AI doesnt ask for help

[Evrett]

I was sharing a continent with the doughboy looking university faction and we'd becoming fairly friendly warring together against the religious pink elf sluts to the north. Suddenly I get a alert that Doughboy has been eliminated. I scroll over to their territory and discover the blue faction snuck up from the south and has conquered all the University cities without my co-nation ever asking for help mentioning they were under attack.

[boulugre]

Well there is a lot of things the AI does not do and things you can't do with the AI, for example you cant ask AI to enter war or make peace with a third party which limits a lot the grip you may have on the meta game.

What bother me the most is the 'inertia" of the AI behaviour. Once you become friend with an AI you will stay friend for the rest of the game ( Or until you declare war on them) Once you become enemy with AI, it will be a bitter struggle to the end. This lead to some silly situation where for example peace unites the world in one big happy family, enabling human player to pick AI one by one while the other are not even blinking. They just keep sending praise and even cash gift (AI giving money to human player? Really? ) while waiting their turn to be slaughtered.

On other game I had situation where I was stuck in endless conflict with one AI which will never back off (just accept a paid truce from time to time but always redeclaring on me very quickly) either side unable to take advantages because of tech tie / nukes / city protection, while watching another AI running away with the game.

This AI behaviour makes some game too easy, others not possible to win while being predictable very early on.

AI should at least take notice of other player behaviours (such as warmongering other factions ), take in account the power level of each faction in their relationship ( leader should attract hate) and try to stop a faction which is about to win the game

[Hiho216]

Eh, I've definitely managed to piss off friends and allies without ever doing anything to them directly. In the game I'm playing as Noxium, Solar Dynasty and I were both declared war on by Divine Ascendency. SD and I had pretty close borders, and DA was on the opposite side of my territory. This was fine, because I had them up to generous, we had open borders, and their fighting let me focus on economy building. Then SD conquered one of the two DA cities, a size 18 city whereas my largest city was size 13-15. I bought and mobilized an army and took DA's last city, their size 20 capital, before SD could take it. Though they didn't seem to take offense to that in particular, I was expanding pretty quickly and my borders basically blocked off any additional expansion to the south. Even though they had more room to the east to expand, they built a colony in the interior of my territory, prompting me to close my borders with them. Though I gave them a hefty gift to offset that, from that point it was basically all downhill in relations. They kept cancelling treaties until it was pretty obvious they were about to go to war (they cancelled the non-aggression treaty and built nukes), so I declared war, nuked their cities, and invaded before they could get them off. Togra, SD's northern neighbor, dropped in relation before the war as well, though Terra Salvum (the only other remaining faction, after having conquered Imperium) stayed generous throughout, likely because of the distance of our territories.

I agree that the AI diplomacy could be improved, but their relations do seem to depend on the other factions' actions. They definitely seem to respond to border proximity, as well as playing expansionistically.

[fortydayweekend]

The "praise" function seems to help create the "world peace" scenario, everyone praises everyone else, raising everyone's diplo status with each other. It's sickening Maybe there needs to be a "too much praise" dynamic where if there's too much peace someone will break it just to liven things up.

I've also wondered why the AI is giving me gifts. But then I don't understand all the status windows - the diplo window I assume tells me how everyone feels about me, so when I hover over them is it telling me how they *expect* me to feel about them?

[boulugre]

The "praise" function seems to help create the "world peace" scenario, everyone praises everyone else, raising everyone's diplo status with each other. It's sickening Maybe there needs to be a "too much praise" dynamic where if there's too much peace someone will break it just to liven things up.

I've also wondered why the AI is giving me gifts. But then I don't understand all the status windows - the diplo window I assume tells me how everyone feels about me, so when I hover over them is it telling me how they *expect* me to feel about them?

I agree the praise mechanisms needs some tweeking.

The gift from AI is a joke on them really I think the hoovering window shows the relationship the diplo mechanism would give your faction towards other faction should you be played by AI.... so not really useful

[adamsolo]

I think the hoovering window shows the relationship the diplo mechanism would give your faction towards other faction should you be played by AI.... so not really useful

My interpretation of the relationship indicator displayed when you hover an AI in the diplo screen, is that it shows each third party's behavior towards that specific player. So, say you over the Terra Salvum AI and see that Divine Ascension AI displays (Reserved), I think that means that Divine Ascension is reserved towards Terra Salvum. So, if you see "Friendly" in your own faction shown there it means that you're acting "Friendly" towards Terra Salvum. It's what they perceive you think of them (or simplifying, what you think of them). In your own box you see what you perceive that they think of you (or simplifying, what they think of you). This is not very intuitive though, so I may be wrong.