Vox Populi Diplomacy Feedback

[Recursive]

Hello all,

Diplomacy has always been one of the key foundations of the Civilization game experience, and a core component of player immersion. I have somewhat of a fascination with the diplomacy mechanics, and I've recently taken a particular interest in improving the Civilization V diplomacy AI for Vox Populi, building on the work of @Gazebo and others throughout the years.

So, I'm starting this thread for anyone who has feedback, concerns, suggestions or ideas of any kind on how to improve the diplomacy AI. Not all suggestions will be implemented, of course, but I think this is a subject the community will be interested in.

So, feel free to post any feedback below! I will be reading this thread regularly and responding to any issues that are brought up.

How does the Diplomacy AI function?
Thanks for asking! I'm currently working on a detailed guide on the various diplomacy AI mechanics, including the two most important ones (Approach and Opinion). The guide can be found on the wiki at this URL:

https://civ-5-cbp.fandom.com/wiki/Detailed_Guide_to_Diplomacy

If you have any suggestions on what to add to this guide, you can post these here as well - or edit the guide directly if you know what you're doing.

Cheers!
Recursive

 

[usadefcon1]

Nice article. 11/25 build seems really solid to me so far. Although, I think a little too much friendliness is given for not sharing a border.

 

[Recursive]

Nice article. 11/25 build seems really solid to me so far. Although, I think a little too much friendliness is given for not sharing a border.

The friendliness is probably caused by not being considered a "major competitor" (in the Ancient, Classical and Medieval eras, strong land disputes qualify you as a major competitor).

Logically speaking, the AI shouldn't be embarking on long-range crusades early on in the game - at least not without a good reason - so this helps limit it to nearby players.

 

[usadefcon1]

Also I would recommend if the AI is being Deceptive, their visible approach should be Friendly OR Neutral. Sometimes it's very obvious when the AI is being sneaky.

 

[usadefcon1]

The friendliness is probably caused by not being considered a "major competitor" (in the Ancient, Classical and Medieval eras, strong land disputes qualify you as a major competitor).

Logically speaking, the AI shouldn't be embarking on long-range crusades early on in the game - at least not without a good reason - so this helps limit it to nearby players.

I agree 100%. In my game everyone who didn't share a boarder with me was sending me DoFs and it felt a little too much, that's all

 

[Recursive]

Also I would recommend if the AI is being Deceptive, their visible approach should be Friendly OR Neutral. Sometimes it's very obvious when the AI is being sneaky.

Ah, but in that case you don't know if their approach is DECEPTIVE or WAR, which is a significant difference.

It would be challenging to change DECEPTIVE in this way because a lot of diplomacy mechanics depend on the current design (plus there are many instances where it isn't so obvious they don't like you), but I did tweak it so that the FRIENDLY approach will never appear if you've denounced them, they've denounced you or they consider you a backstabber, which should eliminate blatantly obvious sneakiness.

I agree 100%. In my game everyone who didn't share a boarder with me was sending me DoFs and it felt a little too much, that's all

If feedback indicates there's too many early game DoFs happening, I'll make some tweaks, but bugs relating to this should be fixed.

Edit: There was a small merge error causing the AI to be slightly more friendly than intended; when ilteroi's hotfix for tech costs is posted, this should be fixed too.

 

[usadefcon1]

There was a small merge error causing the AI to be slightly more friendly than intended; when ilteroi's hotfix for tech costs is posted, this should be fixed too.

 

[usadefcon1]

How about denouncements cancel open borders agreements?

 

[TheUnholyPotato]

@Recursive, is there any way to manually fix the scaling bug, or is it a DLL bug? I wanna dive into the new patch.

Edit: Whoops. I should've asked that on the main thread! Same question applies, I suppose.

 

[Recursive]

@Recursive, is there any way to manually fix the scaling bug, or is it a DLL bug? I wanna dive into the new patch.

Edit: Whoops. I should've asked that on the main thread! Same question applies, I suppose.

It is a DLL bug.

How about denouncements cancel open borders agreements?

Wouldn't that be human exploitable? Give the AI Open Borders, let them into your lands, and kick them out at an opportune moment...

 

[usadefcon1]

Wouldn't that be human exploitable? Give the AI Open Borders, let them into your lands, and kick them out at an opportune moment...

The player would be making the AI pretty mad, it might even give it a heads up as to the player's true intentions. And it's not like you could repeat it again and again.

 

[Stalker0]

My first play. I settled my first city, Aztec declares immediately on that turn and takes it. And all I can say is....well yeah, that's what Monty should do!

 

[Recursive]

The player would be making the AI pretty mad, it might even give it a heads up as to the player's true intentions. And it's not like you could repeat it again and again.

You have a point; and I did program the AI to get such a heads up.

I'll post on Github and see what G and others think.

Edit: https://github.com/LoneGazebo/Community-Patch-DLL/issues/5898

My first play. I settled my first city, Aztec declares immediately on that turn and takes it. And all I can say is....well yeah, that's what Monty should do!

Yup! Be careful forward settling around Monty.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Wouldn't that be human exploitable? Give the AI Open Borders, let them into your lands, and kick them out at an opportune moment...

The player would be making the AI pretty mad, it might even give it a heads up as to the player's true intentions. And it's not like you could repeat it again and again.

Since I read at least once per month a complains about "end of open borders made my unit disappear", "my units are now locked away because open border ended and I think this should not happen", or "unit teleportation is buggy and arbitrary". I don't think that's a good idea to increase the number of situations where this happens.

But on the other hand, that would kind of force out of the shadow all the teleportation bugs that remains (if they were not all exterminated during the last few months). And the teleportation being kind of arbitrary and unpredictable prevent human abuse like "denouncing because you want your units to be teleported away".

 

[Recursive]

UPDATE!
I've added a comprehensive list of every opinion modifier in the game to the diplomacy guide, along with details about how they're obtained and calculated. The updated approach calculation will follow shortly.

https://civ-5-cbp.fandom.com/wiki/Detailed_Guide_to_Diplomacy

 

[Rafs]

I've been playing a couple of maps, have to say you can really feel the agressiveness of certain civs, and I quite like it.
Now, I'm playing a game with England and I have to say it's not possible to leverage your UA without pissing everyone off, as absolutely everyone will hate your guts for doing election rigging (even people who aren't allied with the city state). I think you should only get a diplo negative modifier when you pull a coup d'état and only with the civ that is actually allied with it, right now I would be better off spying on everyone and doing advanced actions, diplowise. At least i'm not caught 100% of the time...

 

[Recursive]

I've been playing a couple of maps, have to say you can really feel the agressiveness of certain civs, and I quite like it.
Now, I'm playing a game with England and I have to say it's not possible to leverage your UA without pissing everyone off, as absolutely everyone will hate your guts for doing election rigging (even people who aren't allied with the city state). I think you should only get a diplo negative modifier when you pull a coup d'état and only with the civ that is actually allied with it, right now I would be better off spying on everyone and doing advanced actions, diplowise. At least i'm not caught 100% of the time...

The penalty's only meant to apply to coups, not election rigging. Will fix; the code for spies is very messy.

 

[General_Drax]

My current game: Isabel, Epic (bug for science so it seems standard and epic got same requisite to get new technologies), Planet simulator, large and infrequent isles, strategic balance. Gameplay mods: pineappledan tweaks (building), 3rd and 4th UC, Enhanced Naval Warfare.

Civs: Songhai (Aut/Artistry/Imp), India (Trad/Fealty), France (Trad/StateC), Sweden (Progress/Fealty) same continent. Bizantinum (Aut/Fealty), Assyria (Aut/Fealty), Ethiopia (Progress/Artistry) other continent.

About diplo:

_ Songhai went all out raging from turn 50 to turn 130 on me. I won both wars and razed one of his city. In this phase he simply pursued a forward settling. Aggressively. Then we denounced each out for about 350 turns and never declared. Blocks are Spain/Sweden/India vs Songhai/France. Bizantinum already won the game capturing Assyrian capital and isolating Ethiopia in desert (very bad starting position, unlucky)

_ strange enough Songhai is managing to steal a lot of CS from other civs via direct influence and his diplomatic units flow is very high. Managed to steal even my closest CS. My spy are rigging election costantly but to no avail. I got penaly diplo for rigging election. Simply CS flips to him.

_ penalty for not moving troops is fading away as it should

_ India (3 cities) renewed DoF since start and DP with Spain as soon he could. Same for Sweden (5 cities). Both are really worried about Songhai but they have no intention (impossible answer) to join a war vs Askia.

_ Diplo wise we barely stop Byzantinum to pass her world religion. AIs like banning resources a lot more.

Probably my fault not to declare but was always a step behind Songhai and they have a massive advantage till Industrial Sufa/Mandelaku cavalry dominate the field.

Disappointing because i'm coming from a streak of 5 victory (Domination x 2, DV, CV, SV) and now it seems I lost two game in a row with Auth.

I do not understand if the new evaluation of enemy force freeze the AI to declare. Songhai could put a good fight with his power spike in Medieval but he did not.

I'll go down declaring vs France and Songhai in a blaze of glory.

Edit: added about DoF/DP.

 

[Coffee Monopoly]

The penalty's only meant to apply to coups, not election rigging. Will fix; the code for spies is very messy.

Has that always been a bug or did you break it recently?

Also, are you tackling voting behaviour in the world congress? Right here in the first congress, all 7 other AIs cared only about not sanctioning Greece and didn't vote on anything else. In result, Gandhi of all people would've gotten his world religion passed if I hadn't put 2 votes against it. Seems like that should be a more pressing issue for most people, or at the very least important enough for the AI to not completely ignore.

 

[4CV]

UPDATE!
I've added a comprehensive list of every opinion modifier in the game to the diplomacy guide, along with details about how they're obtained and calculated. The updated approach calculation will follow shortly.

https://civ-5-cbp.fandom.com/wiki/Detailed_Guide_to_Diplomacy

Thank you for a lot of information that was so much easier to be ignored til now.

Now I know the penalty for me denouncing an AI is +35. But why should the same +35 be applied if they denounce me? Imho, it should be 0 or even a small -x.
They don't like me and tell it to the world. If that is not enough for them to feel a little better, why should they feel even worse?