They need to hotfix AI agression now

[True_Candyman]

Incase people are not aware, this issue is discussed in the latest Polycast by Ed Beach and Dennis Shirk



EDIT: "Its geared to make smarter decisions"...i.e. will war impact its long term goals and economy too much.

Interesting. But such a bad excuse. The AI is incapable of winning war, and they've now acknowledged it. Their fix? The AI doesn't go to war.

Makes sense, and a boring game... I'm really quite upset by how much of a backward step the AI has taken in BNW overall. I'm SO happy with it diplomatically and it does seem a little smarter, but it's missing the sharp edge! It doesn't feel like your playing against them any more, just that you're playing with them.

 

[Buccaneer]

So the goal of all civs is to stay alive so it can do trade routes? Even if they are able to take out a neighboring civ early on the game but it's better to keep that enemy civ alive to have it beat them?

 

[Yzman]

So the goal of all civs is to stay alive so it can do trade routes? Even if they are able to take out a neighboring civ early on the game but it's better to keep that enemy civ alive to have it beat them?

That would be an exaggeration of what was said. The AI now weighs the cost of war against going to war. If it would cripple the AI into going negative gold, it reconsiders.

 

[Heinage]

So the goal of all civs is to stay alive so it can do trade routes? Even if they are able to take out a neighboring civ early on the game but it's better to keep that enemy civ alive to have it beat them?

I've just been playing a game (on emperor) where there are quite a few war mongers.
In fact, Assyria, who is my only neighbor and main trading partner declared war on me early on despite the many caravans going back and forth between our cities.

From the experiences I've had from the 2 games I've played so far, it seems mixed. This one is full of wars but has more war mongering civs (like Zulu, Japan, Assyria) whereas my first game was peaceful (with less war mongers).

I think it's alright because it follows the flavors of the civ, but not to the point where it's completely predictable.

I do think there will be some balance tweaks here and there with the fall patch and that they just needed us to play it a bit more to help identify where exactly those tweaks should be made.

 

[ww2commander]

They used words to the effect of 'if the player would not do something stupid, then why expect the AI to do it'.

Why do players expect the AI to play with a short term view (which is lots of fun when there is early wars) only to have said players quit mid/late game because its a runaway lead or boredom sets in as most of the aggressive players are conquered or reduced to a single city?

My understanding is that BNW places more emphasis on mid/late game which is when ideologies, trade, tourism and culture really kick in. Thus the AI needs to pace itself.

 

[Buccaneer]

Of course, but the Aztecs or Greeks are keeping Ethiopia alive because instead of using their strengths, they would fall into the hands of Ethiopia's strengths - as an example. I am for unpredictability, but I just don't think we are seeing enough AI civs using their military strengths - which is what the human player do. The predicted danger f forcing the game into the latter stages is that there are certain civs thrive by doing that and not others. I would think there would be more than just the Zulus, Huns and Assyrians that would be more effective earlier than later.

 

[Buccaneer]

I remember maddjinn's SfA play through where he said someone (human or AI) needs to put the hurt on Ethiopia or else they would win. I know that's a scenario with different victory conditions but still.

Maybe I am being too sensitive about my current game where Ethiopia will likely win. I wish someone besides the Huns tried to hurt them instead of passively trading with them, which is not doing any of them any good.

What good are all those routes if they are not using them to win??

 

[Buccaneer]

Great, now I get 3 posts in a row. In my current (loooong) game, I have been in a centuries-long war with the Huns. They are being very aggressive but have to come by sea and that's tough. They have by far #1 military and me having the weakest. However, I lucked out on superiority with subs and I am not in range of their ww1 bombers. They, however, have started capturing my city-states.

I have thrown every trick in the book against them - embargo, embargo of their primary luxuries, got my ideology passed which forced them to go into revolution and progressing nicely on tourism against them (all of these are great mechanics, btw). And they are still being aggressive militarily. What is it that made them still decide that war is feasible to them despite the odds? It can't be just having the #1 military because any civ can decide that, esp since Huns UU are long gone.

 

[kingofsealand]

Buccaneer in your case im imagining the huns have already decided how it can possibly win the match. You sound like your at least at parity with them in tech if not ahead so they dont expect to outdo you there and you said your tourism is doing well, i imagine much better than theirs so that rules out culture victory. Lastly capturing those CS's will make a diplo victory more difficult taking that off the table as well. He wants your blood because he knows that that is the only way he is going to win at this point. Dont know about this but i imagine the AI is calculating the risk of you winning some other type of victory just as much as they are considering the penalties incurred by warring with you. If you are that far along in the game of course he is not going to care about the gold and happiness penalties because despite all that if he can kill you he could win, making peace with you is letting you win.

 

[Alexastor]

Although I don't mind not being attacked, this is driving me nuts.

I'm on turn 270, 1800 AD and haven't been in war yet. I'm neighbouring Casimir and Shaka (!) and I even aggressively placed a city directly in Shaka's face early game.

Without the AI attacking you and you not being allowed to attack the AI (warmonger tag being effectively broken) this is getting hilarious.

I think they need to find a middle ground between this and the overly-aggressive AI pre-BNW.

 

[JustinianIV]

Just finished my first win on immortal. 8 civs in total, pang, standard. I was Korea and had to squeeze in my four cities into a ridiculous amount of hexes (only about 50 land hexes that I could possibly get the entire game). I ended up turtling and was the clear tech leader most of the game. My strategy was to not annoy anyone, and just be the nice guy.

Well, didn't get DoWed once. There were a few plots, but nothing came from it. I bribed them to take each other out, yet I was always behind in everything except science and approval.

I did find it more difficult and suspenseful than on Emp, mainly due to the runaway being on the verge of a CV right up until the end. Still, because I couldn't find any iron, I only ever had 2 warriors, 3 Xbows and 2 CBs. That is ridiculous! Come at me! I find it funny that I finished the game as the technological superpower, yet my army consisted of guys who hadn't even upgraded to spears. Meanwhile all the other civs are roaming the continent with X-Com squads. This could have all been mitigated if I thought there was a chance that I would get DoWed.

Why does the AI only attack the weakest players UNLESS the human is the weakest player?

Edit: to be fair, there was one point during the atomic era when Rome was marching its army into my land during open boarders. I was at the end of the pangea, so I had to assume that they were going to attack. Bribed Russiea to DoW and that changed things.

 

[klokwerk]

Yeah there's something buggy about that. Not attacking you was clearly a blunder from the AI. It removes some fun from the game, but I think it'll be patched soon.

AIs need to evaluate military opportunities better.

 

[Horace]

I have had plenty of wars (even when I haven't been warmongering - which basically resulted in perma war with everyone)

I play with random personalities, could this make a difference?

 

[JustinianIV]

Yeah there's something buggy about that. Not attacking you was clearly a blunder from the AI. It removes some fun from the game, but I think it'll be patched soon.

AIs need to evaluate military opportunities better.

No doubt. Funny thing is that I actually enjoyed the game in spite of this. It could be that it was tense simply because it was my first time playing immortal (and Korea). Also, it was my quickest win timewise at just over 4 hours. Normally it takes me around 6.

I don't know if I would have been able to win on Immortal in GnK. Prior to BNW I was winning about 80% of my Emperor games. I suppose I was handicapped due to my CS infested starting location.

I'm going to start a new game on immortal tonight. I'll pick Shoshone and just expand up my neighbours' noses. See how that goes for me.

 

[Kaxen]

We really need to put this to rest.

The changed gold game is what control's AI aggressiveness. If the map make it hard to get trade routes, then the AI is less aggressive, if the AI get good access to gold, it spam units and want to DoW left and right.

If you have an early peaceful game, just wait until later when trade route range goes up and they all turn into crazy warmongers.

Edit: They do need to change the range of trade routes depending on map size, this should clean up that the AI is too starved in the early game on some maps.

This is one of many problems with civilization games... in real life soldiers were payed with FOOD and the promise of riches by conquering and plundering, many people joined local armies just to survive and they didn't need trade routes to do that, it would probably make them even more aggressive without foreign trade because they lacked desired wealth. Then theres other stuff like everything taking forever to build and research going way too fast. This game has it all backwards and it's boring.

 

[André Alfenaar]

I like the fact that the AI is smarter about starting a war. But the agression is still there. I am often asked to participate in a joined war. In my current game it happened just after I finished my second city (so early). And in another game I overexpanded and as a consequence 2 civs declared war and later a third one joined them...

No need to fix this; to me it is just right. I don't want those super-early suicide rushes.

 

[JustinianIV]

I like the fact that the AI is smarter about starting a war. But the agression is still there. I am often asked to participate in a joined war. In my current game it happened just after I finished my second city (so early). And in another game I overexpanded and as a consequence 2 civs declared war and later a third one joined them...

No need to fix this; to me it is just right. I don't want those super-early suicide rushes.

I think you might be missing what those like me (who complain about the lack of aggression) are saying.

We aren't saying that the AI never DoWs, but that they so rarely DoW the human player. Sure, the AIs are very keen to DoW each other. They are not peaceful players.

I have played 1 game on prince, one on emperor, and one on immortal now and have yet to have anyone DoW me even once. And of the accounts we've seen of the AI DoWing the human player, they are consistently the same Civs, who seem to be designed to DoW: Zulu, Hun, Poland, Mongols...

The point is, every civ should have the capacity to DoW when there is the correct opportunity, even the non-war monger civs. If not for the simple reason that the human player is busy building wonders and infrastructure while the rest of the civs are busy killing each other.

To illustrate this point, I wrote recently in another thread about how I won a science victory with Korea, and the entire game my army consisted of two warriors, couple of CBs and couple of Xbows.

I prefer BNW, although I am forced to admit that the rhythm of battle in GnK was more realistic than in BNW, as flawed as the AI was in GnK.

 

[killmeplease]

yeah, problem is - AI doesnt use obvious opportunity
not its "low agressiveness"

 

[klokwerk]

I like the fact that the AI is smarter about starting a war. But the agression is still there. I am often asked to participate in a joined war. In my current game it happened just after I finished my second city (so early). And in another game I overexpanded and as a consequence 2 civs declared war and later a third one joined them...

No need to fix this; to me it is just right. I don't want those super-early suicide rushes.

In my opinion they're not "smarter" about starting a war. They're actually less smart if they don't attack defenseless cities anymore since they would have won the game this way.

Looking at the player cruising to victory with zero military defense is hardly "smarter".

 

[Buccaneer]

yeah, problem is - AI doesnt use obvious opportunity
not its "low agressiveness"

I'd go along with that but it does appear it evaluates obvious opportunities early in the game much less favorably than later - which falls in line of forcing the game to play longer. I love the later game mechanics a lot but some civs are just not good at those (compared to others) and they have missed their obvious opportunities in the ancient and classical ages.