civplayer33
King
- Joined
- Sep 11, 2017
- Messages
- 965
This has been discussed a few times, I believe, but not very fruitfully IMO.
The issue: the AI still overvalues using Great Diplomats for Influence.
In my current game I have managed to create 7 City State Embassies so far (late Modern), making up a third of my World Council votes (and I'm the "vote leader" with statecraft, a religion, play as Germany, have CS allies, am the host, so it's not like I neglected other ways to get votes, though Siam sniped Big Ben).
The AI civs have either none or one Embassy per civ (most AI civs have 1). Despite one civ already having entered Atomic and me playing with EEVP (=more time to plant Embassies) there are still two CS with available Embassy spots and I could liberate about 4 more to plant Embassies there as well.
This is going to make Diplomatic Victory a lot easier for me than it should be; Siam told me twice now that it plans to win Diplo Victory (hilariously telling me that he is writing his World Leader acceptance speech, very cute) and he is very competitive with CS alliances and rushed Big Ben, but does not prioritize CS Embassies at all, having only planted one.
The solution (?): Optimally the AI should "simply" get smarter about long term thinking (not Skynet level smart, though), but since this is probably not gonna happen, either the AI valuation of CS Embassies should be increased, or
Proposal: expending the Great Diplomat only increases available Paper when he is expended for Influence, not on planting CS Embassies.
(FYI you currently get 1 Paper resource permanently when you expend a GD, no matter which way you expend him).
This would force the player to plant less CS Embassies, since otherwise the amount of available Paper would be too low, thus increasing the chances the AI gets at planting their own CS Embassies. It would also reduce the ability of a player, who is very focused on planting CS Embassies, to generate regular diplomatic units, at least in a short time frame, which seems like a decent trade off.
Other considerations:
The issue: the AI still overvalues using Great Diplomats for Influence.
In my current game I have managed to create 7 City State Embassies so far (late Modern), making up a third of my World Council votes (and I'm the "vote leader" with statecraft, a religion, play as Germany, have CS allies, am the host, so it's not like I neglected other ways to get votes, though Siam sniped Big Ben).
The AI civs have either none or one Embassy per civ (most AI civs have 1). Despite one civ already having entered Atomic and me playing with EEVP (=more time to plant Embassies) there are still two CS with available Embassy spots and I could liberate about 4 more to plant Embassies there as well.
This is going to make Diplomatic Victory a lot easier for me than it should be; Siam told me twice now that it plans to win Diplo Victory (hilariously telling me that he is writing his World Leader acceptance speech, very cute) and he is very competitive with CS alliances and rushed Big Ben, but does not prioritize CS Embassies at all, having only planted one.
The solution (?): Optimally the AI should "simply" get smarter about long term thinking (not Skynet level smart, though), but since this is probably not gonna happen, either the AI valuation of CS Embassies should be increased, or
Proposal: expending the Great Diplomat only increases available Paper when he is expended for Influence, not on planting CS Embassies.
(FYI you currently get 1 Paper resource permanently when you expend a GD, no matter which way you expend him).
This would force the player to plant less CS Embassies, since otherwise the amount of available Paper would be too low, thus increasing the chances the AI gets at planting their own CS Embassies. It would also reduce the ability of a player, who is very focused on planting CS Embassies, to generate regular diplomatic units, at least in a short time frame, which seems like a decent trade off.
Other considerations:
- Teaching the AI about this is probably very hard, so making the stakes higher than they are is risky.
- Embassies can be pillaged if the CS is conquered, erasing any benefit the GD had if this change were implemented; quite a dramatic loss.
- If the AI starts to value CS Embassies a lot more, the above mechanism (conquering a CS and removing the Embassy improvement in case the CS is liberated later) would be somewhat exploitable by the player.
