Too many new Vassal bugs (I quit)

[obsolete]

Alright, too many bugs to mention in my latest benchmarking of vassals, but I'll mention some of the big things that really seem unavoidable.

First of all, what's with all the flip-flopping like a maniac with all the civs and vassalization? Even in time of peace I just get them constantly flipping one turn to the next, and I can't understand why it's so bad. Someone tampered with something in the vassal code it seems.

And what's with the giving into demands not always locking me into protection patch for 10 turns? Seems to only happen sometimes. Is this supposed to be some revolutionary design change, or just another 3.19 bug as well?

Ok.. let's assume that we are in a protection pact (BUG mod shows us peace symbols)....

Then why the f@ck, do we get DoWed on when an AI we are at war with decides to friendly vassal to another AI? If we have a pact with him, he's not legal to do this. Who's brainiac idea was this anyway to change this? Again.. this has to be yet another bug, no?

It doesn't matter what way I made a protection pact with an AI, I am constantly getting DoWed on, because some AI decides to flip-flop like a maniac and friendly vassal to people, even those who are not legally allowed to vassal.

Again.. Who's brainiac idea was it to change this? It's just god damn rediculous now. AI with ass-backwards in techs and everything, just flip flops from one partner to another (even in times of peace), gains a shitload of techs, and then just flip-flops all over again. Ohhhh and what is with this . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . about vassaling to someone's own WORST ENEMY???

Huh?

I am lost guys... are you SERIOUS?

I can't EVER get an AI to vassal to me it seems, but they will in an instant jump to someone else, even though they are not legally valid.

Finally.. what in God's name is with this game when an AI ASKS me for a protection pact.. so I AGREE and we sign a mutual defense pact. Then in only 2 turns later, he immediately cancels our patch, and signs up with someone else as a vassal despite no one is even at war.



That's the last straw.....


Ohhh and one more new bug to throw in while we are at it. I just love it how often I can't bribe an AI to war, because it wrongfully thinks I am either in a self-protection pact with the victim, or it thinks I'm in some master/vassal deal with it.

Great job Firaxis, waiting 1 bloody whole year for a patch to replace yet another patch that should have never made it past even a beta, and I see history yet repeats once again....

 

[JujuLautre]

Great. Now perhaps it's time to be constructive and provide several saves for all that ? Perhaps it's just me, but I don't understand half of what you are describing.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=232197

 

[obsolete]

Here is an example. Make a defense pact with Wang. Now logic tells you, no one is allowed to make or break these at a whim, but just click end turn for a few turns and he'll break it on his own before the time is up. I noticed with this latest patch that peace-locks no longer work. I constantly had AI's asking me for def pacts only to break them a couple turns later. I also had nasty DoW's on me, when I was in locked peace mode, (that isn't allowed to happen!).

 

[JujuLautre]

Well, Wang became Zara's vassalv. He cannot any more declare war on his own, so can no longer have any defensive pact. The one he has with you is then cancelled. What's wrong with that ?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Well, Wang became Zara's vassalv. He cannot any more declare war on his own, so can no longer have any defensive pact. The one he has with you is then cancelled. What's wrong with that ?

Under ordinary circumstances you can't cancel a DP within 10 turns...you have to wait.

Like it does in other ways, the AI cheats to work around this rule. The pattern here should be obvious by now:

1. AI cheats
2. Someone reports it clearly showing an unfair advantage given to the AI not defined by difficulty whatsoever.
3. "It works as intended"
4. The majority of players inexplicably accept the AI cheat.

Even in times where the cheating is somewhat illogical, its hard to convince anybody. I'm still scratching my head at how fireaxis could pull the 3.17 overflow gold (simultaneously introducing a bug, mind you), and yet not so much as touch the fact that the AI can detect trades with nations it doesn't know exist. How about some balance in these tweaks?!

 

[JujuLautre]

Under ordinary circumstances you can't cancel a DP within 10 turns...you have to wait.

I don't think this is ordinary circumstances. But what would you prefer? That a vassal agreement cannot be made as long as the vassal has a DP he cannot break? What would that bring over the current implementation ?

Like it does in other ways, the AI cheats to work around this rule. The pattern here should be obvious by now:

blablabla

I must be honnest TMIT: what happened to you lately? Is that your trying to go to deity level which changed you like this because of frustration? I remember a time when I had pleasure to read most of your post, and know lots of them are just something like "AI cheat AI cheat AI cheat" I'm sorry about that, honestly.

Anyway, this is off topic, so just to take one point:

2. Someone reports it clearly showing an unfair advantage given to the AI not defined by difficulty whatsoever.

I fail to see how the current implementation of the current "problem" provides the AI "an unfair advantage". Could you please detail on that ?

I'm still scratching my head at how fireaxis could pull the 3.17 overflow gold (simultaneously introducing a bug, mind you), and yet not so much as touch the fact that the AI can detect trades with nations it doesn't know exist. How about some balance in these tweaks?!

I'm not in Firaxis head. I'd like as much as you that this stuff would be changed, but I cannot do anything about it. And I don't believe that raising that point every 10 or 20 posts of yours will change anything to that fact.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I must be honnest TMIT: what happened to you lately? Is that your trying to go to deity level which changed you like this because of frustration? I remember a time when I had pleasure to read most of your post, and know lots of them are just something like "AI cheat AI cheat AI cheat" I'm sorry about that, honestly.

Ahhh, someone called me on it . Well it's true. I hit a wall in deity even as I do increasingly well on immortal. But any civ concerns are getting (somewhat drastically) overshadowed by RL difficulties. I do try to keep that off the forum, but apparently I'm not managing entirely.

I fail to see how the current implementation of the current "problem" provides the AI "an unfair advantage". Could you please detail on that ?

We can't break DP treaties that way. And I am indeed suggesting that forced 10 turn deals remain as such, for both human AND AI. There's also the "bribe AI to war" issue, also reported by obsolete but reproduced by others including a poster in the IU series I host. AIs bribed to peace can be instantly bribed to war again w/o delay. That's some questionable behavior indeed.

I'm not in Firaxis head. I'd like as much as you that this stuff would be changed, but I cannot do anything about it. And I don't believe that raising that point every 10 or 20 posts of yours will change anything to that fact.

I don't know. I'm not trying to change the world or anything, but this isn't new behavior ----> I'd long complained about events for example. There are some issues with civ that are really bad blotches on a great game. The keyboard hotkeys (probably the absolute worst) for unit selection not working and the hidden/unknown/arguably cheating AI behavior are among the few.

 

[JujuLautre]

I do try to keep that off the forum, but apparently I'm not managing entirely.

Well, I can tell

We can't break DP treaties that way.

True, the human player cannot do that. Now, it's not like the AI took - purposely - advantage of that in any way. I'd say it's perhaps annoying when it happens, but saying that it's unfair? Too much overreacting imho for something the AI does not even realize.

And the other way around, being able to prevent an AI from vassaling by signing a defensive pact? Would be as much strange I think. Having either way something fishy, I much prefer the actual way I must say.

There's also the "bribe AI to war" issue, also reported by obsolete but reproduced by others including a poster in the IU series I host. AIs bribed to peace can be instantly bribed to war again w/o delay. That's some questionable behavior indeed.

I won't argue on that. If that's true, it's definitely bad imho (a little bit like the recent "liberate city while at war" stuff).

 

[r_rolo1]

un·fair (ŭn-fâr')
adj. un·fair·er, un·fair·est

1. Not just or evenhanded; biased: an unfair call by an umpire.
2. Contrary to laws or conventions, especially in commerce; unethical: unfair trading.

un·fair'ly adv., un·fair'ness n.

(bolded is mine)

I must say that Firaxis did a great deal of effort making that Civ IV was far less discriminative with the human player then the previous versions, but it is impossible to call the behaviour that obsolete and TMIT are talking about of anything besides unfair.

 

[JujuLautre]

Well, note that we agree on that I did not say that it was not unfair, just that it is imho overreacting. I'm not talking about the definition of the word here, but its usage. Being unable to trade iron for wheat when the AI can do it? I'd say it's unfair, it calls people saying "hey, the balance is broken and it's bad". Now indeed the balance is broken, but does the AI really exploit it in any way? I'd say no, and stick to my "annoying" (when it happens).

 

[r_rolo1]

Well, technically the BtS AI is uncapable of exploiting anything But i think it goes against the philosophy of the game having diferent rules for diferent players... we already have handicaps, right?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I'd be a little happier if the major AI advantages were actually documented. Finding out the rules of a game as one plays it tends to be less fun than knowing them from the start. Even though the rules are fixed, much of the game's designed makes it feel as if rules are "made up as we go". The bad thing here is the surprise...and the surprise isn't always in a logical fashion.

Take the vassal diplo average for example. There is no harm in knowing this rule by reading the civlopedia or manual. However, rather than having the rule known to us, we have to learn it, and for many players that equals a surprise loss. It's even worse because we're led to believe that the -modifier for having a vassal in the first place is the extent of it. If that rule exists from the start, it is only fair to the player to know it from the start. The averaging rule is very similar to someone playing risk being able to trade in 2 cards instead of 3 if the player just before them traded in cards, but that is only revealed halfway through. Not only would the person considering trading in cards play differently if he knew it, the lack of knowledge on the rule led directly to a loss.

Now in my earlier frustration it's understandable that my posts weren't too useful, but the above is an example of the things that are reasonable to bemoan in this game IMO. Hiding the rules from us sets us up for failure, but it's the cheap kind of failure. Civ is supposed to be a game where good strategy and execution of that strategy leads to victory, but some of these hidden rules are severe enough that someone could theoretically play perfectly otherwise and still lose if he didn't know them. That's pretty foul.

I don't know how many on here have seen the super mario world ROM hacks where the people making levels abuse the invisible coin blocks to surprise and kill the player, but having the AI detect trades in impossible fashions or display a different diplo disposition than is actually there (without warning to the player) are arguably WORSE than the coin blocks! At least the player is aware of the existence of invisible coin blocks ahead of time. The hidden mechanics are among the dirtiest tricks ever seen in gaming. I probably have about 30-40 hours worth of gaming lost to the different hidden rules of civ, and as such they will of course appear in complaints on the forum .

Is it over-reacting? Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't though. We put a lot of time into this game (even a speed player like me) and we expect certain results based on given inputs (IE the rules). Civ IV violates that, unless you dive deep into the XML and possibly beyond it is an incomplete game ------> the rules are not known. I do find it entertaining that people argue that knowledge of the rules is "cheap". The cheap shot was the fact that they were hidden!

 

[obsolete]

Well, Wang became Zara's vassalv. He cannot any more declare war on his own, so can no longer have any defensive pact. The one he has with you is then cancelled. What's wrong with that ?

There is a hell of a lot that's wrong with this. Must I point out the obvious?

And to be honest, while I could possibly, maybe... theoretically... one-day... make some sort of consultation to an AI that gets PERMANENTLY vassaled by FORCE. This is not the case. We are talking about the new changes code that causes them to FLIP-FLOP like a maniac back and forth in this patch. All being VOLUNTARILY.

There should NOT even be a debate here on this. It is clearly a nasty AI CHEAT.... or BUG... whatever you call it. This is NOT something that was intended, this is something that was a SCREW-UP by someone who tampered with the code. If you make a non-breakable agreement, it SHOULD be non-breakable. NO player has the right to VOLUNTARILY on his own accord break these on a whim just because he FEELS like he can find a better deal 2 turns later.

Nope.... that's not the way 99.9% of the players came to understand it.



Is there someone who is reading this thread who doesn't understand yet what a 10-TURN peace deal/agreement is? I'll tell you what... how about I threat-bribe an AI to get me some techs with my army... and 2 turns later I find a way which enables me to do the same thing over again.

I'll bet you 100-to-1 odds that the FIRST thing you'd be telling me is how bad an exploit/bug this is, and how I should be ashamed for doing it. And I bet you this would be the #1 priority to fix.

 

[JujuLautre]

There is a hell of a lot that's wrong with this. Must I point out the obvious?

Instead of pointing "the obvious" (which I don't know what it is, but don't really care in the present case), perhaps think about a possible solution. And all the consequences it will have. That is, if it really should be fixed (which I do not think).

And to be honest, while I could possibly, maybe... theoretically... one-day... make some sort of consultation to an AI that gets PERMANENTLY vassaled by FORCE. This is not the case. We are talking about the new changes code that causes them to FLIP-FLOP like a maniac back and forth in this patch. All being VOLUNTARILY.

As said before, I have no idea what you are talking about. Care to enlighten the humble mortals that we are ?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

He is referring to AIs jumping in and out of vassal deals across very short turn periods, frequently farming a ton of free techs and making the diplo situation very annoying. It also allows the AI to abuse the ability to cancel forced 10 turn treaties in ridiculous fashion.