I'm wondering, is the diplomacy AI system something that's up for discussion? What I mean is
this information panel (raw numbers being visible with "Transparent Diplomacy"), as well as the messages you get from the AI.
From the previous discussion it's clear it requires a fair amount of systems knowledge to understand how the AI makes these decisions, however. That said, I think the community may have opinions to share on the general functioning of the diplomacy AI.
Personally, I find there's one problem that hasn't fully been fixed from vanilla; the AI finds a lot of reasons to get angry at you, and holds on to these reasons for a very long time, while building up positive relations is fairly difficult.
I'll admit, I often play aggressively - but I do try to keep up relations with the AI through trade, DoFs, etc. and I always end up with chain denunciations of me and repeated declarations of war due to my warmongering.
I don't think chain denouncing the warmonger who's conquering everywhere is necessarily a bad thing - what I do find annoying is that the AI will repeatedly declare war on me due to the warmongering modifier, lose to me in war, and then wait about 20 turns before declaring war again, losing again, and the cycle repeats until I conquer and vassalize them - by repeatedly declaring war, they made themselves a target by angering me.
Furthermore, if I'm able to fend off wars on 2-3 fronts simultaneously with no ill consequences, while earning what amounts to free gold and luxuries after I win, perhaps the AIs should take a hint and beef up their military, band together or try a different tactic to defeat me rather than try the same thing over and over again.
I also had the weakest civilization in the game decide it was a good idea to wage a brokered war towards me right before their capital was about to fall and they'd have only one city left - their military being much weaker than mine.
The AI does not always make the smartest diplomatic/trade decisions, and I think there's some room for improvement here. In particular they should remember the outcomes of previous wars.
I understand there are memory constraints, but a quick note like "defeated my army of X size with Y war score" and considering that when declaring war or sending hateful messages or making trade deals would make them a lot smarter IMO.
It's also not clear why the AI hates you sometimes, despite that being a goal of the mod. Sometimes it feels like they're just looking for reasons to hate you, with the way every action you do (mostly) is held against you for the rest of the game.
For example, "Your recent diplomatic actions disappoint them." can be triggered by a number of things, for example if another AI decides to end their DoF with you
(note: not actually "your" action
), or if you select the insulting response to one of their statements, or if you end your DoF with them. And it decays very slowly, starting at -30 and reducing by 1 every 5-ish turns from what I've seen, so it's not as "recent" as it says.
And I had to read into the code to figure out that "Your behavior infuriates them." is triggered by you having a significant lead for any victory condition, as it's labelled VICTORY_BLOCK.
I don't understand the reasons for all these decisions, but I think more transparency about how the AI works in this regard would help the community suggest improvements. After all, the diplomacy AI is an important part of the ultimate single player experience.
As a final note, "Transparent Diplomacy" does not reveal when an AI is DECEPTIVE rather than FRIENDLY. I think it should.
) about how it works would be useful knowledge.
