One of the systems I feel are always underused by players in 4X games is the diplomacy system. And, at least from my experience playing Civilization and a little bit of Endless Legend, I think that's due to the fact that the AI is always designed with a bias towards hating you.

Whether you have a bigger army, or are doing better than them, or you have engaged in some aggressive expansion, the AI usually has more reasons to hate you than to like you, which ends up hurting your chances of striking a fair diplomatic deal.

In my opinion, the AI should be designed in way that your relationship with them remains neutral, unless your interaction with them is hostile (e.g. you attack them or their allies, trasspass in their terrotory, or there are some real territorial tensions). And as long as you remain neutral, the AI should be prone to accept fair diplomatic deals.

I think this inadvertently comes down to a very simple fact: the AI knows the victory conditions for the game and doesn't want you to win.  Given most or all games of this nature have very concrete conditions under which the game ends and a winner is declared, it seems tricky to make an AI that ISN'T biased against the player.  Games with multiple AI opponents have been like this ever since the first computer games in memory.  Ever play something like Monopoly on an old console?  AI trades its stuff around with each other like candy but basically gives you the finger.  Twisted Metal?  AI's just meander around occasionally firing a bullet or two at each other but when YOU show up they all become terminators and unload their arsenal in your face with perfect accuracy.[

Add this to the fact that the computer knows your every move the instant you make it--fog of war be damned--and getting a computer to play like a human is harder than it sounds.

Yeah, the AI tends to dislike the player strictly because the player is usually doing better. If you play poorly enough to stay relatively on par with the Endless Legend AI, they actually tend to ignore you in favor of more powerful AI... unless you share a border, that is, in which case they harass you for resources.

With Shared Victory being a thing, I would enjoy seeing the more dimplomatic factions trying to ally with you in order to share in your victory, rather than desperately trying to kill you off like all the other ones do.

While I agree 4X games need a much better focus on diplomacy, I can't imagine why the AI would be more likely to be cooperative. Maybe in the modern era of global politics, but not for most of human history where there are very few examples of true cooperation outside of alliances of convenience for defense or conquest.

Agree 100% with the original poster.   AI is so reluctant to do trades, treaties, etc, I often wonder why it's even in the game. 

I'd really enjoy a game where I could interact more with the AI in some way other than wiping them out.  

TravlingCanuck wrote:

Maybe there could be a start game option, but I can tell you that relative to the Civ series, the last thing I would want is an AI that's more prone to be cooperative.  The Civ AI already tends to be a patsy, taking it's position based on how you, the player, has behaved, rather than based on what is in the best interest of it's empire.  I'd personally prefer that HK have no diplomatic system rather than a trade system as tilted to the player's benefit as the Civ system, let alone one that favours the player even more.

Part of the challenge, though, is the idea of what constitues "fair diplomatic deals".  I know from years on the Civfanatics forum that what many players consider "fair" deals are, to me, the equivalent of robbing the AI blind.  The AI simply can't use the incremental resources they receive on their side of the trade as well as the player can.  Every trade the payer accepts will help them.  The same is not true of every deal the AI accepts.

The fact that the AI's stance is defined by your behavior rather than what would befenit them is precisely what I would like this game to correct (except for certain obvious situations where it makes sense).

As for assessing the 'value' of each trade, I understand the challenge of that and I agree with you that a bad trade system such as the one in Civ is not desirable. But, all others things equal, what I want is that, regardless of how this system is designed, it is not affected by unjustified modifiers that make the AI less likely to conduct a trade that they would go with under normal circumstances.

You can assign values to priorities, giving them a higher weight if certain actions occur (At least, according to my friend who does AI). From what he's told me, it doesn't sound too difficult once you have everything set up, but you don't need to spend thousands of hours to make each culture unique, just modify the priority values and the actions and stuff like that. While still time consuming, it's not quite as bad as you might think.

ruzen wrote:

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What it used to devs achieve giving the faction leaders personality to go more warmonger or industrious, etc.. a playstyle in a more general form. If you give each AI a winner personality/playstyle wouldn't this dull the game? What modifier would affect their personality to cooperation or not? Devs are going to spend maybe hundreds of work hours just to give each culture a modifier? Even if they did now we can observe some personality disorder actions from AI because of hundreds of possibilities with the culture selection.

We've still to hear how leaders will be implemented in HK, if at all.  

I will say, though, that to your point, it sounds like in HK it will be easier to give each era civ's leader a personality that will both play to the civ's strength, maximie the civ's possible Fame points, and give that civ a personality that differs from other civs.  They may or may not be able to assess the world around them and what they should be doing to minimize the score of other civs, but they should be better able to play to their own strengths.  Unlike in Civ, say, the AI player starts over again next era, so weaknesses that come from that personality don't persist the whole game.  A builder civ that focuses on wonders, for example, won't necessarily be handicapped for the whole game by a lack of focus on military.

That's all theory, though.  I may be wrong in practice.

It'd be neat if bonuses were developed over time instead of "I choose mongols, therefore I get horse archers", but I guess it's too late for that to be implemented lol

It'd be neat if bonuses were developed over time instead of "I choose mongols, therefore I get horse archers", but I guess it's too late for that to be implemented lol

AI should be more prone to co-operation if that's benefitial to it in the short term, but it should also be capable of back-stabbing you when it's convenient for it long term. This lack of understanding of the situation on the side of the AI is the biggest problem with 4x diplomacy. Sometimes you have to drag a screaming and kicking AI into an alliance that immensely benefits him and sometimes it will stay your loyal lapdog even though it's in a position to snatch a victory away from you. I don't think the idea of making the diplomacy better is mutually exclusive with making the AI competitive, it's just a lot more difficult than simply making it dislike co-operation altogether.

Hello everyone,

It's great to see some constructive discussions about AI and diplomatic relations. This is a very touchy and difficult subject as, I hope you can understand, there are no obvious answers about where an AI should stand regarding a human player. 

Do we want the AI to play2win exclussively ?

Do we want it to give a believable experience to the player ?

How much of its thoughts must we expose to the human player ?

etc etc

While I cannot talk about the many diplomatic features the AI and the players will use to forge their relations, I can say that we are making a great deal of efforts to make an AI's attitude and actions towards the player understandable, both as in "feedbacked" and as in "human like though process, with feelings, personnalities and stuff".

Cheers

Chocossimo wrote:

Hello everyone,

It's great to see some constructive discussions about AI and diplomatic relations. This is a very touchy and difficult subject as, I hope you can understand, there are no obvious answers about where an AI should stand regarding a human player. 

Do we want the AI to play2win exclussively ?

Do we want it to give a believable experience to the player ?

How much of its thoughts must we expose to the human player ?

etc etc

While I cannot talk about the many diplomatic features the AI and the players will use to forge their relations, I can say that we are making a great deal of efforts to make an AI's attitude and actions towards the player understandable, both as in "feedbacked" and as in "human like though process, with feelings, personnalities and stuff".

Cheers

Good stuff!!

I would love the AI to roleplay, as it were, instead of playing to win. I believe this consistently results in the best gameplay, looking at other games (Civilization IV has an excellent AI, for instance, enjoyable and consistent in its diplomacy, and capable of surprises and being a threat). With 'roleplay', I also include the AI from AI War: Fleet Command, for example; it is still not an omniscient play-to-win AI, all of its actions are entirely in line with what it knows and thinks and believes - roleplaying. Civilization V and VI, on the other hand, have a very irrational AI, that is just no fun. And Endless Legend has more of a lack of AI; you don't really interact much with them, which is also no fun.