They need to hotfix AI agression now

People never getting dow'd, what difficulty?

I've spent the last two nights playing immortal and trying to get away with building no army, something some people here keep saying is now always possible. I went light on expanding to avoid provoking the AI, I agreed to their requests, I traded resources with them, sent trade routes, obtained DoF's, and each game (I'm up to 6 games now) has ended in a backstab. Usually I'd have 2 archers, a warrior and a scout.

Just to be clear, these were all backstab dows for lack of military, not a civ that got more and more angry at me, but a civ that was friendly that told me they were backstabbing me during the dow.

My theory is that the AI only declares war if they feel they have the upper hand now. I imagine they'll be more likely to go into war without as much of an advantage if they hate you, but it seems like there's a threshold of relative military power, and once that's crossed, they'll dow you no matter what because you're an easy kill. On higher difficulties the AI is much more likely to reach this always dow unit threshold, meaning they're much more likely to attack you.
 
Perhaps I found one reason for the sometimes paralyzed AI:

In my current game once again I could not understand why Oda (Japan, my direct neigbor) did not expand at all, so that I could take all the valuable land.

Finally, I found that there still was a barb camp close to Oda's capital - in the year 1940. :wow:

This barb camp probably stopped his expansion to the west for thousands of years, and in the east it was me, taking all the nice land.

At 1940, Oda still had no iron and no horses (I took it all), but this should not have kept him from cleaning up the barb camp. At this point Oda had only defensive units, like pikemen, trebuchets, probably for defense against me (even though I played a 100% peaceful RPG game), nevertheless his defensive units should have been more than able to take out the barb camp without effort.

Then the funny thing: When I send an offensive unit to the barb camp attacking it, suddenly Oda came with one of his trebuchets, attacking the barb camp too, as if he waited for a offensive unit to "open" the barb camp.

So may be there is a bug in the current AI so that it thinks it cannot win against barb camps without offensive units based on Iron or a similar reason?
 
Just because there was discussion about it does not mean it was the most requested feature. Given that this expansion was about overhauling culture/diplomacy as well as altering the gold aspects of the game, I'd say it was pretty obvious their focus was not in war here.

While we're making snarky comments. Enjoy G&K, I'm sure playing whack-a-mole with half a dozen CB will be very intellectually stimulating for you.

Look I just got done saying archer focus isn't stimulating and the warmonger faction is not entirely composed of people who simply fetish one easy strategy. The reason I mentioned the melee unit discussion was to point out that supporters of CiV's war features weren't all in if for easy archer spam, we wanted and want more out of the warfare aspects, we are complaining because nothing is not more than one thing.

There is I am sure an enjoyable time being had by BNW's defenders in owning the "civilized tone" side of this argument while slyly implying stupidity, lack-of-guts, and uncreativity on the discontents with these constant, constant, constant, constant references to CB rushes.

I never even used CBs in my G&K games so please if you are going to be snarky do it in a way that applies to me even at all otherwise this argument is becoming as perfunctory and boring as warfare in BNW is.
 
I'm only in my second game of BnW so far. To report a few experiences:

1st game: France, Prince level, continents. I was sitting between Ethiopia and Marocco on one continent, everything was peaceful, I DoW'ed Marocco and took most of his cities around early Industrial. On the other continent was Korea, Germany, Sweden, Rome, Siam - things were more hot over there. Sweden was a real bully, taking out both Germany and Rome (lol?), while Korea pretty much made short of Siam.

2nd game: Marocco, King, continents. I'm on a continent with Spain, Austria and Byzantine, currently early renaissance. Spain did march up to my borders with a handful of Warriors and a couple of Catapults during Classical era, but then I moved some forces over there, and they just sad there doing nothing for an era or so. The Warriors finally went home, while the Catapults still sit there? There's a pretty big swath of land to the west of me and Spain that's not settled yet ... I did DoW Austria ones, just to test the waters. Took out most of her troops and then made peace, just to see how that would affect diplomacy. Got a minor penalty with Spain and Austria for being a Warmonger, but still no-one has taken it further to attack me.


The thing that strikes me is that from what I've seen so far in BnW, things have become really SLOW, and not in a positive way. Science seems to have gone notably slower, particularly when you go semi-wide like I have in my current game (6 cities). Gold obviously comes much slower, and you seem to be using ages in pumping out those Caravand or Cargo Ships. Early game war definitely seems more rare, although the fact that I used to play on Emperor might play a role in this also. A reason for the lack of DoW might be changed AI, but I also think the fact that war now cripples your trade and therefore gold income completely by disrupting trade routes plays a part. That's both realistic and something that looks good on paper, but I do think there's a need for tuning here, because I'm not sure if actually makes game more fun.
 
Finished my first game on king yesterday. Didn't get DoW'd once even though I was kinda of warmongerer myself.
 
Well, in my first game (still playing) I got DoWed by my neighbour on Prince, around about turn 100. In fairness, this might not be a reasonable test since my neighbour happened to be Shaka and his capital was built about 12 tiles from mine. He coveted my lands pretty much from the word go, so I was surprised that it took him so long to attack me, but when he did come he brought a fair few units. His tactics were as toothless as you'd expect from the AI, but then again I was lucky in that my capital is on a hill with a bunch of forests surrounding it, so a couple of Archers was enough to see him off.

He only lost a couple of units before retreating, and I notice he's upgraded his Archers to Comp. Bows. So I'm sure he'll be back, if I don't get around to squishing him first.

In G&K I'd have expected my other neighbours to have attacked me by now, but I've got DoFs with them both, with nary a backstab in sight. But then again, I usually play on King/Emperor, so I can't say how much of this is due to the difficulty level rather than the expansion. On King I'd expect that Shaka would have attacked me earlier and been a bit more persistent before retreating.

I must say I'm enjoying the havoc that Barbarian Horsemen are wreaking upon my poor helpless Caravans...
 
Well my first game at King level, playing as Venice - I lost my capital to Caesar on turn 127! I built very few units after what I read about the lack of aggression from the AI.

I was playing at Immortal level before this expansion but haven't played since November 2012.
 
Chiming in. The lack of aggression makes it feel like half a game compared to G&K, despite all new additions. An entire dimension has been lost, complete lack-luster.
 
Well my first game at King level, playing as Venice - I lost my capital to Caesar on turn 127! I built very few units after what I read about the lack of aggression from the AI.

Yes, I made that mistake initially with Shaka :lol:

I'd be interested to see what the size of the Zulu army is now, since in his last peace offer to me he was bold enough to demand two of my cities...
 
I find the Ai now perfectly evaluating when to attack or not.

At Emperah, i had the Vikings on a peninsula next to me, the only way for them to expand was to attack me, and they TRIED many times, losing 2 wars, to the point that they was forced to become my friends and adopt my Order policy in modern times...

No other nations on my borders attacked me simply because they had No interest in doing so, but they had other wars between them.

So yes, the AI is smart now, and really plays to win.
 
This is an absurd statement considering that the ability of the player to wage war is as it ever was. The people who have a beef with less aggressive AI's aren't the daring warmongers, but rather those players too complacent to take the offensive, and instead want to passive-aggressively provoke the AI into a DoW that will compel it to stupidly march their armies into a gauntlet of archers/CB's/Xbows.

If you want to wage war, go wage war already.

Please....

I think I was one of the people who complained, and I have never used the wait for AI Dow tactic. I like all VC but in non gotm setting will go for easiest or what seems most appropriate way to win. If there are nearby targets or i am a warlike civ will go for Dom, but happy to turtle and go for SV.

I am playing immortal on Earth map as Shoshone (spawn in China) and despite teching fairly slowly, have rolled over Maya (Burma) and Carthage (Mesopotamia) and now besieging Warsaw in central Europe of all places ;) and there has not been much resistance from anybody except the Poles who were leading in almost all categories and DoWed me as my army assembled to invade them.

I know it's only immortal but usually for me that's a sweet spot for a leisurely game where there is challenges but not really a chance of losing. But this just feels wrong, I hope things will improve as game goes on. I like the new science penalty, it really slows things down and let's AI catch up. But if it goes as planned and I manage to conquer the world in industrial then that's not fun. What really bugs me is that CB rushes are still so effective, I wish it wasn't so anymore.
 
Perhaps I found one reason for the sometimes paralyzed AI:

In my current game once again I could not understand why Oda (Japan, my direct neigbor) did not expand at all, so that I could take all the valuable land.

Finally, I found that there still was a barb camp close to Oda's capital - in the year 1940. :wow:

This barb camp probably stopped his expansion to the west for thousands of years, and in the east it was me, taking all the nice land.

At 1940, Oda still had no iron and no horses (I took it all), but this should not have kept him from cleaning up the barb camp. At this point Oda had only defensive units, like pikemen, trebuchets, probably for defense against me (even though I played a 100% peaceful RPG game), nevertheless his defensive units should have been more than able to take out the barb camp without effort.

Then the funny thing: When I send an offensive unit to the barb camp attacking it, suddenly Oda came with one of his trebuchets, attacking the barb camp too, as if he waited for a offensive unit to "open" the barb camp.

So may be there is a bug in the current AI so that it thinks it cannot win against barb camps without offensive units based on Iron or a similar reason?

Yes disabling barbarians makes the AI better it can't handle the swarm of barb units, Not to mention they will use all their units to hunt down barbs instead of wars so thats why the Ai is less agressive because of the barbarians.


Well my first game at King level, playing as Venice - I lost my capital to Caesar on turn 127! I built very few units after what I read about the lack of aggression from the AI.

I was playing at Immortal level before this expansion but haven't played since November 2012.


Only warmongers are super agressive However they only dow you at turn 100 because of the lack of gold early on. becdause of this the AI is olso more effective in his atacks so if you start next to a warmonger expect war.

Napoleon does has changed and can stay peacefull if you are next to him if you do the right things like trade with him.

Again I don't see why they should change it. Civ 5 ha finally the best diplomacy where only agressive leaders will be agressive there are actualy personalities
 
Perhaps I found one reason for the sometimes paralyzed AI:

In my current game once again I could not understand why Oda (Japan, my direct neigbor) did not expand at all, so that I could take all the valuable land.

Finally, I found that there still was a barb camp close to Oda's capital - in the year 1940. :wow:

This barb camp probably stopped his expansion to the west for thousands of years, and in the east it was me, taking all the nice land.

At 1940, Oda still had no iron and no horses (I took it all), but this should not have kept him from cleaning up the barb camp. At this point Oda had only defensive units, like pikemen, trebuchets, probably for defense against me (even though I played a 100% peaceful RPG game), nevertheless his defensive units should have been more than able to take out the barb camp without effort.

Then the funny thing: When I send an offensive unit to the barb camp attacking it, suddenly Oda came with one of his trebuchets, attacking the barb camp too, as if he waited for a offensive unit to "open" the barb camp.

So may be there is a bug in the current AI so that it thinks it cannot win against barb camps without offensive units based on Iron or a similar reason?
I saw similar thing when a barbarian archer was attacking a warrior unit of my neighbor, both were out in the open and it was like an endless loop, that warrior was curing and doing nothing to move or attack back
 
From my point of view, AI does seem much more passive and less lunatic, and so far I like it. 2 games so far. One on Emperor, winning culturally with Poland, no one attacked me whole game except my 'neighbor' Monty, but given my position behind mountain range and covered by sea from other side, trying to siege me was truly stupid idea (picture. Monty also tried to take Egypt south of him, but was crushed. Apart from that, Zulus on other half of globe ate someone quite early on and rest of game was mostly free of war (except Zulus and Monty getting wiped out when others had enough and gangbanged them).

Second, still in motion, on Immortal, I took initiative myself and nearly wiped France. That made it rather hard to get DoFs later on, but surprisingly, deceptive AIs can help with that alot. Spain gave me DoF for no reason, which in turn made Byzantium friend me too (they were friend with Spain before). Later on, Isa backstabbed both me and Theodora. Rest Civs on continent (England, Persia) tried to be neutral as possible, they may not rush to war you, but getting DoF is mighty hard sometimes too. On other continent someone again lost capital before I met him, and I think they may be some wars there given Dido having negative gpt when I finally met her.

Both of those games, I was spammed quite a bit by request to go to war with someone, so I guess AI do want to fight, but first it tries to get overwhelming force.

As for people not answering why they don't start their own war, instead complaining about AI being passive, it's quite easy. People love exploiting that behavior before, even I with limited experience (mainly Emperor GnK player with ~150h), was always waiting for enemy to come with war first (and it always came), so that, as said before, his force get wasted trying to attack, and then follow up and take his cities.

Just think how it worked before, when AI decide it's war time. You get to kill his troops with minimal loses, you get to take cities and land for nothing, you get to level up your troops, you eliminate one civ from winning game, and you suffer no penalties (if you leave one backwater city as 'prison'). You get EVERYTHING by pretty much no cost at all, just by being sure every Civ you are next to will be suicidal maniac.

Now, if you want/need to expand, you have to get with DoW yourself! That means AI will have defenders advantage, you will loose troops, you will need to spend way more hammers on units, you loose trading partner and you get diplo hit with other Civs. And if you fail, you are pretty much out of the game. Which is exactly why AI don't want to attack others until they can be sure of victory, you either win war and get all the good stuff, or loose, and get too far behind to recover. Unless AI is crazy/suicidal, it won't attack without reason.

I think I prefer the new AI for now, although I need more play testing before final verdict. It does seem a bit easier given how I steamrolled Emperor and had to switch to Immortal, but there are different diff levels for a reason. Until someone comes and says that Deity is too easy, there is no reason for any complaining, just turn the knob up.

(hi btw :p)
 
So i'm coming to the end of my first game as Morocco and by the 1950s the only war that had taken place was me destroying Germany in the early part of the game. This was before I read this thread and when I saw Bismarck was my neighbour, the alarms were sounding in my head instantly. I decided to go with a preemptive strike as, surely, I would be backstabbed by him soon enough.

Apparently I could have let him live. No other wars at all. I am only playing on King to be fair.
 
Wars and the AI in the game were kind of broken from the beginning, so Firaxis decided to eclipse them by this expansion.
 
Okay, my experiences:

Two games on Prince difficulty where I wasn't DOWed on my way to a cultural victory. But i also was the top dog all the time, a DOW would have been suicide on the AIs part.

Then one game on King difficulty/Pangea where I got DOWed/backstabbed by Dido/Carthage shortly after turn 100 (epic)/1200BC. Even though I was going honour tree and had some defense (3 cities, 2archers, 1 spearman, 1 warrior, 1 great general), I lost my capital in a rather embarassing fashion. I only had one of those archers (+ GG) to defend, because the other units were either too far away barbarian-hunting or cut off by Dido. Total attacking force (that i saw) was 3 archers, 2 spearman, 3 warriors, one Great General. I hadn't pissed of Dido in any particular fashion, it was a completely opportunistic DOW on her part.

So, could it be that the agression-thing is mostly just the AI judging its chances better and only attacking when they have the upper hand? (so if you play on a difficulty level where you are comfortably keeping up with the AI - whatever level that is for you - you might encounter less agression?)
 
I have played three games so far.
The first one I fought a whole bunch of defensive wars (protected myself) with ShoSho and Monty. So that was a normal run.
The second game, Attila DoWed me on turn 11 (yes turn 11*). Normally that's not a problem, but my warrior (and a scout) was out scouting (very far from home) and with no money to buy an archer to protect myself with, I was screwed (should have moved my settler to a hill).
The third game I have not thought any war myself (I am on a semi-large continent, all by myself), but two AIs have lost their capitals (standard map) and when I finally met Askia (I guess he is the one to blame for the warmongering) I was at war with two AIs.

I have also watched some streamed games and sure the AIs don't go maniac and DoW you on turn 50 because, well its turn 50 all the time like they usually do, but they still make war. But then in one streamed game, the player started on a really big continent and those other AIs on his continent (and the player) have all chosen to go tall. That means no border tension at all. But that (hopefully) don't happen in all games. Also they talked about this on the latest podcast. So listen to that when it goes public (in a week I think).

* He and the Portuguese, although I never saw the Portuguese before my sad demise.
 
Before getting BNW I was mildly worried about this discussion.

Now that I've played a few games I don't see what it's about. I'm not really seeing any change from the G&K AI. The really significant reduction of AI aggression came with the patch to G&K some months ago. Could it be that some who are complaining now have not been playing the game since before that patch? Just a thought.

I'm playing on deity, normal speed standard continents map. In one of my games with the Shoshone the Inca first asked me to join in against the Aztecs. I refused but when the Dutch asked for the same thing a few turns later I agreed. The Dutch took one city while I stole lots of workers. Then the Huns joined in and were quick to beat the Aztecs to the ground. I managed to snatch one of the cities they'd been sieging. Apparently this pissed them off, so although we'd been close friends Attila denounced me and then backstabbed me a couple turns later. Sadly the Persians, way on my other frontier away from all the other guys, had been building up for a DoW on me for a long time and attacked at the same time. Maybe the Persians were behind the Hunnic betrayal, who knows.

...Anyway long story short, just this game illustrates a fairly aggressive game. The events described happened on turns 45-80 approximately. Granted it was an unusually cramped 6-civ continent, but still.
 
Top Bottom