I've yet to make a single relatively reliable friend!

[toccoto]

I've done this (cultural victory), on Deity, with one military unit the entire game (a war elephant). Either that was one intimidating elephant, or AIs don't automatically DoW you if you can't defend yourself. I got involved in a few pacts of cooperation, but no pacts of secrecy or defensive pacts, and I kept my empire very small.

Civs demanded gifts from me a couple of times (which I gave them), and they often asked me to get involved in their wars (which I gave the polite refusal), but they never got angry with me for any reason that I could see, and many of them even asked for open borders with me (which I gave) so they could move through my territory to fight each other.

Yeah but I'd like to play one where if a Civ next to me starts getting uppity, I can bribe another civ to war with them, etc. Would be awesome. A truly diplomatic game. Not sure if it's possible. Might try tonight. Basically keep the other civs in check, whenever one starts getting large, bribe the others to war with them.

 

[Veshta]

Basically they put way too much emphasis on winning the game.

Which in itself is not a bad thing, what breaks the game is that they seem incapable of going for anything other than Domination .. even in games where they have a whopping beaker/hammer/gold advantage they still amass troops like there is no tomorrow when they could easily take a spaceship or science win.

 

[Snapp]

I think part of the confusion is that the AI is actually more complicated (diplomacy wise) than in the previous civs.

It seems in Civ V there a bunch of factors the AIs take into account in addition to the standard "Did you agree with my proposals?" that made up most of the diplomacy in the other civ games. Some of these factors seem to be:

Are you in competition for land? If you share borders or settle near them this is true and its a very big hit to reputation. You basically cannot become friends with a civ that feels you are in competition for land.

What is your demeanor? Have you attacked city states or other civs, how big is your military? If you are basically a war monger the AIs are much more likely to "backstab" you.

How trustworthy are you? Have you lied to the other civs, have you broken agreements by declaring war? If you aren't trustworthy the AIs are more likely to "backstab" you and are less likely to make deals with you.

AI personality, certain AIs are more likely to complain about certain things, make certain deals or are more or less likely to go to war.

Other factors - Building Wonders, size of your military, score, probably more

All those factors play much larger roles in diplomacy than the simple "Did you agree with my proposals?" that made up most of what mattered for diplomacy in the other civ games.

If you need proof that the AI can be peaceful, use an island map and don't ever expand off of it, agree to all of the computers demands, politely decline to go to war, make trades that the AI feels are a good deal. You can play a whole game without ever having war.

 

[Clement]

I think part of the confusion is that the AI is actually more complicated (diplomacy wise) than in the previous civs.

It seems in Civ V there a bunch of factors the AIs take into account in addition to the standard "Did you agree with my proposals?" that made up most of the diplomacy in the other civ games. Some of these factors seem to be:

Are you in competition for land? If you share borders or settle near them this is true and its a very big hit to reputation. You basically cannot become friends with a civ that feels you are in competition for land.

What is your demeanor? Have you attacked city states or other civs, how big is your military? If you are basically a war monger the AIs are much more likely to "backstab" you.

How trustworthy are you? Have you lied to the other civs, have you broken agreements by declaring war? If you aren't trustworthy the AIs are more likely to "backstab" you and are less likely to make deals with you.

AI personality, certain AIs are more likely to complain about certain things, make certain deals or are more or less likely to go to war.

Other factors - Building Wonders, size of your military, score, probably more

All those factors play much larger roles in diplomacy than the simple "Did you agree with my proposals?" that made up most of what mattered for diplomacy in the other civ games.

If you need proof that the AI can be peaceful, use an island map and don't ever expand off of it, agree to all of the computers demands, politely decline to go to war, make trades that the AI feels are a good deal. You can play a whole game without ever having war.

You make a really good post there, i've played about 10 games now of eight hours or more each, and i have indeed seen a lot of what you mention, it gives me hope that with more tinkering and refining the AI could end up being really interesting, well the diplo i mean, i don't know much about the battle AI.

 

[ohioastronomy]

I think part of the confusion is that the AI is actually more complicated (diplomacy wise) than in the previous civs.

It seems in Civ V there a bunch of factors the AIs take into account in addition to the standard "Did you agree with my proposals?" that made up most of the diplomacy in the other civ games. Some of these factors seem to be:

Are you in competition for land? If you share borders or settle near them this is true and its a very big hit to reputation. You basically cannot become friends with a civ that feels you are in competition for land.

What is your demeanor? Have you attacked city states or other civs, how big is your military? If you are basically a war monger the AIs are much more likely to "backstab" you.

How trustworthy are you? Have you lied to the other civs, have you broken agreements by declaring war? If you aren't trustworthy the AIs are more likely to "backstab" you and are less likely to make deals with you.

AI personality, certain AIs are more likely to complain about certain things, make certain deals or are more or less likely to go to war.

Other factors - Building Wonders, size of your military, score, probably more

All those factors play much larger roles in diplomacy than the simple "Did you agree with my proposals?" that made up most of what mattered for diplomacy in the other civ games.

If you need proof that the AI can be peaceful, use an island map and don't ever expand off of it, agree to all of the computers demands, politely decline to go to war, make trades that the AI feels are a good deal. You can play a whole game without ever having war.

Up to some point, yes. But it's also hard-coded to pile up on nations which are being attacked (which benefits the big aggressor, not the little AIs jumping in); hard-coded to attack players perceived as weak; hard-coded to be easy to offend and difficult to placate. I agree that they are less vile in their behavior when not close, and this is easiest to achieve over water (which the AI appears to treat as amplifying distances dramatically.) All of the factors you list are real, but grossly lopsided: if you take a city from another AI others will think of you as a Hun, even if it was a defensive war.

If you want to understand why so many of us detest this diplomatic model, try playing with a smaller army on a Pangaia map. Or watch as the AI hates you as a warmonger for agreeing to join them in a war. Or watch as they decide they loathe you because they thought it was a good idea to plop a city next to you.

In the game as it is you have to walk on eggshells, get insulted, and have to maintain large armies to avoid random attacks (when smaller armies are perfectly good at winning the game.) And you still may get attacked out of the blue.

The overall environment comes across as hostile, with obnoxious touches like the AIs trash-talking you as if they were 12 years old. The kids who designed this game obviously never thought to check and see if all of their players liked this approach - which is built around the sort of gamestyle that older (and, by the way, many female) gamers tend to detest.

 

[Roxlimn]

ohioastronomy:

1. Everything the AI does is hard-coded. It's AI, and very bad AI at that. We cannot have good AI in any Civ game because it has to run on our dinky little PCs. Its power is necessarily limited.

2. It is not "easy" to offend and "hard" to placate. It just seems like that behavior you take for granted as being acceptable as a player in Civ games is being recognized as being very aggressive, which it probably is. See point 3.

3. When you start taking cities, your war is no longer defensive in nature. It has become an invasion.

4. Border tensions are natural. Most countries that share a border have, at one point, been involved in war. In many cases, multiple wars.

5. The AI is not insulting you. It's AI. It can't insult anyone. It's not a real person. When it's providing negative feedback, it's telling you how things are between your Civs.

6. There is a disconnect between how the combat AI performs and how the diplomacy AI gauges military strength. Other than that, I don't see a problem. It is obviously necessary to nerf small armies to the point where they can't win against larger ones without outstanding factors in their favor - it's not a problem with diplomacy, but with combat. You can always compensate by behaving as stupidly as the combat AI does.


Long story short: you are perceiving a hostile environment because you are not responding to feedback properly, or refuse to do so. You would perceive a hostile environment with that kind of outlook, even if you were in an actual, human, working environment.

 

[ohioastronomy]

So having the AI programmed to pop up and say "I was just thinking of how pathetic you are and wanted to share" isn't obnoxious and juvenile? I'm not supposed to feel insulted when a game programmed that way? There aren't less childish ways of having the game tell me that?

Good lord, do you ever step back from the "Civ 5 is the best ever" persona enough to appreciate how utterly ridiculous some of the things you're pretending to be OK actually are?

 

[Roxlimn]

ohioastronomy:

You need to be more objective. For instance, I have often said that the AI in Civ V is bad. This is clearly against my "personality" of "Civ 5 is the best ever." In fact, in the poll, I mentioned that I was fondest of Civ 3.

When the AI pops up and says that, it's alerting you to the fact that your relations are not good. In fact, when it does that, I interpret it as a prelude to hostilities - I need to get my army up to fight, or drastically improve relations in some manner.

I have to confess that I have grown past the ability to get insulted by such words in real life, let alone in a game. I can't speak for my generation, but I'm pretty sure most of my friends are well past the age where they get riled by such things.

 

[Jharii]

With all due respect Ohiostronomy, Roxlimn really can't do anything about an inferior AI, except possibly complain about it, which he chooses not to do. Instead, he offers gameplay suggestions, which I do not at all consider defending the game, but merely offering advice on how to play the game with the inferior AI.

Obviously, you do take things a little more personally than Rox does. But I don't see that as any reason to be less than civil with him.

 

[winthrowe]

When the AI pops up and says that, it's alerting you to the fact that your relations are not good. In fact, when it does that, I interpret it as a prelude to hostilities - I need to get my army up to fight, or drastically improve relations in some manner.

This. I've found that it seems to be telling you what the ai will respect and increase your relations, if you continue to neglect development in the areas the ai cares about, you'll have much weaker relations. This isn't always about military strength, I've had similar popups for culture or science. If you take a "I'll show them" attitude and improve that area, your relations improve, from what I've experienced.

 

[ohioastronomy]

With all due respect Ohiostronomy, Roxlimn really can't do anything about an inferior AI, except possibly complain about it, which he chooses not to do. Instead, he offers gameplay suggestions, which I do not at all consider defending the game, but merely offering advice on how to play the game with the inferior AI.

Obviously, you do take things a little more personally than Rox does. But I don't see that as any reason to be less than civil with him.

If you want to have a discussion with someone it can help to find places of agreement. That simply isn't possible with him: no matter the example, no matter the particulars, I'm always wrong according to him; my concerns are without exception invalid, baseless, or involve my poor understanding of the game. It's an arrogant and abrasive style, with no understanding of real human interactions.

I think that it's a perfectly legitimate example to show that the AI is programmed to deliberately insult the players; that I really dislike this; and that there would be other ways to get that information across. He can't even even grant that completely trivial point.

 

[Roxlimn]

I think that it's a perfectly legitimate example to show that the AI is programmed to deliberately insult the players; that I really dislike this; and that there would be other ways to get that information across. He can't even even grant that completely trivial point.

The point isn't trivial - at least not to you, since you seem to be taking such an issue with it. To be accurate - the AI isn't "programmed to insult you." It's programmed to provide feedback. That feedback happens to be worded in a way that you find insulting, for some reason. I can recognize that as being possible, but I find it hard to care, and I don't see how this is an AI weakness, since it's a wording issue, and not a behavior issue.

If the wording were changed to whatever the heck it is you want to hear, it would still be the same AI code - it's just using different end-user output.

 

[Abraxis]

to ohioastronomy's credit, taking cities is necessary even in a defensive war, on the higher difficulties, often your neighbour will declare war on you, break their army on your defenses, and still ask for every resource you have for peace.

Unless you want to stay at war for 300 years, the whole time risking your opponent dragging others into it, your only choice is to pummel the jerk into submission, quickly. Either way you seem like a warmonger, when all you wanted to do was sit behind your defenses and built up rather than out.

It's a catch 22, and it's lame as hell. Even Ghandi is a huge prick, that right there should be enough to validate the theory of the AI, over-all, being a bunch of scruffy lookin' nerf herders

 

[timtofly]

There is also an opportunity most times to be insulting back to the AI.

 

[Roxlimn]

Abraxis:

I would still not call the war defensive in nature. It's still an invasion, but a necessary one to counter the AI's massive handicap bonuses at those settings. Clearly, if the player was capable of keeping up economically with the AI without resorting to conquest, then it would be unnecessary to invade - just kill his troops for XP all game long.

The chance for the AI to bring other AIs into it is just a function of how well the players can play the diplomacy game. If the other AIs dogpile him, then he's clearly not doing it very well. It's entirely possible (and I've said this multiple times) that playing on higher diff settings is causing the AI to behave in this fashion. At that point, you just have to accept it as a given on those settings.

Of course, you can play Civ on alternative settings.

 

[YoHo]

I think it's perfectly reasonably to let such comments roll off your back, but that doesn't mean its reasonable for a game to use such insults.
It seems like an attempt at humor. And certainly Civ4 was generally insulting as well, but there was a certain comicness to the Civ4 diplo screen that CiV doesn't have. Which changes the nature of the interaction.

As for the question at hand. I haven't played enough to really give a good accounting of this, but it seems that in general, the City-States are intended to take on the role of passive AI not trying to win.
The problem is that since each city-state is it's own entity, they aren't a true force to be reckoned with.
It would be interesting to see a mod that made perhaps little city-state alliances or some such. To make the city-states more civilization like.

At the same time, any additions that could be made that would increase the amount of subtlety in the diplo AI would be good.

 

[YoHo]

It seems like some are saying that, to use a real world example, The US and UK were warmongers for invading Germany in WW2.

Which is obviously a ridiculous diplomatic stance to take....unless you were on Germany's side.

 

[Abraxis]

The problem is that since each city-state is it's own entity, they aren't a true force to be reckoned with.
It would be interesting to see a mod that made perhaps little city-state alliances or some such. To make the city-states more civilization like.

well, actually they do, I've only done it once, but I took an Island from two city states, and after annexing the second, 5 other city states collectively declared war on me.

Though, granted, it's not like they were able to really follow through with their collective aggression.

 

[winthrowe]

I think that it's a perfectly legitimate example to show that the AI is programmed to deliberately insult the players; that I really dislike this; and that there would be other ways to get that information across. He can't even even grant that completely trivial point.

Perhaps the messages could be worded more.. diplomatically. However I do find they do a good job of conveying an appropriate amount of contempt and dissatisfaction before the outbreak of hostilities. And, when taken as constructive criticism, and picking reasonable partners, has aided me in forming fairly stable allies in mid level games. IMO, it seems like the insane bonuses that the experts play at weren't tested for their diplomatic interaction, and the game suffers for it. But I think the underlying diplomatic code exists and isn't 100% braindead.

 

[nightspydk]

Unfortunately the AI is quite passive.
If you never join in the insulting, you will prolly never get in conflict with anybody if that is your desire. So it is really much easier to have peacefully relation here that it was before. Played an entire game on prince with not a single encounter on huge map all enemies.
You can exchange luxuries no problem.

Somehow I hated the old AI where I had to wage war at some point, but this just don't work.

Keep your distance and win easily on King.