Diplomacy AI needs big time work

Sorry but the AI coders have failed us as loyal fans. I am playing Russia in the 1805 campaign and of course I start allied to Austria. France takes Prague from Austria, Russia takes it back and then since I don’t want Prague I offer it back to Austria for nothing in exchange (as a gift) and Austria refuses to take Prague back! How could they not think of an ally returning a core province? How can a nation refuse the return of a core province from an ally in time of war? How could the AI coders not code a priority for a core province? It is really disapointing that they did not even basic diplomatic AI correct.

how much unrest was there in prague? if both the lower and upper classes are not happy, the AI will not accept the region without some other incentive (cash, technology, etc). i don't think that this is a bug, rather that the AI does not want to spend the resources required to bring the region back to normal happiness.

however there are other aspects of diplomacy that irk me. i was playing a russia campaign as well, and was allied with great britan against the french. after moving an army across austria, i took a french-controlled region in central europe. the next turn, GB decided in their infinite wisdom to declare war on me. CAI does not seem to have the capability to really work as a 'coalition' and fight a coordinated war.

Spain offered peace to me as Great Britain, after I had taken all of their provinces bar one.

I counter offered that they were to give me 3000 pounds (or whatever you will), which was all they had and they were to break their alliance with France.

They did so rather begrudingly

Did you just made a duplicate thread after the last one got locked?

Not to mention they already answered you in the previous thread. Just add some money with it and the AI will take it. Or repair everything and deal with the unrest first.

Indeed, here is the other one:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=352501

but of what ever unknown reason this other one is on the TWC cementry and so in my eyes ok to write again by the OP

Money is the key to diplomacy. Just offer enough of it and you get what you want.

Originally Posted by Mandelus

Indeed, here is the other one:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=352501

but of what ever unknown reason this other one is on the TWC cementry and so in my eyes ok to write again by the OP

I think you will find it was the name calling (absolute morons) that caused it to get locked etc,
So why you felt the need to bring it back is beyond me

The chosen words which are without any doubt wrong like those "morons" which is at least an insulting because being in anger or kidding doesn't eliminate the true core of points of critics which were named here.
Ok?

i agree the AI has always been horrible in TW games but i think napoleon ai is better than rome or med ai

i usually just give them like 500 cash

Yes the prior post was removed because i used insulting language. Broke the rule about sending a letter/e-mail ect. in anger.

I posted again because unlike this post, I did not get any feed back before it was removed.

Thanks for the comments about unrest...that must be the case.

Giving $500 may "solve" the issue but to me that is more proof of the problem.

I guess an argument can be made against taking back a provence with unrest....but no goverment in the real world, nor most games (AI should try to pass for real inteligence) would refuse back a core/national provence because it was subject to unrest or economic distruction. Again that indicates IMHO bad coding...

I am as critical as anyone of CA, but if they could design an AI that acted like real historical governments then they'd all be much more gainfully employed building Skynet and we'd all be counting down to Judgement Day.

The AI also has to contend with players who emphatically don't behave like real governments: if you let them ignore the state of a province then that is just a license for us to loot, demolish everything and hand it back before it revolts.

What they have given us is not perfect but its hardly the work of 'morons'.

And if you are going to bandy words like that about you should at least be able to spell words like 'province' or 'intelligence' or 'destruction' that are key to your whole argument...

And before they close this thread remember that most of the major governments of Europe in this era were in fact headed by inbred hereditary monarchs who were at best extraordinarily stupid (Louis XVI, Francis I, Frederick William III, George IV, Ferdinand of the Two Sicilies, Gustavus IV, Charles IV and Ferdinand VII) and at worst certifiable lunatics (George III, Gustavus III, Paul I and Alexander I).

The more competent ones (Frederick and Catherine the Great, Joseph and Leopold of Austria, Charles III of Spain) all wisely chose to die just before the revolutionary wars really got going.

Take Napoleon and his clan out of the list and the average IQ of the crowned heads of Europe would have probably halved.

And historically both the Prussian and Spanish royal families did turn down peace deals that would have given them back provinces heavily plundered by the French occupiers in exchange for betraying their allies and accepting what in NTW terms would be protectorate status.

Napoleon himself - perhaps the greatest military genius in history - turned down two peace offers that would have left him in control of France to fight on against increasingly hopeless odds in 1813-14: at least partly because it would have been dishonourable to abandon his former allies and subjects in Germany and Italy to the misrule of the Habsburgs and Bourbons and Romanovs and Hohenzollerns.

So perhaps what you see as moronic AI design reflects at least some of the realities of Napoleonic politics (absolute monarchs sometimes putting their sense of personal honour above their own and their subjects best interests) all too well.

Originally Posted by Clodius

...at worst certifiable lunatics (George III, Gustavus III, Paul I and Alexander I).

I'm sorry, but to call Alexander I a lunatic is kind of preposterous. I'm aware that Paul was a little crazy, but I've read that Alexander was a good leader who tried to institute some very good reforms, as well as rid Russia of serfdom(But the aristocrats would have none of it.) What info have you read up on??

Will & Ariel Durant
Age of Napoleon(The Story of Civilization, Vol. 11)
MJF Books(July 1997)
http://www.amazon.com/Age-Napoleon-S.../dp/1567310222

Originally Posted by Unteroffizier Rizz

I'm sorry, but to call Alexander I a lunatic is kind of preposterous. I'm aware that Paul was a little crazy, but I've read that Alexander was a good leader who tried to institute some very good reforms, as well as rid Russia of serfdom(But the aristocrats would have none of it.) What info have you read up on??

Various books.

I will however accept that in Russia the bar is set very high indeed to qualify as a truly mad autocrat.

His reformist tendencies were so feeble that despite being an absolute autocrat he gave them up at the first glimmer of opposition and ended up as the sworn enemy of liberalism in all its forms.

How certifiable Alexander I was depends on how you rate his increasingly fanatical obsession with a spiritualist Christian cult.

As the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica puts it in its inimitably Edwardian style:

'Another element in his character discovered itself when in 1801 he mounted the throne over the body of his murdered father: a mystic melancholy liable at any moment to issue in extravagant action....The campaign of 1812 was the turning-point of Alexander's life; and its horrors, for which his sensitive nature felt much of the responsibility, overset still more a mind never too well balanced. At the burning of Moscow, he declared afterwards, his own soul had found illumination, and he had realized once for all the divine revelation to him of his mission as the peacemaker of Europe. He tried to calm the unrest of his conscience by correspondence with the leaders of the evangelical revival on the continent, and sought for omens and supernatural guidance in texts and passages of scripture. It was not, however, according to his own account, till he met the Baroness de Kriidener - a religious adventuress who made the conversion of princes her special mission - at Basel, in the autumn of 1813, that his soul found peace. From this time a mystic pietism became the avowed force of his political, as of his private actions. Madame de Kriidener, and her colleague, the evangelist Empaytaz, became the confidants of the emperor's most secret thoughts; and during the campaign that ended in the occupation of Paris the imperial prayer-meetings were the oracle on whose revelations hung the fate of the world'.

His mental state at the end was unstable enough for rumours to quickly spread that he'd either retired to become a hermit or joined the longish list of Russian despots who had been assassinated by their own courtiers as too deranged even to rule Russia.

Speaking as an old fashioned anti-clerical republican he certainly sounds bonkers to me - but your mileage may vary.

Clodius,

You have made many good points...I should re-read my copy of Royal Babylon by Karl Shaw!

To sum up: the AI is no dumber, irratic nor illogical than the inbred lunatics on Napolionic Royalty.

It's difficult to argue with that!

oh god diplomacy AI sucks !!!
i took austria AND bohemia from austrian empire ( playing as france ) and offered them back since i dont want them , but it refuses !! how can AUSTRIAN empire refuse to take AUSTRIA back ? you might now say give them money or technology but im NOT giving them money to take back their lands ...

As I stated in your previous thread on this topic:
Using peaceful occupation still means that in small cities the main building will be damaged (probably by the previous battle between the defenders and the attackers) and in large cities it can vary between 2 and 3 damaged buildings. The AI do not want to pay for the repairment or deal with the unrest.

I know that he was quite the religious fanatic and often called his army's advance to the West, "The Crusade against Napoleon "The Atheist"". I didn't read anything about that, but interesting nonetheless. I know that George III was really bad in his later years. Do any of these monarchs have these 'insanities' in-game?? Umm....One final question, how bad was the inbreeding in royal families of the time? Do you know?

FYI this is whole article from the most recent Britannica (or at least the pasteable text)

Early life.

Aleksandr Pavlovich was the first child of Grand Duke Pavel Petrovich (later Paul I) and Grand Duchess Maria Fyodorovna, a princess of Württemberg-Montbéliard. His grandmother, the reigning empress Catherine II (the Great), took him from his parents and raised him herself to prepare him to succeed her. She was determined to disinherit her own son, Pavel, who repelled her by his instability.

A friend and disciple of the philosophers of the French Enlightenment, Catherine invited Denis Diderot, the encyclopaedist, to become Alexander's private tutor. When he declined, she chose Frédéric-César La Harpe, a Swiss citizen, a republican by conviction, and an excellent educator. He inspired deep affection in his pupil and permanently shaped his flexible and open mind.

As an adolescent, Alexander was allowed to visit his father at Gatchina, on the outskirts of St. Petersburg, away from the court. There, Pavel had created a ridiculous little kingdom where he devoted himself to military exercises and parades. Alexander received his military training there under the direction of a tough and rigid officer, Aleksey Arakcheyev, who was faithfully attached to him and whom Alexander loved throughout his life.

Alexander's education was not continued after he was 16, when his grandmother married him to Princess Louise of Baden-Durlach, who was 14, in 1793. The precocious marriage had been arranged to guarantee descendants to the Romanov dynasty, and it was unhappy from the beginning. The sweet and charming girl who became Yelisaveta Alekseyevna was loved by everyone except her husband.

Catherine had already written the manifesto that deprived her son of his rights and designated her grandson as the heir to the throne, when she died suddenly on Nov. 17 (Nov. 6, O.S.), 1796. Alexander, who knew of it, did not dare to disclose the manifesto, and Pavel became emperor.

Ascent to the throne.

Paul I's reign was a dark period for Russia. The monarch's tyrannical and bizarre behaviour led to a plot against him by certain nobles and military men, and he was assassinated during the night of March 23 (March 11, O.S.), 1801. Alexander became tsar the next day. The plotters had let him in on the secret, assuring him they would not kill his father but would only demand his abdication. Alexander believed them or, at least, wished to believe that all would go well.

After the darkness into which Paul had plunged Russia, Alexander appeared to his subjects as a radiant dawn. He was handsome, strong, pleasant, humane, and full of enthusiasm. He wanted his reign to be a happy one and dreamed of great and necessary reforms. With four friends, who were of noble families but motivated by liberal ideas—Prince Adam Czartoryski, Count Pavel Stroganov, Count Viktor Kochubey, and Nikolay Novosiltsev—he formed the Private Committee (Neglasny Komitet). Its avowed purpose was to frame “good laws, which are the source of the well-being of the Nation.”

Alexander and his close advisers corrected many of the injustices of the preceding reign and made many administrative improvements. Their principal achievement was the initiation of a vast plan for public education, which involved the formation of many schools of different types, institutions for training teachers, and the founding of three new universities. Nevertheless, despite the humanitarian ideas inculcated in him by La Harpe and despite his own wish to make his people happy, Alexander lacked the energy necessary to carry out the most urgent reform, the abolition of serfdom. The institution of serfdom was, in the Tsar's own words, “a degradation” that kept Russia in a disastrously backward state. But to liberate the serfs, who composed three-quarters of the population, would arouse the hostility of their noble masters, who did not want to lose the slaves on whom their wealth and comfort depended. Serfdom was a continuing burden on the Russians. It prevented modernization of the country, which was at least a century behind the rest of Europe.

Out of a sincere desire to innovate, Alexander considered a constitution and “the limitation of the autocracy,” but he recoiled before the danger of imposing sudden change on a nobility that rejected it. Moreover, he was a visionary who could not transform his dreams into reality. Because of his unstable personality, he would become intoxicated by the notion of grand projects, while balking at carrying them out. Finally, the “Western” theoretical education of Alexander and his young friends had not prepared them for gaining a clear vision of the realities of Russian life.

Early foreign policy.

Displaying an astonishing inconstancy, Alexander abandoned his internal reforms to devote himself to foreign policy, to which he would commit the major portion of his reign. Sensitive to fluctuations in continental politics, he was a “European” who hoped for peace and unity. He felt that he was called to be a mediator, like his grandmother, who had been called the “Arbiter of Europe.”

As soon as he came to power, Alexander resealed an alliance with England that had been broken by Paul I. He nonetheless maintained good relations with France in the hope of “moderating” Bonaparte by restraining his spirit of conquest. A feeling of chivalry attached Alexander to the king of Prussia, Frederick William III, and to Queen Louisa, and a treaty of friendship was signed with Prussia. Later, he got on good terms with Austria. His idealism persuaded him that these alliances would lead to a European federation.

Napoleon had other ideas. His territorial encroachments, desire for world hegemony, and his coronation in 1804 as emperor forced Alexander to declare war against him. Assuming the role of commander in chief, he relied on the Austrian generals and scorned the counsel of the Russian general Prince Kutuzov, a shrewd strategist. The Russians and Austrians were defeated at Austerlitz, in Moravia, on Dec. 2, 1805, and the emperor Francis II was forced to sign the peace treaty, since his territory was occupied by the enemy. Russia remained intact behind its frontiers. Moreover, Napoleon wanted to spare the Tsar; he hoped to gain his friendship and to divide the world with him. Such a notion did not occur to Alexander, who wanted revenge.

In 1806 Napoleon defeated Prussia at Jena and Auerstädt. Despite the warnings of both his mother and his advisers, the Tsar rushed to the aid of his friend. The battles were fought in east Prussia. After a partial success at Eylau, the Russian Army, under General Bennigsen, was decimated at Friedland, on June 14, 1807. Then occurred the meeting (June 25) of the two emperors on a raft in the middle of the Niemen off Tilsit (now Sovetsk). The sequel of these events demonstrates that, in the course of the Tilsit interview, it was the Tsar of Russia who deceived the Emperor of the French. Seeking to gain time he used his charm to play the admiring friend. He accepted all the victor's conditions, promising to break with England, to adhere to the Continental System set up by Napoleon to isolate and weaken Great Britain, and to recognize the creation of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, formed from the part of Poland given to Prussia during the Partition of 1795. In “recompense” Napoleon gave Alexander liberty to expand at the expense of Sweden and Turkey.

From Tilsit to the 1812 invasion.

Most Russians were angered and humiliated by the Tilsit Alliance; they thought that breaking off trade with England would inevitably create a disastrous economic situation, but Alexander kept his plans secret and bided his time. He reorganized and strengthened his armies with the competent aid of Arakcheyev, the instructor from Gatchina who had become his indispensable colleague. Meanwhile, the monarch's popularity dropped; all levels of the population accused him of having uselessly sacrificed Russian blood and of ruining the country.

Alexander once again turned his attention to internal reforms. He placed responsibility for them on a remarkable legal writer, Mikhail Mikhaylovich Speransky. Of modest origins, Speransky's talent caused him to rise rapidly. He conceived a vast plan for total reorganization of Russian legal structures and authored a complete collection and a systematically coordinated digest of Russian laws. Only a very small part of his great plan was applied, for once again Alexander withdrew from any practical fulfillment, partly because foreign events distracted him from rebuilding his empire on new foundations.

Despite the strong Russian reaction against France, the Tsar again met Napoleon, at Erfurt in Saxony, in 1808, where he showed himself to have become distant from his Tilsit ally. When a new war broke out between France and Austria in 1809, Alexander, despite his commitments, did not intervene in Napoleon's behalf, contenting himself with feigning a military advance. Napoleon reproached the Tsar for trading with England under cover of neutral vessels and for refusing him the hand of his sister, the grand duchess Anna Pavlovna. For his part Alexander tried in vain to obtain from Napoleon a commitment not to create an independent Kingdom of Poland. When Napoleon annexed the German territories on the Baltic, including the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, a fief of the Tsar's brother-inlaw, Alexander protested against what he considered a personal offense.

All of this was a pretext for military preparations on both sides. A violent shift of opinion against Napoleon appeared in Russia. The hostility toward France among the court compelled Alexander to exile his legal adviser, Speransky, an admirer of Napoleon and his Code. Changing his opinions yet again, the Tsar adopted the reactionary ideas of a patriotic group dominated by his favourite sister, the grand duchess Yekaterina Pavlovna. He judged that, under the conditions then prevailing, Russia had best keep its traditional institutions.

The defeat of Napoleon.

Napoleon and his Grand Army of 600,000 men invaded Russia on June 24, 1812. The conflict that ensued was justly called the Patriotic War by the Russians; in it, the strong resistance and outstanding endurance of an entire people were displayed. The war transformed Alexander, suffusing him with energy and determination. The French advanced as rapidly as the Russians retreated, drawing them away from their bases. Napoleon thought that, once Moscow was taken, the Tsar would capitulate. But after the bloody Battle of Borodino, Napoleon entered a largely deserted Moscow, which was soon nearly destroyed by fire. The conqueror had to camp in a ruined city where he could not remain, and Alexander did not sue for peace. The Tsar, meanwhile, under pressure of public opinion, had named Kutuzov, whom he detested, supreme commander. The old warrior, through brilliant strategy and with the aid of heroic partisans, pursued the enemy and drove him from the country. The retreat from Russia, combined with Napoleon's reverses in Spain, precipitated his downfall.

Alexander had declared, “Napoleon or I: from now on we cannot reign together!” He said that the burning of Moscow had “illuminated his soul.” He called Europe to arms, to rescue the people who had been enslaved by Napoleon's conquests. His enthusiasm, perseverance, and steadfast determination to triumph aroused the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria, and the enheartened allies were victorious at Leipzig in October 1813. This “Battle of Nations” could have been decisive, but Alexander wanted no peace until he reached Paris. He entered Paris triumphantly in March 1814. Napoleon abdicated, and the Tsar reluctantly accepted the restoration of the Bourbons, for whom he had little esteem, and imposed a constitutional charter on the new ruler, Louis XVIII. Alexander showed his generosity toward France, alleviating its condition as a defeated country and protesting that he had made war on Napoleon and not on the French people.

He had become the most powerful sovereign in Europe and the arbiter of its destinies, as he had wished. He inspired the convening of the greatest international congress in history in Vienna, in the autumn of 1814. It was a time of sumptuous feasts and also of diplomatic intrigues and bitter quarrels. The Tsar's allies, whom he had saved, now feared his power and opposed the annexation of Poland to Russia. It was his only claim in reward for what he had done, and he was determined to achieve it.

When Napoleon returned from his exile in Elba and regained the throne, the war resumed, ending with his final defeat by the allies at Waterloo on June 18, 1815. Again the victorious sovereigns met in Paris to frame a peace treaty, and once again Alexander intervened on behalf of France.

The final decade.

This period marked a turning point for the Tsar. Since the invasion of his country, he had become religious; he read the Bible daily and prayed often. It was his frequent visits with the pietistic visionary Barbara Juliane Krüdener in Paris that turned him into a mystic. She considered herself a prophetess sent to the Tsar by God, and, if her personal influence was of brief duration, Alexander nevertheless retained his newly found evangelical fervour and came to profess a nondogmatic “universal religion” strongly influenced by Quaker and Moravian beliefs.

Alexander obtained Poland, set it up as a kingdom with himself as king, and gave it a constitution, declaring his attachment to “free institutions” and his desire to “extend them throughout all the countries dependent on him.” These words awakened great hopes in Russia, but, when the Tsar returned home after a long absence, he was no longer thinking of reform. He devoted his entire attention to the Russian Bible Society and to an unfortunate innovation, the military colonies, by which he attempted to settle soldiers and their families on the land so that they might enjoy more stable lives. These ill-conceived colonies brought great suffering to Russian soldiers and peasants alike.

After the Second Treaty of Paris, Alexander I, inspired by piety, formed the Holy Alliance, which was supposed to bring about a peace based on Christian love to the monarchs and peoples of Europe. It is possible to see in the alliance the beginnings of a European federation, but it would have been a federation with ecumenical, rather than political, foundations.

The idealistic Tsar's vision came to a sad end, for the alliance became a league of monarchs against their peoples. Its members—following up the congress with additional meetings at Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach (Ljubljana), and Verona—revealed themselves as the champions of despotism and the defenders of an order maintained by arms. When a series of uprisings against despotic regimes in Italy and Spain broke out, the “holy allies” responded with bloody repression. Alexander himself was badly shaken by the mutiny of his Semyonovsky regiment and thought he detected the presence of revolutionary radicalism.

This marked the end of his liberal dreams, for, from then on, all revolt appeared to him as a rebellion against God. He shocked Russia by refusing to support the Greeks, his coreligionists, when they rose against Turkish tyranny, maintaining they were rebels like any others. The Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, to whom the Tsar abandoned the conduct of European affairs, shamelessly exploited Alexander's state of mind.

After his return to Russia, he left everything in Arakcheyev's hands. For Alexander, it was a period of lassitude, discouragement, and dark thoughts. For Russia, it was a period of reaction, obscurantism, and struggle against real and imagined subversion. Alexander thought he saw “the reign of Satan” everywhere. In opposition, secret societies spread, composed of young men, mostly from the military, who sought to regenerate and liberalize the country. Plots were made. Alexander was warned of them, but he refused to act decisively. His crown weighed heavily on him, and he did not hide from his family and close friends his desire to abdicate.

The Empress was ill, and Alexander decided to take her to Taganrog, on the Azov Sea. This dismal, windy townlet was a strange watering place. The royal pair, however, who had been so long estranged, enjoyed a calm happiness there. Soon after, during a tour of inspection in the Crimea, Alexander contracted pneumonia or malaria and died on his return to Taganrog.

The Tsar's sudden death, his mysticism, and the bewilderment and the blunders of his entourage all went into the creation of the legend of his “departure” to a Siberian retreat. The refusal to open the Tsar's coffin after his death has only served to deepen the mystery.

END QUOTE

Still sounds like a loony to me...

Started a long post on Bourbon and Habsburg inbreeding including links to recent articles in medical journals but lost it when Vista decided to run an automatic update.

The shortish answer would be that the Bourbon and Habsburg catholic dynasties were inbred with each other to the point of spawning at least one 'lock him or her away in the tower and hide the key' prince, infante or archduke in every royal litter.

Even the literally more presentable ones tended to be hideously ugly with their enormous Bourbon noses and malformed Habsburg chins (check out Goyas portraits of the Spanish Bourbons - and remember that these were the pretty ones who weren't locked away somewhere - one unfortunate infanta was so ghastly even Goya with his strict insistence on painting his subjects warts and all had to order her to turn her face to the wall).

http://www.lib-art.com/imgpainting/3...-lucientes.jpg

(the younger and normal-ish looking members of this family were generally held to bear a remarkable resemblance to Queen Maria Luisa's lover Godoy - so may not have been real Bourbons at all)

Having said this the Habsburgs at least produced a string of intelligent emperors and archdukes in Joseph, Leopold and Charles - however they were the exception rather than the rule.

The Bourbons however were as bizarre a collection of imbeciles, psychopaths and morons as you could find anywhere outside of a horror movie like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Hills Have Eyes - the only ones with any real intelligence were the Orleans branch who embraced the Revolution and eventually produced King Louis Phillippe.

The protestant dynasties were rather less inbred - if only because there were many more German princely families to choose spouses from.

FWIW George III's madness seems to have been porphyria - which is a genetic condition but seems to have stopped at him.

The genetics of the Romanovs were all rather skewed by Catherine the Great's inability to stop shagging handsome guardsmen - so who knows where Paul and Alexander inherited their defects from.

The Hohenzollerns were decidedly odd but AFAIK most were at least sane by the elastic standards applied to royalty at the time...