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My point was that if you want an authentic real to life human AI you wont get it.

Nobody ever asked for that. A good AI doesn't mean a "human-ish" AI. I think people here just expect an AI to be coded to make decisions that are logical. If you as a nation attacked another much more powerful nation who then quickly preceded to destroy everything you own and surround your capitol with forces you have no chance of defeating, would you then demand a large amount of money (or any at all) in return for a cease-fire? An AI doesn't have to be very powerful to understand basic concepts such as military strength, it should be able to see when it's vastly out-gunned and has no chance of winning.

Im sure Germany was totally shocked when in spite of their best efforts to not involve the US in ww2 we stuck out noses in anyway even though it looked like germany would continue holding their iron grip on europe with an inevitable conquest of England. Im sure they couldnt understand why we would stick out noses into that conflict but from our (the allies) perspective we had to fight there was no other option whether we liked it or not. We as people dont always seek to avoid conflict, we sometimes just seek to WIN it.

Not really. I don't think anyone was surprised at what the US did after Pearl Harbor.
 
Im sure Germany was totally shocked when in spite of their best efforts to not involve the US in ww2 we stuck out noses in anyway even though it looked like germany would continue holding their iron grip on europe with an inevitable conquest of England. Im sure they couldnt understand why we would stick out noses into that conflict but from our (the allies) perspective we had to fight there was no other option whether we liked it or not. We as people dont always seek to avoid conflict, we sometimes just seek to WIN it.

I can't take anyone seriously who believes America won the European front for the Allies. America did help but Hitler's arrogance won it for the Allies when he attacked Russia, then Russia steamrolled the Eastern front meaning units had to be taken from the Western front allowing forces from all allied nations to retake France. Off topic I know but I can't stand this American idea that you saved the world in WW2, most of America's forces were in the Pacific and they played more of a support roll in Europe.

While on the WW2 subject though; Germany unconditionally surrendered when the Red Army had surrounded Berlin, yet Germany still exist today and is a major economic power in Europe. That's because they were willing to pay a massive price for peace so they atleast survive.
Japan surrendered unconditionally after Hiroshima and Nagasaki we're devastated by a force never before seen, they surrendered without American troops ever stepping foot on the mainland because they knew they couldn't win against such a force.

Survival is the strongest instinct there is and all animals possess this instinct to either preserve themselves or the species (though I can't speak for the undead). If you are on the verge of wiping an AI player they should bargin everything to live as this is a realistic response to the situation. You don't need a supercomputer with amazing AI to program this, just look at the troops killed vs troops lost and cities gained vs cities lost since the war began then have an algorithm to suggest the amout they should demand/offer based on how well/bad the war is going for them
 
OHHHHH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I CREATED!!!!!????

So after a few days of pondering and playing I realized a good way of getting around the ai system would be to implement a war-score esque system like if you conquer one ai city of five you can demand 5-10 percent total gold, or 3-4 percent total mana for peace, this percent would go up depending on the production of said city, assuming their capital to have the highest increase to eventually all gold or mana for peace, if total conquest, though you would probably just destroy them. and for the non aggression pact the ai would do the same except with your cities say you have 7 cities and 12 units, a +15 gold, +7 mana, and 15 food, and the ai has 4 cities, 6 units, +6 gold, +4 mana, and 18 food, the ai would pay the player some percent of gold or mana, or smaller percent of both for non-agression pact, it may seem like a lot of calculation on the ai's part, but they could probably dumb it down.. Sorry if its complicated, or unimplementable.

btw- if you demand something from AI do they have to pay it if your at war with them?
 
So after a few days of pondering and playing I realized a good way of getting around the ai system would be to implement a war-score esque system like if you conquer one ai city of five you can demand 5-10 percent total gold, or 3-4 percent total mana for peace, this percent would go up depending on the production of said city, assuming their capital to have the highest increase to eventually all gold or mana for peace, if total conquest, though you would probably just destroy them.

Execpt this scales quite horribly. This ties in with the ICS discussion elsewhere and this approach just doesn't work when your opponent has 20+ cities. Look at EU3 and how the warscore is implemented. You could conquer half of the Americas and still not have enough warscore to get even a white peace, if your enemy had spread across the globe. Same here, you'd need to take a lot of cities before you opponent will even consider a cease-fire.

On the other hand, I really don't mind that each war is to the death. Personally I won't suffer any other wizards in MY world! Off with their beards!
 
Seems odd they make so many diplomacy based games if they can't do diplomacy AI...

Would be a shame as a CivV fantasy mod would probably be able to beat Warlock if the AI stays in it's demo state

Oh, and I've forgot CivV, with it's brilliant AI attacking me while being inferior in every respect, and after I've seized all his cities but last one, including the capital, had troops surround the last one and bombard it to 1hp, he was still laughing at my puny army and not willing even to negotiate any kind of peace, though I was willing to pay to keep him around.

This isn't developed by Paradox, and probably neither are most of the games you two are thinking of.
I know. Still, if they don't fix it for that long, it seems it is somewhat problematic to make an AI always assess a situation well enough.

My point was that if you want an authentic real to life human AI you wont get it. Its not that there isnt enough skilled manpower who COULD write the code its that it would be a gigantic waste of processing power when as you just said properly written conditional code works relatively well.

This. But for every conditional-based AI there would be some limitations and situations that make it look dumb. Unless every such situation is barred by the limitations of game itself, but that is really hard to achieve with a game complex enough.
 
On the other hand, I really don't mind that each war is to the death. Personally I won't suffer any other wizards in MY world! Off with their beards!

I do. And I do mind that the devs are not even trying to implement some interesting diplomacy options.
How about some simple trading pact, spell trading and a bit of hate/like/fear calculation, that can't be that complicated.
 
We are talking about Undead, Monsters and Humans here. What Diplomacy would make sense with such factions? It would be like Halflings and Mordor making an Alliance.
Civ 5 and AI should not ever be talked about in the same sentence. AS (Automated Stupidity) makes more sense.

Anyway. Any Diplomacy not involving real humans will always be sub-par and not very engaging. I just came from doing a test round in Fallen Enchantress beta, it has alot of diplomatic options but none of them feels anything like real diplomacy.

Maybe implementing something like the Pride of Nations Crisis System would work?
 
I do. And I do mind that the devs are not even trying to implement some interesting diplomacy options.
How about some simple trading pact, spell trading and a bit of hate/like/fear calculation, that can't be that complicated.

I'll admit I don't really care about a lot of diplomatic options. It just isn't that kind of game. We are one of several warlocks all with one aim - to be the last man (or dragon, or skeleton or etc) standing there isn't a whole lot we should agree on. I like that I am able to secure an uneasy non-agression pact with one neighbour while I deal with another and that's basically it. Once war is declared, there's rarely any going back, and we fight till death. But we'll see what this game evolves into :)

Edit: Oh, and what Featauril said :)
 
There can be more than 3 wizards on one map, so some of them will lead the same races.

The game would be a bit unbalanced then. Maybe they should explore some kind of Allied Wins.

What makes this interesting, is that I just read a thread in the Fallen Enchantress forum on how this game is much more fun, even though it lacks tons of features found in FE. Many of the features in FE feels quite sterile and boring.

I think it is better to have fewer features that work than many without any real effect. Many games make the mistake of introducing skills/items that the AI is incapable of using correctly, Age of Wonders is a prime example of this.

One game that seems to have gotten this right so far, is the stunning Alpha build of Endless Space. The game feels great already.