Revamped Diplomacy

[elthrasher]

That's a basic design question.

*DO* I have to stop somebody else when he's close to a certain victory condition?
*DOES* the AI have to stop somebody else when he's close to a certain victory condition?

As the human player, I am free in that decision, and no design should take this freedom away from me.
As the AI is concerned, is it really necessary to gang up against the human?
Even more important: does the AI gang up against other AI civs?
Or is it just an obstacle for the human?

Personally, I wouldn't make it obligatory for the AI to try to stop another player.
After all, it is called "Civilization" and not "Last Man Standing".

Don't get me wrong: I am really enjoying some hard to fight wars. Especially when not knowing in advance that I will win.
But if I know in advance that finally there will be one last war, the fun is ruined.

Then I am just playing a wargame. And there are better wargames available.

I think these are really great questions that designers should consider before coding a game. In this case, I'm not sure they did. In any case, it's not clear.

The best thing to do is simply answer all of these questions and then communicate that to the players so we know okay, the AI will make one final push at me at the end of the game or it won't.

Or even better, completely rework the difficulty levels so instead of giving the AI a series of bonuses, let players select the sort of game they want so you could have like a sandbox mode, role-play mode, AI gonna crush your skull mode, etc.

That all being said, I have not had the AI make a run at me as I near my victory condition. It just sits there uselessly as I hit end turn a bunch. So I dunno what's going on.