[BTS] "We'd rather win the game, thank you very much..." - Question about AI Reasoning

[SuperXANA]

Hello everyone!

I thought this situation was particularly strange based on my understanding of the many AI reasons and when/why they show up in diplomacy, and I wanted to possibly get some answers about it.

"We'd rather win the game, thank you very much..." shows up when asking my AI buddy to cease their war on a third-party, which of itself is not strange - it's why this reason shows up now that confuses me.

I question why this reason's showing up now because it's nowhere near the end of the game - all starting 14 leaders are still alive and nobody is a runaway superpower/score-leader yet. In fact, it's hardly even started from my perspective. We're only like 150+ turns in at this point and it's not even a Conquest-only game like I usually play!

What I know of the game says that this reason only shows up when there aren't very many leaders remaining or the clear score-leader decides to take over yet another civilization in pursuit of some win condition like Domination or Conquest several hundred turns into the game.

What are the factors that make the game show "We'd rather win the game, thank you very much..." in the diplomacy screen as the AI's reason, if any?

Thanks for reading this, I appreciate it a lot!

~ The Situation ~​

I was playing a high-peace-weight leader and everything was going smoothly for a time, until I got triple-war-declared by two of my low-peace-weight neighbors and an isolated neutral-weight civilization (all AIs)...

I was really worried about surviving the war, naturally. The third participant was a no-show, thank goodness for that. However, I was losing pretty much all my cities in battle and I decided to call up my northern ally & tech-trading partner for some help (such as it would be in this situation).

Literally the turn after war was declared on me, my lone AI friend started propping up my economy and providing me free techs and resources. Even then, it was barely enough to prevent my last cities from being captured and I could buy my ally into freeing my lands from enemy occupation.

My AI friend would be able to bring more allies in due to having better relations with them. Everyone else was not as friendly with me, so this was the only option I had. I wasn't going to just give up, obviously.

However, I was contacting my AI tech-trading partner to ask for assistance when I saw that they'd declared war already and 'Make Peace With' was unavailable & red. I was expecting the reason to be the usual "We'd love to, but you'll have to contact them...", which shows up even when it isn't possible for me to do so, but this reason was the one that showed up!

 

[f1rpo]

The AI apparently picks this response based on the number of land tiles owned by the civ that is trying to broker peace. If the AI has more than 2.5 times as much land, it refuses. Here's the AI code for reference (CvTeamAI::AI_makePeaceTrade):

int landRatio = ((getTotalLand(true) * 100) / std::max(20, GET_TEAM(eTeam).getTotalLand(true)));
if (iLandRatio > 250)
{
    return DENIAL_VICTORY;
}

It would make more sense to look at the average number of land tiles owned by other civs, but I guess it doesn't normally make a difference because only humans can broker peace and they tend to have at least as much land as the average civ. I don't recall ever encountering a situation like this in one of my games.

 

[SuperXANA]

Hello f1rpo!

Thanks for answering the question I posed about the AI reasoning.

I didn't know that only human players could broker peace deals - I mean I've seen the AI make peace with each other plenty of times, but I always thought they exchanged something to establish that peace (like gold or technology) like we do. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen an AI trade gold-per-turn with another AI either. At least, not in my games. Maybe, I just don't see it happen very often.

Yeah, I was shocked to see that my AI friend had already come to protect me in this war, without having to give them anything, and that they were literally going to wipe the aggressor off the map. Usually when the AI gets into a war (with me or another AI), things don't turn out this dire and they often make peace even when they're winning the war. Not this time, apparently!

I am surprised to see how that code works, it's not what I expected it to check for when making peace deals.

Thankfully, my AI friend liberated my cities from my main aggressor and I got some faithful allies out of the war. Of course, now my new AI friends are endlessly crusading (with the same reason of wanting to win the game) against the other low-peace-weight war-mongers that attacked me, how ironic that they're all high-peace-weight leaders. What a crazy game!

 

[f1rpo]

Oh, I only meant that the AI doesn't broker peace between two other parties. When it's simply two AI civs agreeing to peace, the losing side may have to give away a city, a tech or gold, though indeed no gold per turn. On that note, AI civs also don't sell resources for gold per turn amongst themselves. (For a mod, I've just written some code that allows resource sales amongst AI civs, so I should know.) That "we'd rather win" clause also applies only to peace brokered by a third party; it doesn't block the war parties from making peace.

What a crazy game!

Yeah, normally the AI just sits there, especially in the early game. Care to share the game settings?

 

[SuperXANA]

Hello f1rpo!

Oh, I think I misunderstood you when we were talking about brokering peace deals, given that you clarified your answer. I must have been thinking of AIs making peace in general when I wrote my response.

I'd be happy to share the game settings! I'm playing on Team Battleground (my favorite map), Huge map size, 14 civs, Noble difficulty.

I'm using a customized version of the MLP Civilization is Magic mod with 45+ extra leaders added to the mod. The mod only comes with about ten-or-eleven leaders, I think, but I wanted some more variety.
Plus, I like playing with fantasy leaders more than historical leaders. It's more fun when you create their personality yourself and get to see what chaos unfolds as a result!

I can't wait to see your mod (if you ever release it) that allows the AI to buy resources from other AIs using gold/GPT! That really sounds like something that would be cool to have!

Yeah, I know, the AI usually is very passive in many of my matches, and open to peace deals alot of the time. Not this time, apparently, as the world went crazy in short order and none of them would make peace with each other at all. I may only play CIV4 casually, but it's a ton of fun because you never know what to expect!

Funnily enough, I looked back at an earlier turn and my lone AI friend dove immediately into "We Have Enough On Our Hands" mode when the huge war against me happened (which resulted in them joining my defense a few turns later).
(The rest of the world didn't care about my plight, apparently.)

One turn before all this, my AI buddy wasn't interested in starting any wars no matter the cost. They were all red-colored, with "We would have nothing to gain" as the reason. I guess they found something to gain after all...
('I mean, you really want to help me now, but you didn't want to attack anybody before then?!' )

Thanks for coming into this topic and chatting with me!

 

[f1rpo]

I'm playing on Team Battleground (my favorite map), Huge map size, 14 civs, Noble difficulty.

I'm using a customized version of the MLP Civilization is Magic mod with 45+ extra leaders added to the mod.

Thanks; always interesting to hear what settings other long-time players have settled on. I had never given that map a closer look. Sounds like it brings out the best in people (and ponies): ``meant to give MP players an arena in which to play "deathmatch" style´´ (says the map scripts guide).

('I mean, you really want to help me now, but you didn't want to attack anybody before then?!' )

Having you as a war ally probably made all the difference. There's special code for joining a "dogpile" war, and the military power of allies also factors into "nothing to gain"; it's a mix of power and distance. (I'm not saying that this makes perfect sense.)

 

[SuperXANA]

Hello f1rpo!

Nice to see you here again, thanks for responding. I always enjoy learning & chatting more about one of my favorite games (CivIV)!

I have been in all kinds of crazy situations with this map, which is why I like it so much, depending on which AI players show up via the randomizer (or whoever I end up picking if I don't randomize the leaders). I'll have to think about sharing some of my other stories (here or somewhere else), eventually.

Having you as a war ally probably made all the difference. There's special code for joining a "dogpile" war, and the military power of allies also factors into "nothing to gain"; it's a mix of power and distance. (I'm not saying that this makes perfect sense.)

Huh, I didn't know all that... Thanks for showing me something new!
Of course, nothing the AI does would make perfect sense, but as long as it's entertaining then it's fine (in my opinion).

What might have helped me in my situation was the quirks of my AI friend's leader personality (the XML), namely the DogpileWarRand and WarTradeRand values of just 1. I like to tweak the values on the personality XML to see what insanity it can cause, and well we have this topic now.

Thanks for all your answers on my topic, I really appreciate it!