Unrealistic diplomacy because of victory conditions

[lightsedge]

My problem with the victory conditions is that they often make diplomacy - an essential part of the game - unrealistic. Examples:

• Someone not liking me because they suspect I'm going for the same victory as him
• Someone not liking me because I'm powerful (ahead)

I don't expect that much realism from Civ, but I would like AI players to behave like countries, not like people trying to beat a game, which makes the experience "gamey". I want the AI to have "realistic" likes, dislikes, and objectives. Good ones that already exist are: not liking troops on their borders, not liking if you broke a promise, and not liking if you attack their friends (what DO they like?). Maybe culture, trade, civics, giving aid, etc. should be relevant to relationships. An aside: the way city states give bonuses feels very gamey too.

Now the problem is that the victory conditions we have force having an AI hate you for being closer to winning. Up to a point Civ feels like you're bringing a group of people through the ages, like reliving history. However, inevitably it becomes just a winner-takes-all competition with the other leaders in a race to achieve a victory condition. This leads to somewhat ridiculous actions such as nuking someone before he completes the space ship.

Maybe a solution would be to change the victory conditions to global goals, for example, eradicating poverty, world peace, or excessive happiness (or all of the above). Then instead of competing all the time, there would be times when you could cooperate. Give the AI leaders personalities, which may either help or work against victory (what do I do about the aggressive despot?). Of course you can still achieve world peace through conquest . I guess the idea is basically to win by creating a utopia of sorts.

Now I can't say I know how exactly the mechanics should work, but take a diplomatic victory for example. What if the UN started out powerless and somewhat dysfunctional, but you have to get to the point where most countries are willing to cede sovereignty to the UN? Maybe you have to complete some missions. And if you fail too many times, progress is lost (e.g. countries leave).

Or another idea: Allow leaders to work together on a victory condition. For example, work together on the space ship. Then for scoring purposes distribute points depending on how the civ contributed.

 

[Sallah]

I agree, and well said.

My question: is any of this moddable?

 

[lepruk86]

Basically the answer is to introduce joint victories. The problems that emerge from that are even worse than what we already have. Just as an eg.

- Stupid A.I = merging with player just as it is about to win.
- A.I merging with itself to gang up on player (does it really need any more excuses to do this?).
- Do you make agreements permanent or time based? (I.e we agree to win together within 100 turns; if not we go our separate ways - then how does this split?)
- With the above you can game the A.I into helping and then win just as the deal breaks.
- Can you ally with more than 1 civ?
- Can they back-stab you?

I really want permanent allegiance in the game. But I think it would then have to become part of the core focus for the game and thus would need a complete redesign from what we have with CiV V.

 

[Callonia]

Just because you solved world hunger doesn't mean other countries will love you for it, they can use it as tool to take you down with it.

 

[lightsedge]

Basically the answer is to introduce joint victories. The problems that emerge from that are even worse than what we already have. Just as an eg.

- Stupid A.I = merging with player just as it is about to win.
- A.I merging with itself to gang up on player (does it really need any more excuses to do this?).
- Do you make agreements permanent or time based? (I.e we agree to win together within 100 turns; if not we go our separate ways - then how does this split?)
- With the above you can game the A.I into helping and then win just as the deal breaks.
- Can you ally with more than 1 civ?
- Can they back-stab you?

I really want permanent allegiance in the game. But I think it would then have to become part of the core focus for the game and thus would need a complete redesign from what we have with CiV V.

Joint victories/permanent alliances is one way.

Another way that I mentioned is to have a global condition that must be satisfied, where there's no real "winner" (I guess everybody wins?), so to say. For example, you win when earth becomes a utopia, whether through conquest or diplomacy. Scoring would probably have to be done differently, perhaps based on time.

BTW, I'm not convinced joint victories won't work. To answer some of your questions: If someone leaves the alliance, then you should lose his contribution. The AI should not prefer each other over the player when it comes to "victory alliances". I agree that the mechanics would need a lot of testing/tweaking though.

 

[lightsedge]

Just because you solved world hunger doesn't mean other countries will love you for it, they can use it as tool to take you down with it.

And why does launching a spaceship = win?

Victory conditions are subjective. They just need to be what most people would consider to be significant.

Solving world hunger was just an example (not necessarily recommending it be implemented). It probably isn't significant enough itself for a victory condition, but maybe in conjunction with other goals?

 

[DaveGold]

I don't expect that much realism from Civ, but I would like AI players to behave like countries, not like people trying to beat a game, which makes the experience "gamey".

I think if you look back at the message boards from CIV4 you'll see the opposite comment. Countries used to respect their allies, build friendships, then players would attack them anyway because it was a game and they wanted to win. The players made it 'gamey' even when the AI didn't, and then complained about themselves doing it. This is presumably why the diplomacy was changed in CIV5.

Rather than change the AI behaviour back to a previous version it would seem sensible to change the end game victory conditions. Having a winner-takes-all victory condition will always create cut-throat games.

 

[Bibor]

All this already exists in the game -- simply unselect every victory condition except Time and/or Culture.

This way either the civ with most points (culture, population, infrastructure, science etc.) wins, or the civ with most social policies wins (i.e. takes good care of his/her people).

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Basically the answer is to introduce joint victories. The problems that emerge from that are even worse than what we already have. Just as an eg.

- Stupid A.I = merging with player just as it is about to win.
- A.I merging with itself to gang up on player (does it really need any more excuses to do this?).
- Do you make agreements permanent or time based? (I.e we agree to win together within 100 turns; if not we go our separate ways - then how does this split?)
- With the above you can game the A.I into helping and then win just as the deal breaks.
- Can you ally with more than 1 civ?
- Can they back-stab you?

I really want permanent allegiance in the game. But I think it would then have to become part of the core focus for the game and thus would need a complete redesign from what we have with CiV V.

Well "Merging" should be something that is difficult, it takes lots of work (ideally that would be the Diplomatic Victory method)

And "Joint Victory Alliances" could be permanent... they had this as an option in Civ IV... a really fun one.

 

[lightsedge]

I think if you look back at the message boards from CIV4 you'll see the opposite comment. Countries used to respect their allies, build friendships, then players would attack them anyway because it was a game and they wanted to win. The players made it 'gamey' even when the AI didn't, and then complained about themselves doing it. This is presumably why the diplomacy was changed in CIV5.

Rather than change the AI behaviour back to a previous version it would seem sensible to change the end game victory conditions. Having a winner-takes-all victory condition will always create cut-throat games.

Exactly. Thanks for the TLDR summary

 

[lightsedge]

All this already exists in the game -- simply unselect every victory condition except Time and/or Culture.

This way either the civ with most points (culture, population, infrastructure, science etc.) wins, or the civ with most social policies wins (i.e. takes good care of his/her people).

That does not address the main problem of the winner-takes-all victory.


I'm not sure what I like between the following (mutually exclusive) ideas:

• Allow joint/cooperative victories, and code the AI to pursue them. Of course you should still be able to satisfy the same conditions going solo, but having allies should often be a valid (or better) option.
• Have global victory conditions, where you win not by beating everyone, but by beating the system/simulation. That is, the AI civs do not pursue victory, but have their own agendas. The challenge is influencing them in such a way that a victory condition is satisfied.

To elucidate the latter idea, example victory conditions are:

• Achieving over a certain world population, work every non-snow land tile, improve every resource (maybe too easy/boring)
• Domination (in this case maybe you only win if it's you)
• Utopia - peace for many turns, high gdp, high culture, convince everyone to be friends?
• Diplomatic - everyone agrees to global governance
• Score - add up everyone's score
• Beat the aliens that come in 2050

The difficulty would be to make sure each victory is challenging and interesting, although at the very least we could use time to measure how fast victory was achieved.

 

[markusbeutel]

I agree, and well said.

My question: is any of this moddable?

This is moddable. In my NiGHTS mod I've eliminated the AI's hunger for victory. They don't play any differently as a result, other than not getting mad at you for attempting to achieve the same type of victory.

An easy fix - just set VictoryCompetitiveness in the LEADERS XML folder to 0 or whatever number you want out of 10.

 

[lightsedge]

This is moddable. In my NiGHTS mod I've eliminated the AI's hunger for victory. They don't play any differently as a result, other than not getting mad at you for attempting to achieve the same type of victory.

An easy fix - just set VictoryCompetitiveness in the LEADERS XML folder to 0 or whatever number you want out of 10.

Ah, that's good to know. Even with the existing victory conditions, I think I prefer this.

 

[Fluxx]

The thing is people will never get into concensus about which model they want

You will have either the model of Civ4, where "civs" are merely reflections of how we think entire nations and a leader would behave, attached to friends points that affect their direct behaviour to you.

The other CIV5 model tries to emulate some more "lifeness" but then again puts it over the top. The fact that you can be backstabbed, betrayed and simply ignored is a much harsher and uncontrollable environment, but then again it is more "realistic".

Whether you like it or not, try to think into the mindset of the design the developers took the AI this time, and try to find possible changes into that model.
Don't attack the model itself, because it will be futile since other people do like this model more then the aforementioned one.

 

[markusbeutel]

The thing is people will never get into concensus about which model they want

You will have either the model of Civ4, where "civs" are merely reflections of how we think entire nations and a leader would behave, attached to friends points that affect their direct behaviour to you.

The other CIV5 model tries to emulate some more "lifeness" but then again puts it over the top. The fact that you can be backstabbed, betrayed and simply ignored is a much harsher and uncontrollable environment, but then again it is more "realistic".

Whether you like it or not, try to think into the mindset of the design the developers took the AI this time, and try to find possible changes into that model.
Don't attack the model itself, because it will be futile since other people do like this model more then the aforementioned one.

It's a tough balance to achieve between realism/gamism (is that a word?) - but part of the problem is that the Dev's seemed to be coaxing CIV 5 in the direction of Wars. If you look through the XML there are over 30 different actions you can take that will have a negative hit on your relations with the AI while there are exactly 4 things you can do to improve relations.

1) Declaration of Friendship
2) Declaration of Friendship with Friends of the AI.
3) Denouncing an Enemy of the AI.
4) Returning a captured civilian to the AI.

That's it. And all actions are weighted by the AI on thresholds of (-50/-30/-10)(+10/+30/+50) only with so many more negative modifiers than positive ones, the only sure-fire way to avoid stepping on the AI's toes is by not ever meeting them.

EDIT - the threshold are basically the 3 levels of your relationship with the AI. From Competitor -> Angry -> Hostile and then from Pleased -> Friends -> Allies.

 

[Thorn]

It's a tough balance to achieve between realism/gamism (is that a word?) - but part of the problem is that the Dev's seemed to be coaxing CIV 5 in the direction of Wars. If you look through the XML there are over 30 different actions you can take that will have a negative hit on your relations with the AI while there are exactly 4 things you can do to improve relations.

1) Declaration of Friendship
2) Declaration of Friendship with Friends of the AI.
3) Denouncing an Enemy of the AI.
4) Returning a captured civilian to the AI.

That's it. And all actions are weighted by the AI on thresholds of (-50/-30/-10)(+10/+30/+50) only with so many more negative modifiers than positive ones, the only sure-fire way to avoid stepping on the AI's toes is by not ever meeting them.

EDIT - the threshold are basically the 3 levels of your relationship with the AI. From Competitor -> Angry -> Hostile and then from Pleased -> Friends -> Allies.

I think markusbeutel called it. The AI only seems to be there for one purpose- stop the human player. That's fine if you are expecting to play a wargame, which some players here expect. But it's not fine if you are expecting a more realistic game (there can be friends and enemies), which some players here expect.

 

[FireStorm5]

I haven't played Civ5, and likely never will, but from what I've read and seen from the game the AI players know its a big game. They are programed to win the game at any cost and to take specific actions against the human player. Maybe that's the way most Civ players want it, but its not what I look for in a Civ game.

I play Civ games to build a nation, but It doesn't seem that approach is very practical in Civ5.

 

[elthrasher]

I haven't played Civ5, and likely never will, but from what I've read and seen from the game the AI players know its a big game. They are programed to win the game at any cost and to take specific actions against the human player. Maybe that's the way most Civ players want it, but its not what I look for in a Civ game.

I play Civ games to build a nation, but It doesn't seem that approach is very practical in Civ5.

Nope. Try playing the game or something if you want to tell us what it's all about. I know this has been offered as an explanation, but there are lots of examples of the AI engaging in behavior that simply doesn't fit. I have many times completed a space or diplomatic victory in games where AI civilizations were still viable enough to at least try to attack me. In some cases diplomatic relations soured. In others the AI, particularly AI on other land masses in the few continents games I've played, stayed friendly as I won the game. That is not playing to win.

I actually think there is no overarching philosophy for how the AI should behave. That's why it so frequently seems crazy.

 

[JoeBas]

I don't know why people are clamoring for permanent alliances. For ME, my most frustrating moment in Civ, EVER, was when my permanent ally and I were going for spaceship win, we got the tech to build the last part (the big engine), and before I even get a turn, he assigns it to his little size 2 frozen ass fishing village, with like 14 billion turns to completion.

SERIOUSLY?...

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I don't know why people are clamoring for permanent alliances. For ME, my most frustrating moment in Civ, EVER, was when my permanent ally and I were going for spaceship win, we got the tech to build the last part (the big engine), and before I even get a turn, he assigns it to his little size 2 frozen ass fishing village, with like 14 billion turns to completion.

SERIOUSLY?...

Well in that case each civ should be able to work at building it...
or even better you should be able to request... "don't build this" or "build this here"

Permanent allances would be great..they would be ideal for diplomatic victory if you could have more than one (Diplomatic Victory... you are permanently allied to every surviving civ)