Diplomacy AI Sucks

[lozina]

the whole diplomacy ai really stinks... but 2 things that stand out right now are:

1. all civs find it necessary to pirate your trade routes every once in a while. this is annoying not only because they do it totally arbitrarily- dosent matter if you're on good terms or not- but also they consider it "ok". sometimes i pirate their trade routes in return and then send proposal that ill stop if they stop - and they always reject! meanwhile his regard would be at "respects you". i just dont understand it... piracy should be something more hostile civs do and other civs should lower their regard towards a pirating nation. also- you should be able to avoid making trade routes through another nation's border- at a cost of more caravans of course. or maybe even plot the whole course yourself...

another thing is how civs value cities so minimally. id offer another civ a size 30 city for some size 1 hamlet they snuck into my borders (so i can then disband it) and they always reject... or if i offer huge cities for something like a peace treaty they reject that too. cities should be more considered much more valuable to the ai... just imagine usa offering New york city to canada!

why am i posting this stuff on this forum? because i wanna know how to customize the diplomacy so i can make these changes. does anyone know what files i need to edit and if i need to know their SLIC scripting language? ive been fooling around with various files ever since the game came out and still cant find how to make such changes in diplomacy. pls lemme know!!!

[Matte979]

My feel is that the didn't finish the diplomacy.

First. There are alot of things in the files concerning dipolomacy that isn't used. The computer players don't do any diplomacy between themself.
They are almost always at war.

Activision needs to go through the whole diplomacy system.

/Mathias

[OmniGod]

Most of what you want to change is based in the diplomacy files, and in general through out the whole AI files... I've started to glance at them for an upcoming scenario where I need to overhaul the people involved... but if you take the time to read, cross reference and such you'll see that there is possibility in the AI dip.... no special knowledge needed as of yet, but it never hurts to know slic, just in case

Omni

[wysiwyg]

It seemed to me that the most important factor the AI considers is the size of your military. Unless you have a powerful military it's real hard to get the AI civs to agree to anything. They might propose something to you but I've rarely had success before building a large military.

[lozina]

Yes I've notice the only way to get the computer to agree to anything is by building a massive army and threatening war. But thats about the only diplomacy you'll get. I hate to say it but Civ 2's diplomacy was FAR better. In ctp2 every civ u meet is hostile and it takes either brute force or tons of money to get them to agree to proposals which they should probably want to have- like peace treaties. What's this war/peace scrollbar? Has anyone ever even switched it off war??? Everytime I play there's always one civ pirating my trade, building cities within my borders- or just bluntly marching troops trough my borders.. always requiring me to keep healthy troops to protect my sovereignty.

Oh one more thing that pisses me off! When another civ pirates my trade route (which they all do every now and then) I tried sending a battleship or something to tear their pirating ship apart... and guess what happens: that nation declares war and under the intelligence report it says "this nation is incesed about your unprovoked attack"... unprovoked?!? The problem is this diplomacy is a half-assed job and it shouldn't be up to us to learn how to edit it so it's playable and not frustrating. The least activision could do is offer comprehensive documentation on how to edit this stuff. SLIC looks real easy- it's just you need to know all the variables and classes.

i really hope civ3 won't be rushed like this- i CAN wait for a good quality game.

[wysiwyg]

I always demand that they stop doing it and then threaten to declare war unless they agree. I immediately declare war if they refuse and haven't seemed to lose regard yet. It think it works best generally if you declare war before attacking though.

quote: Originally posted by lozina on 12-11-2000 04:33 PM Oh one more thing that pisses me off! When another civ pirates my trade route (which they all do every now and then) I tried sending a battleship or something to tear their pirating ship apart... and guess what happens: that nation declares war and under the intelligence report it says "this nation is incesed about your unprovoked attack"... unprovoked?!?

[MrFun]

Here's a trivia question for you guys - which conducts diplomacy better - the AI in CTP II, or the Israel government and the Palestinian leaders in real life?

[lozina]

ill have to go with the computer ai on this one... ive noticed the computer in ctp2 refrain from using excessive force. many times the comp leaves the bulk of its armies surrounding home cities- and many times if it did send em to you they could probably destroy you.

oh another silly flaw im noticing- the trade routes dont take tile improvements into consideration- if you have a railroad going from one town to another the trade route will still establish the easiest route through the unaffected terrain even when the RR would obviously be much faster. anyone else notice this?

[Depp]

Just give them your map every once and awhile and they soon are your best pals, even if you have a small military. I think it´s easy to make friends, but of course all the ancient civs had a "we are the best, kill the rest" mentality.
But I don´t like the fact that they are not making alliances and trade inbetween themselves, that´s really something to fix.

[wysiwyg]

I noticed the lack of friendly AI relations too. On a huge map the AI civs were keeping up with me until they encountered each other then *boom* they go to war and never make peace. Immediately their research dives and all they do is make military units - forever it seems.