They need to hotfix AI agression now

[eric_]

Aristos, fantastic, thanks for digging that up!

It doesnt matter how strongly they benefit by trading, only if they can have a reasonable chance of winning the war? If so trade should be sacrificed to gain lasting advantage, yes meybe losing friends will hurt them but they don't need friends to trade just not war. If they have large, technologically superior army and player has three archers not attacking him is plain silly.

It matters if they are so reliant on trading with you that going to war will send them negative and tank their economy.

 

[Buccaneer]

Dexters, I agree, I hope there is a middle ground. I think difficulty levels should be a good indicator of aggressiveness but there should always be some degree of aggressiveness at all levels - there should never be passive opponents not trying win.

I know targeting human player is odd but given our inherent advantage, they should not trust us much since we're good at use and abuse.

At immortal, I expect every opponent to win unless the situation puts them in a bad spot. 1/4 of all civs should win domination, 1/4 cultural, 1/4 diplomacy and the rest strong by all means depending on the situation - but not set in stone so as to be predictable. I don't if that is happening now or not but if you want passive opponents, play prince; if you don't, play higher.

 

[durecellrabbit]

I've played 5 games on King so far. In them I've been rushed twice, a warrior/archer rush by Carthage and a swordsmen/catapult invasion by Mongolia. In my other games I've been in relatively open space with peaceful neighbours and no need to war early on but I've seen the AI go to war early with each other in most of them. I've seen plenty of late game wars although I've yet to be the defender in one of them. One thing I would say is that the AI need to be pretty careful when attacking a player, if they've built a modest amount of ranged units to defend themselves the AI be in a lot of trouble as it's very easy to defend yourself with them.

 

[Buccaneer]

Eric, that's what I was wanting to say but got off track. If you are the leader (techs, delegates, capitals, tourism, etc) then yes, you should be targeted.

 

[eric_]

If you are the leader (techs, delegates, capitals, tourism, etc) then yes, you should be targeted.

I think even that depends. For instance, I sometimes devise a strategy that causes me to lag behind for awhile with the idea that when I reach a certain point I'll leap forward and take the lead. If I were to divert from my strategy in order to deal with the leader at any given time, that leap may never come, me and the old leader may fall back to the middle of the pack, and a new leader will emerge.

Now, if you're straight up running away with the game, especially repeatedly, that might be more a problem of playing on too easy a setting.

 

[Teholb]

So basically this is what people had been asking all along. More tools to maintain relationships BY the human player rather than to be exposed to the vagaries of AI RNG.

If you set out to trade a lot with the AI, they will be significantly less willing to war you due to the GPT income.

I knew it!! This is why my first two BNW games as Morroco went so fantastically well! They were pleased with my abilities as a gold/science farm


Thank goodness. It's one thing to have the AI behave in a way that seems inappropriate and causes it to fail, it's another to know why it's behaving that way. And you know, who's to say that those civs wouldn't be the ones to be slaughtered early on, as in every vanilla or G&K game I ever played? Keeping them in the game and relevant for longer enhances diplomacy and can create, in certain situations, things very like vassals. If they bend to your will and allow you to do as you please, are they not properly subjugated vassal nations?

 

[Aristos]

It doesnt matter how strongly they benefit by trading, only if they can have a reasonable chance of winning the war? If so trade should be sacrificed to gain lasting advantage, yes meybe losing friends will hurt them but they don't need friends to trade just not war. If they have large, technologically superior army and player has three archers not attacking him is plain silly.

Or is it? Debatable. With the above piece of code much more rational debate and conclusions can be drawn, regardless of if we agree or not. The devs defined this as WAD (so, not a BUG, finally) ("sanity check" ), and there are strong arguments in favor of that. How long will it take to replace those routes? Is there another opportunistic AI lurking in the vicinity? If my GPT goes negative after I declare war on this pesky human, how can I sustain the army for enough time while other caravans are being built? If I cannot sustain such army, even after defeating this pesky human, will the other neighbours take advantage of such situation and jump on me? Etc etc etc.

This also explains why the more we advance into the game, the more likely it becomes for the AI to declare, and they do (and a lot): trade income becomes less and less relevant in that formula, so it decreases the GoToWar weight less and less with time (as long as the player has developed its economy well enough).

Interesting stuff. Yeah, looking through a telescope, huh "godman"??

 

[eric_]

Aristos, out of curiosity, in what directory/file did you find that snippet? Good hunting...I want to explore

 

[Maxym]

Aristos, fantastic, thanks for digging that up!



It matters if they are so reliant on trading with you that going to war will send them negative and tank their economy.

No it doesn't, in most cases there are other trading parters and in my case the only time I had AI Dow was when I WAS THE ONLY TRADING PARTNER, no other civs on our mini continent. He lost his army but not because it was a bad decision but because he delayed and I know what to do in those cases.

If a war results in acquisition of large very profitable empire with city connections, and wonders and infrastructure then screw the trade routes.

 

[Aristos]

Aristos, out of curiosity, in what directory/file did you find that snippet? Good hunting...I want to explore

DLL for BNW has just been released... go Steam online, let it update (~11 Mb), then go to your SDK folder (same root as the game folder), and look inside

..\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V SDK\CvGameCoreSource\CvGameCoreDLL_Expansion2

Lot of toys in there...

 

[Aristos]

No it doesn't, in most cases there are other trading parters and in my case the only time I had AI Dow was when I WAS THE ONLY TRADING PARTNER, no other civs on our mini continent. He lost his army but not because it was a bad decision but because he delayed and I know what to do in those cases.

If a war results in acquisition of large very profitable empire with city connections, and wonders and infrastructure then screw the trade routes.

Well, now you can go and change those lines to your preference, compile your own DLL, and get rid of those pesky "sanity checks"...

 

[eric_]

Awesome, thanks! I'll update tonight and then wrestle between engaging in one form of geeking out and another...playing Civ or reading/tweaking it .

 

[Aristos]

Awesome, thanks! I'll update tonight and then wrestle between engaging in one form of geeking out and another...playing Civ or reading/tweaking it .

Correction: the best of both worlds:

playing Civ WHILE tweaking it.

 

[Buccaneer]

Kind of goes back to a fear I mentioned last week - are we able to easily pacify an aggressive military civ simply by trading through DoF? If they are delaying warfare until end game, how will they be effective without promoted units? Aren't there about 10-12 civs that would be really good at warfare (beyond just Zulus and Huns) that are being neutered?

 

[eric_]

If a war results in acquisition of large very profitable empire with city connections, and wonders and infrastructure then screw the trade routes.

I have, at times, had nearly 100 GPT coming in from trade alone...it would be pretty challenging to instantly wipe that out and then get revenues back to that level before running into serious problems.

 

[eric_]

playing Civ WHILE tweaking it.

 

[Aristos]

Kind of goes back to a fear I mentioned last week - are we able to easily pacify an aggressive military civ simply by trading through DoF? If they are delaying warfare until end game, how will they be effective without promoted units? Aren't there about 10-12 civs that would be really good at warfare (beyond just Zulus and Huns) that are being neutered?

Well, trade routes are limited; for the iDelta modifier to become meaningful, the GPT proportion coming from trade has to be really high as compared to total GPT, thus implying that most/all trade routes are concentrated in one (maybe two?) relations... that's why we see the AI's warring between themselves a lot WHEN we actively engage in trade, especially with the dangerous neighbour (and remember, trade routes are also limited in range, and in the early eras, it's only the neighbours we have to trade with.

In other words, the block of code shows that trade is indeed a powerful tool, and more so in the early game. We can debate about the sweet spot on that approach now that we have the code, and some adjustment may or may not be justifiable, but I don't think the "o-no-you-builders-ruined-my-game" whine is valid anymore... if it was at all.

 

[eric_]

In other words, the block of code shows that trade is indeed a powerful tool, and more so in the early game.

It would be interesting to observe the likelihood of early wars of aggression for a coastal civ (i.e., 2 or 3 early cities on the coast) with:
-continental neighbors
-early discovery of inter-continental civs
-early establishment of cargo ship trade routes
-lack (or relative lack) of caravan trade routes.

 

[0R4NG3]

Sounds to me like you effectively averted war on more than one occasion. I am a huge fan of bribing other civs into war with each other, especially if I can get everyone on my continent but me to go at it. I enjoy relative peace (unless I want war) and my most immediate neighbors are generally slowed down.

But, in light of your post, I think the list of settings and play styles should be expanded to include:
6. Non-military strategies and tactics used to avoid war, if any (e.g., spamming trade routes that are lucrative for the receiver, too, instigating wars involving would-be antagonists upon learning of their plots against you)

Yes and no, there were plenty of opportunities for the AI to attack me before I started doing that, he was ahead of me techwise all the way throughout the game. But ok, lets say it was my diplomacy skills.
What about my other example: being between Monti, Oda and Napi and having only 1 warrior and 2 scouts and no DoWs?

 

[dexters]

There are other considerations, and it's pretty clear the AI doesn't cheat and look at your units and placement.

They may know you have a small military, but not the composition. They may need open borders to scout your territory. In fact Ai who have Dow me all tried to get open borders at some point prior to the war even when relations were not great, often with a deceptive friendly approach as we had almost nothing in common for the Ai to be so friendly about..

Posts that allege Ai is wrong for not attacking by providing a list of obsolete unit types assume the AI should know what you know and that military strength is the only consideration. It's a red herring.