Major Diplomacy War/Peace Cheese at Intelligent levels

from Stardock Forums
Ok, last night I'm playing a large map with all intelligent AIs, and I find myself militarily superior to the minor races and altarans (who I am slowly conquering), but second militarily (by a little) to the Drengin. The Drengin are, of course, at war with everyone (except me.. I went pure evil and traded with the lil' bastards to keep them friendly ;) )

So here's what I do: The Drengin have *tons* of stuff that I don't, but that I really want. So, I offer to attack the Alexians and Carinoids in return for a trade good plus cash. They go for it. Then, on the very same turn, I go to the Alexians and the Carinoids and extort a tech and cash for peace. I let a turn go by, then return to the Drengin. I offer to attack the Alexians and Carinoids for a trade good and cash, then go offer peace for cash and tech. Then I do it again. I even start getting the Altarans into the mix, since they have some techs that I don't. This continues for some time. I end up with 4 new trade goods, 10 new techs, and many thousands of bcs before the AI decides that it will no longer accept peace treaties. The Drengin never get tired of accepting the same attack offers for big payouts. On consecutive turns. At least once, I did the cycle without clicking off a turn. Still worked.

To the AIs credit, they do catch on eventually. The minor races wouldn't accept a peace offer for less than my entire empire. But it took five or six consecutive cycles. IMHO, that's way, waaaay too much.

Side note: Funniest GalCiv moment yet: The Altarans finally catch on and when I open the diplomacy window, I'm greeted with the message: "Let me guess. You're here to offer peace. Then you'll build up your forces along our borders, attack without warning, and offer peace again? Does that sound about right?" I just about died when I saw that! LOL

Another thing that seemed goofy was that in order to get the Gravity Accelerators from the Altarans, they wanted a planet in addition to the peace treaty. So, I went back to one of the minor systems I had just taken from them, removed the planetary defenses, parked a transport directly adjacent to the system, went back, offered them that planet, got the accelerators, re-invaded the planet, and put the garrison ships back. All in the same turn. It's a subtle AI point, but I wouldn't expect them to accept a planet from a race that is exterminating them if said race has an armada right on top of said planet. ;)

Anyway, I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to fight wars for profit, or extort big dough for peace. I just think that whatever AI safeguards there are against being repeatedly betrayed kick in way, way too late. And there doesn't seem to be any safeguard against continuously paying the human to go to war against the same races over and over again.
1,719 views 45 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
yeah, these kinds of exploits ave been floating around for a while...

three things that are way too exploitable in diplo:

1. player "selling" planets. IMHO this should be removed. but, you still should be able to demand planets and "surrender" a planet when the AI demands tribute.

2. player purchasing ships. again, IMHO too abusable, should be removed. selling ships is okay, as is donating.

3. player "selling" war declarations. as you so beautifully illustrated, it's super-cheesy. again, the game would lose little be removing this feature.

In any case, I generally avoid performing these tactics since they ruin my enjoyment of the game...but i don't like to have to limit my own behaviour. i doubt they'll ever plug *all* the holes in diplomacy. some self-restraint will always be required.

cheers

h
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
How do you sell war declarations on one race to another?
The Political Machine 2024
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Being able to "buy" attacks on other races is pretty important if you plan on conducting things behind the scenes... e.g. if you are playing a high diplomacy/high trade empire and seek to win through other means. The ability for me to surreptitiously "buy" an AI to attack another AI that threaten's me is a pretty cool one, if you ask me.

Likewise, soliciting money for attacks, as stated in the person's example, is racketeering and seems plausible. However, the AI does need to catch on sooner to such behavior... at least at the more intelligent levels.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Can someone explain the keystrokes for selling attacks on one race to another race. Perhaps I'm just dumb and blind but I can't see it intuitively on the race diplomacy screen... :notsure:
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I would think it would better if the AI at intelligent decided *much more quickly* to not forgive you and get wise to you.

~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Oh, click on THEIR attack side and select a race. That's who you want them to attack. Then make 'em an offer until you get green.

~SDC~
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
okay, maybe removing the "selling attacks" feature would be a little harsh. but i agree that it should learn MUCH faster not to trust you. you should only be able to get away with it a 2nd time if a) your relations are friendly or better and/or b) your diplomacy rating is much, much higher.

i stand by #1 and #2 though. there's too many ways to abuse the AI on those.

cheers

h
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree with you, actually.

~SDC~
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I 100% agree with the premise that "intelligent" races are far too slow to catch onto our endless deviousness. While they should not assume we will do these things, if we sue for peace and attack within less than 10-15 turns, then they should never pay us again (they should pay others to attack us if they can vs wasting their money and junk on us). I used this tactic once because it was a very amusing way to declare war (had an ally of the soon-to-be-victim pay me to attack them), but I'd much rather have an AI opponent that will not let me do that.

Hopefully these are tweaks Brad will work on.

~SDC~
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
Not only are "intelligent" A.I to slow to react to abusive "war declaration trades" - they are accepting "war declaration trades" they newer should in the first place.

In my current game there is three superpowers (me, drengins and The Torians) in the game with the others beeing less than minor nuisances.
Drengins was at war with everyone except the Torians while the Torians was at war with only a minor race.
Dengins was to strong for my army so desperate, I tried to convince Torians to attack the drengins. I offered them several thousand of money, 5 tech + 2 star systems but they refused. Then I took back my offer and instead offered to attack the Carinoids in exhange for Torians to attack Drengins and this was acceptable!! :notsure:

...And thats how the Torians comited suicide and the game was spoiled :(
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Elkku,

I've brought up practically the same thing before, but I think my sugegstion got dissed because I'm getting known as a cheesemeister. I think the way you experienced it points out it couldpossibly be a bug in how they evaluate certain values. IMO, this needs to be fixed.

~SDC~
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Dearmad,

Then I can only hope that Frogboy or someone has noticed the problem and is working on it since this is a MAJOR spoiler. Not just a little bug.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
Well i normally dont take much notice of the latest diplomatic cheese posts, i normally just avoid it, but this one i have noticed numerous times in games. Its way too easy to get the other 5 major Civ's to go to war with each other my just offering to attack a minor civ. Ironically you can then just make peace with the minor civ and laugh manically as all the civs start beating the crap outta each other.

~SDC~
Reply #14 from Stardock Forums Top
Also, should the military, econoomic size and number of worlds influence this. I beleive it *should* be a powerful tool, providing the Civ is powerful and a threat to other AI's. Also you should actually have to go to war, not just make peace the same turn,

~SDC~
Reply #15 from Stardock Forums Top
Sounds like the AI is overvaluing atacking a minor civ.

Reply #16 from Stardock Forums Top
"Also you should actually have to go to war, not just make peace the same turn"

That makes some sense. If the player declares war on somebody, a peace treaty shouldn't even be available for a number of turns (long enough that even if you do nothing, the AI will have time to attack and hurt you). Likewise, if the AI declares war on you, it should have NO interest in a peace treaty until it's either achieved it's objective (whatever that is), or suffered significant losses. I've paid off a lot AIs on the same turn they declared war on me... if they just wanted money, they should use extortion; if they go to war, there should actually BE a war.

Dearmad: "I think my sugegstion got dissed because I'm getting known as a cheesemeister."

I think your suggestion "got dissed" because Brad said fixing such exploits was lower on his priority list than fixing outright bugs and omissions; don't give yourself a complex about it. :) Besides, maybe if you stopped using the word cheese, we wouldn't think of you as the cheesemiester. ;)

- Ash

~SDC~
Reply #17 from Stardock Forums Top
Civ 3 gets around this issue by:

--If you agree to attack another civ, you automatically declare war on them (ie these types of agreements are binding).

--Agreements like this have a specified duration.

--If you break the agreement, (either directly or by making peace with the relevent civ) it is viewed as a hostile diplomatic action by the civ you made the agreement with.
Reply #18 from Stardock Forums Top
Here's something similar to do with AIs who are attacking you (works on sub-normal; dunno about higher):

Build up your cultural influence in a sector with 2-3 systems, but leave one without most of the cultural stuff. Trade that system to the AI for peace. Wait until the system rebels against the AI and comes back to your side. When the AI attacks again, perform a holding action until he's ready to make peace for the system again. Lather, rinse, repeat. :)
Reply #19 from Stardock Forums Top
Re: Madine

The 1st is already in place, you do automatically declare war if you sell that declaration to another race.
The 2nd and 3rd sound like a good idea to me though, having an agreement counter behind the scenes where declaring peace after you just sold your hostilities (say within 10 or even 20 turns) would be a hit on your diplo with the race you made the original agreement with. I'd be happy to see this be a high hit in the first 10 turns and then diminish gradually over the next 20 or so.

~SDC~
Reply #20 from Stardock Forums Top
Here's a variation I just saw. All intelligent AI's, and I've gone pure evil. The Altarans got stuck in a corner and were much weaker than me, but attacked anyway since I'm just so evil. The Torians declared war on me to honor their alliance with the Altarans.

That's not the screwy part, of course. The very same turn, I offered to make peace to each race separately. Each agreed to give me loads of tech/cash in return for a peace treaty. For the war they just started this turn. It seems like maybe the AI should do a quick check so that if the conditions are such that it would pay for peace, it wouldn't start a war.
Reply #22 from Stardock Forums Top
Sorry, fixing this stuff isn't going to be a priority. These are self inflicted problems.

We have to put resources into enhancing the game in ways that benefit the most people. For instance, during the entire beta, no one ran into this kind of stuff (obviously). I wish they had since then we could have taken a tougher look at it.

That doesn't mean we won't ever get around to seeing if we can reduce people ruining their own games. IThe diplomacy AI is more than good enough for 99% of the users out there. If not 99.9%. My advice is to ismply not wreck the games. I can assure you, the AI does not get "offended" by you using a cheese tactic. It's on your own game you are harming.

From an AI point of view, we want to focus on enhancing star base tactics, tactical and strategic combat manuevering, making the AI personalities pursue much different technology and social issues.

Once those things have been looked at, we can take a serious look at this sort of thing. If I get time, I'll see if there's something easy that can be done.

However, 1.02 already has updates for much of what has been mentioned. Elkku, it looks like you're playing 1.0. Much of what you mentioned has already been addressed.

~SDC~
Reply #23 from Stardock Forums Top
I'd just like to say that I don't see it as "self ruining." it becomes, because of this sort of imbalance in diplomacy, impossible to tell what is going to do what in the game of diplomacy, so practically everything in diplomacy becomes a ritualistic game of self-limiting. I'm not talking about taking advantage again and again of the of AI, but the first time you offer something to them and they take it and events unfold in a very unbalanced way can ruin a game.

The better the AI is at what Brad wants to improve, the more often, I would imagine, a player might turn to diplomacy in order to keep the playing field alive for him/her self. I guess I never thought of the diplomacy part of the game as a place where I needed to self-impose rules, especially when apperently ready solutions to wieghting the value of trade-items (offerfs to attack, etc) are being offered.

Also, if no one in Beta noticed this, I'm shocked and to me it indicates a particular playing style they all had in that particular culture of playing the game rather than only .1% of players encountering this. You heard and reposnded to the market demand of wnating expanded diplomacy, but that doesn't mean at the expense of making it an integral aprt of the game, IMHO.

I'm finding more and more this is making me set the game aside. Especially, again, since pretty simple solutions could stop it and place it more in a balanced perspective:

1: AI won't do the peace/war/peace cycle as readily as it curently does

2: AI devalues your offers to attack military wimps as only *you* stand to gain anything by that act, so why should the AI value it. In fact when this offer comes up you could have them respond: "Only you will gain anything by attacking the ___, you must think I'm pretty stupid to value that at all. Try attacking the (current game leaders if not player). I might go for that."

~SDC~
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
I'm sorry to hear that. But at the end of the day, games are products. We can't let 1% of the poeple determine the development priorities. Especially when it is preventable. And it's not like you're beating the game at the highest level, even with this. Play on a gigantic galaxy with the AI set to genius or incredible and see how things work out.

As I mentioned, 1.02 has a lot of updates to the diplomacy AI (did you download http://www.stardock.com/temp/galciv.zip) to see if it resolves the "cheese" you ran into?

~SDC~
Reply #25 from Stardock Forums Top
The Genius level AI, AFAIK, is only an up to it's resources and abilities- which would only make me turn more strongly to trying to diplomat it or out-tech it so I can have a fair shot at building up my economy. Unless Genius turns on more AI features (which should be dropped down to Intelligent level, I would think), I'm failing to see the point. There are techs in the game with +10 to my diplo skills for a reason, right? I thought this was a valid tool and piece of the game on equal footing to others avenues of approach.

It isn't, for me, about 1% demanding the 99% to move. It's about offering a clean, simple solution that would stop the problem in its tracks and that is, for a reason I can't surmise beyond that I'm too small a voice in the crowd, put aside.

Brad, I'm not trying insult you or this game, or the intense effort that went into it to get it to be so good. I'm beginning to feel that that's what your taking away from my posts. I'm sorry for that. Please try to see my two offered solutions above as the only main thrust of my previous post.

I'll d/l this version and try it, it would be nice to know what generally got changed in this build.

~SDC~