Found a new Super Cheese tactic

This can only be exploited to a point. I've found that if I'm at war, declare peace, cause a war, declare peace repeatedly enough, the AI does at some point catch on, and gets mad, eventually demanding even more to get the peace, and eventually wont ever declare peace and fight to the death. Believe me, I've tried variations of that cheese tactic and found this out the hard way.

SeanB

If the Torians immediately sue for peace instead of meeting their alliance obligation to the Arceans, then their relationship with the Arceans ought to cool while their relationship with the player ought to warm.

In other words, there ought to be an implicit amount of time they should remain at war in order to meet the obligations of their original alliance. If they fail to meet that obligation then there should be political consequences, depending on how severe the 'breach of contract' was. If their relationship with the Arceans cooled as a result of the Torians suing for peace so quickly, then the alliance ought to be dissolved.

forceinfinity: This is a different case. They are *forced* back into war by their alliance, but they never wanted to be at war with me in the first place. I think it's just an oversight in the AI. I did it about 10 times and the terms for peace never changed.

I brought this up about a week ago in one of the bug threads. Forceinfinity, it's not that he's starting a war, the AI ally of the race he's fighting is. As it is now, if you make peace with one part of an alliance but not the rest then the next turn everyone you made peace with will auto-attack you once again. If you are dominant over them then you can once again get them to accept a nasty peace settlement. This will go on as many turns as the war lasts. You can strip every bit of money and tech that a race has this way.

My suggestions for this is if a race is in an alliance, and their ally gets into a war, that race calculates its strength vs. the enemy's, if it is too weak to compete then it breaks the alliance instead of 'helping'. Or a more subtle thing would be for it to calculate its strength based on the strength of all alliance members and make decisions based on that. But that would be trickier to code and could have a lot of far-reaching consequences.

And I agree with Interstellar, if a member of an alliance for some reason has to sue for peace then it should get a cut in it's diplo rating with the other alliance members that continue to fight. Also, it should sit out the rest of the war or at least a certain number of turns to prevent the ridiculous peace, war, peace, war, peace, war, peace, war pingpong game you currently will get.

Hmmm.... The problem with the diplo rating cut is that noone in an alliance will want to be first to accept peace. There has to be some way of either getting peace from the entire alliance at the same time, or saying "this deal is tentative on peace deals with everyone at war with me with an alliance with you," otherwise it just gets icky. I've been in this position as well, the Arceans were allied with the Torians and Altarians, and only the Arceans wanted the war.

I figure have the cut come in after the turn, and not when the actual deal is made. That way you could do each race, hit next turn, and it would know that all accepted peace, or if someone did and left the rest hanging. But you are right, everything is a little more complicated to implement then it first seems.

As has been said, that's old cheese, and has been occasionally reported already.

Simplest answer: When an alliance member, but only one of them, makes peace, they should be forced out of the alliance. They aren't meeting their alliance terms, after all.

But that would mean you need the ability to negotiate with all alliance members at once... so that you/they can negotiate a truce as a unit, and remain in their alliance. And then how do you get them all to pay individually their war reperations? They just split it evenly, or can you specify different tributes per empire?

I've been saying the alliance AI is bad for a long time. Pretty much everything having to do with alliances the AI handles poorly. I believe the bottom line problem is that the AI does not use alliances as a way to win the game. Theis is merely another symptom.

I have found this to be true only on levels below normal.

I believe I have experienced this on higher AI levels before. I managed to peace out the weaker Torians twice before destroying their ally.

Another similar situation is when an AI declares war on you for warring with their trade partner. You can immediately peace out with that fellow and get a bunch of goodies if you are much stronger. Always makes me wonder why they want to do this when they are under no alliance obligation and don't wish to fight.

You could always just not use the tactic.

This cheese tactic is on my list. But for clarification, does this still happen on the higher levels of AI, or do they catch on quicker?

Volin and Ryan: Thanks for clarifying. I misunderstood when I read the post the first time. Thanks for clearing that up for me. You're right though...that is a bit of a cheese tactic.

SeanB

Pop, I agree.
GalCiv is a fantastic game as is. But if it truly wants to be the greates strategy game of all time it should take the diplomacy system out of Europa Universalis II. THAT was a system that actually made sense and was difficult to abuse.

The shear concept of Bad Boy points would put an immediate end to the most abusive diplo cheese tactics.

Hmm, EU2-style Royal Marriages between a human and a Yor? Or maybe a Drengin? Let's *snuggle*, eh? LOL

Bad boy might be useful of course, alternatively make peace last a minimum of 10 turns or get the AI to propose alliance-wide peace treaties.

As an EU (1 and 2) fan, I'll add my support for the Bad Boy implementation!

It happens on higher level AIs too. Another thing I'd like to suggest is that the AI sueing for peace should ask for peace for all the alliance. There is currently no multipartite peace traty available, you have to go through 2 or 3 separate treaties.

Allow seperate peace treaties as it adds more options and flavours. It's easy to demand that the enemy make peace with your allies as part of the bargin. If you make peace and your ally is still at war the alliance should be broken and your ally should be upset with you for abandoning them!

Perhaps a reminder when you submit ... 'what about your allies'


Paul.


~SDC~

CariElf: Yes, as I said in my original post, this happens with the Intelligent AI. I haven't tried Genius yet, but my understanding is that it's not any smarter, just gets some free stuff..

CariElf, I don't think the level of the game matters, because it's not the player that is actually initiating the issue, it's the comp race that's getting forced by the code to redeclare a war they can't handle, and since they can't handle it they immediately accept a peace offering, then the next turn the code forces them to redeclare war again, etc., etc.

Of course, there is a reverse version of this, say you are at war with an alliance that is destroying you and you bribe one of them with lots of stuff to declare peace. They accept, great. Then you go to the next member of the alliance and they won't make the deal. Now you are screwed, because the next turn the one you bribed will redeclare war on you because you are at war with their ally, and now they have all your tech and money as well.

Listening to this topic gave me an idea. If I am winning the war, it would be neat to be able to ask the aliance be broken as conditions for their surrender.

Or to go to the extreme... demand their military spending never exceedes a set limit (% or $ figure).