Why does the AI commit suicide?

[Barnacle Bill]

Originally posted by Paul_1868
I notice smaller civs that do the suicide wars are always attacking one of the game leaders. Maybe smaller civilizations attack much larger civilization toward the end because it’s the civs last change to obtain victory, even if it is a far shot.

Actually, this is a rather common symptom in almost all 4X games - the AI is programmed to thing like a gamer instead of thinking like the leader of a country. If a gamer can't immediately pursue the victory conditions, he tries to prevent his opponent from reaching them. If one player looks about to win, all the other players tend to gang up on him. The AI in single-player 4X games is almost always programmed to gang up on the human player if he/she is the leader. In real life, of course, governments don't do that because the "game" never ends as long as you continue to survive. Instead, they play to maximize their own board position within the constraints imposed by domestic politics (for example, it is hard to ally with traditional enemies or regimes your people think to be evil, or against countries for which your people have strong sympathies). This realpolitik results in countries that are weak allying themselves with the strong, not attacking them suicidally because "they are winning". It may, however, allow peaceful bad relations (dislike, rhetorical opposition, refusal to trade) with the strong powers they don't like because of ideological/culteral differences and domestic political concerns, especially if either the strong power in question has no reputation for launching wars of conquest or the weak nation has a powerful protector (or is far enough away from the strong that the strong has difficulty projecting sufficient power way over there). The game which, IMO, comes closest to doing this sort of thing realistically is EU2 - not perfect, but far ahead of any other I can think of.

[Grrr]

You are right about the AI's "LAST DITCH EFFORT" to win, and it would probably be better if you had all the time in the world, like SMAC, err sorry, planet. Well if someone was to make a mod that from say 1950, turns are a month each, this will reduce the scientific burden of the 4turn limit too.

By the way, has anyone seen the AI raze a city?!?!

[zorbop]

the ai has to declare war if they ow you money every turn but they don't have it.

and the ai has razed a couple of my cities

[Grrr]

Originally posted by zorbop
the ai has to declare war if they ow you money every turn but they don't have it.

That sucks!, there should be an option to renogtiate, but anyway, aren't improvements sold to make do?!