Obfuscating typical 'game' elements that are really very complex or unknown (like how someone REALLY feels about you) is good.  The GalCiv2 system is good for feedback, but that should be the public face of diplomacy (ie we condemn your military buildup etc) and behind closed doors your enemies should have actual agendas beyond 'we don't like his military score'.

Actually, as long as the AI has the power to do it to you, altering the other guy's offer might open up some good haggling options....

GalCiv2 does allow it, and it is too easy for a human player to punk the AI. Allowing the AI to do the same thing doesn;t work because you still have to agree to the deal - the AI does not have the option to keep tweaking the trade until the text turns green, it has to make a trade that you will go for and the human has too big of an advantage.

Making the AI comples enough to do in depth evaluations of trades and denying certain techs to you - well it is done, for instance an AI that is not already on good terms with you will rarely trade military tech - but no AI is going to be able to really strategically do tech trades like a human can.

@ Chong Li,

Yes exactly the AI should never let you know what it knows. Having a list of techs to trade for gives you WAY too much information into their capabilities.

I also like your idea of being able to do diplomacy with anyone during the movement phase. This would kind of favor the AI players as once they got a tech they could quickly perform millisecond trades among themselves and the poor meat player is going to be able to trade his tech with only one AI and effectively all the AI will get it. It does shut down my unfair advantage, but it almoist goes to far in giving the AI too much of an edge. Maybe it will be concurrent turns and the AI(s) could make all the trades with themselves or humans that they wish, and then the AIs are locked out of iniating trades...but that ends us back at square one.

Having different research trees definitely helps alleviate the - I wonder if you will be able to trade for a tech (or a spell) that is not in your tree at all....hmmm.

Idea! You can only trade a given tech with one other player (AI or otherwise) per turn. That way the AI cannot use its speed advantage, but it also blocks my strategy - it also means that the person who discovered it will get the MOST benefit, as he will by default get one more trade than anyone else - and he also controls WHO gets it first. So unlike my strategy of trading it with my enemies first in order to milk it, it would be smarter to trade it with your friends first and also with weaker players first (i.e you would want to give the benefit to someone who is no threat as opposed to someone as powerful or more powerful than you. That also balances out nicely as it actually gives some benefit to the weaker player and helps bring them more into parity... nice side benefit.

It also means that you are going to do more like in the real world - you are going to trade it first to the highest bidder (becuase you wouldn't want to lose that trade to someone else.....I like it a lot. Your thoughts?

I could see an auction type system being loads of fun, only down side is it could be time consuming. It also implies that the highest bidder will win, which, even under my "one trade for a given tech per turn" rule, even your biggest rival will have the tech or spell in a matter of a few turns, by not selecting him to trade with you at least deny him the ability (for a couple of turns) from turning around and trading it...personally I would tend toward the highest bidder, but if that also turns out to be my biggest rival I would almost certainly trade it to a weaker civ first, or better yet an enemy of my rival!

Ok, you clearly gave your ideas quite a bit of thought, so I feel it fair to address them individually.

The reason you only see this with real players is the same reason that you are going to see me using alot to explain some of the shortcomings of diplomacy AI in the past: it is simply impossible to create an AI that thinks like you and I do. The very concept is something that devoted theoretical researchers quest unsuccessfully for. AI will not think like a human, not even close, for a few decades (at least). Its not generally "neglected" so much as it gets to a point where the investment of time into AI behavior becomes astronomical, and the returns diminish drastically.

The AI simply can't have "oppinions" or "hidden agendas". Perhaps the AI could be coded to look for a valuable artifact, and may even be capable of tricking the player into thinking that the AI isn't looking for it, but as for true subterfuge... we wont see that for a long time. Metrics could be hidden, and thier could be some random variables at work, along with a script written to give the AI some initiative, but metrics are the only way to reliably represent a changing oppinion in computer language.

I numbered your suggestions so I could counter them one at a time.

1- As I said above, its "agenda" will likely be to survive, and little more. Players may also get mightily annoyed if the AI is unwilling to even hint at force makeup and strength - why be diplomatic with an empire you have no understanding of? The "mystery" quickly wanes and the lack of info will make players feel disconected.

2- Random may be the ONLY way to create an AI that acts with initiative. The sheer volume of variables that come into play in a TBS usually means that to take them all into account would cause paralysis amongst the AI. The AI shouldn't be stupid, but it will be pretty boring if its always doing the same thing with little variation

3- Agreed. Although the AI's are generally weaker than the human a short way into the game, so the human HAS to be treated like the big bad steamroller he is. But all things equal, so should diplomacy be.

4- Another good point, but the AI will rarely know whats "best" for it. 35,000 gold might seem like a great deal for a city, but what if its thier only Iron source? Or if it will cut the empire in two? Many games go with the strategy of undervaluing everything the human offers, and drastically over-valueing thier own position. This leads to stale diplomacy, but the alternative is generally human abuse. Hmm..

Those ideas are great, and game developers didn't just ignore the concepts in favor of something else, the concepts were simply unnatainable in a realistic manner. AI often still has to cheat just to face the human on the regular map, do you really think the subtleties of diplomacy are an easy (or even possible) thing to code?

Ok, here is where you begin to lose me. If you want that kind of play, go online. The AI is there to provide a reasonable barrier for the human to beat up on, and not much else. The harder modes generally don't give better AI in most games, they give the AI bonus's. That is because the AI on normal (sometimes on easy!) is the best "thinking" AI you will get.

Tell me how you expect the AI to see through a human plan? Ill use a good example that has hounded some of my favorite games in the past...

A player masses troops on the AI border. What should the AI do? Now, your first (reasonable) reaction is "build a huge army! Prepare to defend!" and thats what many of us would do, but its going to break the AI quickly. Why? The AI suddenly shifts focus from growing to massing an army. If the human is about to invade, great! What if the border just happens to be where the human likes gathering his forces? Even if it is for an innevitable invasion, that invasion could be many, many turns away.

Should the AI crap its pants and abandon the expansion of its nation for an attack that may never materialize? Should the AI strike pre-emptively, thus throwing diplomacy out the door (and becoming the aggressor in what could be a nuetral situation)? Should it ignore the human, and risk being over-run? Should it even bother noticing the build up, perhaps the human moves forces through there all the time? Should it try to be peaceful with a human, who we all know will just abuse its hospitality and stab it in the back? Should it try forming an alliance, giveing gold and resources to other nations and weakening itself for what could be no real issue?

This is the example of a minor issue in a game with thousands of variables. Seeing through the human vale is impossible, even for us humans most of the time, why should the AI be any different?

Good point actually, but the human will quickly wise up to the AI if it always acts this way. Why give away gold if the AI will just stab you in the back all the time? You already said you don't like random variables, so how will this work? Did you ever play civ4? after playing a game with monty or ghengis would you ever even talk to them again lol? I would hope we could avoid that predictability...

It is infact so hard to design that it borders on being impossible. The whole thing could be done through scripting, but your looking at adding another year to productiong and having a massive product with AI's that take half hour turns on a good processor. Your ideas are impressive, but for the most part too pie-in-the-sky. The reason you have never seen it done is because it really cant be... and I have more faith in stardock than anyone when it comes to AI.

So, what do I think they should do? Leave it open and moddable, like you said. Throw some reasonable routines in so that the AI can be proactive. Make the AI realise glaring advantages, evaluate its situation, and act if possible. Powerful mana crystal right across the border? How powerful is the empire guarding it, if the AI is notably more powerful, go for it.

Also, have many AI personalities. One could be more aggressive, one more economic, etc. Make it possible to switch from economic to militaristic when needs arise, and back when the emergency ends. Have the AI also have a very long ranged "focus" ie magic, tech, numbers, money, etc, that it focus's on. Make it unpredictable and dynamic. The only time an AI ever beat me in a game was when it took me by surprise, while I was in my confort zone. Thats the way it needs to act, otherwise the game is a forgone conclusion 1/8th the way into it.

People tend to forget that they have far more processing capacity between their ears than any computer running the game will ever have - and the 'software' running it is highly optimized to make stategic decisions.

Chess is a comparatively simple game, with relatively few moves possible each turn and clearly defined rules of movement and power. And it still took a supercomputer to beat Kasparov - that wasn't a standard desktop he was playing against.

True, I hadn't looked up the specs on deep blue. 30 cores sounds big, until you realize each one was only 120 MHz.

At most 32 units moving inside a 64 tile gameboard. The number of permutations is indeed huge, but nothing compared to a game that might have 100 units occupying a single tile (of which there will be thousands) and constant new unit generation.

The problem with a set of possible options that huge is that AIs can easily be programmed to do the best option NOW, but can't easily look three turns ahead to see the trap the "best option" is leading them into. It is absurdly difficult to program a computer that isn't predictable without being random. AI doesn't think "outside the box" very well.

I want a good AI as much as anyone, I just don't want anyone to get their expectations too high. Better to expect a GalCiv level AI and maybe be pleasantly surprised than expect a human-level AI and certainly be disappointed. There is a reason multiplayer is being built in from the ground up.

Yeah, now try to program a computer to do that. That's how a human plays chess, or any other TBS. Deep Blue won because it brute forced every possible outcome for 5 or 6 turns ahead, then picked the path that gave the best outcome. That option simply isn't available for a game of this scale.

You're over-complicating things. In chess, the relative positioning of every single piece on the game board is extremely critical. One piece can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

Computer TBS games are nowhere near as complicated as that - positioning is far less important. Far more important, in a game like MoM, is to level up your hero, expand and make sure you have adequate defenses. Proper use of combinations of spells and counters to those spell combos is also important, all of which can be stored in libraries for the AI to draw upon. It's really as simple as "if enemy has this unit, cast this spell, then this spell, else cast these spells".

I don't think it's nearly as hard as making a better Go-playing AI. Especially if the AI is open to modding. When people discover new strategies or combos, they can add them to the AI so that they AI knows how to utilize and counter them.

Other things, like examining all of your units statistically and comparing them with its own algorithmically is very simple for a computer to do. They could easily simulate a combat 1000 times over, applying different strategies to both sides all in a fraction of a second before attacking. By doing this, the AI should know its probability of winning the battle well in advance and attempt to avoid the battle if its odds are too low.

In MoM, whenever someone began casting the Spell of Mastery, all other AI players would declare war on him. It did not matter if it was the player or otherwise, the AI would not tolerate such powerful spells (they don't tolerate some of the other evil global enchantments as well like armageddon, meteor storms and death wish).

This is acceptable to me because it does not discriminate against a human player.

You are overcomplicating chess. The binary there/not there positions of pieces are far easier to program for compared to swarms of units that are diffuse in defense, but can concentrate for an attack in one turn.

Another thing an AI doesn't need to deal with in chess: unpredictable outcomes. Attacking a pawn with a knight will never result in the pawn defending itself.

Yes it could. But the issue is two-fold:

1: That takes WAYYYYY longer than your giving it credit for. Youd see considerable lag for even a few dozen internal simulations. 1000? I guess I could end my turn when I leave for work and start it when I get home every day... the quick results of a battle you see in the TW series isn't a real battle, its a randomized algorithm working with a few base unit stats. A real battle isn't a few calculations...

2: The AI would be playing itself in this battle, and unless (here I go again...) we see SD develop true artificial intelligence and bring about the singularity, the AI in battle wont match a humans cleverness. The AI might think deploying its archers in the rear and using them as artillery is the only way a human could use them, but the human might be like "Nah, I've got plenty" and use them as a fodder like meatshield. Suddenly everything changes and the AI's calculations were a waste.