Yeah, I really think this is the primary driver of the most recent concerns that the AI is now too passive. My first (and current) game is with all the new Civs and hostility has been on the light side. That said, while the AI is certainly more friendly than usual, Shaka managed to capture two capitals and Assyria wiped Venice off the map (the last city was Kuala Lumpur - seeing Venice's capital in a puppet was kinda funny) before the Renaissance.
Having the AI catapult itself at you with absurd regularly, like it did in G&K and Vanilla, is not good but neither is an overly content attitude. It's a fine line to tread. There's certainly been an adjustment though and a noticeable one at that. However, it's almost certainly too early to tell yet whether it's gone too far the other way.
I agree that we need a good sweet spot between the AI absurdly suiciding itself, and sitting back and smoking weed all game. It was too aggressive in G&K and it's too passive in BNW. I'm not here to complain, I just think they should try and find a medium between those two aggression levels.
In my experience, by the Middle Ages, everyone hated everyone else in GnK. Alliances didn't exist, and if you had a weak army, the entire world DoW'd you. This would typically end up with 2-3 large AI puppet empires as they gobbled up the smaller fry.
In BNW so far, the AI seems to be much more effective at maintaining relationships. Again, if you've a weak army, they'll still pounce on you, but I definitely haven't seen the pure rage-fests that GnK inevitably devolved to. My latest game William took Isabella's capital, and now he's facing diplomatic backlash from just about the rest of the world. Montie and Shaka both have always gone to war early, and in 2/3 games that I've seen her, Maria's borne the brunt of world ire (in the 3rd, she's next door to my Koreans, and we're trading partners).
Then again, I haven't had the time to finish very many games in BNW. The later eras may prove different.
I stopped a game where, by the Industrial Era, my 12 city empire was protected by the weakest military in game. For land units, I was literally running 3 warriors, 2 Composite bowmen, and a lancer - and my sea units weren't much better. On King mode. With Shaka sharing a long border, ahead of me in tech, and sending me love. The only thing I used my units for were Barb defense early on.
I stopped a game where, by the Industrial Era, my 12 city empire was protected by the weakest military in game. For land units, I was literally running 3 warriors, 2 Composite bowmen, and a lancer - and my sea units weren't much better. On King mode. With Shaka sharing a long border, ahead of me in tech, and sending me love. The only thing I used my units for were Barb defense early on.
Iv had the same thing, but im in the modern era with just a crossbowmen. My spys constantly tell me that "X civ is marching to your capital for a surprise attack" but it never happens. They just camp my boarder and offer me declarations of friendship.
My statistics professors would die after reading this thread, as I doubt any of you have played enough games to make a good estimate on how the AI plays. I dropped back down to Prince because I suck and I need to get a handle of the new features. That being said, the AI in my games have been nuanced. In the latest game my continent was peaceful (I was Venice which allowed the other civs to gobble up as much territory they wanted). Also with the Shoshone, Poland and Indonesia as my continent mates, no one was really warlike.
The other big continent was a little different as it had Japan, Austria, Korea and Greece. Japan was the jerk on that continent (Greece was stuck in the Tundra with little production to make an army) and pretty much had Korea wiped out by the renaissance, only some crappy island city was left. Japan and Austria are starting to get into skirmishes.
The other games had a similar feel as well. I'm really too distracted with figuring out trading, tourism and the new civs to worry about the AI right now.
Well, since this is all anecdotal, I'll share my experience from my first game yesterday. I played Arabia against only the new civs, since I wanted to see their faces and speeches. I've built a reasonable and up-to-date military just for defense, while the game started to taking the shape of a cultural victory. Right by my side there was Brazil, which was obviously going for culture, and Poland, also trying culture.
During the Middle Ages, Portugal was sending great prophets to my land, agreed to take them off, but lied - so, when Brazil asked me to join a war against them, I concurred, took all their cities but one. During the Industrial age, my diplomat informed me that Brazil was planning to attack me, and so they did. It was a very smart attack - they've sent all cavalry to surround my capital and destroy my caravans in one turn, but didn't start attacking the city itself until the cannons were in place. I eventually repelled them and conquered all of Brazil. The Zulu, who were in another continent, dominating everything, made a phony declaration of war during my quarrels against Brazil, probably on their request, destroying my caravel nearby their shore, but not sending a single unit.
By now (I couldn't finish the game until 7 a.m), everybody hates me, but my tourism is so strong with the acquisition of Brazilian great works and wonders that I think I'll win a culture victory even without any Open Borders agreement. Maybe I'll conquer Poland to get some more.
So, yeah, I didn't notice any excessive passivity in that particular game. It sounded only logical, I was Brazil's main cultural competitor, my capital was unprotected, Pedro did what I would do. I was actually considering to invade Brazil, but he was playing nice up to that point, even signing a mutual protection pact at some point.
TL;DR: I joined a war on request of Brazil, who is supposedly a peaceful Civ who was aiming for culture in that particular game, was invaded by the same country and another who had dominated half of their continent. All of that while having a strong military. On Prince.
In my game, it seemed like Korea wanted to attack me, but for some reason, it never did. This strikes me as really odd. Maybe the AI aggressiveness hasn't really changed but there is some new factor in BNW that prevents following through on war intentions. Or maybe all of these erroneous intrigue reports is just a red herring. I can't say for sure, but I honestly don't remember ever having so many "X is plotting against you!" reports result in no action pre-BNW.
I've heard it said before, that even in G&K the AI plotting against you alot of the time might not even much of anything. Korea probably really was plotting against you, but for some reason just never got around to attacking. The AI probably changes it's mind alot, and Korea might have been thinking one turn about attacking and the next turn it might have given up on the idea.
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