AI Aggression Level

[notyoueither]

One would think that setting the AI aggression level higher would make the game harder, but is that true? Maybe not after the first part of the game.

I am playing with the setting above average. I am following my favoured practice of mixing building with waging aggressive war, so of course I have used Republic and Democracy. The willingness of the AI to declare war makes it trivially easy for me to get them to declare war on me and for me to get the happy bonus that results.

1 out of 3 or 4 times the AI will respond to demands to leave my territory with a DoW. A spy caught? 100% DoW that I have seen.

Furthermore, AI civs that have absolutely no business doing anything other than licking my boots are being drawn into alliances against me, repeatedly. So, I am able to gain a lot of cities through short wars that I might not have started otherwise, and the bordering AIs sink further into the depths below my level of power. Thanks for those cities.

Now, it is true that more aggression vs me in the early game could make things more interesting, but if that means that under-prepared AIs are attacking me and giving me the happy bonus while I whoop them out a few cities before taking all their tech in peace, that still might not be so good.

[Todd Hawks]

More aggressive AI doesn't make the game harder, we already learned that in EU2.

It only means it is attacking more often, often leading to wasted resources or the things you mentioned, thereby weakening it.

[Acemo]

So does this mean that setting the AI agression level lower could actually make the game more challenging?

[Catt]

I hadn't considered that the more aggressive settings could provide regular happiness boosts. Thanks for the insight.

BTW, I haven't seen it here at 'Poly but at CFC it was pointed out that the aggression setttings work as follows: Imagine the "least aggressive" to "most aggressive" move on a scale from 1 to 5; at "1" all civs have an aggression level of "1" in the editor; at "2" all civs have an aggression level one less than normal editor values (i.e., Germans normally have "5" -- with this setting they would play with a "4"); "3" is normal; at "4" all civs have an aggression level one more than normal (i.e., English normally have "3" -- with this setting they would play with a "4"); at "5" all civs have an aggression level equal to "5" in the editor.

Catt

[monkeyman]

Re: AI Aggression Level

Originally posted by notyoueither
One would think that setting the AI aggression level higher would make the game harder, but is that true? Maybe not after the first part of the game.
ing with the setting above average.
... snip ...
Furthermore, AI civs that have absolutely no business doing anything other than licking my boots are being drawn into alliances against me, repeatedly. So, I am able to gain a lot of cities through short wars that I might not have started otherwise, and the bordering AIs sink further into the depths below my level of power. Thanks for those cities.

Now, it is true that more aggression vs me in the early game could make things more interesting, but if that means that under-prepared AIs are attacking me and giving me the happy bonus while I whoop them out a few cities before taking all their tech in peace, that still might not be so good.

Two things:

First if the ai is so ripe for the picking, why wait to grap the cities? Or is this part of the happiness bonus for Rep/Dem gov'ts?

The second is that the mixed default settings sets up a bell curve of ai behaviour where sometimes a non-aggressive ai may be more successful in some situations. As a principle of game design it does make sense: if you are using a random walk philosopy to find an effective strategy, aggressiveness is a good parameter to vary.

--mm

[Risa]

IMX, the highest aggression level at least makes pure builder's life hard. Once an AI runs out of space to expand, it's almost guaranteed to be involved in wars within 20 turns. I had wasted several good beginning by being invaded unprepared.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Acemo
So does this mean that setting the AI agression level lower could actually make the game more challenging?

I'm not sure, I would have to play it, but it might help stop them from ripping each other to pieces which means they would be stronger when the human moves on them. It would also eliminate many of the happy bonuses that I use to wage war as a democracy. It's worth looking into.

Originally posted by monkeyman
Two things:

First if the ai is so ripe for the picking, why wait to grap the cities? Or is this part of the happiness bonus for Rep/Dem gov'ts?

The second is that the mixed default settings sets up a bell curve of ai behaviour where sometimes a non-aggressive ai may be more successful in some situations. As a principle of game design it does make sense: if you are using a random walk philosopy to find an effective strategy, aggressiveness is a good parameter to vary.

--mm

First point, I am not playing this particular game for domination. Additionally, you are entirely correct, if I wait for them to move on me then I get a happy bonus that offsets WW for a time at the start of the war. It is really easy to get them to move on me after IA though. Simply spy til caught and they will oblige with the DoW.

Second part, it is occuring to me that the best AI will be at normal settings. Soren has spent a couple of years now tuning the AI. Things like the Aggression settings will be throwing off his hard work. It might be good to try 1 less than normal though, to see if the AI can build better.

I would imagine the aggression setting is very good to have for scenarios.

[Dis]

I never seem to time my war weariness properly. And I can never seem to end the wars when I want to. So I don't normally use wars for happiness boosts. I don't even know how.

I might be curious to play with agression level at the lowest. This would work best if you chose which civs you played against. Teams like Babylon and France should build up nicely. But if you don't pick your opponents, some of the military civs with early uu's could be SOL. Aztecs are one example ( I think they are still military- I know they did add agricultural to them as well in conquests)

[Master Marcus]

I always play at the standard aggression level ( is it the previous default level in vanilla & PtW??? ), mainly at Monarch , and so far I find the AIs much more at war than before - my god, what an incredible number of world wars they have fought even when they have freshly switched to Democracy - and when I'm dominating later on, they didn't declare war on me more than before C3C. Another reason why the ending game can be easier than before, but not the early stages ( forgot to mention that in the thread ''G3C Easier'' , which is not that easier ).