What the AI thinks of you - and why

[War_Pig]

people like this make make me have to laugh. Not saying it's perfect by any means but it's really not that hard to win a conquest game without ever being labeled a warmonger, or is it just me and my good looks that wins them over?

 

[Gabriel Pyyrhic]

I had something exceptionally silly happen to me today.

I played as Isabella on a Terra map. I was tucked away in a corner of the continent and had the Indians and the English as neighbours. All of a sudden, Germany (who were far away from me) declared war and tried to take out my cities with Warriors and Archers... -_- As I had some Swordsmen I easily killed them all, then made peace with Bismarck who gave me all of his money as he had virtually no army left. After I made peace, ALL the Civs I had met, including my neighbours who I had had friendly relationships with so far, turned Guarded and started denouncing me for being a "Warmongering menace to the world"... WHAT!? Bismarck attacked ME, I killed his attack force, made peace, and now I'm a warmongerer? The AI in Civ needs some serious work.

Howdie All

I hope this helps calrify a few things.

PART 1 - WARMONGER

There seems to be a little confusion in the CIv V community when it comes to the WARMONGER status. I touched upon it in my previous post, but didn't really elucidate very well.

Your WARMONGER status, to the best of my knowledge, is only affected by your past use of force upon others (NOT your potential for using it ie your MILITARY STRENGTH).

Here are some factors to consider :
(1) Declaring WAR (for whatever reason) increases your WARMONGER status.
(2) Having WAR declared upon you does NOT affect WARMONGER status.
(3) IMPORTANT : Once you are at WAR it does not matter how the war was started, only what transpires during the confrontation.
(4) There is no penalty for destroying units.
(5) Conquering Cities adds to WARMONGER (Please note (3) above). Now I am unsure exactly what conquering entails, but at best guess it means annexing, puppeting or razing. I will investigate this further in the future when I have time. It is not clear at the moment if any of these factors are worse then any other. I know many in the forums suspect that razing is worse then annexing, for example. I have yet to find evidence of this (in the XML, logs etc), even though it seems like a reasonable and likely proposition. I will look into this further when I have more time.
(6) Each Civ hasd a WARMONGER bias, in general the more aggresive civs are less susceptible to your conquering actions. Have a look at Bibors personality sheet to get an idea of who is likely to get upset the fastest.
(7) Unlike several other mechanics the WARMONGER mechanic has a Personality modifier. I have yet to determine its affect but it is likely that it is a scaling factor of some form that acts on the WARMONGER bias of each civ. In short this would mean that a rating of 10 is more then double a rating of 5, for example. This is only conjecture at the moment and may well be incorrect, but it is worth considering none-the-less.
(8) Things get a little tricky when moving to the higher WARMONGER status (CRITICAL and SEVERE). There is a scaling factor involved here too. Ii is unlcear at the moment its affect, but it may mean that as your WARMONGER threat climbs higher, each transgression counts less.
(9) Declaring WAR on a CS is just as bad as declaring on a major civ.
(10) Conquering a CS is just as bad as conquering a major civ cities.
(11) Attacking CS also contributes to your CS Aggressive status.


PART 2 Addressing svett89

In your example, and based on the limited information i have, there are three possibilities for what may have happened.

(1) You conquered some of the German cities, increasing your WARMONGER status which then negatively impacts OPINION, which then negatively impacts APPROACH (Guarded, Hostile etc)
(2) Your troops attained prmotions, or upgrades, you built extra units, you increased your financial reserve etc, thus increasing your MILITARY STRENGTH. Your MILITARY THREAT would then be (due to your MILITARY STRENGTH) in addittion to your actions during the war. MILITARY THREAT is responsible for increasing both the GUARDED and AFRAID APPROACHES (and HOSTILE if you are determined to have NO comparitive strength).
(3) Both (1) and (2).

You should note that every Civ ALWAYS has an exact approximation of your MILITARY STRENGTH, based on your soldiers, their promotions, how much money you have, number of cities et al. This measurement is made regardless of whether they have scouted your cities or not and is approximated by the SOLDIERS variable in the DEMOGRAPHICS screen. If you see your rank going up then expect more points going toward GUARDED and AFRAID and a greater chance of civs switching to this APPROACH. If you see your rank going down then expect to see points coming off of GUARDED and AFRAID. If you ever are estimated as having NO MILITARY STRENGTH (note this actually does not mean NONE, just less then a MINOR rating) then the AI receives a large increase to the HOSTILE APPROACH. The reason is simple : "Because they can".

Finally your WARMONGER rating could have been anywhere from MINOR to CRITICAL depending on your actions throughout the game. Unfortunately the UI does not show this.

In summary you may have had points already accrued in WARMONGER but below the necessary threshold to obtain a penalty; had you conquered and CS or major Civ cities prior to the war, had you previously declared war, how many cities of the germans did you take, what is Warmonger BIAS of your neighbours. If the answer to these questions are, I didn;'t take any cities, never declared war, didn't beat up on CS etc, then I am at a loss to explain why you had a WARMONGER status.

Remember you can use your MILITARY STREGTH to manipulate the AI. I use it to let the AI think I am weaker then what I am and encourage them to attack. Then I upgrade my units, teach them, a lesson and accept a beneficial peace treaty, without taking a WARMONGER hit for attacking them.

Once an AI goes GUARDED, they belong to one of two camps.
(1) Their opinion is still in your favour and they are just concerned by your MILITARY STRENGTH (more likely if you don't have a WARMONGER status, or have returned Civilians/DOFs etc). Try to bring these AI's back to the fold.
(2) They don't like you much and are only prevented from being openly HOSTILE or declaring WAR by your MILITARY THREAT. There not afraid of you but they do respect your potential.

NOTE : Just because the civs have a reasonably accurate estimation of your MILITARY STRENGTH does not mean they know where your units are positioned. They only see what their units can see and no more.

On a final note, remember that the CIV APPROACHES are not like Civ Opinions. Opinions are a sliding scale measured witha single number. Your OPINION is determinedf solely by that number. On the other hand APPROACH (GUARDED, NEUTRAL, FRIENDLY etc) are ratings that are measured SEPERATELY each turn, with the highest being adopted as the AI's approach to you. So don't think of GUARDED as HOSTILE, the AI could have a FAVOURABLE (or higher) OPINION of you and still be GUARDED (usually due to a high MILITARY THREAT). Then again the AI can hate your guts and be GUARDED because your MILITARY THREAT keeps them in check. Usually GUARDED is accompanied by a military build up on their borders, "ie get your eyes of my dang capital, or my GDR will learn yah!" . As there troop levels are going up at this point, then your relative MILITARY THREAT often is going down at the same time, which can then lead to them flicking to HOSTILE/WAR or NEUTRAL/FRIENDLY depending upon their OPINION of you. If they go HOSTILE/WAR their troops are then in a position to invade.

I hope this helps you svett, and any others. I also hope that you do not take my response as a criticism of your style of play, it certainly is not meant in that vein. I am only trying to explain what "might" have happened.

PS Apologies for the many typos, I am doing this on my coffee break. Also sorry for the long post.

NOTE : MILITARY STRENGTH is an approximation of your total MILITARY STRENGTH (units, promotions, gold, unit strength/type, etc). MILITARY THREAT is fed by MILITARY STRENGTH but alos reflects your behaivior throughout the game (Wars, Conquering etc). MILITARY THREAT is the one that feeds into APPROACH, MILITARY STRENGTH only affects MILITARY THREAT. IN a way civs can be doubly penalised when going on the warpath (through MILITARY THREAT-APPROACH and WARMONGER-OPINION-APPROACH), although MILITARY THREAT only really affects GUARDED/AFRAID.

 

[Gabriel Pyyrhic]

Thanks for the kudos guys, (Pac Dragon, Nyanko, Maltz, etal). I am glad to see people find some use for it. I really only looked into it to see how correct/incorrect peoples opinions were on WARMONGER, and it sort of steamrolled from there.

I will be looking more into what exaclty each APPROACH means, and further disseminating the AI's variables/factors that affect APPRAOCH in the coming week.
In the future I want to look into what affects TRADE, DOF declaraions, DENOUNCEMENT, DEMANDS etc.

I will try and help people out where I can, but time is limited.

I will post any updates I find on the linked site (try and update it every 4 - 5 days), but will respond to this thread whilst it is active where I can.

Anyway I gotta run. Its late Saturday afternoon here, I just finished work and the night is young.

All the best everybody.

(PS Can someone please wipe Bismarck off the map in a game they are playing ? In my current game, they have been growing exponentially all game. My mini-map looks like it has the German pox. They now have 14 peacefully settled cities (1150AD), and lead the world in every Demographic bar 1 (yeah, I got the most people!), have 5 Wonders, have the highest Tech and have the most Policies (What-The!). My poor little lewis&clark type scout has to do a magellean just move through German territory (due to the rabbit like explosion of Landsknechts). Finally the arogant bugger won't accept a DOF from me because he knows that I comparitively suck. I have never had a greater case of Schaedenfreuder (spelling), I guess thats Irony for you.

So please can someone go for the all time highest warmonger score and wipe that pain in the proverbial posterior from the map. Oh and don't stop there, please enable complete kills, raze his cities, and then salt the earth where he once lived and slaughter any civ that tries to settle there. And give his capital to the Babarians, when they ransom it say "no thanks".

Thanks in advance

 

[askia53]

so wait is there a status "Afraid" that i have never heard about? I only know Hostile, Guarded, Neutral, and Friendly.

 

[Aaroc]

(PS Can someone please wipe Bismarck off the map in a game they are playing ? In my current game, they have been growing exponentially all game. My mini-map looks like it has the German pox. They now have 14 peacefully settled cities (1150AD), and lead the world in every Demographic bar 1 (yeah, I got the most people!), have 5 Wonders, have the highest Tech and have the most Policies (What-The!). My poor little lewis&clark type scout has to do a magellean just move through German territory (due to the rabbit like explosion of Landsknechts). Finally the arogant bugger won't accept a DOF from me because he knows that I comparitively suck. I have never had a greater case of Scaedenfreuder (spelling), I guess thats Irony for you.

So please can someone go for the all time highest warmonger score and wipe that pain in the proverbial posterior from the map. Oh and don't stop there, please enable complete kills, raze his cities, and then salt the earth where he once lived and slaughter any civ that tries to settle there. And give his capital to the Babarians, when they ransom it say "no thanks".

Thanks in advance

Strangely enough, I started an Archipelago game last night and ended up with myself and Bismark on the same small island. I managed to take him out before meeting any other civs. Unfortunately, Mongolia was on his own large island, and has about 20 cities in the mideval era, and I've spied about 3 or 4 more settlers in his lands with my trireme, so I think he's going to have to be dealt with early, lest he run away in tech.

 

[Aaroc]

so wait is there a status "Afraid" that i have never heard about? I only know Hostile, Guarded, Neutral, and Friendly.

I've only ever seen Montezuma as AFRAID, and it basically means that you have a bigger army than they do, and they are afraid that you are going to try to take them over. While AFRAID, Montezuma will constantly come to you between turns simply to lick your boots and beg that you "Take pity on those of us who are weak".

 

[Smokeybear]

people like this make make me have to laugh. Not saying it's perfect by any means but it's really not that hard to win a conquest game without ever being labeled a warmonger, or is it just me and my good looks that wins them over?

Agree, it's not that hard to do, once you learn (mostly from reading forums like this, because you sure would never figure much of it out just by playing the game) how Firaxis made it work behind the scenes. But in my opinion, most of those diplomacy mechanics are pretty far from any semblence of real-life common sense, and I'm sure they were heavily weighted towards causing as many wars as possible, as fast as possible, and not at being particularly realistic. Having no understanding of that background reality and general game agenda is what makes folks scratch their heads and come here with all the "WTF?!?" AI questions. You just have to forget what you may have learned about the terms 'friend' and 'ally' back in the real world.

People can and will dig farther into the diplomacy mechanics and eventually wiggle out most of the why's and wherefore's... but knowing why the civs do the stupid things they do, doesn't make those behaviors any less stupid or contrary to sense. It just gives you better knowledge of how to game them for the win. It still needs a heck of a lot of work and improvement, from my view.

 

[King Patrick]

Agree, it's not that hard to do, once you learn (mostly from reading forums like this, because you sure would never figure much of it out just by playing the game) how Firaxis made it work behind the scenes. But in my opinion, most of those diplomacy mechanics are pretty far from any semblence of real-life common sense, and I'm sure they were heavily weighted towards causing as many wars as possible, as fast as possible, and not at being particularly realistic. Having no understanding of that background reality and general game agenda is what makes folks scratch their heads and come here with all the "WTF?!?" AI questions. You just have to forget what you may have learned about the terms 'friend' and 'ally' back in the real world.

The real world where the U.S. fought two wars against the British, could have fought a third if the British had intervened in the Civil War as was a distinct possibility for the first several years, and then fought, what, four or five wars now as allies?

The real world where the U.S. armed the Taliban against the Soviet Union, then less than 20 years later, allied with Russia to eliminate the Taliban?

And that's not even touching European history, where nearly everyone has been alternately at war with and allies of everyone else off and on for centuries.

People can and will dig farther into the diplomacy mechanics and eventually wiggle out most of the why's and wherefore's... but knowing why the civs do the stupid things they do, doesn't make those behaviors any less stupid or contrary to sense. It just gives you better knowledge of how to game them for the win. It still needs a heck of a lot of work and improvement, from my view.

The AI can't be as clever or insightful as a human player, but it's not stupid. You just have to look at the game from the perspective of the AI, not your own. That's the biggest problem people have with not understanding the AI - they want the AI to see everything the same way they do. People get mad because Napoleon doesn't seem to realize they only razed Alexander's cities because he attacked first, and only conquered Singapore because they needed ivory and nobody would trade it. But maybe all Napoleon sees is a bunch of burning cities and a city-state under occupation, and then notices those troops on his border ("for defense only, honest!") and has a different point of view.

 

[roguepro92]

only time i EVER even CONSIDER DoF or denouncement or any type of playing nice and political with other civ is when im playing india and just want to build 3cities and grow grow without making a military unit.
otherwise i ignore every request. and even then i seem to stay "friendly" with everyone.
one key thing i found is to NEVER declare war. if your attacked thats fine. instead of keeping big or decent size army. i just keep a lot of GPT around. so when someone attacks i can trade GPT for cold hard cash and buy 8-10troops no big deal.
otherwise if you dont declare war or participate in the politics. they leave you alone.

 

[Raern]

Helpful thread, thanks.

I would like to add that I'm quite enjoying this style of AI vs Civ 4's AI that tended to stack up reasons why they didn't like you and then hate you forever, or was happy with you right up until you declared war because their AI wasn't even slightly concerned about you murdering everyone else in sight.

In Civ 5 the world's diplomacy never seems to be locked into one state, and the AIs actually will go to war for all the right reasons involved in trying to prevent you winning the game. This may not be fully realistic in line with real life diplomacy, but it at least feels a bit more like you're playing against AIs who care about who is winning instead of just accidently wandering into a Space Victory because they had massive tech and production bonuses from the difficulty setting.

Best part is, unless I'm missing something, they seem to worry about each other for all the same reasons.

 

[wilfogn]

Thanks for all the solid info guys. This helps me understand why I ended up in game long wars after I defended myself from the mongols, and why I always seem to do better ignoring all the AI's requests.

 

[Txurce]

Best part is, unless I'm missing something, they seem to worry about each other for all the same reasons.

This does seem true, and strikes me as more evidence that the Civ 5 diplomacy system will be the best in the series by far once its rough edges are smoothed out.

 

[brasaelal]

In Civ 5 the world's diplomacy never seems to be locked into one state, and the AIs actually will go to war for all the right reasons involved in trying to prevent you winning the game. This may not be fully realistic in line with real life diplomacy, but it at least feels a bit more like you're playing against AIs who care about who is winning instead of just accidently wandering into a Space Victory because they had massive tech and production bonuses from the difficulty setting.

Disagree. Going from a bad reputation to a good one is quite difficult, but it's very easy to see the diplomacy status with all civs deteriorate because of so little.

 

[bryanw1995]

Unfortunately every civ knows of all of your worlwide affecting diplomatic actions regardless of when you met them, and if it was possible for anyone to know about your dastardly deeds. In particular WARMONGER status, broken DIPLOMATIC promises, etc.

Overall you post was excellent, but this part is wrong. I just finished a game where I was on an isolated continent. I had 14 iron readily available, so I decided to take out germany and monty. Just as I was finishing mop-up duty (one city left for each of them), liz shows up in a caravel. 5 turns later I own the entire continent and liz has branded me a warmonger. Within 20 turns I had found the other 6 civs, and all 6 of them loved me. No warmonger hatred for multiple DOW's and killing off 2 major poweres, just love and roses for me. Liz hated me the rest of the game, and warmonger was her #1 reason, but clearly the others knew nothing about it.

 

[Pac-Dragon]

No warmonger hatred for multiple DOW's and killing off 2 major poweres, just love and roses for me. Liz hated me the rest of the game, and warmonger was her #1 reason, but clearly the others knew nothing about it.

This could also have been due to the other civs rolling low on Warmonger Hate, while Russia rolled high. Russia can get up to a 7 on Warmonger Hate, so maybe the others were so low that you never tripped the threshold with them?

 

[brasaelal]

Overall you post was excellent, but this part is wrong. I just finished a game where I was on an isolated continent. I had 14 iron readily available, so I decided to take out germany and monty. Just as I was finishing mop-up duty (one city left for each of them), liz shows up in a caravel. 5 turns later I own the entire continent and liz has branded me a warmonger. Within 20 turns I had found the other 6 civs, and all 6 of them loved me. No warmonger hatred for multiple DOW's and killing off 2 major poweres, just love and roses for me. Liz hated me the rest of the game, and warmonger was her #1 reason, but clearly the others knew nothing about it.

So far that's what I noticed too, that the AI only takes into consideration what happened after they met you.

 

[dexters]

Fantastic analysis. Keep it up.

 

[Gabriel Pyyrhic]

Regarding pre-knowledge of Warmongering.

I cannot guarantee what I stated is absoloutely correct, however I stated that due to the following two reasons.

1. Anecodotal - Several people on the forums have given accounts whereby they had been branded warmongers by other players they had not met, and then found out about it at first meeting. Now while I can't prove something by example, I can disprove something with a counter example. If Civs DO NOT know of your Warmongering actions prior to meeting then an example should not be able to be found that contradicts this. Admittedly I am believing what others have said, but I see no reason why several people would lie, and cannot see how they could have gotten consfused. In my own games I have never experienced this, but I am not often a warmongerer so I am not a good example.

2. No where in the XML can I find anything pertaining to other civs knoweldge of you affecting warmongering.

Please remember that just as the other poster mentioned, warmonger status is affected by the warmonger hate of the civ in question. Exaclty how this number translates is as yet a mystery (at least to me anyway). It may only affect the opinion hit you take in which case the rating its self should apply to each and every civ and this point becomes irrelevent to our arguement here. It may however apply to the Warmonger threshold in which case what 1 civ thinks, will not be the same as another. I need more work here and just havn't had the time to look into it.

With all that said I will try to confirm this through the logs, (should be easy enough just need one example of an unmet civ having a minor or higher warmonger status 1 turn after meeting).

The upcoming patch is going to undo much of the work I have done, so I will need to reexamine the patched files. Unfortunately this will mean things like this issue probably wont get looked at for a while.

Eitherway thankyou for pointing this out, and I will try to remember to alter what I have writtten to add that it has only been anecdotally confirmed as of yet.

[EDIT]
Altered the original post to reflect the anecdotal nature of the original assertion. Will mention your insight should you turn out to be correct.
[END-EDIT]


Cheers

 

[Txurce]

Every civ has an open attitude to you when they meet you. It will change the very next turn, probably based on what they learn about you subsequently. It's possible that prior actions have an effect but don't register because the civ rolled low on warmonger hate.

I am playing a game where I have been a warmonger. I just met Babylon, and quickly traded as much as I could on fair terms. The next turn his attitude changed, but not because of my warmongering. He thought we were competing for the same CS.

 

[elprofesor]

I would really like to know how "bad" eliminating a civ is for the AI's approach, that is, the extra diplomatic hit for taking their last city. In most games, I can manage to keep half the world friendly, and the other half hating my guts, with DOFs. But as soon as I take some civ's last city (which I try to avoid, although maybe now I won't in continents maps, or the CS in the New World for Terra maps if I'm fast), one of my friends denounces me, and it's downhill from there.
Oobviously, being ahead in everything (read: being a wonder and a CS whore, and stressing out the sciency guys) but soldiers doesn't help: they have a reason, and they have the means.

Further, I would like to know if the penalty for wiping out a CS (i.e., taking their only city, in 99.9% of the cases) is as strong as the one for wiping out a real civ.

PS: does anybody know how CS research rate works? They are nearly always ahead, but only own one city (obviously), don't sign research agreements, and the research given by allied CS with the right patronage SP isn't impressive (even if it's only a third of their research).