Diplomacy?

[Catman]

What is with being the most pwerful nation, leading in points, nearly completed with the spaceship and getting attacked by a neighbor who was pleased the turn before? Catherine has lost 60-70 units to my 15-20 and has made no progress. I can understand if A) the AI country had a tech advantage or B) was more powerful or C) was annoyed/furious with me. But after 3000+ yrs of peace and trade with a pleased posture? BTW this game is a normal / epic / inland sea / Noble.

 

[Rameau's Nephew]

I'd say that's good AI behavior. Cathy's behaving as a human player would-- throwing everything she has at you when the realizes that you're about to win the game.

 

[MrCynical]

I suspect your answer is in your own post:

leading in points, nearly completed with the spaceship

Catherine wanted to win the game, and took the only course open to her: military. By the sounds of it she did have a creditable military, so it wasn't suicidal, but the AI does seem to play to win if it thinks it has any chance at all.

 

[Catman]

I guess I expected the "pleased" to account for something, because it really has been near suicidal. I wish you could still build forts without negating any other use for the tiles, that seemed to lessen the annoyance of the late game attacks in CIV III.

 

[MrCynical]

'Pleased' really only translates as 'marginally in favour of'. You have to be Friendly, and usually Friendly with a high + value to be very safe from attacks.

 

[emills]

Each individual AI is trying to win the game, not just all the AI trying to prevent the player from winning the game. You can see it in an AI actions during the space race. Most of the time, they do not want to get into wars and have some serious defense in the spaceship production cities.

When trying to trade for items, and you hover the mouse over red lighted trade items, you can see elements of this. The most posted example is the "We feel you are to far advanced". I have personally never seen this phrase. The cool phrase I saw when trying to trade for redlighted techs is: "We are trying to win." I think it was Mansa who said it.

 

[balthamael]

i had a similar experience- was winning domination victory when the 3 Ai civs turned on me and tried to take the land i had just "liberated" form another AI- these Ai were friendly,Pleased and cautious.As soon as they decalred war the went to "Furious"

 

[EDaddy]

Each individual AI is trying to win the game, not just all the AI trying to prevent the player from winning the game. You can see it in an AI actions during the space race. Most of the time, they do not want to get into wars and have some serious defense in the spaceship production cities.

When trying to trade for items, and you hover the mouse over red lighted trade items, you can see elements of this. The most posted example is the "We feel you are to far advanced". I have personally never seen this phrase.

I have and they'll say it even if they are way ahead of you in tech. I guess that means that they want to win the space race!

 

[Nakar]

Each individual AI is trying to win the game, not just all the AI trying to prevent the player from winning the game.

Not necessarily true; some AI (the ones not in the lead) seem to mess with the human player as a matter of course to their own detriment to "aid" another AI. One or more civs may be trying to "win for themselves," but the entire AI is against you.

 

[Shillen]

I have to disagree. The AI's treat the player exactly the same as they do any other AI in the game.

As for the "we fear you are becoming too advanced" I think it's completely buggy. Every time I've gotten that message I was 3 or more techs behind the AI in question.

 

[Artanis]

Not necessarily true; some AI (the ones not in the lead) seem to mess with the human player as a matter of course to their own detriment to "aid" another AI. One or more civs may be trying to "win for themselves," but the entire AI is against you.

Ever thought that one of the other AIs might have bought them off to try to hurt you? There's plenty of times where I give the AI a couple techs or something to get them to attack somebody that I want to gang up on, and if we can set up that sort of indirect attack against the AIs like that, why shouldn't they be allowed to do it back?

As for the "we fear you are becoming too advanced" I think it's completely buggy. Every time I've gotten that message I was 3 or more techs behind the AI in question.

*shrug* It's the same way with me, so I always just figured that message meant that the AI knows you're behind and wants to keep you that way. If you're hopelessly behind, after all, that's one less rival to worry about

 

[Shillen]

*shrug* It's the same way with me, so I always just figured that message meant that the AI knows you're behind and wants to keep you that way. If you're hopelessly behind, after all, that's one less rival to worry about

It's not like we're asking them for gifts. Even if you offer them something far more valuable they won't give you a single tech. They're not acting in their best interest at all...

 

[MyOtherName]

As for the "we fear you are becoming too advanced" I think it's completely buggy. Every time I've gotten that message I was 3 or more techs behind the AI in question.

If you're nervous about your neighbor Montezuma, and he's only a couple of techs behind... are you going to trade him stuff, so that he'll get closer to, say, nasty military techs?

 

[ElJojo]

If you're nervous about your neighbor Montezuma, and he's only a couple of techs behind... are you going to trade him stuff, so that he'll get closer to, say, nasty military techs?

I think he's not talking about the IA refusing to trade but about the message itself. It is strange to say "we are afraid you might get too advanced" to a backwarded neighbour. I guess they could say something like "we don't want to trade this technology right now", at least you would not feel like they're taking you for an idiot.

 

[MyOtherName]

It is strange to say "we are afraid you might get too advanced" to a backwarded neighbour.

Yes I know -- but it's not a backwards neighbor, but one only a few techs behind.

In my example, the reason I don't trade with Montezuma is... (drumroll)... I fear he's becoming too advanced. I don't want large, hostile neighbor country to be anywhere near tech parity with me. Only a couple techs behind is far too close for my liking!

 

[ButSam]

I had this happen on my first game of Noble as well; I was cruising to a spaceship victory, but then everyone wanted to beat me up, especially Caesar. Victoria even refused to TALK to me (at war with nobody at the time), and she was Pleased with me!

Anyway, I think in my case it boiled down to my military being weak. Open up the Power Graph (last button on the top of the screen, then choose Power). If you are at or near the bottom of the graph, they see military as the way to defeat you.

If not, then it is still realistic--heck, the only way I avoided going to war in my last game (Noble) when I was racing toward the spaceship was because I had a +13 with the most powerful nation (on the same continent), and a Defensive Pact with the most powerful nation and one other. Nobody wanted to take that on...the threat of an automatic 3 on 1 with 2 of them being quite powerful (and I was the tech leader, with a fair amount of military strength) was a big deterrant! I have found Defensive Pacts more useful in Civ4 than in Civ3 for deterring Civs from declaring war on you.

Sam