Why the AI declares war on you - a theory

[Bhruic]

I've been wondering for awhile why it seems like the AI always has it in for the Human player. At first I thought it was because with my playing style, I tended to have less defenses than computer players. But in a recent game, I had at least as many as some of my neighbours, and they still came at me.

I was curious about it. My neighbours had the same religion as me, so it wasn't merely a religion issue. So I looked at the various relationship issues.

What I noticed was somewhat surprising. For all the AI players with whom I "wasn't getting along", there were various minuses like:
"-1 You refused to help us"
and
"-1 You refused to give us tribute"

With the races I was being friendly with, I'd get:
"+1 You helped us"
and so forth.

None of the AI empires had these. This was in an 18 player game, and I checked the relationships of every AI empire. None of them had either of those modifiers. That would seem to suggest that the AI never issues demands to other AI players. That means that there's a class of diplomatic modifiers the AI can never get. Certainly that means they can't get the positive ones either, but the fact they don't get negative ones is pretty major. That makes it a lot easier for AI empires to 'like' other AI empires, even if they shouldn't (different religions, and such), because they don't have a way to 'make relations worse' by demanding tech/resources/gold.

So when it comes time to declare war, of course the AI is going to hit on the Human player, because they are going to dislike them more, thanks to the extra negative modifiers.

Bh

[Error404]

Very very interesting! I want to check my games, I want to interrogate my neighbours too

[Martinus]

Actually if you give the AI a tribute/gift several times, the modifier is not +1, but more.

[xxFlukexx]

This is true, but I've also never seen the AI get a +our trade relations have been fair and balanced either though, have seen the +years you've supplied us with resources between AIs however. So all of the tech trading that the AIs do mean squat to relations which is good.

I do notice AIs working together against me at least. It can't be all coincedence that 2-3 AIs declare war on me on the same turn or one of their friends come in 5-10 turns later into the war or they close borders. I am guessing that the AI does make a check with their allies to bring them into the war, but makes no demands like it does to the player.

I think most of it is hardcoded(or softcoded I dunno) into the AIs personality. Aggressive AIs like Tokugawa or Montezuma will rarely sign an open borders and since AIs don't get the happy trading bonus that makes them declare a whole lot more.

But more passive AIs like Hatshetput or Ghandi, well they will just like everyone so it is extremely easy to avoid a conflict with any of the passive AIs.

Unfortunately there are a lot more passive AIs than aggressive ones, so it is somewhat harder for aggressive civs to last long before it meets 2-3 civs that have good relations and takes on a 2 or 3 sided war.

I think the AI should be a bit more aggressive, but as the game works now, ehhhhh in terms of winning I think the more passive AI might be harder, hehe. At least with space race turned on.

Martinus: He's talking about AI to AI relations.

[Handel]

Firaxis declare they made better AI diplomacy. Bull****. In my last game I was with riflemen and Napoleon was with macemen. Nevertheless he non-stop threatened me and wanted freebies. Besides he was on the other end of the world and would have very hard time, even if he was able to start a war.

[Blake]

I do notice AIs working together against me at least. It can't be all coincedence that 2-3 AIs declare war on me on the same turn or one of their friends come in 5-10 turns later into the war or they close borders. I am guessing that the AI does make a check with their allies to bring them into the war, but makes no demands like it does to the player.

You know if you have AI buddies you can just ask them nicely to declare war and they usually will accept? Otherwise a tech will nearly always sway them. I certainly have no problems "dogpiling" an AI with a couple of my AI allies, AI's love dogpiling and in this case they arent biased against the human.


I like the theory of AI's not demanding stuff of each other. If they did it might kind of break down since demanding stuff is zero-sum, one AI would be "-1 you made an arrogant demand" and the other "+1 you gave us tribute" so the relations would be... very confused.

Come SDK I plan to try and code in an enhanced diplomacy AI that wont be anti-human, it will for example gift you techs out of friendship since it expects you to do the same, and it will trade techs it's just researched - but it'll need a damn good tech in exchange. It would also be good for the AI's to recognize when you help them covertly in wars (ie refuse to join the war, but gift them gunpowder).

[Bhruic]

Originally posted by Martinus
Actually if you give the AI a tribute/gift several times, the modifier is not +1, but more.

Yes, I know, I was just using +/- 1 as an example.

Originally posted by xxFlukexx
This is true, but I've also never seen the AI get a +our trade relations have been fair and balanced either though, have seen the +years you've supplied us with resources between AIs however. So all of the tech trading that the AIs do mean squat to relations which is good.

I did mention that. They don't get the plus or minus. However, in terms of "going to war", the pluses aren't really relevant. If you have the AI constantly demanding stuff from you, unless you are in the habit of giving it to them, you are going to rack up a lot more minuses than the AI will, under similar circumstances.

Bh

[amicus curiae]

Try playing a OCC on Deity. My last one I must have got about 5 techs given to me by the ai. I'm not sure exactly why they did this. It could be because I was beelining the tech tree and still didn't have some earlier techs, or because I only had one city. I have never seen it though in normal games.

[Bhruic]

Er, could you explain the relevance of that point? We aren't talking about getting tech from the AI, we are talking about diplomatic features the AI (apparently) can't use. And these features may be causing some of the 'gang up on the player' behaviour that I'm sure many of us have noticed.

I mean, I'm playing 18 players on a Pangaea Duel map. I'm ranked #1 in power. Has the AI attacked other AI? Nope. Have many of them attacked me? Yup. My cities are, in general, better defended than the AI cities. And yet they are all bee-lining for me. And I suspect it's because of all the "-4 You refused to give us tribute" type penalties that I've got nailed with that the AI hasn't (and can't).

Bh

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Blake
You know if you have AI buddies you can just ask them nicely to declare war and they usually will accept? Otherwise a tech will nearly always sway them. I certainly have no problems "dogpiling" an AI with a couple of my AI allies, AI's love dogpiling and in this case they arent biased against the human.

I can never get my AI buddies to attack other players, even though they hate them (only managed to do that once)... on the other hand I've never been attacked by several Civs at the same time either (only once, though the two Civs that attacked me wasn't that happy about each other either)

The AI's seems attacks each other often though, even though I'm the player with the highest score and fewest units

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by Bhruic
I mean, I'm playing 18 players on a Pangaea Duel map. I'm ranked #1 in power. Has the AI attacked other AI? Nope. Have many of them attacked me? Yup.

Why couldn't it be partly because you're ranked #1? If you're still in the ancient age I can understand.
But if you're in the modern age, #1 with the best technology then they should know you're the biggest threat to them losing the game. The AI shouldn't play for 2nd place, but play to win.
But I don't know the details of your game so if you're simply #1 in military power and other AIs are closer to winning other victories then that's different.

Edit:

The AI's seems attacks each other often though, even though I'm the player with the highest score and fewest units

This is what I didn't like with Civ3 during the ModernAge (or 1 player completely dominating the map - typically a human). The AI just didn't care if you were going win....

[Bhruic]

It's the middle ages. I just got gun powder a few turns back.

And they were attacking me (and only me) when I wasn't #1 in power too. If it were merely "attack the #1 guy", they'd have attacked a different AI player many turns back.

Bh

[Montesquieu]

You know, the solution to all diplomatic problems is a big army.

[Pyrodrew]

That's why I said maybe part of the reason. I'm sure there's not only 1 reason like only the #1 or only the human.
Unless Soren makes a post here, which I sincerely doubt, we won't know everything for sure.

[Bhruic]

For sure, no. But I'm quite confident in my belief that the AI never has to deal with demands for materials. Or, at least, the diplomatic effects thereof. And there's no denying the fact that repeated refusals to give the AI what it's demanding has a dramatic effect on the negative weighting.

How much effect it has on the AI declaring war is where it's somewhat up in the air.

Bh