Multiplayer AI does not declare war on human players...

[bison]

Unless of course you pay them off and apparently even doing that reaps no rewards from this complete joke of an AI. I am furious, I have wasted hours upon hours playing mutliplayer with my friend only to find out over the period of 100+ hours that the AI simply does not work and is incapable of waging wars against humans (not AIs however). I have searched for hours and found no comment on this even from the players. The only comments I found were not from Brave New World but vanilla/GAK so I disregarded them yet they fueled my suspicions.

Additionally I have more suspicions of the AI being incapable at improving tiles or simply just not doing anything. But that is not for now and I will not be testing it out and wasting my time.

I have proof, I have screen shots and my experience of countless games where the multiplayer AI just simply does nothing and a friend who echoes my sentiments. We consider multiplayer war AI simply a waste of time. This game really confirmed my suspicions. It is important to note we are playing on emperor difficulty.

Here are the screenshots... This is a warmonger game, all the AIs are the military powerhouses as selected by me. I have run a similar game in singleplayer and there are wars galore... but for some reason not in multiplayer.
http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198047880748/screenshots/

Carthage is being played by my friend and I am playing Sweden. Top shows the Carthage-Englo borders (war paid by me). Left shows the Rome-Carthage war (paid by me). Right shows when I paid for these wars. Bottom shows when Shaka was paid to declare on me. The most important thing THE GAME ENDED ON TURN 150.

Let's start with the English "war" starting in turn 127, no action as documented by my friend. Her army size was not significant however so this might seem reasonable. She was asking for peace. This can be overlooked, or can it?

The Rome "war" is where it starts to get interesting. This started in turn 133. My friend comments that he has left his horseman within 2 tiles of a legion and no attack has occurred. My scout also shows the presence of roman legions and ballistae easily capable of ransacking his cities sitting there and doing nothing. Additionally Rome will not have peace with my friend!!!!

This behaviour is further REINFORCED by Shaka who does the exact same thing. This was started in turn 136 (when I asked my friend to do it). I sit my composite bowmen and longswordsmen within range of impi and geuss what? No action! Can you geuss if he would sue for peace? I bet you can! NO HE REFUSED!!!!

However I will give credit where credit is due... If you pay the AI to declare war against another AI they will fight straight away with no problem, I have no screenshots of this. I commonly pay for wars in my multiplayer games. However for some reason, unknown to me the AI is utterly incapable of declaring a war on me .

If anyone can disprove any of what I have shown please restore my faith in this game for I love this game. I will not stand for an incomplete game that I paid good money for (really good money) and will not buy any of these games in the future unless this joke of an AI is being fixed. Which it should have been on release.

Sincerely,

A disgruntled customer.

[dd790]

Me and a friend play multiplayer against the AI and we always seem to have a war forced on us, it just depends on who the AI are and if they want your land/cities/wonders.

Denmark seem to always attack someone early game, and America seem to be quite keen on wars...no idea why...

Ironically I have never been attacked by the Zulu's even though they are supposed to be an agressive Civ

[bison]

That is very strange. I was world leader for the most of the game with shaka hostile with me and most civs coveting my lands. I also was overexpanding according to him. Not a single war has been declared throughout the entire game and this has happened without fail with many games. I have also paid for many more wars and the same results have happened also without fail.

Denmark was in our game but we did not know where they were, as well as Japan and Huns, Ottoman and Assyria.

For this game my wonders were temple of Artemis, Oracle and 1 turn away from Notre Dame.

My friend had Mausaleum of Halicarnassus and Machu Picchu

EDIT: Also is it early game war? Or later in the game?

[11 Armenian Genocide]

play diety then...

[Grittle]

Well I had my friend attack and almost lost one of his cities by rome in multiplayer in the early game on Prince

So its very odd

[bison]

Playing diety is not an option, you have no chance at early game wonders and my friend grumbles about playing at emperor. Honestly that is a cop out and hardly advice.

This is about AI declaring war on their own accord not a war you have started.

[Feurisson]

Strange yes, because usually the AI declares war on human players in multiplayer on Princee difficulty as well, at least that was the case before the BNW expansion.

[Ninthshadow]

Prince difficulty should at least provide some war. This is especially true if you've gone out of your way to provoke them. The AI calculates more than most people give it credit for (although their maths isn't great), including your miltary size when deciding if they want a war.

If I wanted to test if it was possible to provoke a war in multiplayer, I'd probably set it to someone like Zulu/The Huns, keep scarce and/or underteched miltary, denounce them, make every demand under the sun. Finally for good measure, I'd make sure the borders are touching.

If that won't provoke a war on Prince or above, you're right, warring is broken.

I imagine that is going to be true for any expansion level. It's almost garenteed on BNW and G&K.

[Danny]

It could be because in the lobby where everyone chooses the difficulty for the AI your friend probably went full autism and decided to do chieftain and you did like king and so it averaged and made the ai like warlord or something ezpz.

Emperor is the most perfect difficulty in my opinion. Immortal is a bit of a high learning curve because ai also starts with a free worker so that can put them WAY ahead and deity with that extra settler...♥♥♥♥ that plus all the other bonuses

[Murgen]

I'm playing an emperor-level multiplayer game right now where the AI has declared war on my team.

So yes, the AI can declare war on you in multiplayer.

[bison]

We both have it set to emperor and we're not autistic lol, we have played at least 30+ games and know and generally know how the game works.

What did you do Murgen to get the AI mad?

Those people saying the AI declared war on you, are you absolutely certain that it was not paid for by another player?

The map size is Huge with 12 players. Maybe that is why, we do not have touching borders.

[bison]

We are now going to test on a small map.

[bison]

We found that in order to get an AI to attack you your borders MUST touch, as soon as I got out composite bowmen he sued for peace and now has cme back vs my crossbowmen with trebs, knights and impis. I denounced the zulus.

Overall my friend and I still feel the mutliplayer AI is not that aggressive or less aggressive than we are used to in single player. I have not required shared borders with the zulu or denouncing them to get them to attack me. My second city contactyed his borders and was the minimum distance away. My friend had shared borders with the huns (who he did not denounce). After turn 100 he got sick of that and denounced them, no action.

[Murgen]

Originally posted by bison:

What did you do Murgen to get the AI mad?

Those people saying the AI declared war on you, are you absolutely certain that it was not paid for by another player?

The map size is Huge with 12 players. Maybe that is why, we do not have touching borders.

We didn't do anything to get the AI mad. We were actually doing trade deals with them and some of them showed as "Friendly" towards me on the diplomacy screen, so their declaration of war took us by surprise and we were not prepared.

Another human player couldn't have bribed them to attack us, since it was only me and my friend (on the same team). It was Emperor level, continents map, 3 teams of two civs each. The two AI teams declared war on us (the human team). We did have shared borders.

[bison]

Ok sounds like the general consensus is shared borders. Thanks for everyone who helped me out.

Looks like we have been playing on maps that are too large..

[Feurisson]

Originally posted by bison:

Ok sounds like the general consensus is shared borders. Thanks for everyone who helped me out.

Looks like we have been playing on maps that are too large..

It depends on the map type as well. There are some maps which make war an unlikely event as they usually provide enough space for every civilization, while others, like Small Continents, for example, where a declaration of war is mostly only a question of time.