two exploits id love to see closed.

[dh_epic]

I think there needs to be greater interdependance between nations, particularly by the industrial and modern era (modern especially). No nation can function as an "Island" -- metaphorically speaking. There's an expression even in economics "if Britain sneezes, Argentina catches pneumonia".

If this were inherently tied into the game, then even with the same penalties to diplomacy in Civ 3, you'd see a greater amount of balance in the gameplay (and perhaps realism).

I still think there's something to be said, though, for the internal strife that comes from losing the moral high ground. Despite what cynical intellectuals will tell you, you can't hold a nation together with injustice. Either the people rebel against it, or the people embrace and rationalize the injustice and use it against one another, tearing the country apart at the seams.

 

[Sirian]

Oh, the AI can and does ROP-Rape you. It will do it fairly often in fact.

I'm sorry, but that's simply not true.

RoP Rape involves positioning your entire force and then breaking the deal. The AI will move ONE UNIT and attack with it, then the RoP is broken and no further AI units benefit.

The AI does not even have a mechanism for declaring war directly. The AI declares war in only four ways:

1) If attacked.
2) If it demands tribute and the victim refuses, it may declare war.
3) Someone signs it to an alliance against a third party.
4) Via "sneak attack", when the first unit strikes a target.

The AI not only does not RoP Rape, it doesn't even intentionally abuse RoP for a single unit. The AI has no means of declaring war "before" it attacks, so it simply moves units toward what it deems to be the best target, and when it gets a unit there, it attacks, and this attack will start the war. RoP has nothing to do with it. The AI makes no account for it.


There are more problems with this set of mechanisms than I can shake a stick at.

The idea that RoP Rape is justified by the AI doing it... well, that's a faulty argument. Abusing Right of Passage is the most gamey thing in Civ3, bar none. If this is not fixed for Civ4... Well, they OUGHT to be able to fix it. I'll leave it at that.

There are fairly harsh penalties (I find not being able to trade multi-turn or make diplomatic agreements for the rest of the game to be major) for it in the game already

The penalty situation is a little more nuanced than that. It is possible to recover from a "minor" infraction, but it takes a long time. If a trade route is broken by accident, player gets blamed and suffers the same fate as true criminals, rendering the penalties inequitable and unjust. Oh, and once the maximum available penalty has been applied (often after the first violation!) there are no further costs. Thus in for a penny, in for a pound. Once you cross the line, you might as well exploit breaking deals until the end of time, because there's only up side from that point on. You might think the AI would not trust you, but no... the AI will ALWAYS trust the player at the peace table, making it possible to exploit them for goodies, including techs and cities, over and over and over and over again, just as often as one can cycle through the war/no-contact/peace/betrayal cycle.


- Sirian

 

[warpstorm]

Sirian, I beg to differ. I've had the AI come in with numerous large stacks when we had an ROP in order and attack with them once they were in place. Maybe it wasn't "intentional" (as in Soren programming it to do that) but it did happen and more than once.

Is it right (for either the human or the AI)? Not really, but I think that both sides should be allowed to backstab with proper penalties to trust afterwards. I think the AI should be allowed to walk all over deals with you also (as long as the other AI players no longer trusted it).

 

[dh_epic]

I don't think anyone is arguing that you shouldn't be allowed to break deals. And nobody is saying that anything morally bankrupt should be cut out of Civ, if anything people want MORE morally bankrupt options. I think people would just like to see a better payoff to honoring deals / more consequences for breaking deals.

That would make the game more strategic, with more empowering decisions, let alone a more emmersive feel.

 

[Sirian]

Sirian, I beg to differ. I've had the AI come in with numerous large stacks when we had an ROP in order and attack with them once they were in place.

What will happen is if the AI can't reach its target on one turn, its entire offensive force will move toward the target. If you have rails in place, the AI will move the first unit directly to the target and attack, without moving a single other unit into place. Pre-rail, an AI attack may make temporary use of RoP, but it's by accident. If you have roads or unimproved terrain, the AI's stack may move into your territory and use the RoP, but it's moving the whole stack toward one target, and you of course will SEE what it's doing and can cancel the deal after the first turn, so that your RoP is no longer aiding the invasion.

The AI does not "move units into place" and then attack. It simply beelines at the target, with no consideration of RoP.

This is qualitatively different than what human players do.


I coined the term RoP Rape when I wrote the RB rules. The definition is more specific than merely "attacks without first cancelling RoP", which is what the AI is doing.


RoP corridors might work. If player wants to move from Point A to Point B... Yeah. Maybe they can implement something like that.


- Sirian

 

[warpstorm]

Thinking back, I don't recall one of these massive assaults post-rail. They just seemed like major attacks by how deep they got and how many units they had in place (unintentionally, I assume). Why did I let them get so deep you may wonder. In at least one case I assumed they were going to attack an enemy on the other side of me (which is why I granted them the ROP in the first place).

 

[Sirian]

When the AI has declared war, it's obvious. The question is "who's the target?" You won't know for sure until the "official" declaration has occurred, when a unit reaches the target and engages. If there are no legit targets on your back side, then you know it's you. One other way to tell is to string units across the narrow part of your land mass, if you can. If you cut off all land paths through to potential AI targets and the invader does NOT turn around, then you know it's you.

I could go on...

Just goes to show how much room for improvement there still is on the AI front.


- Sirian

 

[Guagle]

Just a question: does the AI gets the same penalties as human players when they break a RoP deal?

 

[socralynnek]

I'm sorry, but that's simply not true.

RoP Rape involves positioning your entire force and then breaking the deal. The AI will move ONE UNIT and attack with it, then the RoP is broken and no further AI units benefit.

The AI does not even have a mechanism for declaring war directly. The AI declares war in only four ways:

1) If attacked.
2) If it demands tribute and the victim refuses, it may declare war.
3) Someone signs it to an alliance against a third party.
4) Via "sneak attack", when the first unit strikes a target.

There is one more reason: If the AI can't pay gpt. But the declarations is done via 4).

 

[warpstorm]

When the AI has declared war, it's obvious. The question is "who's the target?"

In the one particularly memorable game, the Spain had declared war on an enemy just to the far side of me. I gave an ROP to let her fight more quickly. Once most of her troops were in my inner (and lightly defended) core, she attacked me. Ouch. From the sounds of it, this was coincidence, but at the time it felt like a major betrayal.

I guess I'd like trust and betrayal to be explicitly modeled in the game.

 

[Exel]

-- having an option to attack any agressor units (violations of borders) without a declaration of war (or warning) --

That'd be a nice addition for Civ4.

 

[dh_epic]

I think the distinction I've used in the past between Competitive AI and Realistic AI might be useful.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2100214&postcount=127

Most AIs would play for historical realism. They'd be trusting and loyal, and they'd hold grudges. Predictable, in a sense.

A few other AIs, however, would be super non-trusting, and while they might hold a secret grudge, they'd be less explicit than others. They might ally with their worst enemy temporarily. They might attack a trustworthy guy because they're weak, and ally with an evil awful person because they're strong. In other words, they'd be as cynical and psychotic as any human player.

To make a long story short, "flavor AI" could be RoP raped... whereas "strong AI" would be too cynical to ever agree to a right of passage agreement. I mean, if I were a human player playing against another human player, I'd probably take the same preventative approach.

Still, as I've said on many AI discussions, I think there are deeper issues at work than making the AI more effective. I do think the gameplay balance is off, and the gameplay strategies are too narrow. I'd like to see more choices and greater balance between the choices that exist. Personally, I think the benefits of pulling an RoP rape greatly outweigh the negatives.

 

[timberwolf4545]

Honoring of treaties could also be a victory factor. If you were to so violate this, you would loose the game.

 

[dh_epic]

I wouldn't go that far, timberwolf. But you are keeping to an important point -- there's not enough of an incentive to honor treaties. There are very selfish reasons why USA doesn't just flip out and destroy France right now. The problem is the economic rewards for having international allies that exist in real life have not been implemented into Civ.

Still, an added incentive of a "historical victory" is something I've suggested before -- rewarding behaviors that would make you famous in the history books. Where you get points for otherwise altruistic actions.

It could be the reward that you give Britain for liberating France, but not keeping it for themselves. Imagine being the USA, watching Britain retake France from Germany, thinking "uh oh, British empire on the rise". Suddenly, they give France away, and there's nothing you can do about it. "Crap! Those damn Brits are trying to get that historical victory!"