Still don't get AI reasoning

What is the formula for when the AI thinks you’re looking for salvage too close to them. In my last game Brasilia landed close to me. They instantly said my scout was looking for salvage in their territory. The thing is the wreckage was probably an equal distance from either of our bases and lets face it….I was there first.

So really what they were saying is everything here is ours. Its not as if I travelled to a different land mass looking for salvage. Is that just a default for the AI? Because they don't seem to be able to differentiate between "clearly in my territory" and "closer to you than me".

It gets better though. Brasilia had already planted a base on one titanium resource I was gearing to get, forcing me to change production to a new colonist to grab the other one within reach. This of course made them accuse me of “grabbing all of the land”.
(The way I see it, its never a good idea to agree to the “I won’t hunt slavage/ build near you” requests from the AI.)

Hilariously there was a large portion of land with good resources they could have exploited early in the game, they just never did it. I did, however, but much later in the game when I had established my core cities and secured resources and happiness. They could have easily taken all of that land without any trouble.

This started the game long condemnations and irritating remarks from Brasilia. Even if I did nothing but mind my own business they’d wait until one condemnation had run its course and expired and do it again. They constantly ran units up to the border and back again into their territory (mostly covered by the FoW until later in the game.) and then told me my military was a joke. I didn’t respond or anything because I was busy securing the part of the continent I wanted….it had loads of floatstone and oil and I needed to clear out nests of bugs and set up bases. I didn’t want a war on the other side of my borders. But I found out that Brasilia was sandwiched between me and ARC and they weren’t as big or powerful as they’d been fronting. They had four cities and very few troops. They were also fighting ARC and while the ARC AI was unable to take a city they were tearing their forces apart. They asked me to join in the war and I declined. At this time I was FAR ahead of both of them, (they were around Affinity level 8 to 10, I was level 13 and building the Emancipation Gate) and Brasilia decides to call me up again with a “You stink” message.

Ok, I want to know what makes any AI do this? Other than be successful at colonizing I hadn’t done anything to them since the beginning of the game. I had trade convoys going to them. My troops outnumbered them and were more powerful. What formula tells the AI to goad me into a fight they can’t possibly win? Especially when they’re already losing another fight?

I took their capitol and another city just for revenge. It took all of maybe five turns. Then for peace I made them give me all of their resources. As soon as the allotted period for peace was up they started bugging me again so I finished them off. Which pissed off everyone but ARC and the Slavic dude. Everyone else condemned me. Even though we were friendly before. I suppose from their point of view it looked like I just attacked Brasilia for nothing, but the Indian lady (can’t spell the name) had attacked Brasilia just before I took them out and a few turns later attacked the Slavic guy.

So is the AI telling me its ok when they do it?

 

Yeah, no leaders in real life are hypocrites. This is too unrealistic.

 

You went to war and conquered a couple cities because they were taunting you? And you don't understand why people think you're a warmonger?

 

There's really nothing particularly difficult to understand here. From the AI perspective any resources or lands that are within a certain radius from their cities belong to them. They don't give a damn if you were there first. AI are absolutely egocentric and have absolutely no ability to understand that others might also feel they have rights on something. The only thing they can understand is what they have rights on, with possibly the only exception being when you specifically tell them "don't settle near us", which they however take as an unfair request whether they comply or not.

There's very little that an AI hates more than a faction that is bordering with them. They don't need another reason, and it doesn't matter if they have vast expanses free for colonization in another direction.
It is still possible to be friendly with a bordering faction, but it's always harder than with one that is far away.

Also I don't think you have mentioned which affinity you were and which affinity was Brasilia. Because factions of different affinities are the third thing AI hate the most, (warmongers being the second or first depending on how much they hate warmongers).

 

I'm not talking about real life. This is a game. I'm just wondering what the formula is. Maybe it is as simple as "human player=must hate". I never mentioned hypocrisy, I'm just curious as how they can fight each other without the chain condemnations.

I suppose it would be different if I could see how the AI's relate to each other. (maybe its in there and I missed it) But to answer your question.....from my point of view I attacked a civ that has been badgering me through the entire game. I didn't go on an all out war spree. If Italy started marching troops to the German border and saying "you guys are p****es" sooner or later someone is going to start shooting. Game wise I just got tired of it and decided to put Brasilia out of my misery.

I wondered why the AI would do it, since the AI must have been able to determine that I could easily run roughshod over them.

There's really nothing particularly difficult to understand here. From the AI perspective any resources or lands that are within a certain radius from their cities belong to them. They don't give a damn if you were there first. AI are absolutely egocentric and have absolutely no ability to understand that others might also feel they have rights on something. The only thing they can understand is what they have rights on, with possibly the only exception being when you specifically tell them "don't settle near us", which they however take as an unfair request whether they comply or not.

Honestly, I think it was the resources in the area. (Titanium). They were too far away from the floatstones with me already blocking that path. It wasn't even that much titanium.

(an aside: it happened again. In another game I began an expedition on a site and halfway through it ARC landed a few hexes away. They accused me of seeking salvage in their "territory". Even though I was doing it before they even got there.)

Affinity wise I was purity while Brasilia was Supremacy. ARC was Harmony though and they were close allies with me. I'm not whining about it as much as I just want to know what the scale is that determines how the AI reacts. There used to be one in CivII in an old strategy guide I had....it actually said what actions made the AI upset and vice-versa. Granted it was a simpler game, it just makes me wonder.

That's why I usually never agree to AI demands of don't get resources/don't settle here. If the AI is already set on being upset if you do either while they do the same theres no reason to agree.

 

The excavation complaint trigger is within 6 tiles of one of their cities, and not in land you own.

 

Sorry. I thought you were just complaining. The AI considers whoever declares war to be the one to blame. The AI factors in conquering cities and, particularly, penalizes the player for conquering a city from a civ that has few cities.

 

Welcome to CivBE AI, where decisions are random and the diplomacy doesn't matter.

 

I'm more annoyed by their lack of concern for human life.

Although in fairness I have ONCE gotten a "Hey, thanks for clearing out those monsters" message.

Once...

 

Thanks for this post - it's always good to learn new things about how the AI thinks.

Out of interest, do you know the triggers for these other AI complaints (In BE or Civ 5):

Settling cities too aggressively
Settling too close to us

It always bugged me that the AI would hate you for something but you really didn't have much of a way to tell if your actions were going to annoy them.

I'd love to have hard-and-fast "good neighbour" rules to follow like "Leave ten turns between settling each city" or "Don't settle within 8 tiles of an AI city" so I could avoid needless hatred from the AI.

 

It's not really random though. The opinion the AI has on other players is based on specific values and none of them are randomly assigned.

I can tell how this work in Civ V because I can actually check the code there, Civ BE is probably the same.
It is a somewhat complicated check, for a Civ to be considered "aggressive expansionist" by the AI several conditions must be met, the most relevants are:

-Must have more than 3 cities
-Must be close to us
-Must not be stronger than us in military
-The number of cities he has must be higher than 1.5 the average number of cities that other players have.


The function that defines "close to us" is very very complex.

 

... I don't think, honestly, that this is a problem with the AI. Of course it'll see any contested, yet uncolonized zone between your civs as rightfully theirs. Of course the amount of uncontested land they have at their disposal won't matter regarding what they think about said disputed zone. See every minor or major conflict between european nations regarding Ameica's/Africa's/India's and Far East's colonization, and how almost every international agreement to pacify colonizer's tensions there was bypassed at the first opportunity.

AI is behaving as it should, IMHO. Only if devs could engineer and implement some sort of international law system (and tie warmonger penalty to it) should the AI be expected to behave differently. And I'm not sure that's feasible using the current engine; maybe that's something for Civ 6 or 7.

 

I think the main problem is how the AI behavior is portrayed to the player especially because of the "denunciation" system.

Every single value that is meant to determine the likeliness of an AI to declare war on someone else is shown as something that they feel like a direct offense against themselves.

Because of that the player often reacts surprised or baffled asking himself "why is this AI pissed at me?"

The human player expects a valid, rational reason for someone to be angry at them, and the AI appears to be completely illogical in that.

But if the AI appeared to be not angry but rather simply greedy "I have nothing against you, but I really like your wonders and your land, sorry, nothing personal", that would be something that most people would understand as a logical reason to wage war.
It would be hypocritical not to.


"You're an easy pray and a perfect target for my expansionist ambitions." is something that we all can understand, I think.
"Your military is weak! How dare you! I'm going to denounce you and tell the whole world that you must be eliminated!" Not so much...


The other reason Civ V/BE AI is disliked is because of its inherent hypocritical nature. They expect you to don't settle near them without any previous agreement but they get angry at you simply for asking the same. They hate you if you conquer cities but they wage wars themselves. It is okay if a few leaders acted like that as part of their irrational personality, but not all of them.

 

Yeah, the problem with Civ's diplomacy is the lack of transparency. AIs will hate you for stuff that you had basically no way of knowing about. I have 744 hours played in Civ 5, and I just learned that AIs would hate you for having 1.5 times more cities than average. A pop-up that said: "Warning, settling this city will make other nations view you as an aggressive expansionist - are you sure you want to proceed" when you're exceeding that limit would go a long way towards making the diplomacy more transparent.

You could have similar pop-ups for settling lands that AIs consider to be theirs - even better would be a system whereby players could stake claims to areas of the map and would be seen as justified in going to war if someone settled there. (IE: No warmonger penalty for taking cities in a claimed area)

The current system, where an AI can hate you for something you have no way of knowing, is bad.

 

At least in Civ V, doesn't the game tell you if the AIs are angry because you have too many cities? It doesn't give such a clear warning, although the AIs do sometimes do say they are worried about expansion if you talk to them (and read what they say).

Still, a warning would be good for newcomers, as long as you can turn it off.

 

It does say something like "We feel you are building cities too aggressively!" as a negative diplomatic modifier, but there's no indication of exactly how many cities you can build without annoying them. My usual strategy in Civ 5 revolved around four very large cities, and even then I'd often get the aggressive expansion diplomatic penalty because I tended to expand to four cities quite early in the game.

Likewise, there's no real way to know if an AI will count a city as breaching a promise not to expand near them or not without examining the code of the game.

If the AI are going to get mad at you for something, you should know exactly what will annoy them, and the game doesn't provide that information unless you literally look at the game code.

 

That's true. I think there should be an option in the settings where you choose to show or not show those sorts of numerical details. Or just a mouse over sort of thing.

 

But realism doesn't equal fun.

 

I agree. I want more variety in the AIs. I want mostly peaceful AIs who will treat you how they want to be treated. I want AIs who will agressively settle near my lands and take my excavations, but understand if I do the same. I want warlike AIs who war because they want your land and think you are weak, and are open about it. The problem is that all AIs feel more-or-less the same as self-centered hypocrites.