete for the same CS, but these are constantly present. He probably also sees me as militarily weak. For the record, we used to be allied for whole ancient and classical - he was consistently neutral during that period. Is this back and forth a normal behavior? It actually keeps me on my toes and makes him completely unreadable, which is kind of fun, but is it intended?

Celts had been my besties until I built one more city than them, then they went hostile. Then they caught up with the number of cities and went friendly again (not sure how many turns it took, but not that many). Then I built one more city (now I have 8, they have 7) and they are consistently hostile again (red building new cities too aggressively and religion).

My setup: Huge, Tectonics, 20 civs, 20 CSs, epic, emperor. Score-wise, I am in the middle of the pack (there are still 2-3 civs I have not met), Siam is usually on top (with a huge army, tech lead and like 10-12 cities, authority).

That's definitely unusual, but not impossible. Approach changes on a curve, and I guess your FRIENDLY and HOSTILE scores are very close to one another, so some changing factor (e.g. military strength or prioritization) is tipping the scales in either direction every couple turns. That it happens rarely isn't too unexpected.

 

[Recursive]

Could something be done about how neighbour AIs will complain about settling too near to them, even when the settled city in question is not near them at all?

I think the trigger distance is based on the AI's Boldness flavor.

I know that territorial disputes are based on contested tiles (land both players want). It's 50% easier to accumulate territorial disputes in the Classical Era and 100% in the Ancient Era.