I agree, I found it slightly strange that the huge post was made 37 turns into a game, but that might just be me.

This is more about the player than the AI, I don't think the AI should gimp itself by being more aggressive earlier on in the game, players should just focus for more than 40 turns, average games takes a lot longer on medium and large maps...

Thanks to Jul for bringing this up and listening anyways though, and thank T for the massive in-depth help.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Hi guys,

thx for the suggestions.

 

@Tuidjy: How can I rename my hero then? And the name of my empire? Can't find the setting

1) one thing i need in order to continue: a mehtof to reduce loading time of the game. I have all ym settings on low, is there anything else i can do to reduce it? You guessed it, i wouldnt stop reloading for this game (new games might be another stories). It just takes too long dor a single relaod atm, maybe 40 seconds!!

2) I need ways to make us of all these heroes. My power rating grants me the peace I need atm to build up mighty armies. You are right, disbanding them lowers my rating and while it increase chances the ai will attack, even more grave is: it will reduce the income/trade terms i have with the ai. So i will keep them. To level up, I have to focus now on the strong heroes only. That leads to another problem the

3)Mage path for heroes: those feeble guys are nearly useless for me, because i am always low on mana. Sadly, many heroes of mine fit into that category. Some even have several paths (assassin, mage, warriro???) how is that possible by the way?

Anyways,what if I use the "steal spirit" spell, will it provide the complete magic category (say the hero was a disciple in fire magic) to my hero, or just 1 step (fire adept)? 

One answer to the combined might of the ai could be my hero. I atm think about shaping him into a powerhouse. While you are right Tuidjy, the gold income from NAPS wont last long, they will allow me to reduce my tax level from oppressed to non again for several turns. That would mean i could actually build something. Research is already going good, maybe 7 seasons for a new military civ.

Hm, is it worth to level up Heroes with the governor path?

4) another important thing: will monster lairs respawn continuously? Or will they all die out slowly for i plunder everyone one on sight atm besides the deadly and some strong ones? I am seeing many new monsters without lair lately, which is very good from xp purposes. Will they continue to grow? This is so important, becaue if they do, I could afford the costy xp divide and keep leveling several heroes at the same time.

 

5) Tuidjy, you said my city growth depends on the level of my hero? How is that and in which way? That is crucial, for i plan to level up the sovereign more aggressively in the future.

That's what i consider about the current game before I can continue..

 

 

Players shouldn't and won't do anything they don't like. Game should be adapted to player psychology, not vice versa.

The problem with that is that the player base is not created from 200 people with the same psychology, its created from 200 people with the same interest, therefore you will see a lot of conflicting psychology, if players don't like playing for more than 40 turns you are correct they should not play for more than 40 turns, but you can't make a game perfect, and you cant make a game appeal to everyone.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

AI can be better. AI can use its advantage to rush the player in early game. If I would be AI, I defeat a player asap. I would not give a player any chance.

I don't think that the AI on harder difficulties should rush the human.  They get higher advantages that come out of nowhere, so I think the player should have the opportunity to work up to beat them.  But has anyone beat the 1.00 AI/World on Insane difficulty, even with a superpowered build?  I haven't heard of any.

Hi StevenAus,

my whole threat is about such a game . Haven't lost a unit yet, cannot decide how to proceed in way way that makes sense. Long loading times and the flaws of the hero-system just brought it to a stop. some think i couldn-ät win, from my point, i can't see how i could lose it. I already see the road of victory, but it would take too much time now.

I just ahve to stay ahead in terms of faction pooints and the ai won't stop me gathering all the strength i need to wipe them out one by one.

Even worse, once i crushed the empire ranked second, I would ahve gained so many faction points that i could take out the rest one by one. Yes, if they would cooperate, hm...

@Harmonius: your rushing idea would mean that you just create a situation that no human can solve without relying on "cheap" tactics.

From my point of view, the ai should have a decent advantage in production etc, but not 6 armies with 5 units each while the player still has 1 maybe with 3 units WITHOUT providing the player the chance to get to the same strength.

This is exactly the situation i am facing. whether i am already strong enough might be worth a discusssion, but the fact that the ai won't act will shape the the glorious winner in the long term.

1) Why not give the ai a small bonus and just make it hardcore aggressive?

2) Let's get rid of the whole diplomacy stuff, no peace possible, each empire fights its neighbours.

That would change a lot.

The problem is the Empire score is terribly vague, and more often than not when I play elemental I will defeat factions with twice my own score due to having superior units.
The AI bases its war-decisions around this score, so it have little idea what is happening around it what war and peace goes for.

I personally would not have done the war/peace system like this, but then again, I am not Frogboy, so I am not the one deciding how the AI decides whom to go to war with.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

 

AI has only one aim - to win. No other restrictions. If player can't withstand the rush, he can lower the difficulty. When I played on highest difficulties, I didn't really enjoy it, because I played on AI stupidity. AI could defeat me, but it didn't do it. AI had hordes of units but it can't manage them properly. AI should divide his army on two big parts: one is for attacking, second is for defending its cities. Attacking part of army should be consolidated and aimed to capture enemy cities.

Again, how should a human player withstand such a rush? If the advantage is not too big, fine. If it is too big, noone would enjoy playing it or be able to win.

 

You talk now about ways for the AI to defeat the human player with the insane advantages it gets. That is not the story.

 

It is rather to reduce these advantages while making the ai using better strategies (that's where your hint come in then).

 

So the question is: how big of an advanatge does the ai need?

 

My answer: not a big one. Just make it hardcore aggressive.

It is known fact that better AI is smarter AI. Smart AI needs small advantages to compete with player. But in reality no TBS game has smart AI. So big advantages are necessary on highest difficulties. Size of advantages are determined by developers depending on player feedback. It is work in progress. But now AI is too stupid.

Hardcore aggressive essentially makes all win types besides conquest meaningless. Such a change would force players to play a certain way, stripping value from other game concepts and/or deteriorating the fun value for some players.

As Tuidjy as mentioned several times, the game is far from over. Declaring victory at turn 39 seems very premature. Will you lose? Maybe, maybe not. The setup (world & civ) coupled with constant save game loading is clearly in your favor but in my experience when the AI is given nice buffs the longer the game goes on the more the advantage shines through.

You might also want to check out Seanw3's Master Affliction mod. Judging by his notes and AlLanMandragoran's thread it's probably right up your alley.

wierd i played on normal and had been war decced and wave after wave of armies.

One little AI that was superb in its day came from a liittle game called "War of the Lance". If developers could/would take a look at that they would see a sweeping AI that not only knows how to play but knows how to use its overpowering resources to give the player and overwhelming game of challenge and joy. Even on normal settings it was hard to beat it. Medieval Total War origional and more recently Shogun 2 Total War have brought some of this fun type of AI back to gaming. It's sad though that only a couple of games offer any real challenge to hardcore players.

The problem with todays AI's is they are built to be a "barrier to victory" instead of being built to win. They stand in your way clearly with an overwhelming advantage at times and don't seem to try to take you out of the game just hinder your course to victory. Now this might be the idea and pattern to sell games but it's not much of a pattern for enjoyment once the type of ai it is is figured out. Most games today once you figure out a pattern to victory the ai never tries to thwart it in later games. The ai needs to LEARN from the player how the player plays and then each game do things DIFFERENTLY to try to take the player out. But, when we see a GLIMPSE of an AI like this we see crying and boohooing on the forums that it's too hard or the AI cheats or wah wah wah. lol

I will always welcome a harder tougher "Game of Challenge" no matter the smartness of the AI though. I want a LOT of DIFFICULTY settings so I can find my optimum challenge level though. I certainly wouldn't mind even a rushing AI level of Difficulty. That's what players do in multiplayer games. Doesn't have to happen in every difficulty but a difficulty "NAMED" Rushing level AI would be nice.

maybe if you mess with starting speeds, like epic , ai doesnt know how to play?

You will not be able to do this forever and the moment you start a war, each other faction will declare war on you at the same time, because the AI will bribe the others to go to war with you (they've got the cash). This tatic will never work. Epic speed helped you keep ahead of the power curve, but that bonus will dwindle away. The only way you could possibly win the game is through the master quest. Which you could try and it shouldn't take too many more turns for your current game.

But if it is possible as you say it is... I would enjoy reading about it. I wouldn't know because I only play the standard factions at present.

 

This still seems like a futile exercise. If you are willing to spend 30 minutes on every turn because you are stopping and saving before you do anything just in case it doesn't work out how you want it just seems silly. You are taking advantage of something the AI cannot.  Worse yet, the same turn one of the AI might have looted a fantastic sword and you reloaded the game to get something better, and now you got the sword and the AI got a rusty helm. In your game the AI is being smart. Why should it attack if it knows it is going to lose? It best option is to build up a coalition to fight you, which is irrelevant because you are just going to save and reload again.

In one of your posts you talk about the load times. The fact that you are constantly loading saved games to get desired outcomes is the problem. Load the game once and just deal with what happens. It seems your main issue is that the AI won't attack, but you are causing the problem you are complaining about. The AI does not get the option of starting over if something "bad" happens.  You are upset because of how long it takes to actually keep doing it. Bad treasure drop, the AI just deals with it. A fight does not go its way, the AI just deals and moves on. You reload (-----------------------------------------------pauses because of the long load time-----------------------------) then do it again until you get what you want.

If Stardock wants to add bonuses to the AI at higher difficulties, that’s fine, but hopefully they do it because people are actually "beating" the game. Last night, a cave bear really did a number on me (early game maybe turn 20). My champion (short ignys bow-from quest-and leather cuirass) and two leather clad spearman all missed their first two shots. My champion got injured--broken leg I believe--and I was left with one unit in just one of my spearman units. For my trouble I got 10 gold pieces and a bear pelt. The real kicker came the next turn when a roaming air shrill attacked my last guy before I could flee and killed him. By the sound of it, you probably would have reloaded that disaster. If you do, in my opinion the game is already over and you lost.  You are simply chasing the rabbit to find out what could have been.

I used to save and reload all the time in all sorts of singleplayer games, but I found now that I don't, I enjoy the game more, and it feels more "real" to me.  And I learn about the game too, instead of the limits of my patience.

jajaja, Steven, you convinved me already. I will reload less.

@Willie Sanderson

great contribution, i nearly rue my harsh reaction from the other threat. i toally agree with your opinion on todays games, well stated.

Here is another example of a great ai:

Age of Mythology!

The ai had (not sure but i think so) onyl small gold and ressource boni from the start. but it nearly played as a normal human player did.

So in order to beat it, one had to be quick and efficient.

I think an interesting pc match no matter what game needs the possibility for the human player, to hinder the ai in its development. If the ai gets "too big of an advantage", there is no need to play cleverly. The fun is to be better, quicker, stronger. Not to wait for a lifetime and then clean the map.

In FE, my enemies have 150.000 gold. I mean, what sense is there e.g. to deatroy their trade routes and stuff? I cannot hit it there, where every real war is decided: in its economic Achilles' heel.

So i pledge to provide only a minor starting bonus to the ai, and let it be reckless aggressive (if it is not smart enough for tactical manoeuvering).

Remember HOMM 3? I am sure we played it all.

There it was also a matter of speed and efficient fighting, becuase otherwise the enemy would steal all ressources. I later HOMM versions, one could take literally one's time for ever, the ai would not steal anything.

All these successor games weren't nearly as challenging as HOMM 3, so i really enjoyed playing the campaign.

But true, still the ai would be a barrier to victory, but near to a real threat at least.

--------------

 

Total wars, yes. Actually a great series, but the ai had flaws that stopped me from playing. E.g the diplomacy options: one could trade military access for endless amounts of gold, so after turn 5, i already swam in money. This is still valid for shogun 2 etc.

So the game evolved into a "explore as many opponents as quickly as possible, because you can trade with them". Gold = victory.

But that was not the real game-breaker. The real annoyance was the amount of time one had to spend at the diplomacy screen: trade military acces for 100, offer, if declined, reload, try 80, if agreed, reload try 90, if declined, realod, try 85 and so on

Yes, it is hard to be a MinMaxer indeed .

This is another example of a mechanism legally implemented but if used excessively, mitigates the game experience because it makes the game too easy.

And restraining from using diplomacy then? If it is there, i cannot. It's like an inner urge, i rahter deinstall the game (what i did with every total war successor besides Rome after a while..

@ Deadly Julia: Making the AI hardcore agressive whould kill the pacing and design of the game (and wait till your faction score drop all the way to the bottom. And it will. take those non-aggro-pacts while you can. You'll be glad you did). The first enemy is the world itself (and that intent of design isn't exactly delivered subtle. See the Intro for what I mean. The game is ment to play out just like described there)
No need to axe that part of the game / setting away just because one trait allows a player using custom factions to do so (and as I hinted at there is something to be gained from having a tough wildlife either for a min-maxer.
To freely quote Sun Tzu: the ability to become invulnerabe is determined by yourselves [there is no such thing as a desirable fair fight in warfare. "Cheating" is just another way of getting an advantage over your enemy and fair game. Yay reloading. :P] the ability to overcome your adversary is dependent on the weaknesses of your enemy. To quote Lao Tzu freely: To be/get strong means to be/turn inflexible and fade. Turn that nasty wildlfe which tries to eat you into a tool with which to hit your adversaries. Profit.)

Adventurer Vocation shouldn't be axed. Getting 800 gold to start with is an alternative to get 4-8 heroes early. Beastlord is at least on par if not better. Most Vocations are neat to powerful and offer truly differing experiences. That is a strength of this game.
In the final beta it was a trait costing one souvereign point and freely compatible with all vocations. Talk about powerful right there!

Please reserve your judgement about the balance of the overall game until you actually finished a game on riddiculous or above all the way to the end. (and -20 spell resist is my favorite weakness. It hardly matters so far. Cruel is also quite nice but I like low unrest since the end of last beta. Unrest is largely underestimated in its impact.)

This is a deep game with a huge scope and high customizability (that last thing may very well be a weakness but I'm not much into creative stuff so who am I to juge other peoples likes / dislikes). Its balanced with the idea in mind that there should be many powerful options which seem overpowered indivudually but are about equaly broken in power so that an equilibrium of strength is reached. Some fringe combinations break the experience in half. Not forced to get those and even there similarly powerful combinations exist (in the beta even a combination of beastlord and free heroes was possible. As much as I dislike no free heroes anyome its a sensible change which is better for the game since it makes both truly powerful and fun choices exclusive as to make them matter.).

When Frogboy finailly gets the AI to exessively use aggresive strategic spells we will all run for the hills anyways (and I look forward to dialing back to expert when its ironed out to also use equipment wisely and enchant its troops liberaly with stuff like nature's cloak.)



To make it clear what I hinted at in my last post and what Tuidjy was trying to get across:
Unlike most other 4 X the AI just really starts to take of at Turns 100 + (most of the AI got Scores around 600 in my current riddiculous game while I merely got around 200 around Turn 140. And that is after eradicating 3 Empires and being declared on by the final one which to my luck is resoln which is lightly armored and not very tough in troops thanks to no armor trait. Good thing the other toughys are all Kingdoms and I have a huge ammount of Influence soon to be 1000 when I go full tilt into quest maps. So I got them tamed all close friends. Probably will shoot for an alliance victory this time...)

I'll try to get it across by exaggerating (a bit only though): What happens in the first 100 turns is borderline meaningless in your fight against the AI (beyond enabling mere survival clinging to the edge). Wars on other factions start after that (and you won't be able to keep your lead for long. You whouldn't even in riddiculous) and unlike nearly any other 4 X TBS early advantages are much harder to leverage in the long run.
The rest can only be experienced not truly explained (and I'm sure you will get to it...). The game is fun enough to us optimizers. So I'm sure you'll get to it soon or late.

Try expert for a change (and still optimize but maybe in another way which doesn't axe the core gameplay experience and design.) will reduce the need to reload greatly and offer you the ability to actually complete a game and experience the flow of FE without wasting all that time at the load screen. And will still provide a bit of a challenge. I promise. There is always time to get up to riddiculous in your second game and insane in your third isn't there?





I did get that you played a custom faction. I just overlooked that being not visible to monsters was a trait still (looked for it last custom creation and missed it) and misremembered to have read that it was the tarthan faction special now. Sorry for that.
I use the factions only as a an alternate for the faction bonus / race. I didn't ever play the standard factions when I could play a custom one ever all the way back to elemental War of magic (when it offered that option). As I said we seem to share tastes in how we like/play  our 4x TBS games. As I hinted at I am a min-maxer as well (just not exclusively that anymore after some development after years as a gamer...)


As for reload speeds: Get yourselves an SSD (highly reccommended not just here if you havent got one and they have become cheap enough to be affordable if you keep your old HDD for the big files) and exit+restart the game from time to time. Game seems to take in-game loading in chains very poorly. Should help with other games on the SSD you want to reload either (for ascets a 60 GB or at least a 120 GB SSD will do. a 60 Gig one is available for about 50 € / $ even without much searching). If you allready got one: Yea that is as fast as it gets. But its allright since it prevents fun in all to much reloading. A little disincentive to reload for every single setback even is allright isn't it...

A last little note regarding split XP: That was a balance choice from testing results in the beta. So consider that a feature not a misdesign (I agree with that choice even if I think its implemented a bit to harsh. With stacks of lots and lots of heroes there is a trick around it taking some investment: The trainer Perk. Take it with all your heroes and add potential into the mix and you'll still level fine with an all-hero army). Hero strength ebbed and flowed in the beta while Armies where only powerful one short part of the beta. I for one think they went a bit to far in nerfing Heroes for final release (hitting them tricefold... :() but I'm sure they will find the sweet spot for heroes soon being allready rather close. Unit balance has still a long and hard way up the road to be truly fun...

@DeadlyJulia: If you haven't already played you should find a copy of Warlords IV and get the 1.04 or 1.05 update. It has one of the hardest ai's I've seen in awhile and Prince difficulty and above it will literally massacre you without a heavy retinue of leaders. (You can save and carry over 3 leaders per game max). I eventually had to start out less than Prince to build up my retinue of Leaders that I could eventually deal with the AI of the higher difficulties. It was quite challenging and quite fun. Of course like any game once you figure out what you need the AI doesn't do anything about it and that once again is the BIGGGGGG problem with todays AI's. It continues to play the same way all the time with little variance.

Older Warlords series games like Warlords III I think and Age of Wonders first game gave you the ability to PICK the AI strategies of that particular session. You could pick aggressive, defensive, trash and burn or random I believe and this made for some very interesting games of those two. Of course later both developers took this ability out and the AI's once again became the same just different races with different stats and specials.

Oh and as far as diplomacy goes in the Total War series I have completely dropped using it except for "trade rights" only as the ai is too stupid in the diplomacy in just about all of the series. I had several factions declaring war with me then make peace and give me 10k denari, then on the very NEXT turn declare war again. I forget how much money I got out of Carthage with this silliness. Diplomacy is for HUMAANS in multiplayer games. There are very FEW games where diplomacy and the AI work and I mentioned one above "War of the Lance" has an excellent diplomacy system and I've not seen a better one since. Warlords comes close as usually the ai will declare war on you before you can exploit it but not in the Age of Wonders games. It's just too funny how you can form alliances and march 3 stacks of units right up to the AI's capital doorsteps and then declare war and knock them out of the game.

Even in THIS game I do not use the Quest victory system or casting the Master Spell. I play total domination and/or diplomatic victory which I highly doubt the AI will ever let me win that way, much like in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. The sad thing though there always comes the time in the game waaaaaay before the end that you just KNOW you have won. You have the majority of the cities and the ai is so split up and not allied that it's just a sweepup session instead of a challenge to the end. It's one of the reasons I liked MTW1 and S2TW because at least the factions would gang up on you and even your allies as you got stronger and in MTW1 some factions would come back stronger than they ever were in regular play. Plus, your own realm would start to fall apart also as you got bigger. THESE <~~~~~ are the things they need to keep in new games. ALWAYS a challenge even in the endgame.

ah, loevely, great hints!

funny that you qote Sun Tzu, my allyear toilet literature favourite. He himself would ahve been a great fan of save-reloading indeed .

@Blackmantle:

Nice one, I see many similarities .

1) SSD + reload:

This hint with the SSD is absolutely great. Just one question reagrding this: i can plug in this SSD like an USB stick and use it as my HD for saving games, right? How do i set-uo the game that it saves the gamesaves on that SSD? Do i have to install the game on the SSD? Or can i set the savegame path somewhere? Is the game overall faster when being installed on the SSD? Do i also have a faster ping with SSD (would be great for games like war of the roses).

- Question: you know an efficient waqy for problems with overheating? i am using a 2 year old laptop overheating sometimes, so i already have a laptop cooler underneath. But it still leads to "heat lags" in multiplayer games. Havent tried compressed air additionally until now, any other hints to reduce that problem with technical help? 

2) to live with the hero nerf:

Thx for the hint of taking the trainer perk, perfect. I ll do that, even if it means sacrificing other useful traits for it ;(. In the beginning years of playing strategy games i always tended to pick traits increasing xp,

It took some experience to realize these traits are mostly crap for the hero will be max level soon enough anyway and you sacrifice other traits for them. so in the end it gets much more powerful without these.

- Question reagrding the hero "special" perks (e.g. i ahve one Tann the Dragonborn with a trait being able to spit fire doing area damage): are these unique for every hero? or can i select them like a perk if i level up? do all heroes have the same "special" perks to choose? or do the depend on the "normal" perks? Is there a list showing these paths?

3) overpowered traits

Okay, understand. probaly one can build a great strategy with most one of them. But i remember some to only provide a minor initiative or attack bonus. this is just so much less useful than the traits we mentioned, that that should be balanced out. 

But i still think the adventurer traits is out of range. 800 gold might be a lot of low-level heroes, but i ahd some turns where i could recruit 4 level 9 heroes in one turn. And i can't see any ai hindering me from exploring as quickly as possible to get all these heroes for free waiting lonely out there in the open. So with this trait, i would always get most most of them for free.

And with the realization that heroes = faction points = buy time/keep the peace to level up, its just too powerful.

This is even more sad when considering how much i would like to take that beatslord perk but cannot combine it. So i had to take the adventurer trait nevertheless, or alsways suffer from knowing about the army of heroes that will be recruited by the enemy or will require most of my gold to spend to get ;(.

4) difficulty settings: i just don't know if i would enjoy a game with a difficulty below the max. I always think like "is it worth to invest so many thoughts/time in a game when it's not a real challenge? What you mentioned, "you know when you have won", this thoguth often comes far too quickly in most games. Darks souls was deinstalled just 30 minutes after i had found a totally overpowered spear just by running around enemies. Using it, ordinary monsters died after max 2 hits. I found that i can recall may 3 games in the last 2 years that i have played through ;(.

I have to stop here becuase its getting too long .

----

@Willie

The good old warlords series. I just played warlords II 18 years ago a lot. Ah, i loved that game. Great battles, long games.

Dito with the victory conditions. Be it civ 5, Warlords MOA or this game, i always pick conquest only, max number of opponents (and largest map if it wouldnt take so long to save).

NOT using a diplomacy feature that is there and COULD provide an advantage is something i just cannot do. Must be something genetical

Anyways, back to work  

 

There is no max level.


They are unique.


There are several powerful traits in the game, but you can't get all of them. You have to choose. Also, what you consider powerful (or OP), depends mostly on your playstyle. Me? I couldn't care less about an army of champions. The AI can't use them properly, and for me they are just wasted XP. I rather use only a handful. In my last game, I had only three (including my sov), and one of them was indisposed (trapped in an area he couldn't leave) for most of the game. Yet, I won the game easily. My sov was level 34 at the end and nobody could stand against him. Not even Dragons. If I really wanted a champion-army, I play Altar and use Henchmen. They are almost the same as champions, but you can design them yourself. They cost Influence to train, but as Altar you can get that from quests (which you can buy as Altar). Most importantly, however, they don't split XP. You can put as much of them in an army as possible, and with the Bard and Trainer traits, you can get very quickly to extremely high levels.

@Gaunathor:

Seems DeadlyJulie agrees and will try these henchmen, because she is interested in a few powerful Heroes, too. besides, she HATES waste.

Only thing i will really miss the the exceptional good equipment level 9 heroes just recruited provide.

Will this be offset by the stuff your hero finds later on?

Thx for posting!

So "beastlord" it will be, "heroic" and some other stuff i need to think about, goodbye overpowered "adventurer" + "betrayer"! You will never be fixed, but who cares ?

I can understand the AI just being smart about it not attacking a powerful player, after all, the player is likely to easily outsmart it when it comes to unit design and tactical prowess. Two or more AIs on the other hand... Is there AI routines in place that make opponents of the same alignment seek out alliances and/or war support to deal with runaway players or AI on a power trip? If there isn't, it needs to be. Let them be more likely to happen among AI with the same alignment against a runaway player with a different one.

 

I, like Julia, seem to find the AI a bit passive, and by this point I am rather firmly consolidated. If multiple AI would have tried dealing with me somewhere between turn 100 and 200 I would really have had to fight for my survival. Instead, all the AI, be them empire or kingdom, love me.

 

.