Very strange AI negotiating for peace

[MasterDave]

I have noticed that if the AI is losing a war, or even if it is in a stalemate (on Noble and Prince level so far) that it is often willing to give up tons of techs and even cities in order to get peace. Perhaps the most insane example of this happened on a game I was playing on an "inland sea" map on Saturday.

In this game, the Persians declared war on me on around 200 AD or so even though their empire was on the other side of the map. They had a few units near my territory, and I eliminated them fairly quickly.

After about ten turns or so after his expeditionary force was killed, I contacted him. I chose the lets make a deal option, and just to see if he would cough up anything. I did not have alphabet yet, so I could not get techs, so I asked for all five of his cities listed in white and asked if this deal was fair. Amazingly he went along with it and ceded his entire empire to me (except his capital, of course)!! This had the effect of wiping me out economically, as the maintenance costs of those five cities that were so far from my capital were huge. At 0% tech spending I was still at negative forty gold per turn!

There is no way that AI should have been willing to give up even one city under those circumstances, much less five! I could understand him wanting peace since he was unable to attack me, but I had done nothing to him except kill the four or five axemen and swordsmen that were invading me. I am not sure if this is a bug, or just some AI weirdness, but I am wondering if the diplomacy AI ever seems sort of out of whack to anyone else.

[spy14]

Maybe the AI knew this would bankrupt you and cripple your science. Just a thought, but it leaves the way open for an AI counterstrike a few turns down the line.

[MasterDave]

I would think that losing five of six cities would cripple the AI as badly as I get crippled. At any rate it is hardly a realistic or historical thing for a computer player to do.

I promptly reloaded the game after this happened and took a "white peace" (no concessions) instead. I suppose I could have given the cities away to my political friends to curry favor had I chosen to continue.

[dearmad]

You didn't test out the results. You should have played on to see what would happen. YOU got screwed, IMO and were about to enter a dark age where your science would stagnate and the AI's around the glboe would catch up and surpass you. Those cities you "took" would be taken back soon enough.

You blew it, IMO and should play out the repercussions to see if this IS an AI mistake.

[spy14]

Depends on the resources the capital city gives the AI, but im thinking if your military is crippled and lagging technology wise (which it will be when the moneys all gone), then the AI knows it can pretty much walk back into at least some of those Cities.

Kind of a gamble, but I figure it could just work.

[Willem]

There seems to be a bug in the way that the AI makes deals, other people have reported strange reactions as well. One poster mentioned that he made an offer that was totally outrageous which the AI of course refused. When the player asked for a counter-offer, the AI suggested exactly what it had turned down in the first place, which essentialy ruined that civ.

[spy14]

Originally posted by dearmad

You blew it, IMO and should play out the repercussions to see if this IS an AI mistake.

Or if you have a savegame post it up for others to try, different people will have different takes on this.

[Jon Miller]

this is a bug, I am fairly sure

I have heard of this happening to people, and then they having enough money to take it all in (they had to switch governments to state propery, and lower science rate a bit though..)

JM

[kimmygibler]

Originally posted by dearmad
You didn't test out the results. You should have played on to see what would happen. YOU got screwed, IMO and were about to enter a dark age where your science would stagnate and the AI's around the glboe would catch up and surpass you. Those cities you "took" would be taken back soon enough.

You blew it, IMO and should play out the repercussions to see if this IS an AI mistake.

So then according to you it would be a good strategy to build 5 new cities and then give them away to an opponent? You think this would give you the advantage? Sure his science would be low for a while, but once he filled all those cities with improvements you would be really screwed. Not to mention the fact that you are left with only one city

[Solver]

It's a bug.

The bug is that, if you ask the AI to fill in a peace deal, it might be willing to give up absolutely everything, especially if it's winning.

[MasterDave]

Hopefully its a bug that gets fixed soon. Especially if someone can exploit this against computer players to get an advantage in a multiplayer game!

[Solver]

I'm counting on a fix in the first patch.

[Acidyl]

Actually, although I do believe it's a bug or just a bad calculation on the AI accounts, it IS sort of realistic.

Think of Iraque, the US invaded it and now have a sort of control, but, It costs them huge sums of money to maintain them there and at the same time there's the big problems with the huricanes and the unemployment rates at home. It's a huge loss.

Now the US is of course big enough (and wealthy enough) to survive this, but if for instance Iran would have invaded and took over Iraque, It would have probably killed their bugdets completely, until they were able to export Iraque oil.

But as I said, it shouldn't happen so simply in the game (although of course, it' surrender or be crushed even from the AI point of view.)

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by Acidyl
Actually, although I do believe it's a bug or just a bad calculation on the AI accounts, it IS sort of realistic.

Think of Iraque, the US invaded it and now have a sort of control, but, It costs them huge sums of money to maintain them there and at the same time there's the big problems with the huricanes and the unemployment rates at home. It's a huge loss.

Now the US is of course big enough (and wealthy enough) to survive this, but if for instance Iran would have invaded and took over Iraque, It would have probably killed their bugdets completely, until they were able to export Iraque oil.

But as I said, it shouldn't happen so simply in the game (although of course, it' surrender or be crushed even from the AI point of view.)

While what you say about occupying countries being expensive is indisputable, what happened in my game is not the least bit realistic.

To use your Iraq analogy what happened in my game would be akin to Saddam sending over a couple battalions of men to pillage Belgian infrastructure without provocation. The battalions quickly get defeated by local Belgian National Guardsmen. Nothing happens for about 10 years or so, then when Belgium sends over a diplomat to negotiate a peace deal, Iraq immediately surrenders 85% of their country even though the Belgians have no military assets anywhere near Iraq, and have never counterattacked on Iraqi soil. Then Belguim goes broke trying to pacify and control Iraq.

Does this sound plausible??

[Senator]

maybe saddam just likes the way we ran belgian congo