Customized Diplomacy and Attack factors?

[Exile]

The AIs' diplomatic behavior can be customised.

The AI responds to a ratio of attack factors, its own and its intended target's, and determines whether or not it will attack.

If you set things up so that a specified AI civ NEVER has very many TOTAL attack factors (for all units), it will rarely sneak attack or go to war. It might not ever.

When a new tech makes a new, high attack factor weapon appear . . . the AIs that have it start wars within 3 turns . . . as soon as the numbers hit the ratio point mentioned above, no doubt (whatever that ratio point is). Therefore . . . changing even one number, up or down, in the attack factor of a preferential unit, could have profound effects . . . diplomatically.

If an AI has a very large amount of total attack factors, it will start a war sometime, somewhere, no matter what its government, even if it has to switch governments to accomplish it.

SO . . .

It seems that if one wanted to customize a specified AI or even a player civ, there are tricks that can be used.

Although the drawback is setting aside a unit slot that will be useless for anything else, one COULD dedicate a single unit that has whatever the ATTACK factor number required, and NO movement. The unit might not even need to be be on the map. Hide it somewhere if you want it to remain undiscovered. Give it a high defense number if you want it to survive.

A variant of this idea is to give a specified Civ one of these units, give it the necessary high attack factor but low defense factor, set it somewhere vulnerable. When it's killed, the drastic change in total attack factors will also drastically change the diplomatic interactions. Set in the right place, and you can time the event.

Anyone ever used tricks like these?

[techumseh]

Fascinating. Can you tell us about your methodology?

[curtsibling]

Interesting - I will be looking into this for Bitterfrost V...

[Exile]

I haven't experimented yet to determine precisely where the ratio numbers are. Repeated play of various scenarios, guided by the original hypothesis, seems to verify it.

The way to check it would be to slide one/several of these high-attack factor units into a scenario situation, observe the diplomatic activity, then take the unit out, and see what happens.

Big losses in total attack factors will trigger an AI to attack, whether the target is you or another AI.

The way to get an MGE AI off your back, no matter what their disposition, is to pile up a lot of (normal) high attack factor units. The more units, the more calm the AIs will become.

Technology may play into the formulation of the ratio, not sure.

If you want an AI to attack or not to attack, one way to accomplish this is to give one of the special high attack factor units. More attack factors, total, will spur the specified AI to attack. Conversely, if you give the special unit to the inferior side, AI or not (in attack factors of normal units), it might just prevent an adjacent, apparently rabid AI NOT to attack.

Trial and error is the method, Brian. lol.

[Exile]

Brian, Ive been trying to find a reference to this. Could've sworn I saw it in Possidente's book, but haven't been able to locate it.

One way to assess your relative "power," in terms of attack factors is the diplomatic module. "Our power is . . ." If your power level goes up, and the ratio, therefore, goes down, the MGE AI will actually avoid a war. When you have a large army and/or fleet, and you're in a senate-limited gov, about the only way you can get an AI to sneak attack is to get another AI to ask you to go to war. The AI MUST be a programmed opportunist. When a certain favorable ratio is reached (if,then), it attacks. Probably a random factor in there somewhere though.

An experiment could be devised. lol.