[0.982] AI War declaration pig pile.

from Elemental Forums


I'm quite enjoying the latest version.  It does feel much more challenging, but my current game ended in an interesting way, and while I am not sure exactly what to do about it, it does feel a little bit broken.

I was playing along, doing prettly well, only having met one AI opponent.  He didn't like me, but we'd done some trading, and nothing had happened yet.  I was trying to ignore him, and just work on my empire building.

One turn I suddenly got 5 messages saying that because I was at war with their friend, various AI nations were declaring war with me.  Each of these messages were of that nature, until the last one, which was the one AI I had seen.  He didn't say anything about his friends, just that he was going to war with me.

Now this was fine, except for a couple of things.  First, his message was last, so I was initially a bit confused about which friend the first five were talking about.

Second, I hadn't met the other five AI's yet, so it felt very strange to get that as my first contact without ever seeing them.

Third, five or six messages in sequence like this felt quite dramatic.

Now, I think what happened is some AI code that says if someone declared war, other nations that are friendly with him/her go to war as well.

Here's my suggestion as to how to make this feel less broken;

First, it shouldn't be a boolean.  There should be a chance each turn of going to war with a friend's enemy in this manner.

Second, it should be with a friend, not just someone the AI is at peace with.  I know that at least one of them wasn't a friend to my attacker, as he declared war on him the next turn.

Third, It shouldn't happen immediatly.  There should be a grace period of at least a few turns before they all start piling on.

As to how this ended my game, well, I wasn't prepared for it, and went down pretty quickly.

6,657 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Same thing happened to me two games in a row.  (2 games with newest build).  This AI behavior makes it almost impossible to have any diplomatic relationship with AI players... no matter how great it is, the one AI that is pissed at me will declare war and every other player on the same side (Kingdom/Empire) follows. (even if we are best of friends with treaties and all that)  The other thing is that all the AIs that declared war have not even seen each other yet (some of them have not seen me), according to diplomacy screens.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

I believe Brad fixed this in 0983 (just came out).

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I noticed something odd in my game as well.  An AI player who I have been buddies with asked suggested we go to war against the current AI leader, I opted to say okay, let's do it.  Then looking at the Kingdom reports my AI buddy docked me 3 points for starting a war

If someone declares war on me and I end up killing off the AI who started it, the other AI players are docking me points for being a warmonger.

obviously they still really need to tweak the diplomacy system in FE

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

"Third, five or six messages in sequence like this felt quite dramatic."

 

How dare you sday something so offensive!!!!!

 

I Cugel Da Clever will will not rest tilll you are exterminated

 

Even then I wil not rest. !!!!

 

Happened to me too

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

In general there is a fairly serious problem with the order of messages popped up. I've had similar with a quest having 3 messages on completion but they popped up in reverse order leading me to be very confused (not helped by the fact the several champion level up messages popped up interleaved with them).

I also think the propensity for the game to pop up a message for one thing and then scroll the underlying map to a different location is awful. This would make my top 5 bug list I'm sure (although to be honest I've probably got a top 15 or 20 list of bugs/ui issues which I regard as serious).

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Yes, I had also reported this - I just reloaded my game using 0.983 and this time only two factions declared war - rather than all 7 - much better now

 

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I had this happen today too. It was very exciting, so say the least, lol.  I'll look for the new version to try.