Illogical Diplomatic Decisions

CA need to do a lot more work on the diplomacy side of this game. I am still getting stupid decisions being made by AI factions, which are irritating especially coming to this game from a roleplaying background where a great deal of effort actually goes into ensuring that NPC factions make sensible decisions. There are ways to do this, which were explained years ago in the book about the Hyboria Campaign it just needs a bit more effort to provide each factions with some sensible 'survive and prosper' rules.

dude, your singing to the choir. there are like over 9000 "bad diplomacy" complaint threads. we all know the diplomacy sucks. hopefully CA will fix it, but odds are they won't. just live with it.


an example is when, as the knights of st john, i tried to buy sicily and sardinia off of spain for a handsome amount of money. they refused(even though they had more than enough provinces anyway), and idecided to take them. now, not only am i growing exponentially, but i have created an "Italian League" so to speak. every single italian state(plus the barbaries) are either my allies or my protectorates, and we are all ganging up on spain. this is better than just conquering itly, because now i can devote my entire forces at spain while their trade is cut off by my buddies and raiding parties.

now spain has every port in europe blockaded, half their european provinces gone, and half the mediteranean against them. they are ready to fall pretty quick(plus now i'll get some trade ports and colleges to research and trade).

Such as don't declare war on a nation 10 times bigger than you, with more money and an army big enough to crush you 100 times over. They also need to make peace. Once they go to war, that's it, they're at war for the duration of the campaign. Period.

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Originally Posted by Dayve

Such as don't declare war on a nation 10 times bigger than you, with more money and an army big enough to crush you 100 times over. They also need to make peace. Once they go to war, that's it, they're at war for the duration of the campaign. Period.

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wait...what? i just said i was kicking their asses into the sea! my league of italian nations will soon annhilate the spanish noobs and "reach out and touch" portugal and france.

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Originally Posted by Didz

it just needs a bit more effort to provide each factions with some sensible 'survive and prosper' rules.

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Originally Posted by Myself

Such as don't declare war on a nation 10 times bigger than you, with more money and an army big enough to crush you 100 times over. They also need to make peace. Once they go to war, that's it, they're at war for the duration of the campaign. Period.

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See?

oh i thought yo uwere talking to me. thanks for clearing that up :D

I know, we posted at the same time, i had intended for mine to go right under the original post.

The AI will never get fixed, we got suckered into a lie by CA, simple as that.

it is horrible but you can say it is improved as only the human player has a chance for a ceasefire.

The mughal empire(as great britain) came to me and asked for a ceasefire for only 30 grand. They need to make the AI not so greedy with diplomacy

Actually, that may be it, the AI doesnt ever ceasefire with other AI because it cant accept its own deals.

It's not the AI making peace with us that's the problem, it's them making peace with each other. I can usually get a peace settlement out of the AI for free, if not then a couple thousand if i can afford it. Problem is, they break the ceasefire immediately by destroying a farm or a town with a single unit of militia, which gives me horrible flashbacks to the AI stupidity of Rome, which we were told had been improved, and which clearly has not.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

Actually, that may be it, the AI doesnt ever ceasefire with other AI because it cant accept its own deals.

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that is probably the most likely decision; the obvious choice then is to tone down the a.i. dumb-ass-ness with its demands.


i also want back the diplomatic-offer-niceness-o-meter that tells you if your offer is good or bad.

My problem with the AI is that it never wants to sell you tech, no matter how much tech you offer in return.

That's one part i actually don't mind... how realistic is it even? Even today the best of allies won't give their secrets away, at least not their best ones, maybe the lesser ones like a new rifle design and such.

Especially in those days were alliance were more fragile than ever, you could give technology away one week, and the next be at war.

I dislike the AI not wanting to take any amount of cash above 110k. Above that they just don't want any of it. Unless you offer several million, then they reconsider at times. In fact, Spain would happily give me 4 territories for 1. But they wouldn't sell any single one of those under 5 million (used a trainer to check how ridiculous this is - who in their right mind would pay this amount of money for New Mexico or Sardinia).

The other thing I dislike is that the AI has a set price for everything that they want your things for. Like they'll give you a set amount for a given region depending on how much they value it and won't give you a single coin more. On the other hand, if they see you have money (which they shouldn't be able to, as you as the human player can't tell how much the AI has), they will charge you more. So a tech they sell you for 22k normally, they won't sell you at below 80k if you have that amount of money. And again, if its an expensive tech and you happen to have more money than its worth, you might just get above 110k and have to pay even more to get over the AI's "I don't want your money" stance.

Basically early game diplomacy works. Mid and late game, it doesn't at all.

Oh, and Natives somehow never want to make peace with you for under several hundred thousand either (along with techs and what not)

I've found that the AI sometimes accepts cease fires that are very much not in their favour, but only when you've thoroughly whooped their ass. For example, I took all of spains american holdings, and after that they accepted a cease fire for all their tech and a hefty payment (and new mexico which I didn't bother to take by force). Likewise with France after i took french guyana and louisiana, then threatened Paris with a full stack on the bridge north of it.

BUT, I was drawn into a war with Prussia, didn't share a landborder (as UP) but I was allied with Hannover so I marched through Hannover and took Brandenburg from Prussia. I offer Prussia ceasefire for giving them Brandenburg back. I tried to get a nice payment back for the territory but they refused the deal however little I demanded of them in return. They even refused me giving them back the territory for nothing, even excluding the ceasefire. That's pretty appaling. Even when I took west prussia and they were down to one territory they would not accept a truce under any circumstances I could produce. So I sold west prussia to Hannover for 50000 instead. Of course, they countered my offer of 50000 with 57340.

Silly.

I have a problem at the moment whereby I cannot find anybody to give France to. Seriously-I offered France and Alsace-Lorraine to the Dutch for Ceylon (combined they generated about 4 times as much as Ceylon), and they refused. As an experiment, I offered the territories to them for nothing, and they refused. Oh yes, they were very friendly trading partners by the way. The regions had fairly low dissent (exempt tax made public order fine) but everybody refused to take them!

The question is not if the diplomacy AI is reasonable. The question should be if your diplomacy is reasonable. Really. Some of you play this game so irrational that it creeps me out. Declaring wars, backstabbing everyone, going for world domination without any concern of how it may look to the AI. Play with reason and the game respons with reason. That is my experience of the game so far playing 3 campaigns.

Then you have been remarkably lucky. As I've noted already in my 'Dutch Campaign abandoned in disgust thread.' playing reasonably merely results in the AI behaving like a cheating idiot.

The only way to introduce any degree of reason into the gameplay is to opt for 'World Domination', mainly because this is the only option that give you the player the freedom to choose your enemies. Even then I'm noticing that as the game progresses the AI is thrown more and more illogical spanners into the works. Friendly nations with feeble armies declaring war in order to commit suicide for no strategic purpose, (not even a one turn interuption of my trade) and most recently Britain pesting me to sell them Mysore every turn for 769g when its daily revenue is over 7,000.

Dumb AI gave me my biggest territory wins in my GB campaign. France declared war on me, 2 turns later I occupied Paris, 3 turns traded it back to them for ceasefire and Louisiana Territories. The next turn they declared again, repeated the occupation, ceasefire trade of France for Newfoundland and Arcadia. Very next turn DoW again Paris occupation, this time I offered to trade France for the remaining American holdings and no ceasefire... it was accepted!

I now have a full stack at the gates of Paris (with nothing but the mob to defend it) and massive trade income. I am playing M/M, broken no alliances, not DoW on any other faction, but at war with most Native American tribes. I had been on friendly terms with France due to early bribe and trade rights (and shared no land borders).

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Originally Posted by Pinxit

Play with reason and the game respons with reason. That is my experience of the game so far playing 3 campaigns.

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My experience is the opposite: in a game as the United Provinces I wanted to remain a 1 province in Europe and keep my original colonies and that was it, I wanted to play out the campaign as a small nation in-between giants. Pretty reasonable. It started well, but after the first few years World War I began breaking out in Europe, but unlike the real WWI this one is neverending for all parties involved...

That ruined the game for me because, obviously, after a while, they came for me, even though I had good relations with everybody, and no matter what I offered I couldn't get Peace Treaties.

This is the only issue in diplomacy I wish was fixed. A neverending WWI breaks out in every single game. Perhaps deleting the Historical Grievances modifier could help a little... I can live without tech-trading, but the suicidal AI makes the campaign game irrelevant, it's just a big mess with everybody fighting everybody, might aswell just skip it all and go play Custom Battles or multiplayer.

Sometimes it does accept peace, but in the vast majority of the time the AI refuses even the most favourable of peace treaties, even if it has no armies left and its last city is besieged. The effect of having no armies left and their last city besieged should increase their willingness to surrender and accept peace dramatically.

I came to Empire:TW right out of Europa Universallis III, which I was using to fill my thrist for Empire, and comparing the experiences when I started noticing the inevitable WWI behavior I couldn't help but think the campaign aspect of the game is almost one big waste, in the end you're at war with everybody, except for one or two nations or if you luck it out. And if you won those wars you are now a Super-Mega-Power and the game is pretty much over, mopping up the rest of the map wouldn't be a challenge, just an auto-resolve chore.

EUIII isn't perfect by any means, nor has tactical battles, but the developers and players of Empire should try it out to see how nice and fun and reasonable a campaign AI can be.

To be fair the diplomacy is a lot better now than in previous TW iterations.

But I agree, lots of improvement is still necessary. What surprises me more is that we still don't have a competent battle AI which is supposed to be the core of the entire game.

If I could have just ONE thing changed in the diplomacy model, it would be for AI nations to 9 times out of 10 finish prosecuting existing wars before starting new ones. That's it. And I know that's not difficult to implement.

I don't find the random declarations of war so unreasonable. Afterall, having good relations/history doesn't mean squat. Player controlled nations routinely backstab allies during their "growth" phases, no reason why a cunning compouter player wouldn't either. But I agree that if they are at war with 4-5 nations already (particularly if at least half of them share a common land border) they shouldn't declare war on anybody except in support of an ally.

Wasn't there a recent Daily Update where someone said that more of the AI was being moved from hardcoded to moddable? If so, this should give us some fantastic results once teh modderz get their greasy paws on the data ...

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Originally Posted by Lemur

Wasn't there a recent Daily Update where someone said that more of the AI was being moved from hardcoded to moddable? If so, this should give us some fantastic results once teh modderz get their greasy paws on the data ...

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If only that were true :drama2:

If the AI would follow up on the DoW with an invasion with at least a decent force than the DoW would actually mean something.

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Originally Posted by Pinxit

The question is not if the diplomacy AI is reasonable. The question should be if your diplomacy is reasonable. Really. Some of you play this game so irrational that it creeps me out. Declaring wars, backstabbing everyone, going for world domination without any concern of how it may look to the AI. Play with reason and the game respons with reason. That is my experience of the game so far playing 3 campaigns.

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I want to second this. I played about 10-12 campaigns so far, a little over half with GB and Prussia. Honestly, I cannot remember any DoW that was totally weird. The only factions that declared war on me and didn't attack me are factions that disputed my line of succession but were too far away to mount a real attack (i.e., when Prussia disputes British lineage), or allied factions of the faction I DoW on (or vice versa). Most of the time they'll take a peace treaty pretty quickly if they don't share borders with you.

Most DoW for me happens when I take faction objective specific regions. For example, France will always DoW if you possess Alsace-Lorraine, no matter what your diplomatic relation to them is. To me, that is not crazy. An ally would normally give land back to his ally if he takes it from their mutual enemy. Most Human players won't do that. Lets say the Americans lost some territory to the British in the revolution, and some allied French troops come and take that territory, and not give it back to Americans. Pretty sure Americans would be pretty pissed off.

The 2nd most common DoW for me occur on heavily garrisoned borders. Keeping a certain mount of stacks in these border regions prevent a DoW, but once they are moved away, a DoW usually follows.

Other than that I am usually the unreasonable faction making illogical DoWs. Take Hannover for example. Right next to my Prussian capital, they never attack me and I trade with them since turn 1, thus building up relationship to both sides being very friendly. 40 years later, I wipe them out "for no reason". Same thing with British vs. Marathas/Mughals. They're by far the best trade partners for British, and are always very friendly with them, but British eventually has to wipe them out.