Then, we have room for improvement.
If the AI waste resources attacking the player that it could have used for winning earlier, then there's an advantage.
Agendas are, basically, polar +15 or -15 attitude
I'm just completing a Germany game that saw me have 3 dp's with 3 different civs throughout the course of the victory. All 3 were very strategic and made good sense; I actually turned down the French offer because I'd planned on attacking him. Also, for the first time that I can recall, I was actually able to initiate a dp myself through the trade screen - 99% of the time it's always "impossible" regardless of the situation, so I was pleasantly surprised! I had a strong military throughout the entire game, so that definitely helps. In terms of the AI establishing insurmountable dp's with like 5+ civs, that has become reduced and much better over the past several versions; in my current game, I never saw any civ have a dp with more than 1 other civs at a time.
Within 15 goals you stated in the OP AI has to pick it's allies somehow. Right now it mostly randomly revolves around map placement and military strength so AI goes to war with neighbors when it runs out of settling options, has high war bias or was bribed to do so which makes sense if all AI have primary Domination victory goal. AI going for Science or Culture victory should not go to war period if they are on winning pace and focus on accumulating allies instead.
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.
Ok, I'll set aside a couple of days and try playing with the most recent patches. You did ask for inputs on how diplomacy could make more sense, but if you want to stick with survival of the fittest jar of snakes peer doctrine then military conquest of your peers is always the best solution to all your problems and that doesn't leave much space for actual diplomacy.The diplo AI has changed significantly since August (if you win a lot of combat engagements it will bump up your projected military strength, for instance) - recent feedback is far more useful.
That's before Recursive, took on his mission to make Ai diplomacy make sense. He's not finished, though.
Perhaps I have misconstructed my arguments, but I only give Ideas to consider that you may have not come upon yourself, not making suggestions or requests. No overhauling - adding a dozen additional modifiers akin to shared religion and 'we fought together against a common foe' that use already existing game-tracked stats like culture output, relative army strength, land coveting priorities etc that would add more tiebreakers and personality flavor. You've already said that you are not interested in the sim aspect and are going for strategic performance instead so just forget I brought this up.I did ask for inputs, but I'm not going to change the entire structure of how the AI works based on a single person's relatively general input, particularly not if it isn't based on recent information or a complete understanding of the mechanics (you say you've written diplomacy mods before, which is also why I suggest bringing up more specific changes).
I also don't have unlimited time to work on the diplomacy AI and while I take all feedback into consideration, I'm prioritizing certain changes over others.
I don't exactly get paid to do this, and the pandemic/various other things in my personal life have been keeping me busy!
What I'm saying is that simply saying "fix everything!" and proposing major structural changes without being more specific is not really helpful to either of us, and that some of what you propose may not be suitable for how the AI in VP works (it has been opportunistic and competitive for quite a while, and generally others here haven't given negative feedback about the way it's structured or behaves in general - outside of specific instances, like the wonder penalty being overtuned in a recent beta - so I'm hesitant to make fundamental changes like this in a community project - a modmod may be more suited to what you're looking to accomplish).
Re: war being used as a solution to everything - the AI does try to use diplomatic tools other than war, friendship and Defensive Pacts being two of the big ones. It's inherently limited in this, however, by how poorly written its interaction logic with other players is. It's like Firaxis wasn't even trying sometimes. Fixing this is one of my main priorities going forward.
