AI

[omniscience]

Hello! I just got this game on Steam, and I'm having a good time!
The Wizard Pact logic seems a little bit weird.
Here's what happens:

* I'll start playing and summon a magic spirit and send it out to explore for me.
* My magic spirit sees another wizard's city. I chat with the wizard and trade some spells.
* The wizard messages me: "hey, I'm friendly, let's have a wizard pact!" Shrug, okay. I click yes.
* Literally the next turn, the wizard messages me again: "hey, I'm angry because of your troop buildup near my city. I might break our wizard pact and declare war on you!"
* I move my magic spirit away from their city. Then I get another message about troop buildup. I guess they have an outpost somewhere nearby which can see my magic spirit?
* I keep scouting and get more warnings. In not too long I get an angry message: "You have too many troops near my cities. I'm breaking our wizard pact and preparing for war!"

Questions:
* Is there any way to modify the logic to ignore "troop buildups" that are much weaker than the forces defending a city?
* Is there any way to modify the logic to ignore "troop buildups" that are literally just one magic spirit?
* Is there any way to modify the logic to ignore "troop buildups" during the first turns of the game when I'm scouting?
* If I just don't agree to the wizard pact, will that make them less angry at me, or will it just make them less willing to tell me they're angry?

Obviously it would be bad to add loopholes to the AI that make them vulnerable to attack, but it still feels like there could be room for improvement here.

[Seravy]

* Is there any way to modify the logic to ignore "troop buildups" that are much weaker than the forces defending a city?

Probably yes but due to the combat spellcasting, even a single spearmen is a huge threat and the enemy is aware of that.
"much weaker" is also hard to define and subjective. Is 1 magician against 9 longbowmen "much weaker"?

Is there any way to modify the logic to ignore "troop buildups" that are literally just one magic spirit?

See above.
While it's not really a thing anymore, razing cities with a single magic spirit was common gameplay before free swordsmen were added. Even then, a spirit can be enough to raze a fresh enemy outpost if you use your combat spells well.

Is there any way to modify the logic to ignore "troop buildups" during the first turns of the game when I'm scouting?

Yes, but again, subjective. What's "early turns" for one player is the end of the game for another. Sapher consistently wins before turn 100 on Lunatic.
From their perspective, it's their territory and you have no business scouting it.
Why do you want to scout it anyway?
It really only can mean one of these, otherwise you have no reason to enter :
-Steal their treasure/nodes.
-Curse their cities/land.

If I just don't agree to the wizard pact, will that make them less angry at me, or will it just make them less willing to tell me they're angry?

If you don't agree to the wizard's pact, absolutely nothing happens. The Wizard Pact is a treaty where you agree to not entire their territory and they don't attack you in return. If you violate that by entering, they'll get angry.

However, there is a 1/50 chance of the AI still telling you to leave if you are in their territory. This only comes with a small relation reduction and happens rarely, so it's almost always safe to ignore.

I feel the greatest problem with Wizard's Pacts is how most people have no idea what a Wizard's Pact is, and the help entry for it in the game is hard to find(You have to open the wizard then right click on the "Treaty : Wizard's Pact" text.), nor do they read this part of the documentation, see below :

Due to the assymmetric nature of Diplomacy, the Wizard's Pact is assymetric as well. While the human player can reliably expect the AI to not violate the treaty and the AI is literally unable to do so and thus is guaranteed to not attack the player until the treaty is broken officially, the human player is allowed to backstab. This wouldn't be fair and the benefit would be entirely one-sided, so the human player and ONLY the human player, agrees to not enter the territory of the AI in exchange. While players generally dislike this fact, and hate seeing AI troops in their territory, that unfortunately can't be helped : The AI uses a dozen different movement and targeting functions of various types and lacks the ability to do complex moves like using a ship to avoid walking through the player's territory. Also, this enables the AI's troops to be in good position, so when the human player does backstab the AI, the AI is ready to retaliate immediately instead of having no troops to do so. Let's face it : the 2 tile range with 3 turns of tolerance, will not make it any harder for the human to attack the AI, either. Finally, this much incovenience is a really good deal in exchange for the benefits of a Wizard's Pact most of the time, and seems to work surprisingly well as more aggressive and impatient human players violate it intentionally and tend to have problems using the diplmacy system as a consequence which is perfectly reasonable.

[omniscience]

Why do you want to scout it anyway?
It really only can mean one of these, otherwise you have no reason to enter :
-Steal their treasure/nodes.
-Curse their cities/land.

I'm trying to find neutral cities to conquer, and unclaimed land to settle.
But I don't know which land is unclaimed until I scout it.

Thanks for the documentation link.  In future, I just won't make Wizard Pacts until I've finished scouting the map and I know what territory I have to avoid.

[Seravy]

Using units with a higher scouting range or movement can allow you to scout without ending your turn in an area the wizard pact doesn't allow. When in doubt, spending the last movement point to move backwards then continuing next turn can also help a lot.
Finally, the Wizard's Pact will only be broken if you stand on the wrong tile for 3 consecutive turns, although you do get a small relation loss on the first turn.
Waiting until after the scouting is done works well too, if you can afford that and don't need the Pact immediately.

[ichthyosaurus]

I have to agree with this. One magic spirit (for example) is anything but "a troop buildup". Also, getting warning that you passed by something that you're not even seeing, plain sucks...

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[ichthyosaurus]

I didn't see the last posts by Seravy before my comment... They make a lot of sense actually.

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[massone]

Immediately after making peace with the AI, it's possible to threaten war and get paid. Should this be allowed, considering that there's supposed be a peace treaty already active?

[Seravy]

I see no reason why not (although if it makes it too easy to extort spells or money from the AI that might be a problem.) - the player can break the peace treaty by attacking so the threat is real.

[massone]

I see no reason why not (although if it makes it too easy to extort spells or money from the AI that might be a problem.) - the player can break the peace treaty by attacking so the threat is real.

So I've tested it a few times now in different wars and with different personality AIs (Peaceful, Lawful, Chaotic, Maniacal), and while I suppose it might just be because the AI is weakened enough, they always seem to pay if I do it immediately after peacing and their military power is lower than mine. It's kind of an exploit in the sense that you normally expect the AI to pay only if they ask you for the peace, and you risk staying at war when you refuse. But this way, you can just peace out then threaten for the money. I don't know if this works if the AI already paid for the peace treaty though. But what would happen to the peace counter? Does the threatened counter replace the peace treaty counter, or does it count as a hostile action reducing the peace counter?

[Seravy]

Threatening will set the peace counter to a new value if it is successful, effectively replacing the old peace with a new one, and will do nothing to if it fails, unless it fails so badly it restarts the war.
Extorting gold from the AI isn't really an issue because by the time they are far behind, it isn't likely they have much left or the player is winning anyway.
Spells might be a problem though.
A fairly simple solution would be that after peace, the AI sets the variable that determines if they want to talk to the player very low. Then the player has to wait after peace before they can threaten, trade, or otherwise talk to the AI, the same way he has to after a war declaration or breaking a treaty. It makes little sense though, why wouldn't they talk to a player after a peace treaty. So this is probably not good.
An alternate solution would be to alter threatening to always fail during peace but peace being invisible that might not be a good thing either.
A third possibility is to use the same solution as used for finding spells from banishing the wizard, in the end, threatening and banishing are similar game mechanics in the sense they work against enemies weaker than you. This one even makes sense - if they offered the best they could in the past and it wasn't enough to make the player stop harassing them then why would they do it again? So the logical reaction might be to offer gold instead the next time which is not a problem for game balance - A cornered AI has little gold to spare and the low gold might even make the player angry enough to attack the AI's fortress unprepared and lose significant forces, effectively losing the game to the already defeated enemy anyway.
I think I do like this one.
We could even make this more detailed and add a condition : if you banished the wizard, they won't give you a new spell by threatening either because they know it'll be used against them in the end. Question is, do we want to connect this to the AI offering a spell when they ask the player for a treaty?