A.I. Trespassing, or, putting a price on Sid's head.

[Ravenloff]

Greetings.

I'm probably beating a dead horse here, as I've seen many posts regarding the absolutely infuriating way the AI civs trespass. But, I've had enough. I've tried everything and still cannot keep them out of my borders. I completely agree with someone who said that it's bad enough to be considered a bug.

The only way to stop them is to post a unit in every single square along your frontier. Is this cost effective? Is this was Sid n crew meant us to do? I think not.

Thing is...why the hell did Firaxis, the same company that did SMAC, do away with a very simple and effective tool for claiming territory and that's the automatic 9 or so square radius around a city that is considered yours. The other factions in THAT game kept out of your land...what's the problem here?

It seems like a pretty basic programming problem. Have them do a simple check of the surrounding squares after their move is over or before the next one. If the check shows that a square is within another's territory, the unit does a check vs that AI's stance toward you.

Simple.

What's being done about this problem? Can we expect the Civ3 team in the Ivory Tower to bestow upon us...their customers...a fix to their product any time soon?

I am so pissed off about this issue I could scream. I think I will.

Ravenloff

[Dale]

The funniest thing about THIS particular problem, is when it was noticed in CTP2 I simply wrote a "withdraw" script for the AI so when it agreed to a "withdraw troops" the script kicked in and moved the troops out.

Can ya do THAT in Civ3?

[Asharak]

Sometimes it does automatically kick them out. Not always though, and the biggest problem is that 5 turns later, they're back there again!
It really is annoying... once, I saw the AI get smart, load it's settlers onto a boat, and go AROUND my territory. I was very impressed -- infuriated, but impressed. I went back to infuriated soon thereafter, when it seemed to forget that little trick, and went right back to trespassing. Grr.
I hope a trepassing fix is in the patch, but until then it's not a big enough issue (2 or 3 turns of telling them to leave usually kicks in the instant-eject thingy) to keep me from a enjoying what is, really, a wonderful game.

[SerapisIV]

During Soren's chat he mentioned that when he wrote the AI, if he forced the AI to avoid crossing your borders, the AI become super-passive, ala CtP2. He removed the "do not trespass" command so that the AI would actually be competitive. I think it's a very fair trade-off. A little annoyance (which disappears after the middle ages, when culture borders fill everything) versus poor AI. I'll take the annoyance

[Locus]

SerapisIV is correct. It can be annoying but the problem does go away when culture borders take up any "unclaimed" land near your empire. As long as there is a void, the AI will want to claim it.

[SuiteSisterMary]

Yup. And remember, you can, and should, do it right back to the AI. And if you 'don't want to, because that's not the way I like to play,' well, in the late 1930s, nobody actually wanted to go to war with Hitler. "Peace in our time" indeed.

[yin26]

I might post an image series on my current game. I played with the concept of this borders issue in mind. I think it will show quite effectively that the AI poses no threat doing this. My larger issue, though, is that the AI is actually hurting itself in many cases by throwing away so many cities.

Anyway, Soren is watching this closely and should hopefully tweak it to find a better balance between expanding like crazy (good up to a point) and building from within. As it stands now, I am virtuallly guranteed to destroy my nearest neighbor in the Ancient Age (or have him worthless) because of this AI opening.

[Zizka]

I wil agree with that. the AI depletes its cities soo fast in the ancient era to scramble for more land that it leaves itself vunerable (militarily and culturally). Indeed its become a favourite opening... find nearest civ ASAP.. crank out archers (which are well nigh invincible on offense in the ancient era) and just rush them. They usually have lots of "1" sized cities that just cannot mount a serious defence. This is in addition to the cheap free labour (from bagging workers and settlers as they tresspass) and cities that they try to build in the middle of my empire. Just too tempting to resist. The AI even does it to itself. I saw a small Chinese empire (Island) overrun a huge sprawling french civ early in the game.

Has anyone else noticed how more likely AI Civs are to eliminate one another.

Z

[bahoo]

I just wish their was a way to lay claim to land without building a city there.

There's the occasional chunks of useless desert or artic scattered throughout your colony thats not worth colonizing. Inevitably the computer will get a colony started there.

You either have the choice of accepting the useless city when it deposes, or being forced to destroy it, perhaps causing a war you don't want or need.

There ought to be some way to pound a flag into the ground that says this LAND is mine, and if the opponent is on good terms with you they'll avoid and if not, they can just ignore it.

It seems you always have to start needless wars with generally friendly civs just to keep em the heck out of your land.

[Trifna]

just wanted to say I agreed. Hope they'll fix that in a patch...

[FrantzX]

Just like the New World during the 16-18th(or so) century:

"I claim all of this land in the name of the Queen of England!"
"Hey! I got here first! This land belongs to Joan of Arc!"
"Shaka is the ONLY soverign here, European dogs!"

Maybe we can get the Pope into CivIII to carve up new frontiers for us...

[Wizard84]

Maybe Military units should have some sort of an ability to artificially extend your borders? You would have a little option like pillage or fortify that would claim the tile as yours.

[origimist]

I think it's a realistic feature.

Borders in the real world are extremely porous, UNLESS you line them with troops end to end to keep "settlers" out. Of course, that doesn't help when they use boats to get around your border guards (another realistic feature).

[Arrian]

Yeah, it's annoying. But during the early land-grab, it is something the AI needs to do to be competitive. Yin is correct, however, about the "grab every single last spot of land" thing beign an AI weakness. Often, they are just building cities for me

A couple of ideas:

- Have the AI agressively seek right of passage agreements. Instead of Montezuma demanding 11 gold from me in 1500bc, why not have him demand a right of passage agreement?

- Have the AI check a potential city site for 1) corruption and 2) chances of assimiliation by an opponent. If either of those things (or a combo of both) is too high, the AI doesn't try to build there. The downside of this, however, is that sometimes those terrible cities, far far away up in the tundra wasteland that will never, ever produce more than 1shield/gold do produce something infinitely more valuable - oil. Expand this to the other resources and you'll get my drift. So I'm fairly certain that this idea is a no-go.

- I have seen the AI use a land route to get to a location which could be reached faster with a boat - and the AI always has tons of boats. Yet, if it can get there w/o the boat by going through your territory, it will (even if it takes 5x as long). Perhaps some sort of alternative route coding so that if the AI has been kicked out of your territory (LEAVE OR DECLARE WAR! I say for the 10th time), it will use the alt. route.

Anyway, the AI trespassing is usually harmless (except, of course when it beats you to that great city site by doing it). If the AI intends to attack, it will declare war when you tell it to leave.... and you can usually see it coming - a stack of 15 immortals just doesn't look much like a settle/spearman combo.

-Arrian

[Wombat]

There's another situation where the AI violates your border continuously which I find even more annoying. That's when it's at war with another AI, and to reach them they have to move through your territory. Military units will simply swarm across your border in huge numbers, getting in the way, and making me nervous. You can order them out, but the very next turn they start marching through again. I find this far less forgivable than the settler movement and shouldn't happen if you haven't given them free passage. It did have one amusing benefit in one game I played. A swarm of workers also entered my territory and started building a railway through my land.

Anyway, settlers is one thing. Being overrun by dozens of military units is another thing entirely.

[Andrew_Jay]

It really does get pretty crazy when you are between two enemies. In one game I was on a kind of three pointed continent, with me occupying the centre, the French to the south-west Chinese to the south-east, and Indians to the North, eventually two other civs had a bit of land they took from teh Chinese, so pretty much every was involved the sides fighting on my land. It was really annoying when they were flying bombing sorties over my territory and shelling each other's units. I managed to restrained from fighting back though, and just lined my borders with stuff, and the one time the Perisans got through because I was upgrading teh units, I mangled them really good with my half dozen, brand new, modern armours That was fun, especially when I took all their cities on the continent in three turns.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by Wombat
A swarm of workers also entered my territory and started building a railway through my land.

Wow, the "Burma railway" approach in CIV3!

[Bubba_B]

Originally posted by yin26
I might post an image series on my current game. I played with the concept of this borders issue in mind. I think it will show quite effectively that the AI poses no threat doing this. My larger issue, though, is that the AI is actually hurting itself in many cases by throwing away so many cities.

Yin's got it right

No real threat, I let them build the city and my culture gobbles it up before long or its my first target in war. They build them in bad spots alot, but resources show up there later in the game.

[Dis]

I seem to remember the ai in smac violating my borders constantly.

maybe it is physically impossible to program the ai to stay out of your borders

[LRotan]

My first point was already stated above. Settlers, workers, and maybe one or two military units crossing my borders doesn't bother me much in most cases. However, sending hordes of military units through my territory to attack another civ or simply because they want to is something altogether different, especially when two warring civs start killing each other in my borders. Right about then it's time for them to leave.

I can see where forcing the AI to stay out of your borders could make it too passive, however it raises two questions. If there's no way to keep them out other than lining your borders with units, then why is there even an option in diplomacy to ask them to leave? Second, why is there a right of passage when they already have it? I'm not insulting anyone or being sarcastic, I'm genuinely curious.

There's always the option of going to war if they don't leave, but I don't want to have to fight a war every time a civ comes romping through my territory. I'd be at war constantly with just about everyone on the map.

LR

[D4everman]

Its unnerving.

In a game i started today Shaka asked to join his alliance against russia and for right of passage. i declined the alliance (didn't want a war) but gave him right of passage because then I could send my settlers through his territory instead of ferrying them around the continent in a galley. BUT....Shaka then asked the French to join his alliance and they did. So in a few turns there were about twenty french longbowmen running through my territory. I wasn't sure if they were going to attack me at first.

I asked Joan D'Arc to withdraw and she did...only to send the same troops back in another turn. Then to make it even more ludicrous, she plops a city on a tundra laden section of unclaimed land where I had a horsemen looking out of for barbarians and asks ME to leave her territory!

I think the "withdraw request" should last at least ten turns. If the offender trespasses before the time limit there should be an automatic act of war or at least a mandatory % of gold fine.

[star mouse]

Originally posted by LRotan
If there's no way to keep them out other than lining your borders with units...

Perhaps units in Fortresses should have had some Zone of Control? You'd still have to put units on your borders, but only in every second or third square.

[Venger]

I really don't want to hear how they can't program the AI to expand properly. It's ludicrous. It's simple look at a couple factors and that ought to God damn tell you if it should build a city there...

Will the square have unimpeded access to the ocean or their border? If it is completely surrounded, don't build.

Make the border, I dunno, a BORDER. If a settler plops down immediately against my border, he doesn't push my border back. That's BS. He should only be able to use the squares outside my border. As such, the AI should consider that as a cost in a cost/benefit examination of site suitability.

If a city is founded, is there sufficient room to expand again? If not, and the new city is not adjacent to their existing borders but is adjacent to another Civ, don't buld (unless on an island, or against the coast with enough tiles to support a decent city (see the first rule)).

I'm sure there's more basic common sense rules that are easy to translate to the gameplay engine.

Venger

[LRotan]

You're right, star mouse. That's something I thought should have been added. ZOCs associated with fortresses. If a unit is in a fortress within your borders, there should be a radius around it that units from other civs simply can't enter without first declaring war. Two things, though:

1) The radius of squares that they can't enter should not extend past your borders.

3) The AI must declare war before entering the ZOC of a manned fortress within your borders. The reason being that if you set it to be an automatic declaration of war if they enter the ZOC, I have a gut feeling the AI won't see this as much of a deterrant and would end up declaring war on you constantly because of its troop movement.

Just my opinion.

LR