Diplo AI Might Need Some Tweaking

In my experience, AI's will declare war on you if you are weakest. On higher levels, they will 'automatically' start to dislike you every 100 or so turns.

My best guess in your case is you probably have one or more AI sovereigns who are 'manipulative' and have bribed others into declaring war on you. So it's nothing personal, they are just greedy bastards 

I would also think that the sovereigns that are declaring war on you who aren't close to you are doing so at the request of someone else.

And being weak is a reason for them to declare war on you.

I think 1.5 is meant to be a Diplomacy patch.

If you're weak, they will dow you and send a pretty weak army in attempt to take your cities easily. Although this never work out very well for the AI..

I'm working on the diplomacy features for 1.5 right now.  It's getting the biggest revamp since the original release of Fallen Enchantress.

There are really two broad problems with it:

1. There are a lot of different variables that determine relations but not a lot of controllers (i.e. they're either on or off without any conditions other than true or false).  This is being changed so that the relation modifiers start to show up based on your existing relations. 

2. It doesn't really communicate well to the player why relations are what they are.  So the AI is going to communicate more with players on the different things they're doing.

That was my impression as well. And makes me wonder if a perceived weakness is a good enough reason to start a war with someone in all phases of the game. During the early phase of a game this probably is a good idea more often than not. But later it might be more feasible to attack someone who is running away with the game.

I look forward to these changes.  Right now matters of war and peace strike me as almost being random.  In light of what others have posted above, I can understand stronger powers declaring war on me, but not powers weaker than me, especially after they pester me for aid...and get it! Not to mention when they are already at war with other powers who are kicking their head in. 

Looking forward to 1.5!

And thanks for all the replies, everyone.

Good. It's been my single gretest complaint for months. Not that individual issues haven't been important, but this haws been the gretest area of concentration that has noticeably lagged behind GC II and needed a lot of loving care.

In my last game, around turn 30, out of the blue Kraxis declared war on me and proceeds to convert my capital city to his cause

Mind you, he was nowhere near me, and i had no contact with him at this time.

After my initial !?!! WTF !?!! i simply took the city back with my spearman which was luckily standing next to the city. Did not even have to fight, no city defenders popped up.

good times

There are several system problems with the current diplomacy machine.

- First and foremost, with alliance being placed soooo late in the tech three, they are effectively disabled. This takes out much of the fun, intrigue and complexity we all enjoyed in GalcivII, with coalitions waging epic wars. In FE (LH), from the mid game the cards are set and its just a constant war everybody vs. everybody (concerning AI).

Suggestion: Move the alliances more to the beginning of the tree (2nd or 3rd tier). Rename current alliances technology as Allied vitory, Unity or something.

- Secondly, trade system is very... poor. It is not clear, what different treaties (economy vs. trade) will bring and its just a matter of clickfest to have them signed, no intrigue behind it, no strategic decision.

Suggestion: Unite existing two econ. treaties in one with clearly defined benefit (road + economic bonus). Limit the number of econ. treaties per one faction (increasable by technology), so player has to take strategic decisions with whom he will trade. This way trade will become strategic diplo feature more than just a clickfest - aka trade routes in GalcivII.

- Diplomatic options are unnecessarily limited. I understand taking out direct tech trading, when there is a single tech tree, but why have you disabled cities and unit trading? Why cant we sign, in game with resources, longterm treaties on resources supply?

Suggestion: Consider adding some of the above mentioned options in the game.

- Caravans are...not functioning well (broken). Not only they have no real role in the game, they are also subject of many problems - AI Wither & Tremoring them and talking about that to player being the most well known.

Suggestion: Reworking the caravan system feels necessary, they are not working well as freighters in Galciv were... maybe swith to Totalwar system, where you cannot attack caravan directly, but placing a unit anywhere on the route means you are disrupting/looting that trade route?

So these are my two cents about the most subpar things about current diplomacy...hope it helps!

Absolutely looking forward to some work on Diplomacy.

What I'd really really like in the Diplomacy section of LH is a screen that looks something like this:

That visual representation of the relations between factions is great, I want one for LH

In general, I find the relative strength to be what 90% of declaring war is based on.  I almost never have the AI declare war on me without first letting me know that it thinks it is superior to me by asking me for tribute.  If that doesn't happen, I assume it is because I have an unusual and large penalty like if I raze a lot of enemy cities or it is because they were paid off by another AI to attack me.

I don't fully understand why to trade or not trade for research points, but other than that everything mostly seems ok to me.

I don't really see the value of caravans that much and I think they could easily just be eliminated from the game, but that is just a minor point.

I would like to see minimal city defenses come online sooner, but that barely even matters.  It just annoys me that the AI can recapture a city right away for free with one hero if you leave the area.

Diplomacy in this game is so damn lousy and seemingly random, I just ignore it, as if I was playing a game of Risk vs. computer opponents.  It's a shame really, because in Galciv2, diplomacy was one of my favorite parts of the game.  I dunno how Stardock bombed on this one so thoroughly.

you won't like the answer.

In GalCiv I hard coded everything. So I could throw in all kinds of specific cases and have it adjust relations.  In Elemental, it's XML driven so the idea is that if those conditions are met, then the corresponding relation modifier is applied.  In 1.5 I'm starting to put some hard coding in.

N/A

What's the difference between xmling and hard coding it up?

You won't be able to play with the numbers.

I guess part of the problem then, is that most of the time we have no idea what those "conditions" are.  In Galciv2, we could see all the "plusses" and "minuses", and could take steps to improve relations.  In Fallen Enchantress, it seems like the computer will offer me a trade agreement one turn and then shove a mace up my ass the next and I'm just scratching my head thinking "what the hell?...".  Eventually, I just started clicking past all the computer's dialogue prompts and now treat the game as if it were merely another war game with no diplomacy at all.  Still fun, just like Axis & Allies is fun, but sort of a waste of a potentially cool feature.

Anyhow, here's hoping that 1.5 will usher in a new age of foreign relations!   I also hope that Galciv3 will improve on what was already a great (in my opinion) diplomacy system.

@Wetballs, you can see the numbers in FE/LH.  Just go to the foreign policy area and it'll tell you exactly what the pluses and minuses are. 

Here's what causes the problem you experience:

Your current relations with someone might be say Neutral. And if it's neutral, it'll say "Hey, want to have a trade?"  But its feeling towards you (the +'s and -'s) may point to eventual warfare with you and that value can, in a matter of turns, change them from neutral to hostile (it's not instant but it can happen quicker than it seems).

In GalCiv II, the system was much more sophisticated but also very hard-coded. That is, I would have a bunch of IF THEN statements that would regulate these relations and what they might do. But they couldn't be modded by third parties.

Can you maybe elaborate a bit on what you might be changing in 1.5 in relation to this?

I don't know.. basically your interactions with the AI is limited to..

Trade knowledge.

Tributes.

Dowing.

Set up agreements like research, trade, etc.

And for example, Kraxis wants to pay me tribute I told him no thanks, three turns later, he bothers me about it later, I give up and say okay to kraxis.

Then I checked the modifiers, Kraxis now have  new -1 towards me saying "You are forcing us to pay tribute to you."

I was like huh? You're the one who wanted to pay me tribute not me, I only said ok cuz u was bothering me about it.

Even when Diplomacy of FE:LH improves, I have my doubts that I will ever use diplomacy lol

I'm pretty much just chilling on my own. I havent even insulted anyone yet, and that's only because the games refuse to give me a feature where I could insult the ai but gaming companies find it okay for the ai to insult me without me returning the favor. Thus, I disregard all the AIs and do whatever I wanna. If they don't like it for some reason, too bad.

And diplomacy is 100% based on Faction Power score, AI rely on it too much.

Whom your friends is will change throughout the game because the AIs is fighting for their own survival albeit badly.

A weak AI that stumbles it's way into a level 100 village which transforms it's faction score from 5 to 50005 will make the AI transform into the next Hitler but without the army to back up it's imperialistic ambitions and get promptly squashed because he pissed off too many neighbors with his insults.

Or as I have noticed.. a power 500 score Ai will go out of it's way to send several armies to kill an supposedly weak The dead faction at like score of 48 only to have their armies squashed in a single turn by the Puny.

Wow, I never realized that there were plusses and minuses displayed on that screen!  To be honest, I don't think I ever even looked beyond the trade screen (derp).

Anyway, thanks for explaining things.  It does seem though, that how an AI faction views me is weighted heavily on our respective power levels.  Almost like "If you're stronger than me, I like you" and "If you're weaker than me, I hate you."  I guess it's odd to me since when I'm looking to clobber somebody, I usually gun for my biggest competition, not beat up on the guy who's already losing.

Again thanks for taking the time to explain things on the forums.  I don't know of many other game developers who are as personable as the ones here at Stardock.

It's a good screen. Personally I think the plusses and minuses should show up as a mouseover tool tip on the relationship bar when interacting with the AI. Ok, you feel Cool towards me, but why is that?

Or, make clicking on the relationship bar from the AI interaction screen take you directly to the Foreign Relations screen.

Maybe something for the fabled user interface patch...

Has anyone else noticed the lack of resource (iron, crystal, horses, wargs) trading in 1.4?  Now only tech?

Please give AI players the ability to sweeten their peace treaty requests with goodies: magic items, quest reward creatures, resources or gildar.

I recently had a battle against Verga and was pleased when the Figurine of Grazna was loot-dropped(The Pillar of Grazna was in the enemy stack).  Sweet!  This was a regular old battle, not even in a city IIRC.  More loot drops like this will make the battles against other AI's much more rewarding.

I have never had an AI try to bribe me to attack another AI.  That would be fun.

Or how about an event where a powerful hero from another faction seeks to defect to yours?  Or one of yours defects?  Or a whole city?