It's not ******ed, it's AI

[CornPlanter]

From my last game (King).

Apart from me there was one another powerhose, namely Darius I. Far weaker than me but far stronger than everyone else.

Harun Al Rashid was already ressurected by me. He was finished off by someone else, if that matters, but the bulk of his cities were taken by me. I ressurected him just for fun and buffer. Later I found out ressurected leaders vote for me in UN but that really doesnt matter for the purposes of this wall of text.

So, at some point Darius declared on Harun. Harun had maybe 2-3 cities and most of his units were gifted by me earlier when he fought against English (to keep him alive as buffer). Now during this war Harun wasn't important for me anymore, but for fun I decided to help him against Darius.

I kept donating him units (far better ones than he could build himself and far better than Darius' for that matter), resources, later I started donating him my spare cities just to keep him alive. With Darius forces Harun could be dead in 5 turns. I prolonged this war for forever.

Now here's the ******ed part. Not even Harun didnt became more friendly to me, quite the opposite. He started insulting me with all these "oh I'm sorry I confused you with barbarians", demanded me to break alliances with various CS and eventually turned Hostile to me in game terms. And all this time it was me who kept him alive with ridiculously big injections of military and cities and resources.

I understand that in Civ4 donating units couldn't help with relations because it would have been abused like no tomorrow. Hell, even city donations were abused badly. But it's Civ V... and most of all I didn't really care about better relations, I just have no idea why they got even worse after I started helping him.

 

[Onionsoilder]

They will react hostile to you if they see you as a threat, among other reasons. Because your empire was right next to him, you were far to close for comfort. That is my guess, anyway.

 

[bobbyboy29]

If you're by far the runaway leader in the game, an aggressor, and you're right next door. Then he should definately be hostile towards you, I really like that weaker AI's will now be more likely to try and band together to prevent (or at least delay) you from winning.

Hopefully, it will work the other way if you come up against a powrhouse AI. If you could band together with the other AI's against a powerhouse, collectively wear him down and then snatch a victory then I'd say that Civ 5 has easily the best diplomacy of all civ games. (whether this is possible remains to be seen...)

 

[SRV]

I think he is just an ungrateful jerk face.

 

[Augustgrad]

By all account, AIs have no logic whatsoever when it comes to Diplomacy.

 

[ethanyoung66]

i just assume everyone is hostile and every AI civ will turn against me sometime if not now.

 

[Udey1]

I like this one aspect better in some respects. No longer can you completely marionette certain AIs. I can't go all +10 green smiley faces on Ghandi(ala civIV) and now they cant change their behavior even if their circumstance changes. I do wish there was some indication of their feelings or standing would be nice- but thats another thread.

 

[cembandit]

Reminds me of real life,heh. You see similar scenarios with super powers and small coin tries of interest.

 

[r_rolo1]

If you're by far the runaway leader in the game, an aggressor, and you're right next door. Then he should definately be hostile towards you, I really like that weaker AI's will now be more likely to try and band together to prevent (or at least delay) you from winning.

Hopefully, it will work the other way if you come up against a powrhouse AI. If you could band together with the other AI's against a powerhouse, collectively wear him down and then snatch a victory then I'd say that Civ 5 has easily the best diplomacy of all civ games. (whether this is possible remains to be seen...)

That is not AI, that's ******ed A civ in any civ game has two objectives: to survive and to win. There is no point in trying to stop another player win ( even if sucessfully ) if you are in no conditions to win afterwards and even in danger of putting your own survival at peril ...

Now if the AI start acting before it reaches that point, or by manipulating other people onto the fight, that is another issue. But what we have now is not that, and in fact it resumes to seppuku in a lot of the situations posted so far, with no effects in even denting the rampart march to the win of the other player ( human or not )

 

[ZapRowsdower]

That is not AI, that's ******ed A civ in any civ game has two objectives: to survive and to win. There is no point in trying to stop another player win ( even if sucessfully ) if you are in no conditions to win afterwards and even in danger of putting your own survival at peril ...

Now if the AI start acting before it reaches that point, or by manipulating other people onto the fight, that is another issue. But what we have now is not that, and in fact it resumes to seppuku in a lot of the situations posted so far, with no effects in even denting the rampart march to the win of the other player ( human or not )

If it were to act like a human in a circumstance with no chance to win, then it should support its friend to win. I think this was the intended goal of religion in Civ4, to act as a way to break multiple civs into "teams". The big problem with it is that it was too powerful and there was no other component of diplomacy that could override the religion component.

It would be cool if they could find some dynamic to break civs into two or more factions, like the cold war, so that there were clear alliances that would remain (mostly) clear throughout an era.

 

[Nunya]

A civ in any civ game has two objectives: to survive and to win.

They tried to make the AI behave more like a very competitive human player. And because of that the AI in Civ 5 does not have the objective to survive. The only reason why it cares about survival is because it needs to survive in order to win. But survival without victory is worthless to it, just like it would be to a human opponent.

The AI basically knows that it's playing a game and acts accordingly.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think "Liberated Civs" should behave somewhat differently though.

They don't need to act like a Human player, because a Human player would never be in the "Liberated" position... they would have lost.

I think "Liberating" a civ should have the effect of making them work toward Your win.

 

[mrt144]

They tried to make the AI behave more like a very competitive human player. And because of that the AI in Civ 5 does not have the objective to survive. The only reason why it cares about survival is because it needs to survive in order to win. But survival without victory is worthless to it, just like it would be to a human opponent.

The AI basically knows that it's playing a game and acts accordingly.

. This thought is getting repeated time and time again and yet, the AI isn't very good at winning the game. So if the AI isn't good at winning the game, maybe it shouldn't play to win individually, but maybe to prevent a loss to the human.

 

[Nunya]

. This thought is getting repeated time and time again and yet, the AI isn't very good at winning the game. So if the AI isn't good at winning the game, maybe it shouldn't play to win individually, but maybe to prevent a loss to the human.

Okay so that makes the AI like a very competitive bad human player.

The most effective way to make AIs prevent the human player's victory would be to simply make all AIs immediately declare war on the human player. But that wouldn't be a fun game to play, would it?

I think the main reason the AI isn't good at winning is because it can't handle combat. Not only does this mean that it can't beat you in a fair fight, it will also have to waste a lot of production to replace them instead of spending it on buildings and wonders. When (if?) the combat AI becomes better, we will see a general improvement in all areas.

 

[r_rolo1]

They tried to make the AI behave more like a very competitive human player. And because of that the AI in Civ 5 does not have the objective to survive. The only reason why it cares about survival is because it needs to survive in order to win. But survival without victory is worthless to it, just like it would be to a human opponent.

The AI basically knows that it's playing a game and acts accordingly.

No , it doesn't And you can see that by exactly what we are discussing: if the AI was acting accordingly with the notion that it is playing a game, it should worry first with survival and then with winning ... simply because you can't win if you are out of the game So, the first thing to do is to put the near suicidal moves out of the play until you run out of options ...

This is very diferent of "let's attack the guy that is powerful because it can win ". Not even humans play like that in MP : they will try to find other sucker to make the dirty job first , or will even befriend the strong guy just to later .. and only in last resort they do what we see the AI doing in civ V: desperate raids.

Now, IMHO firaxis should had hired someone that understands of game theory for the AI ( or, if there is someone there that knows of that, listen to them )... Gangbanging by desperate but weak civs against strong civs is light years away of "playing to win" in any possible sense of the word "win" ... and it is also unfun in general

 

[elthrasher]

They tried to make the AI behave more like a very competitive human player. And because of that the AI in Civ 5 does not have the objective to survive. The only reason why it cares about survival is because it needs to survive in order to win. But survival without victory is worthless to it, just like it would be to a human opponent.

The AI basically knows that it's playing a game and acts accordingly.

I think this is an interesting point. It reminds me of some Civ IV players who tried Civ Rev and complained about how the AI would attack them when they got close to winning, even if they'd been nice all game. Because the AI knows it's playing a game and wants to win. In Civ IV the AI didn't know they were playing a game and would happily vote you into victory if you were a swell guy/gal. I guess that's something they didn't want in Civ V (I'm guessing here as I haven't had any non-violent finishes yet).

I'm sure there will be some AI tweaks. I notice it doing some odd things too, like giving away too many cities and stuff. One thing I liked was a game I was playing where Caesar and I were doing well and two other AI on my continent were totally marginalized. I went to war with Caesar a few times, but once we had a ceasefire, he'd happily go back to trading. Meanwhile the weak AI hated me, wouldn't trade and would insult me all the time. I never did a thing to them, but half my cities were taken from Caesar. Why was Caesar okay with my behavior while the weak AIs hated my guts? Because the successful player (AI in this case) knows that aggression isn't personal, it's just business, just part of winning the game.

 

[tibbles]

Speaking of funny diplomacy, my first game I decided to do a diplo win. I was bored so was just blowing cash on city state allies, and so by the time I finished the UN I already had 17/10 required votes. The turn I completed the UN, 2 civs declared war on me. (It makes sense from the don't lose perspective, but it's amusingly ironic to generate hostility from the UN) The thing I don't get is, why did only the 2 out of 5 remaining AIs declare? They weren't even the hostile or close ones. Even with a guaranteed win in 9 turns, the AI can roll to decide to let you win.

Course, I know now I likely could have simply avoided the DOWs by leaving the vote winning alliance gold donations until turn 8.

 

[Nunya]

No , it doesn't And you can see that by exactly what we are discussing: if the AI was acting accordingly with the notion that it is playing a game, it should worry first with survival and then with winning ... simply because you can't win if you are out of the game So, the first thing to do is to put the near suicidal moves out of the play until you run out of options ...

I think that's what it's trying to do. It's just not capable to find any other options so it goes for the suicidal ones.

This is very diferent of "let's attack the guy that is powerful because it can win ". Not even humans play like that in MP : they will try to find other sucker to make the dirty job first , or will even befriend the strong guy just to later .. and only in last resort they do what we see the AI doing in civ V: desperate raids.

As much as an AI player manipulating other AI players would be awesome I think you're demanding a bit too much.

Now, IMHO firaxis should had hired someone that understands of game theory for the AI ( or, if there is someone there that knows of that, listen to them )... Gangbanging by desperate but weak civs against strong civs is light years away of "playing to win" in any possible sense of the word "win" ... and it is also unfun in general

I agree that there is much room for improvement, but I think the basic foundations of AI reasoning are fine. They just need to make it more capable at what it's trying to do.

 

[dannythefool]

I think that's what it's trying to do. It's just not capable to find any other options so it goes for the suicidal ones.

Not commiting suicide is always an option. Even if the outlook is bleak because you only have one city and the human will just crush you, your chances are better if you don't actively try to die.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Oh, lol. I think I just realised why the high-difficulty AIs were not attacking me in the last few games I played. It might be because my empires were small and my armies pathetically weak. If the AI is more likely to become hostile towards you if it perceives you a threat, does that similarly make it more likely to be friendly with you if you aren't a threat?

I think some of you have already seen that screenshot of the China blob of death that never bothered to annihilate me. I had like 2 samurais and a couple of musketmen or something pathetic like that. I was never attacked by any of Greece, Rome or China. None of them even went hostile towards me.