Just so you know, even though I've been saying I can't be bothered fixing the AI, I'm looking into the one section as I see as needs work. Diplomacy, and it's prioritys. So last night I ran some experiments.

1 - I changed the prioritys on sending and receiving certain diplomatic events (namely pacts and alliances).
2 - I set the regard bonus amount for each turn at peace/pact/alliance a little higher.
3 - I changed a couple of the response priorities as well.
4 - I fiddled with roads to make them more 'attractive' bonus wise for the AI, and added roads to the lists of improvements to build for all categories (growth, production, etc).
5 - As an expansion on diplomacy-war, I made the ATTACK and SIEGE goals almost irrisitable to the AI.

Here's what happened. Remembering that at this point I'm working on extreme conditions and will narrow down to something balanced.

Setup a mid-size planet with 8 civs on impossible. I cheated and gave each civ advance: cannons (and everything below it added in auto), 10000 PW and 20000 gold. I also gave each civ 4 settlers. Basically, I wanted it to be a bit further on than a beginning game. Myself as a player did nothing but build defense units (keeping 6 in my city at all times, disbanding excess). I didn't improve or anything. I quickly ran through 50 turns. Turning off FOW I saw:

1 - The AI had spread all round the globe.
2 - The AI had built roads EVERYWHERE! It had gone nuts with them. I even saw a roman city in the centre of 6 cities with double roads to each city. Even roads going to nowhere.
3 - Units flowed down these roads comfortably. There was no congestion of stacks, no blockages or whatever. Just stacks moving comfortable to where they were going without hindrance.

I took a look at the diplomacy of every civ. 3 civs were fighting an all-in war (with stacks of cannon/riflemen on the borders). But the interesting thing was that these three civs had built roads to this triple-border area and had connected. Therefore, battles were occuring between AI stacks. 2 civs had research pacts with each other, one of them having a normal pact with civ number 8 as well. Civ number 7 was on an island all by itself, and only had a couple of contacts, but couldn't do anything as it hadn't got diplos to them yet. I kept the turns rolling. I noticed:

1 - The AI would declare war, fight an intesive battle with someone, then after a while when one sues for peace the war ends. The wars were short and bloody. I saw one civ send three stacks of 6-8 units at another civ at the one time. When peace reigned between two civs, the regard went up quickly till the next war (or sometimes turned into a pact).
2 - During peace, the AI built roads like nuts for infrustructure. During war, it built roads near the frontier (reminding myself to add forts to the improve lists as well) thus making unit movement good.
3 - The diplomats of the AI civs actually interacted. Admittedly it was usually an extreme (refuse a pact and they declared war) but it was something.

Maybe there is life in there afterall. Will go back to moding tonight.

But here's an example of what I did in diplomacy.txt

The original:

ProposalElement {
Proposal PROPOSAL_TREATY_ALLIANCE
SendPriority 100
AcceptPriority 110
RejectPriority 100
SenderRegardResult 200
ReceiverRegardResult 200
ViolationRegardCost -100
ViolationTrustCost -30
}

The moded:

ProposalElement {
Proposal PROPOSAL_TREATY_ALLIANCE
SendPriority 200
AcceptPriority 200
RejectPriority 50
SenderRegardResult 250
ReceiverRegardResult 250
ViolationRegardCost -300
ViolationTrustCost -50
}

As I said, an extreme. But the increased priorities made the AI consider them. By increasing accept priority to the same, it makes the AI accept more alliance requests, as lowering reject makes it not want to reject it. The violation costs make the AI want to hold onto it a little longer. For example, with a -50 trust, by violating an alliance, the other party is going to take a LONG LONG time before it trusts the violator again. More in line to how I think.

I'll try and fine-tune the diplo a bit more tonight and let you know tomorrow.

- They requested 200 gold in a haughty tone.
- I refused.
- They threatened war.
- I still refused.
- They declared war.

After declaring war, they sent a couple of stacks at me, which I brushed off and they requested a cease-fire.

This is the weekends goals:

1 - Make the AI build diplos.
2 - Make the AI pursue diplo functions as per their government (communist with other communist, repub with other repubs, etc) Birds of a feather flock together basically.
3 - Make the AI pursue diplo functions based on their personality. Eg. Militarilist leaders pursue demands/threats. Scientists pursue advances/research pacts. Etc.

Keep the ideas flowing.

- Name change to Diplomod 2.1.
- Made it generic, should work with any other mods, not just frenzy AI.
- Supports frenzy AI 1.02 (just a little change of the script is needed)
- Cleaner and meaner.

Edit: I've found the problem. I used a "Consider" statement when I should've used a "Change" statement. Will fix for version 2.3

The new design for your website is substantially better.

BTW, expect v2.3 (maybe v3.0 if I re-write the lot) after the weekend. I'm starting to code the full AI diplo-handling routines. In previous versions I left it to the program to handle the considerations, but now I've got the mod-skeleton I'm going to add them in.

The AI diplo-handling routines will be the ones that look at the current position and force a proposal/response based on that analysis.

EG. Player[a] looks at player[b] and says "Hmm, nice border-city. I'll extort that." Player[a] sends player[b] a request_give_city. Player[b] looks at the proposal and says "Hang on a second, he receives THIS bonus, and I receive THIS bonus. My bonus is less so I'll counter-request." Player[b] sends player[a] a counter-request for GOLD equalling value of CITY. Player[a] looks at player[b] and says "Hmmm...... I don't have much gold left so NO SALE!" and refuses counter-proposal. BTW, I got this routine running. It seemed like the easiest to do. Obviously, if player[b] receives a 'gift' proposal it's gunna say "Cool! Free stuff!" and accept.

quote: Originally posted by Dale on 01-15-2001 07:59 PM I've found the problem. I used a "Consider" statement when I should've used a "Change" statement. Will fix for version 2.3

Could you please let us know the bugfix for this i.e. where we need to replace the "consider" statement with the "change" statement ? I feel I can change this on my own in the 2.2 version (so no publishing of the bugfix version necessary) but I would need to know where....

In SMAC you could cripple the AI by giving faction A a city of yours that is about to be overrun by faction B. Faction B is going to take that city, even if they are allied with faction A. You could keep doing this and always keep everyone fighting.

If it is possible, I would suggest that the AI consider the diplomatic status outcome for accepting a free city. If the sender is at war with a faction that shares a border with the gift city, then the AI should probably turn down the free city offer.

The AI wasn't changing it's diplomatic strategy. It considered it but didn't change it. Therefore, in the 'BeginTurn' routine you need to change all the ConsiderDiplomaticState's to ChangeDiplomaticState.

Kinjiru:

At lunch I drew up some flowcharts to map the flow of diplomatic proposals and what to check (on paper of course). Pity I got beetroot juice all over it. Anyways, I thought of just that problem you mentioned. I figure it could be overcome if CityToExtort is within 10 squares of OwnCity which would make the city a border-city. That way, at least it has a fighting chance of getting defense there quickly. If you take into account the reality of supply problems, you don't want to accept a city that is too far from your borders, or on another island totally. I think this simple measure could simulate that. Any suggestions anyone?

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

quote: Originally posted by Dale on 01-16-2001 09:32 PM Therefore, in the 'BeginTurn' routine you need to change all the ConsiderDiplomaticState's to ChangeDiplomaticState.

Thanks a lot, Dale! I did exactly that (in the 'BeginTurn' routine, changed from 'ConsiderDiplomaticState to ChangeDiplomaticState in total 3 times), however still I can get each and every city I request from others (independent from the tonality of my request).

Did I miss something ?

So question for you guys:

Do ya want me to bug-fix or continue till I get a v3.0 alpha for you to play with?

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

I don't know if this is a bug in the game or in your mod cause I never tried exhanging advances for gold with the AI before.

Maybe it is just my version or something so I would like to have it confirmed. Otherwise I will have to reinstall the game/mod.

Keep up the good work. Looking forward to v. 3.0

DIP_NumOfPlayers = Preference("NumPlayers") + 5;

TO

DIP_NumOfPlayers = Preference("NumPlayers");

fixed the problem. Of course, if you're in a saved game you need to reload SLIC (either through the chat dialog or the cheat menu).

Just on version 3.0, I had an interesting test last night. Started a hard - small map game (so contact is made quickly). Found the Greeks about turn 5. They immediately demanded my capital. Over the next ten turns they demanded my capital 3 times, and on the last one threatened war. I rejected all of them, they declared war and sent their army at me (which consisted of a hoplite and a warrior). He beat me as I only had a warrior in my captial. The other was getting ruins. This was all within 30 turns. So how's that folks? I just don't know if it was an isolated incident.

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

quote: Originally posted by Changmai Beagle on 01-18-2001 08:16 PM I'll probably wait until version 3.0 so that's my vote. (But just in case - in which files would I change the numplayers and the considerdiplo.... statements?)

diplomod.slc

quote: P.S Thanks for all the effort. Sounds good and I look forward.

No problemo.

quote: P.P.S It might be a while before you see any mods from me, being a beagle of little programming ability. For example. I was trying to do a bit of tweaking the other day and couldn't figure out why I was crashing. Then I realized I had left Net Nanny on and she had edited out all the "naughty bits", like "bomb_cabinet".

It'll do that. haha.

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.

quote:
P.P.S It might be a while before you see any mods from me, being a beagle of little programming ability. For example. I was trying to do a bit of tweaking the other day and couldn't figure out why I was crashing. Then I realized I had left Net Nanny on and she had edited out all the "naughty bits", like "bomb_cabinet".

That was very funny! Computers, you gotta love them!

I'm rathern new on the block here but that solution to the array out of bounds error don't work when you take away the + 5.

In the for statements you have to change DIP_civ1 to player[DIP_civ1] and you have to change all of these statements !
This is a simple C programming language error...you have to let the SLIC know which array it's about !
The player array !

But having changed this leaves me with a new error. To many arguments in ConsiderDiplomaticState.

I'm very pissed off with the support we've received for CTP2. While a good game, the glaring problems will not be addresses (namely diplomacy and AI ferocity). In response to the frustration I'm facing in trying to get the AI to perform diplomacy, I'm putting Diplomod V3.0 on the shelf. If I don't have anything else to do, I may go into it. But considering how many crashes I get with patch 1.1, and the fact that the unpatched CTP2 has almost no diplomacy SLIC available, I doubt very much that I'll continue. Thanks for your support though.

Except for the fact the AI will NEVER make a treaty or alliance (because of the internal programming settings and there is no SLIC to force a proposal/acceptance), I actually had a pretty decent AI diplomacy model working. But without treatys or alliances between AI's, what's the point of using diplomacy? These two options make diplomacy, not all the others which I have working well.

PS. If there is interest for the AI diplomacy script that I do have working, then let me know and I'll send it to Rich to update his link on V2.2.

Wes, it's a SLIC script, not just txt file changes.

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Author of Diplomod. The mod to fix diplomacy.