This goes back to my original post, where I listed several key rules for the AI to follow, one of which is:

It's one thing to have an AI randomly stab you in the back after you just signed a momentous trade agreement, it's quite another for the AI to do so after having determined that you are becoming too powerful and threatening to them.

I think it's pretty obvious where I stand here.

But it would still seem random to the player, and in that case what you get is a steamroller effect; the more powerful a player becomes the more likely he is to be attacked, be forced to conquer the enemy, and become more powerful. The infinite loop this becomes starts to get old after a game or two.

I see what your trying to say, and where you stand, but to make an AI think like that is impossible pretty much anyway, as I showed you in many arguements prior. The other thing is, again, if you want it to be a simple "beat the human because he is more powerful (which he almost always will be) then you have a repetitive wargame that actually goes against a diplomatic model.

If the AI refuses to attack you because you're too strong, you also get a steamroller effect. Namely that since the AI is afraid of you, you can pick them off one by one at your liesure and the other ones won't do anything about it.

But the AI's push is likely to simply lead to endless war. You will either A: Perish at the hands of your status quo loving nieghbors or B: tear through them, becoming larger and thus a greater threat to more people.

Even if what you say is right, a game where backstabbing is common and war is a daily occurance would get boring. Didn't you start the thread wanting better diplomacy? Now you seem to be more interested in an AI balance mechanism. Pfeh. Sorry, but the human player will always be better than the AI unless it cheats, hence the AI in such a system would be in perpetual war with the player. Thats not diplomacy.

It depends on what chance the AI has to win. If the AI's only chance to win is to defeat you in a war, what else do you expect it to do?

If the AI has a chance to win without war, then by all means, let it go ahead and do that.

Took the words right out of my mouth. Totally agree!

It's sad that some people don't want a truly competetive A.I. They simply want the best possible A.I that plays along with what the player wants....

So the player will either A: Lose or B: Win and win even more....ok, and what's the actual problem here..?

Nonsense! It would keep you on your toes at all times and force you to check what your neighbors are doing just like in a MP game!

And are you saying that constantly being at war is boring..?    This entire GAME is about WAR!   It's about getting a basic economy and production started so you can churn out some troops and go capture that lair/node/shard to get more powerful so you can cast better spells, build better factories/farms/libraries so you can get even better troops and capture even MORE powerful nodes/lairs/shards so you get even MORE powerful magic, troops'n'stuff to eradicate your opponents!

Isn't the point of every single game (atleast TBS?) to destroy your enemies..?

There was something said around here at some point about a lengthy quest chain that could win the game if completed. I don't know if it was a suggestion or something that is actually going in, but it's been discussed before.

Why would anyone (including an AI) ever agree to lose the game? Diplomatic victory in past TBS games involved electing a ruler. If the AI hopes to win a diplomatic victory, it better be able to command the majority of votes.

Personally, I think diplomatic victories are stupid. In real life, elections never solve anything, there is always another election around the corner. Who actually believes there could be an election to create one world government and that it would somehow result in world peace?

Modern games (almost every single multiplayer game) are designed with a client/server model. The server contains all of the details of the world and the clients connect to it and play through it. Even when you are playing by yourself, you are still connecting to a server. AI players are clients as well, each of them connecting to the server the same way you do. This means the AI players get no special knowledge/data advantages at all.

The server may have difficulty settings, but they act more like handicaps in that they give bonuses (money / food / research / production / happiness) to some players and penalties (in the same areas) to other players. Whom these bonuses and penalties apply to is determined by the difficulty slider (easy tends to give the bonuses to humans whereas hard gives them to AIs). Ideally, the AI should be good enough to play the game at normal (no penalties or bonuses for anybody) and actually be competitive with an average human.

I would be very surprised (shocked even) if SD goes back and designs this game the old monolithic way, especially considering that they are planning to include multiplayer (a client/server model makes multiplayer a lot easier to implement, since it is basically incorporated into the design from the very beginning).

I've always loved AI personalities. MoM had em, Civ has em. They're what truly brings variety and unpredictability to the game. I think the most important part of AI personalities is that they are random each game and that they try to keep their personality a secret. I've always thought it was pretty cheesy in Civ that you knew Monty was the aggressive one.

I am not sure if the AI can even have an agenda apar from meeting a victory condition. Let us suppose that that is the case, that is the AI can have an agenda in the sense that it wants to conquer another one's capitol city.

Now suppose the AI will not reveal any info that will not further his agenda... What info would it release to you? Keep in mind that not releasing any info can also be a telltale sign that the AI is up to something. Ideally you will want the AI to act as if it is not up to anything and hen have it strike when you do not expect it. I highly doubt the rules in the OP will cover this nicely.

Diplomacy in a game like this is extremely important because I do not want to actually wage war to win the game all the time. Waging war in games like these can be fun, but nearer to the end of the game you know you will win and then you will not want to go through the trouble of mopping up some chanceless AI.

Earlier in the game what I would really want to see is not just an AI that will offer a challenge, but I want to be able to forge alliances in order to defend against a common foe, I want to pool spells with it if it is mutually beneficial, and I want to be anle to somewhat rely on an AI being my friend and Help me in time of need. What I find sorely lacking in most games if the option to actually work together with the AI. Of course there needs to be some balance to this, but if Stardock can get this right the game will truly have the potential to be amazing.

OK this actually sounds very cool. This was also my idea of an agenda, even if I may hae worded it wrong.

I just fear that even an AI obeying the rules in the OP will give things away that it should not. Remember that not wanting to disclose info can also be a dead giveaway of it's intentions. In the end you learn to adapt to that and you will learn what to expect in different situations.

In a game lik Civ IV diplomacy was handled with random factors and arbitrary dice rolls. The difficulties there were not governed by the obscure ways of the AI to handle diplomacy. The system was in fact crystal clear. It was up to the player to understand the system and then learn what the consequences of different actions would be. The difficulties of handling diplomacy in Civ IV was then just juggling with pro's and con's of different decision, choosing the option that was the least bad and preparing yourself for the bad onsequences.

In the end, diplomcy in CIv was all risk management. This was a crystal clear system that worked, and if you wanted to have an unpredictable factor you had an option to play with random personalities. In the end, the Ai would seem like it pursued it's own agenda.

I would very much be in favor of a system that was transparant to a degree. Juggling actively with diplomatic hardships wasso much fun in Civ IV that I would not mind seeing that in EWOM.

in order to keep relations up you were however forced to make dificult calls, andonly in rare cases could you play the game start to finish in relative safety, and even then it required a pro-handling of the diplomatic system and an intimate knowledge of it. In no way was it ever so dull as you describe it here as it always required a careful monitoring of the opposition, assessing threats and then taking preparing measures to meet threats you may face.

Maybe you could to a certain extent predict what would happen but in a game where enemies attack each other it is safe to say that avoiding war should be possible in at least some of the games, as long as AI players have another archenemy. If you took proper care you could play a game without war. This worked fine imo.

The warning you speak of was indeed one thing to look out for. It was however entirely possible for an AI to declare war on you without warning so you at least needed to take safety measures no matter what. In the end though I think there is nothing really wrong with a transparent system. In reality countries rarely attack each other out of the blue, there is always an underlying reason an a political tension even though the reason for declaring can be anything that ignites anger. It would be fair to let a player know who he should and who he should not fear because these things are not that obscure in reality either.

In the end it would be horrible to have a system where you cannot ever predict how the AI will respond. An example would be Empire: total war. IN that game countries declare war in a whim and they cancel agreements that are mutual beneficial, factions attack their ally for no reason and small countries declare on nations that can obiterate them with whatever rookie garrison is stationed nearby. This system is complex, vague and lacks any character and therefore it is horrible.

In Civ IV I can see your concerns with the system, but I do not agree with you that the diplomacy was bad. I think in all games that I saw, the Civ diplomacy delivered what it pomised. In reality you can also to a certain degree know there are tentions on certain borders and that both sides are preparing for war. High political officials know these things. In Civ you also know these things, albeit you see these things through some arbitrary means that are abstract. Although those numbers seemed arbitrary it did the job just fine.

In the end if this predictability was really bothering you that much you could always play with random leader personalities on the AI where Ghandi might behave like a madman and attack whenever he has an itch. Even if the numbers were not telling you war was coming some proper scouting and witnessing armies gathering near your bothers were a sure warning...

In the end Civ IV was challenging all the way because on deity level the game was not beatable at times, even by the most competent players. On deity it was always tense and even if the numbers were telling you war might be possible, here was not nessecarily much you could do about it.