In the end, the game suffers under the same shortcoming as so many other games:

[Cort Haus]

So the call here from the OP is for an AI that presses home an advantage by backstabbing him, but will not press home an advantage by dogpiling him?

The AI used to 'press its advantage' in Civ 1 and Civ 2 - by all attacking at once near the end - including friends. This wasn't my cup of tea, but it seems to be what people are calling for again. Or is it?

[yin26]

Not my cup of tea, either, though perhaps you could add more things like:

"-2 You have grown too powerful."

"-1 You were the first to discover deadly technology X."

"-4 You attacked a civ that was friendly with you."

In this way, Civs will be more "aware" of your threat in ways that make some sense and can (mostly) be controlled by the player. Don't backstab. Avoid being the first to discover a certain tech. Etc. This would make the game a bit harder without making it impossible to win. It just means that if you play out front -- and ruthlessly -- you *should* be dogpiled at that point.

More nuance. That's what I'm after.

[Strategist83]

Yin, your suggestions are excellent. That is the kind of diplomacy I want the AI to conduct.

Others: Was it really so hard to understand? I am not complaining about the AI 'dogpiling'. The AI should of course do everything in its power to win in order to provide maximum challenge, including 'dogpiling'. I am merely pointing out that it is the kind of gameplay the game currently fosters. And, in my opinion, it is ultimately the greatest shortcoming of the game (and most other strategy titles).

[MasterDave]

This thread is an example of the problem that game designers face in the strategy genre: everyone wants and expects something different from the diplomacy engine and in terms of game difficulty, and everyone has a different idea of what "realistic" international diplomatic behavior would be like. In fact, some people like Strategy 83 changes his mind about what he wants in the successive posts.

To address the original complaint about one's success being dependant on what the AI countries do collectively, I think that is a good thing. A game that is too easy or too winnable every time quickly becomes uninteresting for me. My favorite games overall are the ones where sometimes I get trounced (or just barely beaten such as last night when Frederick snuck out a spaceship three turns before my cultural victory was due).

In every TBS or RTS or just about any other kind of strategy game I can think of where there is more than one AI or human opponent, the human player is vulnerable to the dogpile. Part of a winning strategy is to use your diplomatic tools to prevent this from happening, and Civ4 has a better than average diplomacy engine to make this happen (better feedback and different ways to make an AI like you such as religion, trade, handouts, etc.) .

That being said, I would like to see an "honor" rating (or bad boy rating) similar to what we had in Civ2, Civ3,and the Europa Universalis games where the AI tracks how well you honor your treaties and uses that as a factor to decide whether to attack you later. Perhaps this could be introduced in an expansion later. Right now there is no consequences among third party nations for attacking a good friend or a brother of the faith, and I feel that there should be a negative modifier for that among countries other than your victim.

[Forwarn45]

everyone wants and expects something different from the diplomacy engine and in terms of game difficulty, and everyone has a different idea of what "realistic" international diplomatic behavior would be like.

I agree with this completely. Contrary to the poster's comments about luck and the potential for a pile-on, I feel many of the the AI players don't try hard enough to win sometimes and act too consistently. Personally, I would prefer that the AI players try harder to win, which would sometimes mean attacking or isolating those who are squeezing you in or who are on the path to winning - even if other factors point to a longstanding friendship. Sometimes this would mean taking advantage of a situation and piling on the pressure in a war. Although they may do this on occassion, in my own experience with the game - they should do it more.

There are some natural factors that can prevent this from getting too out of hand. It would not make sense, for example, for me to help one of the strong players crush a weak one if I'm only going to get a little out of it and the other strong player will benefit equally or more significantly. After all, the weak player isn't necessarily a threat to win the game whereas the strong player is. I might prefer to help the weaker player to stop the strong one in some circumstances. So more cost-benefit analysis would be cool IMO. But I recognize others may disagree and would prefer to enhance the diplomatic factors (for like civics, trading, same religion, etc.) rather than override them more frequently.

[Strategist83]

Originally posted by MasterDave
In fact, some people like Strategy 83 changes his mind about what he wants in the successive posts.

There is no contradiction in what I wrote. If you still fail to get the point (or rather, points), well... I guess you cannot be helped.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Saurus
I felt much more confident and secure than usual when suddenly my brother in faith, Salladin, witch was Friendly toward me, suddenly declared war out of the blue ... next turn Hyana Capac + Kublai Khan joins in.

The moral of this story is: be wary of aggressive leaders. Some of them you can't trust, no matter what.

So, when Saladin is around you next time, sic him first

[Rook]

I seen this more in the earlier versions of Civilization, not so much in Civ 4, but I have experienced it. I do think it is the AI seeing some easy conquest. Perhaps it is the size of your army. I notice when I am leading in the arms race, nobody messes with me.

[Feyd]

Originally posted by Forwarn45 ...I feel many of the the AI players don't try hard enough to win sometimes...

Try a diplomatic victory. The phrase "herding cats" comes to mind

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Rook
I do think it is the AI seeing some easy conquest. Perhaps it is the size of your army. I notice when I am leading in the arms race, nobody messes with me.

You don't have to be leading either (Vel mentioned this somewhere else), but you can't be in the bottom 1/3 or so. Otherwise you will be just asking for attacks.

[Axxaer]

Originally posted by Strategist83
...Your survival is entirely reliant on multiple opponents not ganging up on you.

Originally posted by Strategist83
I am not complaining about the AI 'dogpiling'.

Originally posted by Strategist83
A third faction jumping in out of the blue to partake in gaining land at the attacked civilization's expense has nothing to do with diplomacy.

Originally posted by Strategist83
Maybe there is a cynical backstabbing bastard hidden somewhere in the AI after all? I would sure like to think so!

Originally posted by Strategist83
I would love to get abused by the AI.

Originally posted by Strategist83
There is no contradiction in what I wrote.

Originally posted by Arrian
Does. Not. Compute.

This is the most ridiculous argument ever.

OP seems to want an abusive backstabbing AI who will not attack someone *just* to gain land.

How can you backstab someone without attacking them "out of the blue" ?

[Saurus]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


The moral of this story is: be wary of aggressive leaders. Some of them you can't trust, no matter what.

So, when Saladin is around you next time, sic him first

I thought Saladin was more of a religious freak than a warmonger. But then again ...what prevents him from beeing both..

[Blake]

Saladin is a religious freak, he is however not mentally unstable, at least in my experience. If he attacks you it's either because you're running a different religion or you're in a weak position. He is oppurtunistic and loves killing a weak civ and dogpiling. Saladin tends to have utmost respect for those who can beat him up.

Isabella is an example of a mentally unstable religous freak, she'll attack friends then acts like it didn't happen. She'll attack civs who are stronger than her.

Monty is simply nuts. My best monty nuts moment was this:
Monty delcares war on my ally (who is stronger than him)
Monty delcares war on another AI (who is also stronger than him)
Monty delcares war on me (MUCH stronger than him).

Suffice to say his empire became an all you can conquer buffet. Prehaps he wanted to be eliminated from the game...

[Vince278]

Re: Re: Re: I agree

Originally posted by Yosho
I see you have never played Diplomacy.

[Blake]

On the main topic of this thread. I'm a pretty good FFA player in multiplayer RTS games. While a player ignorant of meta-strategy will consider that winning is mostly luck, adn each player has a 1/N chance of winning, my win %age usually hovered around 40%-60% for 6-8 player games, considerably better than the expected 12%-15%.

A mastery of meta-strategy is required, my usual strategy be to remain somewhat under the radar, while being prickly enough not to be worth attacking, while mildly harassing the stronger players. Then ocne there's only 3 players left (with myself being the most difficult to root out), I'd try to turn up uninvited at the final showdown, cleaning up both players armies and easily taking victory. my other strategy would be to overtly support the players with very weak playing skills, by brutally harrassing the stronger players, the idea being to allow a player much weaker than me to come become much stronger than they ought to be, I would then easily counter their army (since they lack skill like scouting, and only "won" thanks to my interference) and destroy them to take victory. I'm also a master of not being percieved as a snivelling little rat who screams "So and So is running away with the game!". I maintain a demanor and playstyle that suggests i have little ambition for victory and am just playing for kicks and giggles (which is partly true). I would call this being the (in)credible threat, as in both being percieved as non-credible while actually being the most dangerous player.

Ofcourse I could never really get above 50% victory rate because in a FFA there are always other players with their own devious plans and plotting, altough I'd often beat players far better at actually playing the game than I.

Now to bring this to a game like Civ4.

If the AI is given awareness of players, and the objective of killing the player, then the player would lose every game, because the AI's would just team up.

In contrast, if the AI's are not able to distinguish between the human and other AI's, and has the objective of personal victory, then it's going to lose anyway because AI's simply aren't skilled and devious enough, any half-decent human would run circles around AI's playing for their own victory, because an AI really can have no awareness of what it needs to do to triumph, it understands how to play but not how to play better than the player and other AI's. In particular it doesn't understand the nuances of defeating others so that they can't win. If the AI has a tendency to attack stronger players, the player will stay under the radar. If the AI attacks weaker players, the player will make sure to be big and scary so no individual AI will dare attack. If the AI attacks randomly, the player will just turtle up and let the AI's destroy each other, with some opportunistic nibbling on weakened AI's.
In short, AI's don't and can't understand what needs to be done to win. They can only follow their scripts and whether they win or lose comes down entirely to luck.