My issue with the diplomacy AI.

[Flavorable]

The economic and military AI is really impressive; it's so refreshingly challenging compared to the Civ5 ai. My only problem with the AI lies in how it acts diplomatically.

The problem I have with it is that the AI's stance towards the player is generally cemented within the first ten turns of meeting it, and deosn't change for the rest of the game. This means that generally I know if I've either won or lost the game before I reach the Transcendance era, because once the enemy alliance is dealt with I know that I'm not in for any surprises with the AI. This deflates alot of the tension and strategy of the late game, because the player is able to demilitarize and the game turns into nothing but dull economic management. The praising and denouncing creates such a powerful feedback loop that no maintenance or attention is required to keep an AI at generous; I can even cancel every agreement I have with a leader and he'll recover back to being generous within a few turns because of constant praise.

I think tinkering alone could definitely improve this, but a select few new components for the diplomatic AI would really improve things. I have some ideas that I think could help:

Tweaks

Note: Initially all of these suggestions are focused on making the Diplomatic AI more dynamic and volatile, so that the player has a reason to consider the status of his diplomacy screen when making strategic decisions if the enemy alliance even after the enemy alliance is eliminated. The player should find it challenging to keep friendly relations with multiple allies at once. This would push the player to really have to consider which faction he praises.

-Dramatically buff the cooldown for praising a faction.

-Only allow the player to praise one faction at a time.

-Make praise have less of an effect on external factions.

-Buff the rate at which extreme stances (Furious/Generous) decay back to the baseline (Reserved/Polite)

-Change the scale so that extreme stances last shorter than more moderate stances (Angry/Friendly) and baseline stances are the biggest. That way, going from Generous to Friendly should be faster than going from Polite to Reserved.

-Rejecting another Faction's deal should have diplomatic repercussions. As it is their stance doesn't change no matter how many times I reject their trade agreement/open borders, which doesn't put any pressure on me to think strategically about diplomacy.

-Disallow denouncing while at war, it only serves to keep friendly AI generous.

-Make cancelling an existing agreement have big diplomatic consequences. Cancelling my Trade, Research and Open Borders should bring him from Generous to Reserved, and Cancelling a Non aggression pact should make him reserved to signify distrust.

-When a faction enters a new era the rate of decay on relationships should get buffed so that alliances become more capable of drastically shifting the longer the game goes on.

-Factions don't praise you if they consider you a threat (If you significantly outpace them in any field). This way, the player is challenged in new ways (diplomatically) as he gets stronger than his allies, so that the game doesn't become predictable.

New Components:

-Allow a faction to ask another faction to join their wars, and allow factions to ask for a large fee to join a war. As soon as a war starts, Faction A analyzes whether it is more powerful than Faction B, and if it's weaker then it asks all factions who Faction A is Polite/Friendly/Generous towards to join their war. Faction C will then base it's answer on whether it is more powerful alone then Faction B, and if they like the Faction A more than Faction B to begin with. If Faction C does not like Faction A much more then Faction B it will ask for payment. Rejecting a request to go to war should have huge diplomatic repercussions.

-Friendly factions should ask for tribute if they have a significantly more powerful Military. Rejecting a friendly faction should have large diplomatic repercussions. This is to keep the player from being able to demilitarize and focus purely on economy late game.

-There should be more criteria for changing what a faction thinks about the player. Settling on a faction's borders should annoy them. Being in war against a common enemy should improve relations, Waging war with a non aggression pact should shock friendly factions.

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What do you guys think of the diplomatic AI? Has anyone else noticed that the late game can suffer because of how passive the AI is?

[void]

Thanks for the great suggestions, several of these will make it in over the next week.