It is quite difficult to speak specifically here, as we are talking about a large project in abstract. I think that the AI should be more likely to support you if you are their ally, and generally not attack you (unless you leave your border open), but they should probably still try and defend their front line at least to a certain degree, like a human would. If the AI's behaviour is based on human moves, then they should realise that backstabbing and false allies are very common and very likely in this game and react accordingly. Of course I am not a coder nor developer but from my own experience, I almost gave up on this game early on because I thought it would be all gunboat like in the bot tutorial games and I wouldn't want other new players to do the same thing.

[quote=Prague post_id=281725 time=1641242368 user_id=21050]
I understand that this is probably very difficult to code, but could a feature be added where you could perhaps enter a command like /alliance or /nonaggression or perhaps buttons in the chat menu? I think this would be really cool and would maybe help new players get an understanding of the diplomatic side of diplomacy.
[/quote]

I think the first issue would be that afaik, the bots don't take in any input besides the current (and past?) board state. Certainly a suggestion that you could make to the FB AI team...not sure how to contact them, though.

Second issue would be, how exactly should such a message change a bot's behavior?

There are people who send lots of support signals in gunboat and mean them. There are people who send lots of support signals in gunboat...and then walk into Burgundy the moment you leave it.

The bot would have to evaluate the "truthfulness" of your message, for lack of a better word. Closest thing I can think of is maybe how Civilization does alliances and happiness? But even that is pretty linear "did you attack me? then I don't like you", or sometimes certain leaders start off negative/aggressive towards others. Might be interesting to experiment with, but not sure it would make the bots "better", although I don't think that's your intention here.

Anyway. You can send regular support signals towards the bots, just like you would to a human player, and it should (theoretically) influence their behavior since they're trained off human webdip games.

I'd agree learning solely on gunboat is tricky when transitioning to online play.

I understand that this is probably very difficult to code, but could a feature be added where you could perhaps enter a command like /alliance or /nonaggression or perhaps buttons in the chat menu? I think this would be really cool and would maybe help new players get an understanding of the diplomatic side of diplomacy.