AI could be more responsive to non-military "attacks"

Reading back over that I also feel like I should note that in general I'm very impressed with the AI and the game, I don't want it to sound like I'm just bitching for the sake of bitching. On the contrary, it's such a generally impressive piece of work that I'd like to see the remaining flaws ironed out.

I agree. The AI doesn't seem to be very good when it comes to dealing with culture in general. It doesn't understand how to culture flip planets. It builds influence starbases, but the AI rarely places them close to planets that it could possibly flip, and it never upgrades them enough so that they could pose a threat.

If you have read the forums for a while, you've probally noticed that most players usually capture planets instead of culture flipping them. That might be the reason why the AI isn't good with culture. The AI has to be programed to fight wars, otherwise they would be push overs for most players.

I agree.  I have some ideas on this area but it's a tricky thing because we want to have an AI that will let you get away with it (otherwise, the game always boils down to military power). 

Perhaps the AI could serve diplomatic notice that the cultral starbase be destroyed or war will be declared. War should be declared quickly if the power under cultral attack is matched or superior militarily with the cultral aggressor. If not they should try to get someone else to attack the cultral aggressor and give them ships near to the cultral starbase(s) in question to attack it. Also they should be building up miltarily meanwhile and possibly building counter culture starbases.

Thats what id like to see anyway hard to code no doubt...

I agree with you guys. If you (or the AI) culturally flip a planet with influence starbases that act should be considered very hostile and as such the relations should drop drastically. To the brink of war even. Hell even the presence of influence starbases in an empires space should be considered a huge act of aggression.

Unfourtanetely this is one of many situations where the AI simply "doesnt get it". Im winning, you AI fool, you should try and stop me!

To me it would seem that not only should the AI be smart enough to attempt to culture flip your planets, it should defend itself - culturally - when you attempt to do it, by placing "counter-culture" starbases to thwart yours, creating cultural improvements on planets, etc. That's what I do when I don't want an outright war with a race that starts plonking down Influence starbases; I put out my own.

Depends on the AI setting I guess. I would think that at "Challenging" and above, the AI would not only recognize cultural takeover attempts, but, also, take steps to counter them.

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Of course, there's nothing that says you have to use a Cultural takeover strategy. I do use it myself, but only to soften up the enemy race before I launch a big military campaign. I'm just starting to post to the Metaverse, but from what I think I've read, you get the big points for military takeovers, not cultural.

That's great to hear, thanks for popping in. I can see how it would turn into a nasty balancing act, certainly. Ideally, of course, it'd neither be easier nor harder than a military victory. I don't particularly envy you the task of making that work, but at least we all seem to agree that right now the non-military victories are a bit too easy. I do think there's something to the "the more planets of theirs you flip the more negatively they regard you" idea.

Rather than just trying to adjust the ai's rection, which is a tough balancing act, why not add some real negatives to a flipped planet too?

- You lose 2/3rds of the pop. Civil war and all that.

- Random improvements are destroyed.

- A 3 month, or 6 month or whatever balances out, penalty on manufacturing/research production, colony maintainence costs, etc.

-Give the original owner a free spy or two, Immediately, to use against the new owner. Make the chance that the aI will steal a Tech from the new owner fairly high on the first few turns after flipping a planet ... Quislings in the new Government.

- The civ under Culture attack has a permananet percentage gain in loyalty each time it looses a planet ... getting rid of all those malcontnents, so it gets a bit harder to flip the next planet.

- The aI's don't seem to use Trade embargoes much in my experience - if one starts a cultural war, have the aI be more likely to do this.

- If someone is embarking on a Culture War, make use of the UP....have it call an emergency session to invoke sanctions...and halve the vote total of the agressor. (All civ's should be allowed to call 1 or 2 emergency sessions at any time during the coarse of the game if they feel they are being attacked in a major way...have some separate UP events that address each type of agression...war, cultural, or technological)

Just some food for thought.

Funny enough, I've seen minors try and place influence starbases at random...which is totally useless for them, of course.

I agree that I've gotten away with using culture effectively against the AI. On the other hand, if you do get into a shooting war with the civilization in question, the relative weakness of influence starbases makes them tempting and easy targets for your opponent.

I definitely agree that the AIs do not respond well to influence starbases. I also understand Draginol's concern about wanting to provide the player a "non-military" way to expand. It think working on AI influence base usage should be a priority to solving both these problems. I'd be thrilled if the AI would build (and upgrade!) some influence starbases to keep its planets from being flipped.

I wonder if some of the problem comes from the way the AIs choose which techs to research. Is there some kind of decision tree in the AI programming that says, "huh, we're getting overwhelmed by influence, we'd better research those influence boosting techs".

On a related note, does the AI programming contain routines could lead it to "embarking" on cultural conquest? Or does it simply react to its overall influence situation turn-by-turn?

If the AI can call Emergency Sessions, why shouldn't we be able to?

I don't think the other planets should become more loyal after more flips. To my knowledge, a Colony Ship arrives, carrying malcontents and loyalists, lands, and all interstellar contact with other planets is cut off. Unless a trade route is founded between that world and alien worlds, or mining modules ship in goodies from the asteroids, there is no travel between planets after the colonization.

So how would all the malcontents be on one planet?

In Dark Avatar 1.5X (the internal build) the AI keeps track of how many planets have culture flipped and now takes that into account in its relations very very strongly.  It only does this at intelligent or higher, however.

How would an embassy and cultural base be considered aggression?
I think that if you were to think of it like America putting Mcdonalds in Russia.
Its really just that our culture started to bleed into theirs.

Russia can't very well declare outright war because its people started loving our jeans and hamburgers.

I would like to see a culture start building influence bases on its borders in a similar strategic manner to my own though.

That's fantastically good news, thanks for letting us know. Are the AI's going to be better equipped to wage their own culture wars as well? I don't think I've ever seen a computer opponent wage an aggressive influence campaign.

It wouldn't be. Suffusing a Russian republic with enough diplomatic and cultural Americanism that it eschews Russia and declares itself part of the United States, on the other hand, would prompt a very hostile reaction.

The "we know waht you're doing" modifier is probably sufficient for when influence is being applied, it's the reaction to a defection that needs to be (and apparently has been) made substantially more aggressive.

Selling crap food that kills people to other country should be considered an act of agression   

No, but if local russian goverments swore allegiance to USA, paid taxes to USA, built products for USA and did research for USA and stopped recognising Kreml then I bet that would be enough to declare war.

Some would definitely consider it an act of aggression - heck, we see that right now. Especially when those in power see their people starting to like the foreign ways better than the traditional ways. They are often part of those traditional ways and they will act to keep them in place. They aren't going to say flat out that they are breaking off relations because their people are starting to like another nation better, of course. They will talk about "poisoning the minds of our youth" or some such. But they will take action. Maybe even violent action.

Another point on the A.I. - when you do take over a planet (at least on Normal difficulty), the ships that were on that planet get the boot. Then they just sit there. Forever. The AI never even bothers to scrap them for some quick BC. (A rather scary thing when those ships are troop transports.)

The AI does respond to culture invasions, but its VERY mild. I tweaked the nose of the Yor pretty hard by swarming them with dozens of constructors every other turn basically prying open spacelanes through their empire with influence starbases, and really all I managed to do was take relations with them from Friendly to Cool. They weren't happy with me, but not irritated enough to attack, even as the fourth Influence starbase with the Cultural Domination modules maximized went up in the Iconia system.

Well I agree with you guys, there should be some kind of reaction, but there is a case where no reaction would be better. If a military victim of you surrenders to a third race, then there are usually a couple planets left of the former victim that are now in your newly conquered space that will flip. It is unlikely that new civilization would get upset when their new planets are flipped.

If there is always a reaction it is the pathway to a new way to cause wars. If you own a planet that is about to be flipped (and you don't want it anyway because it a low PQ) gift it to another AI and it will ruin theit mutual relations.

You raise an interesting point falcon. In a lot of ways it'd make sense for the animosity to be scaled by how long the race has held the planet. That might be asking too much, though.

It'd also make sense if the animosity scaled by how deep in foreign territory the flipped planet is. It would suck if you wound up at war just because the AI had decided to colonize Mars, then got all upset when it inevitably flipped.

Also a valid point. It's easy to see why getting these things right is so hard for the devs, even the simplest of ideas ends up being very complicated once all the mitigating factors are taken into account.

okay, i haven't read this whole thread. i just thought it made sense to relay this anecdote.

i had the terrans starting a small but prosperous civilization. i wanted a compact and easily defensable position, so i stopped colonizing at 12 systems in 5 sectors, but the drath managed to grab one of the colonies i wanted. i proceeded to build an influence starbase, and their world starts to rebel. suddenly the yor contact me to let me know that some mysterious power wants me dead, which i assume would be the drath.

so the AI does take note of it, and does get pissed off about it. they usually don't jump up into arms, though, at least not until it's too late.

I think it is probably hard for the AI to really recogonize culture flipping from afar (if you have just really built up and researched tons of influence techs/building/starbases), but it should really take offense to someone putting starbases in their immediate area. I don't think the AI pays enough attention to those nearby starbases and nearby fleets enough. If they do, then they don't really let you know to way.

I'd really like a way for them (and us) to at least send a diplomact message that they don't like that starbase/fleet near them. It should be an almost immediate reaction.