Pacifist AI

[rb401]

I've played a few games of Civ IV but it just seems to be getting a bit stagnant. Admittedly my style of play has bordered on the conservative, building up my cities and technology until I'm very ahead of my rivals and then launching a late military onslaught against their inferior units.

My problem is that I want to attack AIs earlier in the game but I want to pitch my battles carefully so that I can still trade tech and resources with other nations. In my games the AI rarely seem to attack each other. If I explore a new continent later on in a game then generally no cities have been captured or razed so I'm sensing that the AI just live in peace for the history of time!

Is there any way (other than the diplomatic option of declare war) to encourage wars between AI players?

 

[Beamup]

Unfortunately no, not to any great extent. It's one of the acknowledged flaws of the Civ4 AI - most wars will involve the player, one way or another. Sometimes it will happen that the AIs fight extensively among themselves, but it's not reliable and there is no known way to encourage it effectively.

 

[snipafist]

set the AI to agressive on a custom game. Also, add extra AIs to the game, which means they're going to be running up against one another more quickly and will likely have more differences. Then you'll see some war.

 

[suspendinlight]

Put more civs on a map than is default. Right now I play 24 civs on large or standard maps. Also, the AI is more agressive (including against each other) in Warlords.

 

[manwiththehands]

set the AI to agressive on a custom game. Also, add extra AIs to the game, which means they're going to be running up against one another more quickly and will likely have more differences. Then you'll see some war.

I agree. In my experience the more crowded the map the more the AI's fight amongst themselves. Also, I get and stay friendly with my neighbors with religion and tech trading, and I NEVER trade with 'enemies'. It seems if the AI can't pick on you they pick on each other.

 

[uncarved block]

In addition to the other advice, make sure you only found one religion. Whenever I found three or four of them, the world tends to turn into one big Buddhist bloc, which isn't going to lead to much war. Or you could just put Monty in every single one of your games . . .

You don't even need to add extra AIs to get early war. On the new standard Great Plains map, six of the civs are set up right next to each other, with one off to the side. Tokugawa declared war on Isabella on turn 30 or 40 in my last game (Epic speed). Crippled them both for the rest of the game.

 

[bitplayer]

Put more civs on a map than is default. Right now I play 24 civs on large or standard maps. Also, the AI is more agressive (including against each other) in Warlords.

24 on a large map! Wowzers Ive played 18 on huge before and it was pretty cramped I couldnt imagine 24 on standard/large.

 

[se7en]

Put more civs on a map than is default. Right now I play 24 civs on large or standard maps. Also, the AI is more agressive (including against each other) in Warlords.

I tried this for a while too, but then I got 20 tiny little nations that were a breeze to knock over because they only had two or three cities; and still no one went to war.

 

[suspendinlight]

I tried this for a while too, but then I got 20 tiny little nations that were a breeze to knock over because they only had two or three cities; and still no one went to war.

Well then my advice for you is to play on a higher difficulty level.

 

[se7en]

Well then my advice for you is to play on a higher difficulty level.

I have tried that, which definately resulted in more AI v player wars, but I really didn't notice any increase in AI vs AI agression on higher difficulty levels (monarch and emperor) and I still hit the issue where after I conquered one or two other civs (easy to do, even on monarch when you both only have two cities since the map is so crowded) it was easy to start outproducing the other one or two city AIs and then you just steamroll them.. regardless of their production bonus. I even suspect that when the AIs have under 3 cities they are severely handicapped because one of those cities is likely to be building a wonder, the other a city improvement, and one (if you are lucky) building military.

Can you confirm that it is in fact the case that AI on AI aggression is increased at higher difficulty levels, preferably somewhere in the SDK or XML, or is this just a guess?

 

[apopholeus813]

I like 13 rivals on a standard map, pangea, aggresive ai, throw in all the crazies as your opponents and you'll have plenty of war.

 

[se7en]

I like 13 rivals on a standard map, pangea, aggresive ai, throw in all the crazies as your opponents and you'll have plenty of war.

even ai vs ai wars with large numbers of cities changing hands? if so i'll definately give it a shot tonight! i have to admit, i never even thought of preselecting the AIs to ensure max carnage.

 

[uberfish]

AI-AI wars with significant territory changes are indeed a lot more common on immortal and deity. I don't think the AIs are hardcoded that way as such. However faster AI expansion and religion founding rate leads to earlier tensions, and the large production bonuses make it more likely that one AI will be able to get a jump on another in military power.

The best way to get the AIs to fight on lower levels would probably be a somewhat overcrowded pangaea with several Aggressive AI.

 

[se7en]

AI-AI wars with significant territory changes are indeed a lot more common on immortal and deity. I don't think the AIs are hardcoded that way as such. However faster AI expansion and religion founding rate leads to earlier tensions, and the large production bonuses make it more likely that one AI will be able to get a jump on another in military power.

The best way to get the AIs to fight on lower levels would probably be a somewhat overcrowded pangaea with several Aggressive AI.

i'm happy to report that playing a epic standard continents map on noble as ramses with "all the crazies" plus a few token pushovers resulted in tons of cities changing hands. the aggressive ais were able to beat up on the weaker ones until they were quite strong. the only ai i regret putting in is tokugawa because he's so socially ********.

isabella, gandhi, churchill, tokugawa, montezuma, and genghis turned out to be the major players with me, isa, churchill, and toku on one continent and everyone else on the other. somehow, even though i was with isa, no religions were founded on my continent except for when i founded christianity which i quickly spread to everyone on my continent except for shaka and toku who would not give me open borders. it mostly spread to them anyway, because there was no other game in town. eventually isa founded islam, but i razed the holy city before it really started spreading in order to keep my diplomatic hegemony on my island (isa was #2 in score and i didn't want a full scale hatred going.. since she hadn't converted to islam yet i only got the -1 you declared war on us and -2 you razed a city.. well offset by the +7 or +8 we care for our brothers bonus.)

shaka declared war around the time of muskets and attacked with impis. lame, so i took a few of his cities that were near my border and soon declared peace. around this same time i made contact with the other continent where every single civ had a different religion. lots of cities had changed hands, especially notable is that half of the mongolian cities were stolen from hatshepsut. everyone over there absolutely hated each other, which was especially stark in comparison with my continent full of love. Because of all the hate and war, no one over there was technologically competent so i turned my focus back to my own.

isabella was uncomfortably close to me in score so i declared war again right after researching steel so that i could use cannons to take care of her riflemen. cannons are crazy strong in bunches, you can back them up with grenadiers and still take cities no problem if you have enough. i razed two cities and took one, which was enough to lower her below churchill.

now, ive just finished researching artillery and im going to declare on churchill and give him the same treatment.. raze a couple cities and cripple him so that i can run away with the win. this strategy basically leaves me with no allies (in exchange for having no strong competitors) in the late industrial age. it will be interesting to see how it plays out through modern times with all these aggressive AIs.

 

[se7en]

oh, forgot to mention i had raging barbs on too which made the early game a lot of fun. i have to admit i copped out and built the great wall though.. i almost wish that wonder wasn't in the game (or had a different effect) because it seems so overpowered when raging barbs is on. next time, if i can resist, i'm going to let one of the ais build it just for the fun of the non-stop barbarian raids.

 

[shadyforce]

I doubt, both from experience and common sense, that there is a hardcoded rule that the AI should be more likely to declare on a human than another AI (even aggresive AI should mean broadly aggresive to everyone). If you seem to always be involved in the warring, (and assuming your not putting it down to you being the war-mongerer), it's far more likely that you are bringing wars on yourself by either:

a) Having too weak a military (as compared with the typical AI)
b) Not giving into demands where other AIs might to appease war mongerers
c) Impeding on others' cultural borders too easily (aggresive expansion)
d) Generally not handling diplomacy very well

In my games, it varies a lot whether I am declared on a lot, or if the AI fight among themselves more. Depends on circumstances. But it definately seems 'fair' to me anyway.

Anectotal tangent:

Spoiler :

In my rather abnormal and amusing latest game on Warlords, I played as Inca on a small terra map with (8 civs - aggresive AI (which I always play these days) - no tech trading). I founded Hinduism but couldn't spread it because I found myself stuck on a peninsula with 4 cities (about average for all the players on the cramped map) blocked off by Churchill who refused to give me open borders.

Yet despite having a religion not widely known on the continental hub, and having a single lone Quecha guarding each of my cities right up until I promoted them to single lone riflemen, and being disliked by everyone else, and constantly turning down requests/demands (not bowing to a single one), and generally violating every guideline I posted above, I was amazingly left completely alone while all the other guys kicked the sh*t out of each other. There seemed to be countless wars being declared, sometimes simultanious distinct wars. The poor vikings seemed to be involved in every other one, and some of the few cities that Buddhism spread to, like Persopolis and Ankara, seemed to change hands constantly.

Meanwhile, I cottage spammed, beelined to astronomy and settled the new world (building and captured about 10 new cities there) and I currently have techs like Electricity, Biology and Rifling while I can only see longbowmen in the AI's cities. I haven't yet finished this game, but I'll probably quickly tech myself some Modern Armor and quickly raze the AI cities for fun.

I've no screenies cos I'm at work atm. (If anyone asks, I'll upload when I get home.)