Scaring the A.I

[Pyrodrew]

Re: I'd sell

1st, I would have some backbone & NOT sell... but be extremely kind & gracious to them. Stress the importance of us getting to know each other 1st... if they were civil they should respect that. Giving in to "what-if fears" is never a good leadership tactic. However, IF the aliens then pointed their giant lazer & said "are you sure?" I would reconsider & say relax, let's talk. Obviously if they were civil enough to ask they would be civil enough to discuss this further.

Originally posted by GePap
If a civilization that advaced came here and asked for something, i would sell in a heartbeat. A Civ so advanced could probably wipe us out easily, so if they are offering to pay, they are being nice as hell- better take advantage of that quick before we make them angry- which was the original point of this thread. Sometimes others make 'offers you can't refuse' so why refuse and risk destruction? It makes no sense to try to defend the undefensible(is that a word?) while risking everything in the process, which is something the A.I. does all too often.

Besides, none of the strategic resources are finished products, they are the things needed to make a finished product. As such, yes, they could be exploited by a civ, mining them,while not knowing their use.

Someone mentioned that the AI is far more acceptable in negotiations when you have heavy military units near their cities/borders (forget exactly). But if the threat is not there (you have a weaker military than they do) then they have NO REASON to give it to you.

Until I get steam power, I don't even KNOW if I have a coal supply, and neither does the A.I. Until the necessary tech is found, the A.I. has NO USE whatsoever for this resource, so we can't claim to be depriving it of anything.

Again the AI loses it's coal advantage it has over you if it sells it to you. If it doesn't have the tech & you don't have the coal & it sells you the coal... now YOU gain the uses of coal. Thus the "cannot use coal" attribute now only applies to that civ & not you. So it is losing something.

The point of my argument is to allow the A.I. to trade resources it CAN'T yet use.

That's a little different. If an AI has a resource it cannot use, but *wants* to trade I posted earlier in another thread I don't see a problem with that. I kept saying one doesn't need to know horseback riding to sell a horse. Some starting going into horse husbandry, etc. But that is NOT horseback riding otherwise the tech would be horseback riding & husbandry. If a city can take care of cows, they can take care of horses... and then sell them. Someone also made an additional point of saltpeter just laying around waiting to be picked up. And who says that civ that is selling the resource is the one extracting it? Why couldn't the Civ buying it send in their scientists & engineers... for the right price?

[GodSpawn]

Saltpeter is strange to have as a special resource, isn't it? Because you can make it out of any old crap (and I mean that quite literally )

[Shiva]

Originally posted by GodSpawn
Saltpeter is strange to have as a special resource, isn't it? Because you can make it out of any old crap (and I mean that quite literally )

Lol yep, you can leach it out of crap

[GePap]

Scaring the A.I. 2

Pyrodrew:
Before having gotten sidetracked by the resource bit (which i still think is a good idea but we won't come to an agreement nor will we convince each other) I said, in my little story that the babs built a city in the middle of my land. My military had not only a technological but numerical edge as well, especially in the zone of battle since I had better infrastructure. There was no way in hell they would win a war vs. me, and i was nice in offering them money and minor techs for it. They were in a simple gain-lose situation: Give up a city you can't hold for money (yes, I do think it matters) and tech (certainly matters), otherwise risk a war with a superior power. A human player (regardless of 'backbone', {substituting for brains}) would probably have taken the deal because they loose what they can't keep while gaining something they did not have, plus avoid a dangerous war. The Babs still said no, and the only reason they did not pay for that mistake with total destruction was the fact that I did not want to waste my time on a campaign to take cities i would not keep anyway. This is the sort of semi-suicidal behavior that the A.I. should avoid. Think of all the times a minor civ is dumb enough to join some grand coolition war with all the big boys involved, many times paying with its life- in real life there might be ideological or sentimental reasons for a minor power to join a dangerous war, but this is a computer, with very little ideology installed in it. It's calculations are based on cold equations enabling it to try to survive and thrive. So why does it keep doing things that are near suecidal?

[Pyrodrew]

It's calculations are based on cold equations enabling it to try to survive and thrive. So why does it keep doing things that are near suecidal?

Regarding the AI putting pocket cities in the center of your empire, I think your prior sentence answers your question. Personally, I let the AI keep the pocket cities & let them work the land & build up the city... then I get to take it for free with culture later. Yet, in another thread I explained how I received VERY GENEROUS offers for a worthless size 3 tundra city far away from other AIs which was about to be absorbed by AI Aztec culture. Thus, I believe the AI is *literally* blind when it's placing it's cities & considering cities in deals. It doesn't know which cities are surrounded by an foreign empire nor which cities have growth potential. I'm not Soren so I don't know how hard/long it would be to program that. I've also seen game companies make their game AI worse... it'll put a chill down my spine if that happens with Civ3.

[GePap]

All about deal making

I agree with you that the A.I. expands mindlessly in order to survive-but there are multiple aspects to survival, and the number of cities is not the be all and end all. Your ability to survive, and win, is based on a combination of factors, from your culture, economy, tech, defense, and number of cities. Lets think about a game in MP (when that occurs) in which a human player behaved like the A.I., creating new cities everywere, never giving them up, and always wanting more: would this person win? More likely, the other players would gang up on them and kill them to end their reign of annoyence-so in the end the strategy was counter productive. Again, to my example: just in order to maintain one city about to be lost anyway, the babs risked a war that cost them 6 and set them back, plus their long term strategic survival is now far worst than before. An A.I. who really built up cites, expanded quickly but at some point stopped and consolidated, would have a better chance at long term survival. After that war, the babs exist only at my mercy while before, if they had let that go but consolidated their defenses and improved their culture, they would be a serious contender. Just for Telloh, they shot themselves in the foot!

[Blaupanzer]

In both the "fear" case and the resource case, the actual problem is personification, not the AI. The AI is programmed to put premium value on cities containing their own citizens. All cities have a "disproportionate" value to the AI compared to our values. Fact is, the AI will respond politely in the face of power, but computers are never, ever afraid.

As to resources, you can see the site you want them to mine/exploit, but they cannot. That's why the resouces don't appear on their list and cannot be traded for. To the AI, you are talking total nonsense, "What goo, what rocks?" Since you can't colonize or build a city on their territory, nobody who can see it also can get at it. This is the truest reflection of non-exploitational technological advance I've ever seen in a game. In the "real" world, the exploitation was often cruel and has left much bitterness. In this world, the response has been, "What the heck are you talking about?"

[GePap]

Rational choice

To Blaupanzer:
I realize that a computer can't technically fear, but that value that the computer has is not a moral value either, it is an equation, a number imputed and given to the A.I. to use as an assuption about how it should behave. What i think is that this value is too high and it makes for an A.I. that ignores other pertinent information, like looking at relative power and so forth. Yes, the A.I. should value units of pop. of its own nationality but this should never come ahead of making clear desicions based on relative power. There does come a point when even a much more powerful enemy will make demands that you can't say yes to, even if you know you will loose, but that is a difficult place to reach and is certainly not true of each time someone asks you to tarnsfer pop points.

[Dale]

On the resource thing, I can understand the principles behind the AI being harsh in trade negotiations.

Take Australia for instance. We don't have the technology to make nuclear weapons, but we sure as hell know the Yanks want all our uranium for things that go KABLAMMO! And a LOT of it. I'd be just as harsh in my negotiations if it was the other way around.

I mean COME ON! The AI is going to see you running around with tanks to his knights, and you ask him for his "black goo for a couple of gold rocks"??

Doesn't take a genius knight (is that a contradiction in terms? ) to realise the long pointy end is bad?

[Pyrodrew]

Re: All about deal making

Originally posted by GePap
I agree with you that the A.I. expands mindlessly in order to survive-but there are multiple aspects to survival, and the number of cities is not the be all and end all. Your ability to survive, and win, is based on a combination of factors, from your culture, economy, tech, defense, and number of cities. Lets think about a game in MP

An AI Civ will never be better than a human player... until maybe Civilization XII or something. Since the AI is blind (as far as it knows you're planning on buying all it's cities around it's capital & then will smash them) I prefer having it err on being conservative than saying yes to every deal. Worse case here we see a stubborn ignorant AI... worse case the other way we have TONS of posts on this forum about how the AI sucks because everyone can buy their cities & wipe them out. Yet, does that mean I think the AI should stay the way it is... no, the AI could always be improved.

[GePap]

On War

The basic question for me is, how willing should the A.I. be to go to war? When should it draw a line? As of now, unless you have already beat them down to a pulp and have them at your mercy they won't talk, which makes no sense. The A.I. is blind but it also has embassies so it should be able to gahter a basic knowledge of how powerful you are. Also, it can see yous units on tis land and recognize their power-just as we do- so all I ask, which might be difficult, perhaps not, is for the computer to be, as you say, cautious and conservative when it comes to the biggest decision you can make in this game, to go to war or not. It must look at the specific deal in its generaal power balance with you, just as I, or you, do when making your deals. This should not be hard to figure out, even for this level A.I.

[Pyrodrew]

Re: On War

Originally posted by GePap
The basic question for me is, how willing should the A.I. be to go to war? When should it draw a line? As of now, unless you have already beat them down to a pulp and have them at your mercy they won't talk, which makes no sense. The A.I. is blind but it also has embassies so it should be able to gahter a basic knowledge of how powerful you are. Also, it can see yous units on tis land and recognize their power-just as we do- so all I ask, which might be difficult, perhaps not, is for the computer to be, as you say, cautious and conservative when it comes to the biggest decision you can make in this game, to go to war or not. It must look at the specific deal in its generaal power balance with you, just as I, or you, do when making your deals. This should not be hard to figure out, even for this level A.I.

As I said earlier, IF you have a stronger military than the AI the AI should be more willing to trade. Every game I've played this has been the case for me. I've never been turned down what I've wanted when I'm considerably stronger. However, I realize that just because I'm considerably stronger doesn't mean I can pay peanuts for what that smaller Civ has. Example: 1 luxury for 1 luxury. As explained earlier 1 more luxury for a small Civ is peanuts for a small Civ compared to what 1 more luxury does for a superpower. This is why it is considered "an insult"... you might as well go to war with them if that is what you are demanding. Again the weak Civs should play to win, not play to simply "survive."

[Raleigh]

Also, some trades only seem unfair. Your third luxury (plus a market place) will be worth more to you (2 happy faces) than one luxury will be to a country that only has 1-2. I could never understand why some countries would give me 20-30 gold per turn for some luxuries and others only 6/7 gold.

As for the surrounded City, West Berlin was guarded by a superpower a full continent away with 1/2 the army of their communist rival with nukes as the only alternative. We didn't "sell it" to the soviets. Nations refuse to give up a square foot no matter how useless (strategically or economically) land is. Why else all those border wars in asia (Inida/China, Pakistan/India, etc.).

That being said, it would be nice if your opponent could recognize the writing on the wall Since there is now no penalty for going to war, I suppose there should be some way of dealing with this...