[GS] The current AI grievance behaviour feels unnatural

[FinalDoomsday]

Good day all,

I feel the current grievance system robs AI leaders of personality and agency because of how dominating it is on relations. Meeting new leaders who denounce the player right off the bat because of actions against an unknown 3rd party feels bizzare.

Harald Hardrada never got a chance to form his own opinion of me based on my interactions with him, his friends and his enemies because the grievance system demanded he denounce me because that's how it works. After meeting Cyrus and going through the formalities of denouncement he actually let me know he liked that I declared a suprise war but he still had to fall in line and denounce because his opinion is insignificant compared to the grievance system.

It almost feels like all the AI are a singular force rather than independant actors free to pursue their own goals and make up their own mind. Their passive behaviour just seems to add to this as generally they seem very happy to sit where they are and leave any drama to the player to create.

I'd like to know what other people think about the current system because I feel like whatever angle I view it from it does not feel engaging and really turns me away from the game. Thanks for reading and please share your thoughts!

Edit: removed a part I realised was not true to avoid other people bringing it up when its not the main focus of the discussion.

 

[leandrombraz]

It also seems to create an 'All or nothing' approach to diplomacy where you either play passively like most of the AI and good diplomatic relations are easy to maintain with everyone since no one forces you to choose sides or tries to disrupt the status quo in any way. Or you just ignore the system for the most part and just accept every 30 turns leaders will approach you just to let you know they still hate you.

There are a lot of ways to manipulate grievances and conquer without pissing off everyone. It's even possible to win domination without getting denounced by every leader, if you have the patience to do so and if you aren't in a rush to win early. I like to leave other Civs alive in my domination games and I often ally with defeated enemies after I took their capital.

• Friends/allies can't declare war on each other and usually they renew the friendship/alliance, as long as you do it on the same turn it ended, so that's a great way to secure your relationships before you go out conquering;
• Casus Belli is a great way to reduce grievances, mainly the golden age casus belli that you get if you adopt the "To Arms!" dedication, available from the renaissance to the information era. That Casus Belli is OP and reduces grievances to a meaningless amount;
• Don't use emergencies as an opportunity to conquer, since you'll get grievances as if you had declared a surprise war. You should only conquer if you declared a proper casus belli or at least a formal war;
• Invite everyone to participate in your wars;
  
• Liberate cities that the AI conquered, mainly city-states, to get a grievances reduction and positive relationship;
• Don't conquer city-states;
• If you're going to eliminate another Civ, either liberate their last city or get it through loyalty, to avoid getting a penalty for eliminating that leader;
• The dead can't hold a grudge, so if you eliminate a Civ, you'll get rid of the grievances they have against you, which is a great way to fix your diplomacy if you generate too much grievances with a leader;
• If, however, you want to keep your enemy alive and have a good relationship with them, be sure to conquer one more city than you're planning to keep and return it in the peace deal, which removes a nasty -18 penalty for occupying their cities. You can also gift one of your cities, any city, or liberate one of their cities that got conquered by another Civ. Any of these actions will remove the penalty. Liberating a city is specially effective, since that also gives you positive relationship.

So, it isn't either you're peaceful or just accept that everyone will hate you, that's a false dichotomy. You can secure your relationships before you conquer, then conquer surgically, without letting grievances get out of control. Despite its flaws, grievances is a system that gives you quite a lot of options on how to approach war. If you want to conquer without diplomatic consequences, you can do it.

Meeting new leaders who denounce the player right off the bat because of actions against an unknown 3rd party feels bizzare.

I agree, off course, that this is a problem and something Firaxis really should change, a Civ you just met shouldn't care about the grievances you generated up to that point. I also hope that, someday, they will rethink that -18 occupation penalties, which is a bad, unintuitive mechanic that undo what the grievances system tries to accomplish.

After meeting Cyrus and going through the formalities of denouncement he actually let me know he liked that I declared a suprise war but he still had to fall in line and denounce because his opinion is insignificant compared to the grievance system.

The agendas system needs an overhaul, to deal with this kind of inconsistency. Leaders like Cyrus really shouldn't care about grievances, unless you generate a ridiculous amount.

 

[Gedemon]

Months ago, hyped by GS introducing "grievances" which seemed to be a very good mechanism on paper, I said to myself, "ok, a lot of people love this game, even old civ4 players too, why don't you ?"

So I started a fresh game, played a few turn, realized that grievances where still affected by...

actions against an unknown 3rd party

... or something of the same kind, and then I remembered that it's not me who don't like the game, but it's the game that hates me, at its core design.

 

[Archon_Wing]

It also seems to create an 'All or nothing' approach to diplomacy where you either play passively like most of the AI and good diplomatic relations are easy to maintain with everyone since no one forces you to choose sides or tries to disrupt the status quo in any way. Or you just ignore the system for the most part and just accept every 30 turns leaders will approach you just to let you know they still hate you.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

Thanks for the comments,

I'll admit the 'All or Nothing' statement was a knee jerk reaction although it has come from playing with the system for ahwhile. I concede you can make conquests without ruining diplomacy but it still feels like a lot of the methods to do so are tricks in the AI behaviour rather than machivellian scheming. I'm thinking specifically of refreshing friendships and alliances on the turn they expire before the AI has a chance to think they don't actually like you that much and giving a single city back in peace terms manages to effectively wipe the board clean in relations.

It's true the 'To Arms' dedication is very powerful but what it further exposes is a large gap between classical and reneissance where theres very little opportunities to declare wars without harsh penalties which feels thematically off. Holy War should be avaliable in the early medieval I would have thought, and there are opportunities for additional cassus belli such as one to use on a civ that doesnt have a majority religion a 'defeat the pagans' sort of thing or one that targets civs you can deem 'barbarians' perhaps due to low culture output or something like that.

But even when you do manage to navigate the grievances succesfully it still remains that the system homogenises the computer players by forcing them to base the vast majority of their opinion around the grievances. If you manage to avoid the grievances then you have few issues regardless of your other actions.

 

[Breadsmith]

I love meeting new civs on the other side of the world that denounce me because I was aggressive in converting my neighbors to my religion. Esp when they haven't met this new civ yet. Even better when it's Kongo doing the denouncement.

 

[UWHabs]

I love meeting new civs on the other side of the world that denounce me because I was aggressive in converting my neighbors to my religion. Esp when they haven't met this new civ yet. Even better when it's Kongo doing the denouncement.

While overall I like the grievance system to give a sort of explicit penalty to actions, it's a little too strict. Like, there should be some AI that couldn't care less that I converted my neighbours to my religion, and there should be others who would take that as a personall affront to them and a pre-text for war, while looking the other way at me burning and razing the neighbour on the other side of me. Similarly some civs might even consider a holy war as a worse atrocity than an actual simple formal war declaration, so that would add a new wrinkle too if there were varying effects - "I could declare a holy war, which my civilians will appreciate more and be less unhappy, but that will cause excessive grievances with Saladin. Or I just stick to the formal war, which is less justifiable to my people, but won't upset Saladin as much."

Of course, some of the problems are due to the asymmetric view of civs. Like if I have met Kupe, and Kupe has met Kongo, it feels like at some point in my discussions with Kupe he might mention his dealings with the Kongo, especially if Kongo took an action against him that caused grievances. So in that sense having grievances before you officially meet someone can make sense.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

Thats right the grievance system gives little room for the AI's own opinion and values. Most leaders in the game should probably be operating on some level of realpolitik and be interested in practical diplomacy as opposed to ideology or morals. For many leaders what goes on between me and Saladin is between me and him as long as they don't see either party as an ally its going to weigh little on their minds. How I deal with them and how I affect their interests is what matters. A couple of leaders mind despise blood shed regardless of the situation or target but not many, equally some leaders might actually like you more if they see you're not afraid to get your hands dirty.

 

[Stringer1313]

I have the exact opposite reaction. Grievances are a joke because they disappear at a rapid pace.

For a game where the AI is extremely manipulable, and seems to grant friendships and alliances at the drop of a hat, i'd welcome more negative modifiers.

In addition, their personality and agenda modifiers should have 2-3x the negative modifier. Being a friend or ally covers a multitude of sins -- and it shouldn't.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

I think part of your issues are related to my point. Grievances are such a blanket system they are too harsh on relations with non-involved third parties but actually too little in regards to AI players have actually been wronged. The ability to manipulate the system so that you can get AI to love you when you have taken settlements from them does seem strange.

 

[AriochIV]

I like the grievance system better than the "warmongering" system it replaced... it is similarly unforgiving (and I think that is probably by design, since conquest is the easiest way to get ahead in the game), but at least you can clearly see how it works and manage it to some extent if you're willing to put in the effort (I rarely am).

What makes the AI seem so artificial, in my opinion, is not the grievance system itself but rather the simplistic and predictable way that the AI players respond to the inputs to the system. Unless they're your allies or are at war with the same target, you will pretty much ALWAYS be denounced by EVERYONE the turn after ending a war in which you were ceded cities, and then the very next turn they will ALL make demands. It doesn't matter whether they're Genghis Khan or Gandhi... they all react the same way. I have a similar problem with the agenda system... it's so simplistic and inflexible, devoid of any context or personality, that it makes the AI seem more robotic. Mvemba a Nzinga kvetches at me for not sharing my religion with him, and then his waiting gaggle of Apostles gang rape my missionaries the moment they set foot in his territory (and these are his Apostles but from someone else's religion; he doesn't have his own). One is left with the impression that they made no effort whatsoever to supply custom behavior code for each civilization, and that is why they all feel the same... because they are.

 

[oSiyeza]

It feels that Fxs was so focused on creating a predictable AI that would not make difficult to foresee actions against the player, that they forgot to add any personality or any hability to actively pursue any goal. Go figure.

 

[FinalDoomsday]

I was certainly no fan of the warmongering system I suppose this is better.

What makes the AI seem so artificial, in my opinion, is not the grievance system itself but rather the simplistic and predictable way that the AI players respond to the inputs to the system. Unless they're your allies or are at war with the same target, you will pretty much ALWAYS be denounced by EVERYONE the turn after ending a war in which you were ceded cities, and then the very next turn they will ALL make demands. It doesn't matter whether they're Genghis Khan or Gandhi... they all react the same way.

That's a good point the grievance system could actually feel better if it still tracked all the grievances between civs but actually let the individual AI's choose how to react (or not) for themselves. Rather than force all AI to hate that player now without significant other modifiers to lay it off.

It feels that Fxs was so focused on creating a predictable AI that would not make difficult to foresee actions against the player, that they forgot to add any personality on any hability to actively pursue any goal. Go figure.

Talking about predictability made me think about an old run in with Sweden...

I was not the biggest fan of Civ V but it did generate one my most memorable gaming moments when Gustavus Adolphus my declared friend stabbed me in the back and declared war and pushed a huge army over my borders. I was simultaneously confused, panicked and enraged as the Swedish army swept through the land taking cities one by one. The betrayal never felt like an AI quirk he even acknowledged his backstab in the war declaration message and I'm sure better players would have seen it coming but it made such a story and threw me off completley. I totally gave up trying to keep up with everyone else to have a chance at a victory I was only interested in the unofficial 'Revenge Victory'