Diplomacy AI Development

He's telling you you should trade only with him. That's his thing!!

 

I like Morocco but I'm not a huge fan of this part of the UA to be honest. It seems like the kit favours a peaceful/trade-focused playstyle but pillaging trade routes because someone won't trade with you is a really passive-agressive thing to do. I do like getting lots of trade routes, and I can see the ability being useful if you want to wage economic warfare on someone (or goad them into attacking you). So it's not all bad. It's just seems odd for a leader like Ahmad al-Manur who seems generally pretty diplomatic and fair to have this petty sort of 'trade with me or trade with nobody' thing in his back pocket.

 

Hehe, you really don't stand these passive-aggressive types.
Honestly, I don't like this ability either for playing it myself, but it's quite realistic to find a civ that is playing the jerk if you don't do things the way he likes them. It's interesting to play against. Would you concur and trade just with Morocco for his benefit and your peace of mind, or would you seek confrontation and fight for your freedom of choice against someone who can defend pretty well?

 

This is totally the kind of thing I would declare war over XD. I'm normally a very peaceful player but I dislike being attacked in a way I can't easily defend myself against. It hasn't actually happened to me very often though. Maybe just once or twice and I had other civs I could trade with without going through Morocco's territory so it was only a minor annoyance really.

I do wonder though when I'm playing Morocco how much of everyone trading with me is getting better yields or trusting me/being friends and how much of it is them knowing I can prevent them from trading with others. That might be irrational though as I've totally seen people send TRs through my territory as Mrco.

Sometimes I feel bad when I've getting so many TRs compared to when I play other civs. Like, Arabia wishes he had this many trade partners lol. I guess other civs have their own UAs though. Looking back the Shoshone's territory grab on settle seems incredibly powerful. I'm playing Byzantium at the moment and they are fun but don't seem OP in any particular way.

 

Byzantium? The ultimate religious combo civ? It might not look like it, but take some time trying to figure how to combine founders, enhancers, pantheon and follower beliefs, and add a couple of whatever you want from this list. These beliefs are there always for you, so no chance of ruining your strategy. Add that you receive tons of faith for your extra purchases that in turn produce a respectable religious pressure. Ever wanted to play religious tall and still spread your religion?

Do you remember that reformation belief that gives tourism to every faith purchased building? How many faith purchased buildings can you have as Byzantium? Five!
Do you want just extra great people? Fine, save your faith and go to the glory of God, and the several beliefs related to great people are there for you. Do you want to abuse missionaries? Sure thing.
Surely you will find more strategies, you can test a few and see how strong the synergy can become.

 

Hmm. Maybe I just haven't played them enough yet. I guess what I'm missing from other civs I like is the early boost. In the game I played recently I started next to the Maya who founded much earlier and spent a lot of my faith just converting my cities back to my own religion at first (they kept spamming me with missiories). I guess the current bug with inquisitors probably didn't work in my favour. I do enjoy Byzantium though! Being able to choose whatever I want is very nice. The other thing I kind of missed was that I didn't get to use my UU all that much because I wasn't in a very strong position at that point in the game so my resources were mostly devoted to other areas.

 

Yes, it takes a while. Byzantium is a medieval civ after all. Until then you must just survive.
CrazyG always recommend that you try to found a religion even if you have a guaranteed one. That's one less religion to care about, and the sooner you get to your strengths the better.

 

Something to try, don't take a second follower belief as the bonus. Try taking a second founder or an enhancer instead.

 

I'll confirm the reports of AI not being opportunistic enough on the war-front during the first 100+ turns. Here's a situation where Rome (he even befriended me and went authority, though I did basically give him a free lux) and Carthage (I even denounced her after she refused to not settle) could both do some damage, but they left me be - I even purposefully left cities with no garrison and walls for a while to entice them.

Spoiler :

War picked up mid-game though, in another session; Rome, Dido, and Babylon all went at it, while the former took Maya right out of the game.

Spoiler :

 

In my current Byzantium game, the first DoW happened on turn 58 or 59 by Sweden against Egypt. So still fairly early.

 

An interesting situation in my current game. Around turn 200, a few turns before a WC session, I tried to sell my votes to Siam. The resolutions proposed were Sanction Siam, ban a luxury (not Siam's) and open doors on a CS. I didn't propose any of these. What's interesting is that when I offered to vote "no" on Sanction Siam, the trade value was "Impossible" (understandably, it was the same with to vote "yes" on that). Also interesting is that when I checked what I'd get for the luxury ban vote, Siam wanted to pay me either way (trade value around 375 to vote yes, trade value around 250 to vote no).

I don't quite understand why (unless in the rarest of circumstances, mostly late in the game) buying "no" votes on proposed sanctions against itself isn't top priority for the AI. I'm also not sure I understand why the AI would pay for both yes and no votes on the same resolution.

So that's perhaps something that could be looked at when improving the AI.

 

Sorry to bother you again but what do you mean by friendly behaviour? ahah
When a Civ is Friendly towards you? Does "fake Friendly" Marrocco plunders?

 

I like the idea, but it runs into balance concerns: won't that lead them to under-use their ability?
I'm questioning 4 in particular, but perhaps even 3. Ideally there would be a cost/benefit analysis before plundering, but I realize this straddles other AI.

Separately, I want to say thank you for the amazing job you've done! The last beta is the best ever in terms of diplomacy.

 

Seems reasonable to me. If I understand correctly, it means they will pillage trade routes belonging to people they are HOSTILE or GUARDED towards and people they are NEUTRAL towards if their opinion is less than Favourable (I'm guessing there's an opinion like 'Neutral'?).
But not trade routes belonging to people they are FRIENDLY or AFRAID towards, people they are NEUTRAL towards and have a Favourable opinion of or better, or people they have a DoF with.

I agree on that count, diplo has been great recently .

 

So in my most recent 10 or so games, the only way I've ever upset an AI significantly before the Renaissance is by planting too many cities.

Denouncing, competing for wonders, religious differences, territorial disputes, buying land near him, settling cities near him, and ignoring all requests to stop, taken together, are not enough. I tried just going through the diplomatic screen and offending Rome in every way possible, he just takes it. Then he taunts me, and I insult him, he backs down (I have less than half his military score). This happens multiple times.

For comparison, if you build 5 settlers before turn 65, there's a pretty good chance that multiple civs will declare war instantly. The AI are willing to break friendship, getting the backstabber penalty to do so.