Does the AI gang up on you?

[Dr. Foo]

I've noticed that for at least the colonization era the AI will fight each other and I'll fight a short insignificant war with some far flung faction that won't even send an attack force or maybe the bugs got it before it reached my borders. But everything changes in the mech era, one will declare war and another and eventually everyone is attacking me. Granted, I'm not the most diplomatic player so perhaps I should work harder at getting the other factions to like me more. The factions spam so much I ignore a lot of their requests...I guess that made them angry.

I'm not sure diplomacy matters I had one faction I thought I was safe from, it canceled all the deals we had and they even attacked me.

This might be the culprit, I got nukes first and they all came after that and never stopped coming. After giving one or two a bloody nose they accepted peace but declared war again a few turns later. It was only after my nukes went online and I let them fly did they back off and headed home to lick their wounds.

Most 4x games are like this, which is why I would like to see a mutual defense treaty or non aggression enforced for a set amount of turns. Even, not allowing a player to declare war again after a set amount of turns would be helpful. Most of the time I can hold my own against two factions but three or four attacking, it's too much. Without the nukes I would have been gone for sure.

Is this hardcoded for the AI to just turn against the human play all at once or just my bad luck and crappy diplomatic play.

[Rossthegreat]

I've yet to be dogpiled. Diplomacy system is super ez-mode in Pandora. Easiest I've ever seen.

You literally have to go out of your way to get dogpiled.

[arraamis]

The AI (Even with their aggression setting increased in the xml) are very docile in this game. And they also, don't seem to form alliances during wars and they don't group-up against other factions. (At least as far as I can tell)

The game, as it is presently .. doesn't offer any surprises.

[jdmillard]

There is another pattern worth mentioning though: that the AI like to pick on the factions with the smallest military. Certainly, there are exceptions, but it is definitely a trend. It is a strong strategy because the aggressor can pick up a lot of population with relatively little effort which will provide a huge boost to their research and production putting them in a good position to to the same thing to the next weakest. It is smart, but I'd prefer that they also pick on the strongest factions out of distrust.

Anyways, if you are getting attacked by the AI, it's probably a combination of a weak military and poor diplomacy. Try to have a "3 dot" military and make an effort to be friends with a few factions. Friends will help because (aside from the obvious fact that they wont be attacking you) when they praise you, their other factions will think better of you (well... your friends' enemies will think less of you... but you catch my drift). Of course, the praising and denouncing is all sort of theoretical; sometimes it doesn't seem to really change anything. But it does make at least some difference, here's my proof: One time there was a bug that allowed me to praise whomever I wanted as many times as I wanted in the same turn. So I sued for peace with my enemy and experimented by praising him over and over and over. Of course, he rejected it every time because he was my mortal enemy, but after a ton of praises, all my friends were "generous" towards him. Each praising had an incremental effect that eventually changed their opinions. Granted that this "mortal enemy" rejected it all and still hated me and my friends, the praise did indeed have diplomatic leverage with the observing factions. In summary, we were generous towards him while he was furious towards us (yes, it's a two-way-street) and the praising did influence it.

So
-Have a decent military
-Make some friends

If you do that and are still getting owned, I'd say there's either a bug or you just have horrible luck.

[Dr. Foo]

Anyways, if you are getting attacked by the AI, it's probably a combination of a weak military and poor diplomacy.

It's not my military, I always have "Unrivaled" or close to it, which is why I can survive an attack from three or four factions at once. I basically ignore the AI, no open borders, no non-aggression, no trade of any kind. Even when they do attack, while it can be hairy for a bit, I still prevail and they back off but return later to do it all over again. It's OK, it makes for a fun game, I hate playing games where I accept all requests and then just sit there for hours with all the factions loving me and giving me gifts. I like the tension of an impending attack and not know when or where it is going to come from.

I was just wondering if the game is coded to take out the human over the other AI factions. While they do fight each other, I don't see them attacking one AI faction at once. Every game is different, it's like the AI might have random personalities. Sometimes, I don't get attacked at all, using the same ignore diplomacy and other times it's all out war all the time. It's cool, as I said it makes for a better game.

[BlueTemplar]

Got two empires declaring war on me one after the other in my current game. But they were Imperium and "Cult" (so warmongers), and I had a sub-par military, so...

[jdmillard]

Anyways, if you are getting attacked by the AI, it's probably a combination of a weak military and poor diplomacy.

It's not my military, I always have "Unrivaled" or close to it, which is why I can survive an attack from three or four factions at once. I basically ignore the AI, no open borders, no non-aggression, no trade of any kind. Even when they do attack, while it can be hairy for a bit, I still prevail and they back off but return later to do it all over again. It's OK, it makes for a fun game, I hate playing games where I accept all requests and then just sit there for hours with all the factions loving me and giving me gifts. I like the tension of an impending attack and not know when or where it is going to come from.

I was just wondering if the game is coded to take out the human over the other AI factions. While they do fight each other, I don't see them attacking one AI faction at once. Every game is different, it's like the AI might have random personalities. Sometimes, I don't get attacked at all, using the same ignore diplomacy and other times it's all out war all the time. It's cool, as I said it makes for a better game.

Actually, that kinda makes me want to play a game where I (self-imposed) turn down every diplomatic offer ever extended... just to mix things up.

[Rossthegreat]

I should add in that I tend to have subpar military because I don't really upgrade from colonial era troops due to tech progression being very fast.

Points where I upgrade is from Basic troops to Steel armor then i don't upgrade until Gauss stuff then it stays there until I reach Transcendence era and upgrade there to tier 3 armor/weapons. It seems quite sufficient, there's always one bloodthirsty ai that decide to attack me when I have few turns left until Gauss stuff is done researching, or like one turn as I research it. Timing is quite unfortunate for the AI again and again.

Plus gauss rifles look darn cool, will be a shame if I don't get in a war while they're still relevant while delphinus guns look like a damn purse.

[boulugre]

I played a 'challenge' game a couple of week ago with the morganite yellow faction to create such a scenario. On a medium size Pangea, very high difficulty, low alien. I selected 3 opponents : Emporium, Religious and Solar dynasty faction. Gosh it was a blast!

Empire faction was swallowed from the start by the 2 other AI, splitting it cities between them. I was then locked down in a super negative diplo standing with basicaly each AI faction declaring war on me one after the other and as soon as I managed to get a cease fire with one the other faction was re declaring, so it was a constant war from the very beginning.

I manage to grow to 4 cities while being under a constant siege of units, with hardly any tech advantage at all. I defeated wave after wave of Avenger tanks, Planes, mech era tanks and even grow my military to the point where I could start thinking of striking back. Unfortunately at this point the AI hit nukes and they spam built them. In 10 turns I lost 2 cities to nukes (one reduced from 12 pop to 4, the other a 14 pop insta razed with a big chunk of my army in it. I decided to give up as I was not in a position to attack anymore and they were going to nuke me to dust city by city.

Good fun though

[jdmillard]

I played a 'challenge' game a couple of week ago with the morganite yellow faction to create such a scenario. On a medium size Pangea, very high difficulty, low alien. I selected 3 opponents : Emporium, Religious and Solar dynasty faction. Gosh it was a blast!

Empire faction was swallowed from the start by the 2 other AI, splitting it cities between them. I was then locked down in a super negative diplo standing with basicaly each AI faction declaring war on me one after the other and as soon as I managed to get a cease fire with one the other faction was re declaring, so it was a constant war from the very beginning.

I manage to grow to 4 cities while being under a constant siege of units, with hardly any tech advantage at all. I defeated wave after wave of Avenger tanks, Planes, mech era tanks and even grow my military to the point where I could start thinking of striking back. Unfortunately at this point the AI hit nukes and they spam built them. In 10 turns I lost 2 cities to nukes (one reduced from 12 pop to 4, the other a 14 pop insta razed with a big chunk of my army in it. I decided to give up as I was not in a position to attack anymore and they were going to nuke me to dust city by city.

Good fun though

Sounds awesome, but yeah - once they have a higher population the only way to keep up in tech is to sacrifice production like crazy (which is out of the question when you're under constant siege. I suppose the only other option would be to try and match their inherent morale bonus by building holo theater and it's superior versions in every city... but even then, it's rough.