AI's dumb diplomacy

[S6k6l6v]

I'm playing as Kivean Rus and one of my alliances are with the Byzantines. My relation with them is outstanding and I have one marital tie with them also. Then Byzantium goes and makes an alliance with the Cummans, who then attack me. Then to my surprise the Byzantines brake our alliance and side with the Cumans. My question is why would they do that, me an Byzantine empire share the same religion, outstanding relationship and marital ties, while the Cumans are Islamic and only one turn before their invasion made the alliance(so they can't have really high relation yet). Is this just the AI being dumb, or is there some other criteria the AI looks into when choosing with side to join(like military strength or something)?

[SirRobin]

The game is broken, and the AI's actions are close to being totally random.

[Byg]

Perhaps the Cumans bribed Byz away from you.

[rockman4417]

Actually that sounds like some serious planning on the Cumans' part. They wanted to invade you, but not risk a war with Romans.

[Ichon]

Actually that sounds like some serious planning on the Cumans' part. They wanted to invade you, but not risk a war with Romans.

I agree... you can either take the AI as broken or that it evaluates you the human players as its greatest threat and thus works politically to isolate you and then find allies against you. Not too different than how states worked historically or even work now against the perceived greatest threat. Only time I find it stupid is when a 3 region AI decides to suicidally attack an Empire 10 times its size.

[S6k6l6v]

Perhaps the Cumans bribed Byz away from you.

How can you bribe a faction to break its alliance with another faction

The AI have a set relationship towards each faction from the start so some factions will never get along. Like England and France. And HRE and everyone. I remember Byzantium and Kiev being the same. They both want to be the figure heads of the orthodox church or something I think. And the Kievs attacked Constantinople near the beginning of the game too historically. Its in the descr_strat i think. At the end of the diplomacy section.

Thats cool, so then there is some bigger historical twists to the game, I guess I better examine my other alliances then.

[hpsauce13]

Why will lemmings follow each other over the edge of a huge cliff?

Why will the AI break your alliance for no good reason?


Because they want to die.

The outcome is the same for both (only for one the grim reaper looks like gravity, and for the other he looks like you)

[Tomato_Sandwich]

The AI have a set relationship towards each faction from the start so some factions will never get along. Like England and France. And HRE and everyone. I remember Byzantium and Kiev being the same. They both want to be the figure heads of the orthodox church or something I think. And the Kievs attacked Constantinople near the beginning of the game too historically. Its in the descr_strat i think. At the end of the diplomacy section.

[HolyDevil]

Yeh i had PERFECT relation with the pope and i was allied with them, then the genoese who barely had half of my crosses, attacked me and the pope sided with them....

then after i repel them and go siege their settlement, "cease hostilities", it was the perfect WTF?!?! moment

[Tomato_Sandwich]

Its a bit pooey but the Pope will Always side with Italian factions. makes sense. sort of. If you're a piece of code.

[Alavaria]

Then Byzantium goes and makes an alliance with the Cummans, who then attack me. Then to my surprise the Byzantines brake our alliance and side with the Cumans. My question is why would they do that

It's the AI. I always expect it in particular when I see my allies ally someone I'm directly at war with. This forces a ceasefire, and when I re-attack my enemy? Yeah, my ally breaks with me and then starts sieging me.

It's all old hat by now AI, I know you're gonna do it ...

[delra]

Alt+tab ranting- run for your lives. :-)

My experience with Savage AI VH/VH is very negative so far. AI will randomly blockade my ports causing wars which are completely uncalled for - and in which no land invasion will ever follow. This is a bug because of which I quit M2TW vanilla forever a few years ago. They should either want to fight me and come in full force - or don't want to fight me and leave my ports alone. I can't sign a single freaking alliance because I am at war with 5 dumb AIs who blockaded me and then chickened out and didn't attack on land. Neither AI will sign peace with me, and noone will ally because they think I am being torn apart while in fact I am rapidly gaining ground in all directions. Oh, and their fleets are at the bottom of the sea now so it's not like they could possibly think they can pirate me for free.

Extremely irritating - while I expected Savage to be most sane out of the three AIs I was to choose between. Lusted's always was famed for how calm it is, I think I will switch to this one now, gracul I remember as a crazy powerplayer so I kind of know what to expect from his AI - and I don't really want that kind of fun just yet. :-) I wanted something in between, something close to reality when there's neither constant war nor constant peace... while I got a game-long of pointless state of war with all neighbours because of this darned ports.

[JorisofHolland]

The AI tends to side with the attacking party (which actually makes alliances pointless, I know) instead of the defending. No idea if it's modable.

[k/t]

Lemmings don't actually jump off cliffs.

I started getting the "random port blockade" in the latest version of RR/RC, which I didn't have before. I don't know which AI is to blame.

[Ottheinrich]

Sometimes I think the AI (no matter which one) is set to "kill the player!!111!!". Everytime I am a playing as a faction far away from the baltic, Lithuania always conquers the rebel cities first and than attacks Poland. Everytime I play as a russian faction, Lithuania conquers Mensk and then immidiatly attacks me. If allied to Lithuania (seems only to happen when I am a russian faction), the other russian faction breaks alliance and joins in on the fun.
Alliances seem almost always to break, no matter how good the relation is, or if you are the attacker or the attacked. They are only usefull to prevent a neighbouring faction to attack you without a reason (most of the time).

[Alavaria]

Sometimes I think the AI (no matter which one) is set to "kill the player!!111!!".

I thought it was always like that.

It's a standard expectation for me that I'll eventually be at war with every (living) faction at some point. If only due to the powerful port blockading trick!

[soulson]

This happens to me a lot as well. No matter if I have perfect standings or marriage alliances, the AI will always side with the other computer. Sure the AI has relations VIA the strat file, but these relations change over time based on certain situations such as a faction having too many settlements or just game balancing changes. Not sure there's much you can do than editing the campaign_ai_bd file and changing the diplomacy section so the AI wont ally with your neighbour.

[S6k6l6v]

yeah those random port blockades were really irritating in the vanilla map, haven't ran into this problem in SS tho. Well now that byzz allied with my enemy I allied with theirs, the turks. Surprisingly as I'm slaughtering the Cummans my rep with Byzz had no significant drop, so hopefully byzantines don't decide to invade.

[For England Men]

I read somewhere that CA have admitted that the CAI since RTW is particularly written to want to destroy the player.

Post a screeny as you can as it might be clearer as to why they sided with Cumans could be a border thing or have a look in the ratings and see if the Cumans beat you on any of them.

[Slyspy]

Contrary to a previous poster's experience. I'm using Savage AI and finding it quite reasonable. It still does the old "make peace then attack next turn" thing, but I've had no random port attacks or such like. This has got to do either with playing it on Hard, or because my Faction Leaders are alway high Chiv.