What Would Gandhi Do? - AI Rebalancing Mod

[black213]

Alexander, Continents, Prince, Standard time and map size

Turn 6: Meet Bismarck

Turn 9: Bismarck Hostile, calls my army weak

Turn 14: Warrior upgrades to Hoplite

Turn 17: Friendly, offers DOF, I accept. Calls my army powerful

 

[Txurce]

Turn 240 - Here's something that surprised me. A CS with a GG. Apparently he had been fighting me so much he actually
produced one.

Turn 242 - Make a research deal with China, as well as giving them open borders.

Turn 245 - Came across a really weird bug. I'm attacking one of the CSes and for some reason even though I had it surrounded
with cannons I couldn't aim for one of his pikemen. I accidently move click on it with one of the un-set up cannons and...
well it glitched. The cannon moved into the same tile as the enemy pikeman. On the next turn the pikeman attacked one of my
other nearby pikemen and killed it, moving into that space. Managed to kill it with musketmen on the next turn. All in all,
very unusual.

Turn 246 - Took Genoa. As a result, is no longer allied with GK.

Turn 247 - Oh look, surprise, surprise. Japan, my long term ally has denounced me.

I'm not going to continue this segment for now. I'll explain why in general observations.


All leaders -

- Your friends found reason to denounce you

Wu Zetain -
Friendly
+ Desires friendly relations
As typical of China, runaway AI of this game
Denounced Russia
Is the person who stomped all over Turkey (She has their capital) and has a scary amount of troops (No 1.
in demographics)

Genghis -
Has a dartboard of my face in his palace (Hostile)
- Asked me to stop attacking a city state and ignored them
- Destroyed city states under their protection
- Gone to war in the past (and this time he's very unwilling to negotiate peace)
- I denounced them
- They denounced me
- Apparently I'm a warmongering menace
- Made a declaration of friendship with one of their enemies
- Stole lands belonging to them with a culture bomb
- Covet lands I own
Allied with Genoa
Allied with Monaco

Nobunaga -
Friendly (yet has denounced me. Derp)
HAS A BOATLOAD OF CITIES (8!). Kinda expected, I remember what Oda was like post-patch
+ We've denounced the same leaders
+ We have a pact of friendship
Denounced Persia, Russia and Mongolia
Allied with Florence
Allied with Rio De Janerio
At war with Persia

Catherine
Hostile
+ Desires friendly relations
- Believes I'm a warmongering menace
Denounced China and Japan

Darius
Guarded
- I denounced them
- They denounced me
- Been at war in the past
- Apparently I'm a warmongering menace
Made peace with Japan at some point

General observations:

- I'm getting sick to death of this AI whenever it goes into late-game phase.

Here is why. Why do people find this game less fun at the moment than CiV? Because at some goddamn point, no matter what point you're at or how well you managed your relations, when you trip a certain threshold with the AI... BAM... Borg collectivity engages and they all want you dead or removed from the game. With humans this is a lot more subtle. There will be more open relations, more wars, more everything in a big game vs humans. But the AI in the way it turns on you is so blatently contrived and childish that you can't help but laugh and facepalm.

All of a sudden you're not playing a Civ game. You're not making clever deals in order to trick the AI or embargoing third parties so you can make head-way. Hell, why not just get rid of the Diplomacy menu and just have everyone at war with you
if that's the way CiV is going to treat you. Because frankly that's how things are at the moment.

I'm sorry but I am not accepting (- Your friends found reason to denounce you) as a legitimate feature of this game. It is contrived, unfair and it creates a pointless articifical handicap that no player would enjoy except for those who prefer
'Always War'. Why the hell should the other AI's care that I'm stomping all over CSes that they're not even involved with? In fact, THEY declared on ME! So as soon as I get some sort of upper hand, the AI immediately calls me out for it? How is that even fun?

It's not clever, it's not fun, in fact, it's a backwards step in the AI. It's reminiscient of Skirmish AI that you'd find in old RTS games.

Let's give an example. Anyone here played C&C Red Alert? If you played skirmishes in that you'd know that most games were free for alls. In an 8 player game for example, you could attack everyone and anyone, and the AI did the same, they attacked everyone and never allied...

Which is a lie by the way. The AI in Red Alert didn't start out as allies. However, once a computer player or two was eliminated from the game, THEN they would form what I can only assume was an ad-hoc NATO and then went for you and you alone, creating
bizzare situations where you were holding off 6 enemy armies at once.

The threshold I obviously tripped here was the 'Killing more than a few CSes threshold. So, hang on a minute, Russia has killed two. Yes admittedly I've killed off the most (3), but it's just ridiculous that I get flak for it when I was just getting rid of the thorns in my side. And the message of all things comes from my longest term trade partner, Nobunaga, which is just a slap in the face.

This isn't the only game I've had something like this happen before. I had a game recently (without this mod) where I played as Alexander and monopolised all the CSes and was pretty close to culture. There was peace all game and then suddenly they all declare on me. This was legitimate, I have to admit the AI knew I was going for culture and rightly wanted me gone. However, there's just something about the way ( - Your friends found reason to denounce you) is worded that pisses me off. Why not just say (We would rather win the game thanks). The AI used to use those exact words in Civ4 when they were holding off a tech from you so you couldn't get an advantage in the space race, but it didn't necessarily mean that all embassies were closed to you (other AIs were still willing to trade), nor did it mean the enemy AI that was withholding the tech from you hated you (indeed they were still willing to trade other things such as gold).

But this is not good. Why? I'm going to use that word again, that word that you see often chucked around threads in general discussion. It is the immersion factor. In a game where you're partly making deals with the world, they should have more reasonable and logical approaches to you.

Now don't get me wrong, if I were playing a CiV terminator edition where all my opponents were sentient AI and I was to roleplay the only human alive that had to get an advantage before Skynet came online, unified them all and got them to invade me and seek my elimination from their perfect AI world, that would make sense for this current version of the game.

But this is not a Terminator movie gone huge. This is not AI War: Fleet Command . This is meant to be Civilisation. Fans to a certain extent should be allowed to roleplay. Victory is the icing on the cake, it is the journey that matters.

In conclusion, the diplomacy is too much of 'Do nothing and you'll be screwed. Do something consistently and you'll be screwed' This does not maketh a good game. I would be able to accept it IF I actually went out of my way to declare war on Mongolia. That would be a good reason for the AI to be afraid of me. But no. Alas, rather than Mongolia alone being vilified, I am thrown into the same camp. Without any prior warning from who I assumed to be my closest Ally all bloody game.

- With that off my chests, I have a few suggestions:

1. There needs to be more incentive to form agreements with the AI. It shouldn't be a case of the AI wanting to turn the tap of friendship on and off repeatedly for the sake of it, and growing timid just because their friend of one billion years suddenly cherry tapped a tiny nation that they actually don't give a crap about. I don't want AIs with 'cold war' personalities, sure, throwing some into the mix who have 'backstabbing slut' or 'impossible and immovable in diplomacy' personalities is fine, just don't have all of them adopt the same crazy paranoid demenour every time the human player so much as breathes.

1a. On top of this it you should be capable of forming relationships as well as souring them. For example, let the AIs see positivity in things such as having open borders with the player, having research agreements, trading resources, giving tribute and gifting the AI with something it needs at that time. And let the player SEE these things in the diplomacy screen, so it gives them more incentive to stay allied. At the moment there's too many things you can do to annoy an AI; this needs to be balanced out with more friendly options.

1b: With this in mind, the logical progression of a pact of friendship should be one due to the benevolent actions one civ has taken towards another, rather than it being the other way round. At the moment, the AI are like children in a nursery saying 'I like you, let's be friends' at the drop of a hat, rather than befriending someone on a mutual basis. AIs should earn each other's trust as well as you being able to earn theirs and vice versa.

Without this idea, the game literally becomes Civilisation 5: Everyone is Montezuma edition

If you manage to do this Sneaks (or if anyone else manages to figure out the AI) I will chisle a statue of marble of your likeness using my teeth and my manly soul and place it somewhere on Stonehenge as a testament to your genius.

For the meantime I will continue to play test your mod.

I like the fact that the AI bands against a player who starts taking over the CS – just as they do against the AI civs that do. ( I just saw them do it vs Songhai.) Civ 5 does not have twice as many CS as major civs to provide the majors with cannon fodder. They are meant to be worked rather than absorbed most of the time.

I also like the fact that the AI generally turns hostile late-game toward everyone… including the presumably ascendant human player. It adds a little uncertainty to what has traditionally been the boring downslope of the game. This is one of the most under-rated aspects of post-patch Civ 5. More importantly, I have shown in this mod that it’s easy to keep most or all of the AI friendly all the way to victory. That you can’t do it warmongering seems reasonable to me.

Finally I find value in early, “unearned” Friendship pacts they provide me with security when I’m weak. I suspect the AI feels the same way – they are securing a flank. In the mid-game they don’t seem to offer DoF’s to equally powerful civs, but rather to relative weaklings they are gathering under their cloak. (This often includes the human player.)

That DoF’s are a two-edged sword, since it ultimately means you’ve chosen sides and are indirectly annoying someone, does need balancing. While I like the overall drift of the modded game from cooperation to hostility, there should be more ways to gain positive reactions from the AI, versus the many ways to get a negative one. What is most glaringly missing is an alliance factor that prominently rewards war alliances, but all the possibilities you mentioned make sense to incorporate.

Although it’s secondary, immersion would certainly benefit from more appropriate AI verbal responses.

 

[zambies]

The big one:
-AI no longer given happiness handicaps. Instead, given faster construction, and one extra warrior on Deity. The unhappiness bonus was allowing the AI to play by an entirely different ruleset, rather than just getting a head start

Are you certain you got this one right? I started a standard/Pangaea game on Prince and, according to InfoAddict (link/image below), the AI is still getting a 6 happiness bonus over me (Siam) at turn 0.

 

[Sneaks]

That is throwing me for a loop. Prince is the only difficulty in which the AI received no base happiness change from the player in vanilla, and thus should be unaffected in my mod. I will look into this

 

[zambies]

That is throwing me for a loop. Prince is the only difficulty in which the AI received no base happiness change from the player in vanilla, and thus should be unaffected in my mod. I will look into this

Would you believe that's not true, either? The below screenshot is from a tiny/Pangaea/Prince game that is vanilla with the exception of InfoAddict being the only installed/enabled mod. I'm China, obviously.

 

[Sneaks]

I am totally confused by this.

 

[zambies]

I am totally confused by this.

Glad I could help! *grin*

I've always seen absolutely absurd AI happiness on Price but never really had the appropriate venue to mention it. This is across multiple machines, game re-installs and OS re-installs so I really doubt it's a game files corruption on my end.

 

[Txurce]

A short PS on my last game, in which I built too few cities as an experiment and paid for it, with Iroquois launching in 1850: Gandhi was the first to build The Bomb, and nuked the hell out of the Americans. At least three CS built the Manhattan Project. And by the end of the game everyone except powerful Egypt had denounced me (Hiawatha as he launched!) but my only war was a game-long, long-distance one with America.

 

[Sneaks]

I don't doubt it is on your end either. I just cannot find anywhere that would explain the magic extra 3 happiness it has.

 

[zambies]

I don't doubt it is on your end either. I just cannot find anywhere that would explain the magic extra 3 happiness it has.

It isn't only three extra happiness though; that just happened to be the easiest this to show. I don't have any available saves from the game, but I recently played a Large/Pangaea game where at least four different civs (Germany, Iroquois, Siam and Greece) were ICS-ing like mad - each with 20+ cities - and only Greece had anything less than +80 happiness by mid-late game. These weren't small cities, either. Siam had at least 6 that had populations over 20.

It seems the AI gets happiness bonuses of one sort or another at every level despite what's been said, though it may be accidental/a bug.

 

[civcivv]

Something that would be nice is if you agree to gift something to the AI it wants, you should improve your relations this way.

Currently, if you got a DoF and they request a gift, giving it does nothing. Not giving it gives a negative.
Would also be nice if you could request a gift somehow. But you can only demand -.-
Also seems impossible to end DoFs now other than to go to war or denounce, both of which make you a backstabber.

Oh, and the phenomenon of AI showing as friendly when in fact it hates you could be the thing with Deceptive flavor (check the leader xml). Even setting that to 0 though still sometimes gives the wrong info on the diplo screen, but that's because it takes a turn or two to "update" to the real attitude.

As for mystery happiness, I don't have InfoAddict but I noticed that duplicating Prince to Settler in HandicapInfos, setting default happiness to 0 (and all other relevant factors to 100 to bring it in line with what the human player gets) and then setting the default diffulty in GlobalDefines (which in Civ V affects AI not human) to Settler may fix that issue for you. AI from my experiments seems to get the happiness bonus from the default difficulty PLUS the chosen in game difficulty.

 

[Leoben]

One quick idea I had: Would it be possible to change the AI's negative and positive modifiers the same way it works for the CS?

For instance, having several different multipliers so that some AIs are more friendly than others, and others are more hostile. Something like 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5 modifiers. An AI with a "O.5" modifier to the negative modifiers would take a lot of time to piss off, while an AI with a 1.5 modifier would start getting annoyed very easily.

Just a little idea to implement variety in the AI, and so that the player has to try and find which AI would make a good ally and which AI is an unreliable one.

 

[Isikien]

One quick idea I had: Would it be possible to change the AI's negative and positive modifiers the same way it works for the CS?

For instance, having several different multipliers so that some AIs are more friendly than others, and others are more hostile. Something like 0.5, 0.75, 1, 1.25, 1.5 modifiers. An AI with a "O.5" modifier to the negative modifiers would take a lot of time to piss off, while an AI with a 1.5 modifier would start getting annoyed very easily.

Just a little idea to implement variety in the AI, and so that the player has to try and find which AI would make a good ally and which AI is an unreliable one.

I like this idea. Ai strategies already appear to be random, so it makes sense. Though these modifiers should be slight and relavent to the ai. A ghandi for example hating everybody he came into contact with would be a bad example

 

[V. Soma]

I started (another) testplay, here

 

[Isikien]

Sneaks, something that might be really handy if you haven't already seen it

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=401897

 

[Sneaks]

Yeah, I have all that info readily available. The next version of this is going to be delayed a bit so that I can both do more playtesting and attempt to hunt down the magic AI happiness.

 

[Isikien]

More info from other test games:

- There are still things that can be abused via loopholes in trade. For example, I traded excess spices to catherine, who gave me lots of gold and strat resources. However, she also offered me one-sided open borders. Weirdly enough I dial her up and offer her one sided borders, but asked her 'what would make a fair trade'. She gives me 50 gold for me to open my borders.

I also, in this game, did the exact same thing to Ramekhang

Considering that there's no real benefit to OB at the moment, I find that a bit stupid

 

[JamesCivFan]

Something I noticed in my King, standard speed, standard map size, 9 AI's, 17 CS.

Towards the modern age (turn 280 or maybe a bit earlier), every 2 turns or so, at least 2 AI's were either saying if I want to join them in the war against another AI, or that they attacked one of my CS friends and if I am okay with it.

This means that they still like to wage war a lot. Just thought I'd inform you of that, so you can change some variables to make it happen less often.

 

[Leoben]

Already asked on another thread, but does anybody know how those values (which seems to have come up with the new big patch) influence the leaders' behaviour?

<Loyalty>4</Loyalty>
<Neediness>4</Neediness>
<Forgiveness>5</Forgiveness>
<Chattiness>7</Chattiness>
<Meanness>7</Meanness>

They are ranked from 3 to 7 and I don't know if they have any impact in the game.

My guesses on them are:

Loyalty: influence actions taken against a friend or an allied CS.
Neediness: maybe influence the messages such as "I hope your troops are only passing by near my borders", that kind of stuff?
Forgiveness: high forgiveness could mean that the Civ won't feel the need to go at war again against a previous foe, while a low forgiveness civ will tend to declare war again.
chattiness: more messages if it's high?
Meanness: absolutely no idea about this one, my guess would be that an AI with high meanness will wipe out an enemy, maybe?

Sneaks, any idea on those ones?

 

[Buckets]

I think I found out where the extra happiness is coming from.

I did a simple mod to change the SETTLER handicap from 15 to 9. Then started a game on PRINCE. Using Info Addict the AI's starting happiness was 9 vs my 6. My suspicion was that the AI is getting the SETTLER handicap and sure enough that seems to be the case. The extra 3 happiness is probably coming from further happiness bonuses on settler.

Hope that helps.