Diplomacy is still broken?

[Heart Break Kid]

Agreed 100%, i said this two years ago and i still feel the same, but they took away the magic of the Civ series, of making me feel i was a world leader and demoted me to being a board-game player with all these ridiculously arbitrary rules like un-razeable capitals, the game is a lot better than it was but this lost realism can never be recovered in 5, only Civ 6 might bring it back if they feel like it.

The last quarter of each game is where this "playing to win" AI is most obvious as all hell breaks loose between previously reasonable Civs that are now having their behaviour overidden by a desperate need to win against the clock, imagine in the real world if some nation had to "win" by the year 2000, the US would have invaded even all their allies in "trying to win."

I wouldn't be surprised if the single player experience was sacrificed for the multiplayer experience, if so it was a poor trade-off for me because single player suffered greatly in terms of being able to suspend one's disbelief (something Sid himself talked about in a seminar i saw on youtube) and multiplayer i have never been interested in.

What magic? Civilization isn't a simulator nor does it pretend to be. It's a huge board game with an historical theme. The AI should be trying to win since the human is trying to win.


What is this realism you guys are referencing?

 

[kukatr]

I think it was a nice move from a backstabber. I don't want to go deeply into this immersion discussion, but if a civ don't play dirty then it will be eaten by the warmongers. It is written in history.
What I think is a complete nonsense is a backstabber penalty at who asked me to backstab my friend. Come on! I would only allow it to Montezuma or Boudicca, they are insane in my eyes.

 

[dexters]

What magic? Civilization isn't a simulator nor does it pretend to be. It's a huge board game with an historical theme. The AI should be trying to win since the human is trying to win.


What is this realism you guys are referencing?

Op's bait title caught a ranter; there's no arguing with someone like that.

 

[mrwho]

The word 'broken' is so overused in gaming these days.

 

[Clement]

What magic? Civilization isn't a simulator nor does it pretend to be. It's a huge board game with an historical theme. The AI should be trying to win since the human is trying to win.


What is this realism you guys are referencing?

I used the wrong word, instead of realism i should have said "immersion," in Civ 5 i am jolted out of immersion far more regularly than i was in previous titles due to the simplistic mechanisms/diplomacy and the very arbitrary rules which i feel were set up to accommodate multi-player, as for Dexters calling me a ranter, it's just a personal opinion, nothing more.

 

[Roxlimn]

Aside from 1) the warmonger status that takes forever to get rid of, 2) can't do crap when the AI invades your city-states/other civs without taking a diplo hit yourself, diplomacy is fine.

The backstab can get predictable if you know which civ is likely to do it. Also, if your neighbour is building a huge army and the only one near them is well, you, you can be damn sure any DoFs is just for show. While this game tries to be "unpredictable", if you play smart and actually pay attention to your surroundings, it's rather a good challenge, not some random fight.

Changed in BNW! You can totally declare war, liberate CS's and allied Civ cities and not take any warmonger hit at all. In fact, if you liberate enough cities, you can take some of the invading AI's cities (even his capital) and still not suffer warmonger hate with anyone.

 

[dexters]

The biggest change are the fixed penalties for taking cities have been removed. Civ Elim penalty is also gone for both major minor civs. Game now looks at map size, total cities and the civs cities.

You also get a reverse penalty for liberating cities so a good way to wipe away some of the warmonger penalty.

 

[Buccaneer]

I think one of the faults of the whole Civilization series is that the AI opponents can be somewhat predictable - that creates an unfair advantage for us. I agree that it to be a balance for the purpose of competitiveness and gameplay, but we should not expect to know how opponents of any game should play ("an opponent should always love me if I do X"). It wouldn't be a game, otherwise.

 

[Buccaneer]

I agree, I used a poor choice of words which I do/did apologize for. I will still debate that there is a big difference between being tricked by the AI and a poor diplomacy system. Like I said, 200 turns ish of positive diplomatic relations plus a DoF and research agreement 2 turns prior to war is, IMO, a poor system of diplomacy. Do I agree it makes for a more competitive game? Yes I do but I would argue that for more casual Civ players like me I think that system is foolish.

Can you not think of any example of real history of this occurring?

 

[kaltorak]

No Civ game has ever felt even remotely like a simulation of being a real world leader.

I think civ4, while not having a perfect diplomacy, at least had personalities. There you got for example Isabel. She was a religion fanatic. If you adopted her religion, you had an ally almost granted. If you didn't, you had an enemy for life.
That is immersion. You are playing with a civ that cares about religion, and not about reaching more "score" in one of the victory conditions.

But then again, it's different ways of playing, I'm not complaining, I'm saying, I prefer it the other way. I do not play to win the game. Yes, it's my final goal, but I may attack a civ that made me angry instead that one that is better for me winning the game. Or I may go for a victory condition that I feel I want to, instead of the one I see is easier for this game. For me civ is a game about managing an empire. Yes, while trying to become powerful and at the end win the game. But I don't play with winning the game in mind from the beginning.
And I doubt civ lovers since civilization 1 are a majority of players who just want to win the game in the highest possible difficulty, like it was a competitive game. I bet there are lots of players who play and always played civ games, like a civilization simulator. Which doesn't mean we don't finally aim for winning the game.

 

[Roxlimn]

I find Civ V's diplomacy more immersive, actually. They feel more human. Civ IV's AIs were more predictable and didn't feel realistic with their motivations.

One of these ways is that Civ V AI will contact you to mock you. This is a simulation of a very human thing - trolling. In fact, this was so effective that many players complained about it! They reacted to it as if the AI were human and were behaving badly! Of course, I took it purely as feedback of the AI condition, so I didn't feel offended, but it feels more human that the AI holds grudges and deceives and is petty.

 

[kaltorak]

I find Civ V's diplomacy more immersive, actually. They feel more human.

They do feel more human. The problem is they feel like a human player, instead of leader. They are playing a game with you, not acting like leaders of a country, with their own personalities and non gamy goals.

 

[Roxlimn]

I meant that they feel more human in general, not like an AI. They still feel like they're leaders. They feel like human leaders, with foibles and faults - even foibles and faults common to historical leaders. Civ IV's AI felt more like AI. At point did I feel like they were leaders of anything. They're empty.

It's not true that Civ V leaders do not display personality. They absolutely do. Some of them weight common religion longer and heavier, for instance, just like Isabella does in Civ IV. They're just not going to be so brazenly manipulated by it, which is more human.

 

[njmfff]

Rome has a tendency to backstab often.

Hmm, dunno, I have rarely seen Rome backstab in my games. He can be "friendly" then attack, but usually if I don't have any negative rep with Rome, he stays friend till the end of the game (altho, Rome is very hard on declaring friendship)

Same goes for some other warmongering civs like America, Mongolia and China.

In my games, most of the backstab are done by The Aztecs, Japan, Iroquois, English (ALWAYS, declare friendship, next turn attacks), and I've noticed that Babylon become backstabbing friend. He ALWAYS declares friendship and attacks in the same turn.

oh yeah, and Alex and Harald seems to love being hostile the very next turn after we meet for some reason. I don't remember ONE game that Alex was anything but hostile to me. (and I never know why, I don't pick on CS, and he is usually far away from me to have boarders\land conflict)

 

[Staal]

Civ is a competitive game. There's a victory condition, one reaches that, the others lose. If you don't accept that you're living in denial.

Civ is not a simulator, for that you should see a game like Crusader Kings.

"Simulator" gets thrown around a lot but it makes no sense. It is a non-sensical, flippant response. The guy isn't asking for a simulator. He just takes enjoyment from manipulating the RP AI. Maybe the needed artificial advantages to compensate for this doesn't bother him?

Personally I am torn between the two AI approaches but I am getting more and more hacked off at the pro-human approach posters. There is nothing wrong with a player preferring a more pro-RP approach. The one is not "morally superior" to the other which is almost how I sense you guys look at it.

Ultimately, the system has to have a mix. Otherwise there is no purpose behind diplomacy modifiers at all if an AI must play like a human.

 

[The QC]

I am getting more and more hacked off at the pro-human approach posters. There is nothing wrong with a player preferring a more pro-RP approach. The one is not "morally superior" to the other which is almost how I sense you guys look at it.

I agree with you, but the "superior" stance goes both ways. There is no need to call the diplomacy system broken, for instance, just because it isn't to your taste.

The discussion will sadly never get very interesting, because it is in fact a thinly disguised Civ V vs. Civ IV discussions and those are always the worst content produced on this forum.

Ultimately, the system has to have a mix. Otherwise there is no purpose behind diplomacy modifiers at all if an AI must play like a human.

I'm not sure I agree here. I think the mix is what makes everything confusing for everyone. They should just pick one approach and pursue it fully.

The diplomacy modifiers are a discussion in themselves. I think they are the reason why the human-like diplomacy never worked - they're just too simple. A human player thinks about more than love/hate. He thinks about how much he fears you, about how much he needs your help, how much he can trust you, how much he needs peace with you in certain moments... And so on. The modifiers system doesn't allow for that, which is why a weak neighbor will insult you and refuse trades and spam missionaries, even though what he really, really needs is to give you reasons not to crush him.

 

[Buccaneer]

"Simulator" gets thrown around a lot but it makes no sense. It is a non-sensical, flippant response. The guy isn't asking for a simulator. He just takes enjoyment from manipulating the RP AI. Maybe the needed artificial advantages to compensate for this doesn't bother him?

Personally I am torn between the two AI approaches but I am getting more and more hacked off at the pro-human approach posters. There is nothing wrong with a player preferring a more pro-RP approach. The one is not "morally superior" to the other which is almost how I sense you guys look at it.

Ultimately, the system has to have a mix. Otherwise there is no purpose behind diplomacy modifiers at all if an AI must play like a human.

While I think there is some overlap between the two systems, there's not much without compromising the quality of either system. Let's say you would want the AI "leaders" to always act in a certain way (historically or something else). In other words, a very predictable and easily manipulative opponent. They can turn the game into that, taking it to an extreme, but where does that leave all the rest of us that want competitive opponents that you are competing against to win? They're not going to do that, of course, but that's an example of how the two system can be incompatible.

 

[Tosslikeman]

I find Civ V's diplomacy more immersive, actually. They feel more human. Civ IV's AIs were more predictable and didn't feel realistic with their motivations.

One of these ways is that Civ V AI will contact you to mock you. This is a simulation of a very human thing - trolling. In fact, this was so effective that many players complained about it! They reacted to it as if the AI were human and were behaving badly! Of course, I took it purely as feedback of the AI condition, so I didn't feel offended, but it feels more human that the AI holds grudges and deceives and is petty.

Civ V's AI feel more human, but they're stupid "human",trying to do something they're not able to do. Why so many people think they have no personality? Because their personality are all "stupid". An experienced player can easily fool them and take advantage of them. Less predictable? I don't think so.

Civ IV's AI feel more AI, but they're not stupid rivals. They do all they can do very well, though they're a little bit stubborn in different ways. Because they're not that stupid, people will respect their different personality. Even though you know their personality, the game will not be very easy. And also, you can choose "Random Personality" option.

 

[dexters]

While I think there is some overlap between the two systems, there's not much without compromising the quality of either system. Let's say you would want the AI "leaders" to always act in a certain way (historically or something else). In other words, a very predictable and easily manipulative opponent. They can turn the game into that, taking it to an extreme, but where does that leave all the rest of us that want competitive opponents that you are competing against to win? They're not going to do that, of course, but that's an example of how the two system can be incompatible.

Right. We want the Civ AI to be flexible and understand game concepts and take advantage of their UA, which means modified preferences towards how they deal with city states, war, peace, development.

If people want historically 'accurate' leaders, they really need to either mod a scenario or play a game along the lines of EU that is essentially one big scenario.

Civ has been and always be a high level 4x game. And I'm fine with that.

They do feel more human. The problem is they feel like a human player, instead of leader. They are playing a game with you, not acting like leaders of a country, with their own personalities and non gamy goals.

They're more human insofar as the AI is capable of long-term strategic planning. Civ4/Civ3 AI admittedly (from the game's programmers) played turn to turn. It could make a decision to attack you and set a DoW in 10 turns to give that illusion its thinking ahead, but the grand strategic component is a turn to turn evaluation based on its current situation.

A lot of the humanness ; such as the so called 'psychopathic' diplomacy has been existed or severely moderated. To the point where I don't see this critique as valid anymore.

Admittedly, the civ5 AI is more capable of doing a lot of things and catching little human cheats that we used to get away with and or doing it themselves. The thread OP is a good example of duplicitous behavior by the AI.

But I think people have always wanted an AI that could at least pull that off and there's never been an outcry about that.

 

[Buccaneer]

Dexters, you are correct. I was going to add a sentence about scenarios and mods as the alternative for those wanting a more historical (which I love to do as well) game/simulation/toy, but I had to go. The regular game should go more the other way in tightening/increasing the competitiveness to win and getting all opponents to use their strengths much more effectively. It's almost irrelevant what those are (as long as they are varied) or what "names" they assigned to them.