Fall Patch, AI asking for the moon: a Theory

[dac050]

It's been a while since I've been thoroughly flamed, so here goes.

I have noticed, and if I've been reading the forms correctly, other folks have too, that the AI is immensely difficult to get a reasonable peace deal out of, even when it seems clear to the player that the AI is losing.

I remember the patch having a feature where instead of 4 (5?) levels of peace, the AI now had 9 levels of peace available to it. I believe what we are seeing is the effect of that.

Consider: The AI attacks you, and if you're like me, the AI usually has a lot more troops. You destroy the initial wave, then the AI offers peace, but they want every city but your capital. "That's nuts", you think. So, you either fortify, or build more units. You crush another invasion, you take a border city, something like that, and the AI asks for peace again, only wanting most of your cities this time, not all of them. And on it goes.

First, the AI doesn't seem to consider troops lost as any kind of negative. It simply compares its Army size to your Army size. If, after losing its invasion force, its Army is still lots bigger than yours, it doesn't see a problem.

Second. I believe what happened before patch, and what happens post patch are the same thing. Every "negative event", say, loss of a border city, drops the peace deal one level. But before, 2 negative events drop you from demanding everything to a white peace, now it drops you from everything, to quite a lot of stuff. And, since the AI is probably bigger and has more cities now than it used to, losing even several cities probably isn't going to cause any more than a once peace deal level drop.

So, I think this results in the longer wars we are seeing, where you have to severely pummel an AI before it offers any kind of reasonable peace deal.

Anybody agree? Disagree?

 

[Gamewizard]

Peace deals are based on the military strength numbers. If theirs are bigger than yours then they will want stuff for peace. It doesn't matter how many units you kill. The difference now is that the AI will rush buy units (as you can tell by their decreased gold amounts), so it is more difficult to get the numbers to sway in your favor.

Also the AI builds and buys lots of naval units which inflates their numbers.

 

[Smokeybear]

Peace deals are based on the military strength numbers. If theirs are bigger than yours then they will want stuff for peace. It doesn't matter how many units you kill. The difference now is that the AI will rush buy units (as you can tell by their decreased gold amounts), so it is more difficult to get the numbers to sway in your favor.

Also the AI builds and buys lots of naval units which inflates their numbers.

IOW: Yeah, it's kinda more broken now. The patch pendulum hath swung. It went from the AI offering you their wife and the kitchen sink at the first sign of trouble, to having to beat them down to the last janitor guarding their palace before you get a fair peace deal.

 

[Gamewizard]

IOW: Yeah, it's kinda more broken now. The patch pendulum hath swung. It went from the AI offering you their wife and the kitchen sink at the first sign of trouble, to having to beat them down to the last janitor guarding their palace before you get a fair peace deal.

To be clear, I'm not criticizing the system in place. It is practical and I think it works well enough. Get your unit strength higher than theirs; simple and effective.

 

[Cedbird]

I agree . What is reasonable ? Depends on the situation . But simple numbers is fine with me . If we want supreme rational thought play multi-player . Ok maybe not . But I think its fine . Sometimes just like in real life the enemy is so pissed even when they are getting beat down they want to keep going at it ha ha too funny

 

[Peng Qi]

AI is building more boats. That's all. So it loses its entire land force and thinks "I still have half my units left!"

It just needs to be taught that navies can't win alone.

 

[Moriarte]

Technological superiority is key. If you have a reasonable amount of up to date troops, AI is likely to offer you good peace terms. Not necessary to completely outweight them in military numbers. Beeline the next military tech, upgrade, and wait for compensation.

 

[Arachnofiend]

To be clear, I'm not criticizing the system in place. It is practical and I think it works well enough. Get your unit strength higher than theirs; simple and effective.

Except it makes the AI stubbornly stay in wars it is losing badly in. I honestly have no reason to bolster my army to make the AI more afraid of me if I'm winning; it would make more sense if the AI took losing cities into account so that they can actually go for peace when they still have something to give.

 

[Matthew.]

Somewhat on topic: There seems to be a modifier when a second person joins in on the war. I've had civs refuse to sign a basic peace treaty with nothing attached, but a few turns after a second Civ declares war on that initial Civ, they are all kinds of eager to make peace.

But perhaps it isn't an additional modifier, but simply adds the military strength of the two attacking civs together.

 

[Sidor1982]

To be clear, I'm not criticizing the system in place. It is practical and I think it works well enough. Get your unit strength higher than theirs; simple and effective.

I had a deity game a couple of days ago, when my military was wastly lower in numbers than the military of AI, but I managed to conquer all the AI's nevertheless. I've reduced the defense of last AI capitol to 0 and placed a destroyer next to it. Then I gave the AI the last possible chance to sign a peace treaty as my next mouse click would be the game winner. The AI refused to talk...

The system does not work well and is completely ridiculous.

 

[heke]

Simple numbers give you simple logic and simple game. I wish that AI could "think" more deeply the situation. Like if they lost 50% of their troops they would consider more balanced requirements for peace. And there should be more variation on action of different leaders. I could imagine that Huns or Mongolians would be more stubborn to sign peace than India, for instance...

 

[bc1]

I like it fine the way it is now. Depending on difficulty level, you may find yourself chewing through wave upon wave of enemy units. If the AI gave up based on a simple unit loss count, it would make the game too easy. Also once the AI becomes hopeless, it's nice that they retain their dignity and refuse to surrender: this forces you to choose between (annihilation + zero spoils) or (leave them a chance + some spoils).

 

[Tachii]

But perhaps it isn't an additional modifier, but simply adds the military strength of the two attacking civs together.

That's what I'm assuming as well. And since AI with the greater military number can be easily bribed to go to war (sometime as low as like, what, 15 gold? lol), a lucrative peace deal should be relatively easy.

The AI refused to talk...

Does this mean s/he won't even negotiate a treaty? Because that's normal since there's usually a cooldown period before AI can start talking about a peace deal.

Also, I don't like some of the suggestions here of AI taking into account of how many units they lost. Like others have said already, it's a poor plan because we KNOW AI are incapable of combat tactics and to compensate for that, they produce a lot more units. If this suggestion became a game mechanic war would be a piece of cake for most people since it seems most people can destroy loads of AI units fine as it is, hence why there's been so many criticism of AI being stubborn even though they're "losing" the war.

 

[Pook]

Consider: The AI attacks you, and if you're like me, the AI usually has a lot more troops. You destroy the initial wave, then the AI offers peace, but they want every city but your capital. "That's nuts", you think. So, you either fortify, or build more units. You crush another invasion, you take a border city, something like that, and the AI asks for peace again, only wanting most of your cities this time, not all of them. And on it goes.

First, the AI doesn't seem to consider troops lost as any kind of negative. It simply compares its Army size to your Army size. If, after losing its invasion force, its Army is still lots bigger than yours, it doesn't see a problem.

Second. I believe what happened before patch, and what happens post patch are the same thing. Every "negative event", say, loss of a border city, drops the peace deal one level. But before, 2 negative events drop you from demanding everything to a white peace, now it drops you from everything, to quite a lot of stuff. And, since the AI is probably bigger and has more cities now than it used to, losing even several cities probably isn't going to cause any more than a once peace deal level drop.

So, I think this results in the longer wars we are seeing, where you have to severely pummel an AI before it offers any kind of reasonable peace deal.

Anybody agree? Disagree?

I thoroughly agree. Post-patch, it is much harder to get a reasonable peace deal or even a cessation of hostilities out of the AI. I've had the same experience in the deity games I've played since the patch came out. Even after I decimate the initial AI invasion force and take one of their cities, he/she still demands all my gold and all my cities as a condition for peace. Since I'm not willing to go along with that idea, the result is either a lengthy 'sitzkrieg' of nothing happening, or a lengthy war I don't want and can't get out of even though I'm winning.

This aspect of the patch needs to be fixed.

 

[bc1]

But you would win even more easily if the AI let you have your way... Where's the challenge ?

 

[Sidor1982]

Does this mean s/he won't even negotiate a treaty? Because that's normal since there's usually a cooldown period before AI can start talking about a peace deal.

Don't my a comment to a part of mine comment which was completely taken out of the content. I was making a completely different point. I've given the AI one last final opportunity to make peace before getting a victory and it refused to talk - is there any logic behind such a behaviour? I get, that it has been programmed that way, cause the dicsrepancies between army sizes did not allow the AI to negotiate a peace treaty. That is the point - the AI is too stupid to negotiate peace even when being on a verge of defeat.

 

[Heinage]

Ceasefire should be brought back in to the game

 

[Tachii]

Does this mean s/he won't even negotiate a treaty? Because that's normal since there's usually a cooldown period before AI can start talking about a peace deal.

Don't my a comment to a part of mine comment which was completely taken out of the content. I was making a completely different point. I've given the AI one last final opportunity to make peace before getting a victory and it refused to talk - is there any logic behind such a behaviour? I get, that it has been programmed that way, cause the dicsrepancies between army sizes did not allow the AI to negotiate a peace treaty. That is the point - the AI is too stupid to negotiate peace even when being on a verge of defeat.

I didn't take your comment out of context. I was asking for clarification because that's the part I didn't get.

If you click negotiate for peace and s/he won't even let you do it, that's a game mechanic - it has nothing to do with "AI stupidity" (it might indirectly make the AI look stupid, but it's not about how dumb they are), it hardly even have anything to do with relative army strength. I've had the same situation pop up before and sometimes it's because you have to wait like some turns due to a game mechanic (for example, if they were bribed into war, they need 10 turns before they can negotiate peace, EVEN IF they are losing everything.) Or, they just need some turns after they DOW before they can even negotiate. If it's a long war in most cases the negotiation choice becomes accessible.

 

[Gamewizard]

Don't my a comment to a part of mine comment which was completely taken out of the content. I was making a completely different point. I've given the AI one last final opportunity to make peace before getting a victory and it refused to talk - is there any logic behind such a behaviour? I get, that it has been programmed that way, cause the dicsrepancies between army sizes did not allow the AI to negotiate a peace treaty. That is the point - the AI is too stupid to negotiate peace even when being on a verge of defeat.

It is also hard to get favorable or neutral peace when you have a history of breaking deals. I do not know if this applied to your game or not. Nevertheless, your game is over. Why do you want the AI to look for peace at this point anyways? Just end it and move on.

 

[smallfish]

I thoroughly agree. Post-patch, it is much harder to get a reasonable peace deal or even a cessation of hostilities out of the AI. I've had the same experience in the deity games I've played since the patch came out. Even after I decimate the initial AI invasion force and take one of their cities, he/she still demands all my gold and all my cities as a condition for peace. Since I'm not willing to go along with that idea, the result is either a lengthy 'sitzkrieg' of nothing happening, or a lengthy war I don't want and can't get out of even though I'm winning.

This aspect of the patch needs to be fixed.

I dunno about that.

I had a runaway Napoleon on another continent in a recent Emperor game (took out his neighbor Songhay, had a successful modern war with tech leader Wu Zetian in which he helped himself to Persepolis); he was mad REXing all over the place, even onto my continent

Spoiler :

Initially, both of us were friends. Then at some point, after I started late midgame expansion of cities (in addition to taking out every capital on my own continent and some puppets), he... well, realized that we shouldn't be buddies anymore.

Spoiler :

Mind you, for a Standard Emperor game, both Nappy and Wu were runaways worthy of being pre-patch Immortal; Wu was in Industrial at T177 despite her small size, for instance, while Nappy eventually overtook her and was perilously close to completing Apollo sometime at the end of the mid-T300s.

Spoiler :

I was like friends with both of them, but at some point, everyone hated me. Well that was normal because I was a warmonger who decided to pause for now and build up a massive invasion fleet... but then, this happened:

Spoiler :

Yeah, I read some other thread where folks were saying the AI was unpredictable now, would DOW you in mid-DoF... yeah no, not at all.

Standard procedure: make one of the "neutral" party DOW each other, prepare for the worst from the 1000-pound gorilla.

Spoiler :

It didn't take them long to act up, but that's when they ran into the problem of attacking a Great Walled opponent

Spoiler :

Apparently Nappy was probably going to be Autocracy-driven too, judging by the content of his DOW speech:

Spoiler :

Oh yeah, I even delayed teching Dynamite to head for Plastics/Atomic Theory... it was hilarious.

But now long story short, after much fighting and teching to Bombers and discovering how much peashooters Battleships are to 100+ def cities now and finally preventing Ottomans for being turned into "French Greater Africa", we carried the war to France itself, first with judicious use of submarine wolfpacks. 2 subs per direction, each hugging close to each other and sniffing out for trouble... they racked up so many kills I would call it "Clubbin' Baby Seals Time"

This was Nappy's first offer for peace:

Spoiler :

Then came the D-Day, and he changed his mind:

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

But I didn't want some lousy peace like this, and how was I to justify such a large military force expenditure to the general public if there was no invasion, so the War continued

But then some more it ran into problematic Time Limits

Spoiler :

After I took this city below, Nappy offered me another kind of peace... give us back Strasbourg or no peace. Didn't take screenshot of that deal when I should have, but alas, it was a fine example of "Peace with Honor".

Spoiler :

Both of us could sense the time bomb ticking, however, so I went and took this city down after the special weapons were thorough with it, razed it down... and he accepted a peace with France handing me some gold

Spoiler :

Then we went to work on taking on President Wu Zetian and her devious schemes to become Eternal World Commander-in-Chief (had to pay Nappy off to that, but ah well, cake isn't always possible)

Spoiler :