Is bribing AI into war harder for the human player?

[saamohod]

As the title says. Out of dozens if not hundreds games I've played with VP, almost every game there is an instance where an AI declares a bribed war on me. On the other hand I struggle to remember a single case where I was able to bribe some AI into war.

Does this mechanic discriminate in favor of AI or am I just being paranoid?

 

[Rosete]

I have the same impression as well, but I'm not sure how much of this is just my own selective memories. I've gotten invited to a joint war by AI often enough, but I also can't seem to get the AI to pay me to get into their war. For example, if a neighbor warmonger is getting ganged up on by the AI and I want in, the AI don't seem willing to pay me to get in the fun as well.

 

[Teholb]

This hasn't been my experience. I frequently pay AIs to fight my neighbors, or their own neighbors if they would otherwise consider me a target.

They're much more willing to do it if you wait until they ask you to go to war with them. At that point, it's obscenely cheap to get a war started. Sometimes just a few GPT is enough. Then I denounce the AI they're at war with, and that is usually enough to keep them focused away from me.

 

[Jednooki_John]

I think it is.

What I cannot understand well is why AI frequently refuses following deals:

X is at war with Y
I propose to X that i start the war with Y
IMPOSSIBLE

Why? If X is at war with Y, shouldnt that at least be considered? I cannot think of any single reason why it would be IMPOSSIBLE.

 

[looorg]

I find that various running peace offers/deals and defense pacts stop most of those suggestions from being a thing. The AI seems better at it but I guess is cause they all check each and every turn or so if any is possible and I as a player just don't. I have been able to offer so some AI that I would declare war on someone for money tho. They are more into that it would seem. Then a few times they have offered to declare war on someone if I would fork over some gold. But it's very rare for me to suggest that they go to war without me.

 

[Fluffball]

There have been a number of discussions on bribed wars and i have turned them off since the option was added and found the game much more enjoyable and more 'fair' as i also found it impossible to ever pay an AI to DoW someone while most wars in the game in general and particularly against me were bribed wars.

While turning off bribed wars does stop a lot of the conflict in the game i feel most of that conflict was either pointless spam as the AI would not act on the DoW and you could just count down the timer and offer peace or often would be of detriment to the AI as apart from the AI breaking friendships and research agreements etc it would allow me to milk my neighbours through combat without having to declare war myself and because when i am on the offensive my target would often get distracted by another bribed DoW against it which would make my attacks easier rather than being able to focus on me.

Having said that, i know there has been an effort to improve the bribed wars mechanic with apparently mixed results where many people comment on how it is better than it originally was but still a lot of people commenting on how 'not perfect' it is.

This hasn't been my experience. I frequently pay AIs to fight my neighbors, or their own neighbors if they would otherwise consider me a target.

They're much more willing to do it if you wait until they ask you to go to war with them. At that point, it's obscenely cheap to get a war started. Sometimes just a few GPT is enough. Then I denounce the AI they're at war with, and that is usually enough to keep them focused away from me.

The AI letting you 'bribe' them to do something they are aleady going to do is not really a great example of a 'bribe'. At best you are paying to make sure they can't offer peace for X number of turns.

 

[MontyJava]

Every attempt has been met with "Impossible!"

I've found 33-50% of DoWs have ~0 commitment behind them, and get peaced out when you kill your very first unit.
On the one hand, it's a bit silly. On the other hand, it's more interesting than not having half the DoWs. Peaceful games are dull games, after all.

 

[Rick Drayson]

Definitely.
i really hate the impossible mechanic. Would much rather prefer that any diplomatic action is possible just with exorbitant costs . Here take all my cities.

Whereas AI can bribe really cheaply. Just had a game on emperor go south with the bloody danes bribing mega india neighbor to go to war with me along with his many vassals.

 

[MontyJava]

I tried a game with bribes turned off and aggression set to 2. Despite having only Monty and Genghis for neighbors, I never entered a war, and there were maybe 2 DoWs active at any time (16civs). Typically at that point, there's like 6+ DoWs active at any time (half fake, sure). Guess I'll turn bribes back on then.

 

[Rick Drayson]

I tried a game with bribes turned off and aggression set to 2. Despite having only Monty and Genghis for neighbors, I never entered a war, and there were maybe 2 DoWs active at any time (16civs). Typically at that point, there's like 6+ DoWs active at any time (half fake, sure). Guess I'll turn bribes back on then.

How do you turn bribes off?

 

[andersw]

There was a major "feature" solved recently where the AI's chose the human player last for all type of deals.
This and no more infinite defensive pacts likely had a huge impact.
With the recent, "max=2 defensive pacts" it works a lot better and wars and more evenly distributed.
This means AI's are interested in defensive pacts with me and I can play with bribed wars on.
There is also the fix of joint wars, so we agree on "in 10 turns bla bla" and if I go to war the AI is forced to join.

 

[Fluffball]

I tried a game with bribes turned off and aggression set to 2. Despite having only Monty and Genghis for neighbors, I never entered a war, and there were maybe 2 DoWs active at any time (16civs). Typically at that point, there's like 6+ DoWs active at any time (half fake, sure). Guess I'll turn bribes back on then.

Did you take time to note the greater effect on the game as turning off bribed wars does mean a lot less 'conflict' but i have found it increases the ability to actually use diplomacy as friendships aren't aritifically broken while individual wars are more meaningful and dramatic as the AI only DoW's when it means it.

With bribed wars on i always just found 'good diplomacy' was a liability that will end up hurting me more or simply pointless.e.g. friends backstabbing me, research agreements broken with a few turns to go, giving gifts to make friends being just a waste of resources as they will probably DoW soon anyway etc and thus i always just assumed the AI will hate me eventually i could annoy the other AI's less by not commiting to anything diplomatically so why even try to be nice. With bribed wars off i find i can engage in diplomacy and while it can still go sour i can actually make and keep AI's as friends even for the whole game if i use positive diplomacy options so games are more varied. It becomes how long can i keep them friendly rather than how long can i delay it before they inevitably hate me.

I have found negative diplomacy is more meaningful also. Because it is possible to make friends and keep them i have something to lose by acting 'badly' and it means i have to put a lot more thought into other decisions like if i want to knock a civ down a bit i usually actually have to DoW them or actively work to annoy them so they DoW me rather than just wait for the inevitable DoW which is probably bribed and means they aren't really prepared for war so i can easily take advantage while getting no warmonger score or other diplomatic negatives for actually declaring war. Also when the AI does DoW me it is usually serious about it and i quickly find one of my cities in severe trouble so i am actually scared when i see a DoW rather than just thinking, "here we go again" before counting down the timer to make peace while i farm XP from their units and maybe pillage some of their tiles and only occasionally surprised they actually mean it. When the AI is focused solely on fighting you it makes them much more serious ooponents and with bribed wars off i find myself having to make more difficult decisions like sacrificing a city or having to make sure i place cities in defensible positions and spend time building defenses in case the AI does attack.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

With the recent, "max=2 defensive pacts" it works a lot better and wars and more evenly distributed.

Weird. I just discovered Chivalry in a 13 player game (standard/standard/Emperor) and the AI offered FIVE defensive pacts on the same turn to me. I kept accepting them just to see what would happen and they kept coming. So, is that a bug then?

EDIT: To clarify, I have 5 defensive pacts all active currently.

 

[andersw]

Weird. I just discovered Chivalry in a 13 player game (standard/standard/Emperor) and the AI offered FIVE defensive pacts on the same turn to me. I kept accepting them just to see what would happen and they kept coming. So, is that a bug then?

EDIT: To clarify, I have 5 defensive pacts all active currently.

I think that the limit is only for AI's at the moment, not sure if bug or feature.

 

[DizzKneeLand33]

I think that the limit is only for AI's at the moment, not sure if bug or feature.

Thanks for the quick response. If that is the case, then I will house rule it to 2 max for myself as well.

 

[CppMaster]

There was a major "feature" solved recently where the AI's chose the human player last for all type of deals.

What? Why would the human player be discriminated by that?

 

[andersw]

What? Why would the human player be discriminated by that?

I guess the reason was "sloppy firaxis coders" ....

This is some of it
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-version-1-2-1-november-23-2021.674256/
"
[Bugfixes]
- FINALLY fixed AI making Defensive Pacts above the limit, this was happening because Firaxis's deal code for AI to AI deals functioned as follows:
AI #1 asks for something and decides how much gold/stuff it's worth, without asking the other AI
AI #2 accepts automatically, even if their value would normally be "IMPOSSIBLE!" or dramatically different
This terrible "wild west" system has been fixed at last
Thanks to Milae for fixing AI to AI deals
Thanks to Aristos for finally providing the save that I was able to debug
- Fixed remaining cases of nonsensical bribed wars and other trades of impossible items (a side effect of this bug)
- Fixed AI making Defensive Pacts with civs they don't want to (another side effect)
- Fixed AI being unfairly more friendly to each other compared to the human (another side effect)
- Fixed AI rarely having resources available for trade (another side effect)
- Overall, diplomacy/trade should now be more dynamic and fair to human players!
"

 

[CppMaster]

I guess the reason was "sloppy firaxis coders" ....

This is some of it
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/new-version-1-2-1-november-23-2021.674256/
"
[Bugfixes]
- FINALLY fixed AI making Defensive Pacts above the limit, this was happening because Firaxis's deal code for AI to AI deals functioned as follows:
AI #1 asks for something and decides how much gold/stuff it's worth, without asking the other AI
AI #2 accepts automatically, even if their value would normally be "IMPOSSIBLE!" or dramatically different
This terrible "wild west" system has been fixed at last
Thanks to Milae for fixing AI to AI deals
Thanks to Aristos for finally providing the save that I was able to debug
- Fixed remaining cases of nonsensical bribed wars and other trades of impossible items (a side effect of this bug)
- Fixed AI making Defensive Pacts with civs they don't want to (another side effect)
- Fixed AI being unfairly more friendly to each other compared to the human (another side effect)
- Fixed AI rarely having resources available for trade (another side effect)
- Overall, diplomacy/trade should now be more dynamic and fair to human players!
"

Oh, ok, so it is fixed now I thought it was introduced to VP for a reason

 

[Recursive]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

Yesterday I did a large amount of debugging and while it likely won't be in the next version, I'm going to do another pass of the logic for bribed wars and such.

With any trade item you have to consider that there are numerous others it could be sold to. You're not competing with one AI for bribed wars; you could be competing with six or more, and if the AI agrees to any request (with such requests happening more often than a human player will likely try, as 6+ computers with different relationships to the seller may be trying at varying intervals), then the bribed war happens. That said, the logic could use some work.

There's no longer any inherent bias in favor of the AI as that was recently removed, but computers have natural advantages over humans.

And groups have advantages over single players. Much like how in a room of 30 people, the odds of two specific people sharing the same birthday are low, but the odds of any combination of two people sharing the same birthday are much higher.

 

[LarryAR]

Kudos for @Recursive and @andersw.
The bugfixes of @andersw are a great example of a single change in code can have multiple unforeseen effects. Kinda like a cyber butterfly effect.
Something to keep in mind when requesting general code changes to meet a personal playstyle.