Well, my military wasnt as strong as I thought, my fault. But still:

I got very good relations with one of my neigbours and had close borders to him. Then suddenly another, more aggressive neighbour attacked me - and he came through the territory of my "good friend", so that he could directly attack my city with his axeman, without having to march through my territory.

I think a good friend shouldnt act like this. "I am your friend, but well, i still will let your worst enemy march throgh my territory to rush you. No need to give you a warning."

Well, regarding the game mechanics there's no reason to complain - i could have sent troops into my friends territory to see my enemies coming in early enough. I should have noticed they have open borders. But anyway, dont you agree that this is not a way a friend should act? Maybe the AI could be improved in this regard.

I think if we're talking about axemen here then, at best, you were at "pleased" and not "friendly" I dont think Ive ever gotten to friendly while axemen were still a power to be dealt with.

As such it is possible that while he was "pleased" with you for one thing he could be at least cautious with your enemy - which is all they would need to have an open border agreement.

I wouldnt expect a "Friendly" civ to allow a new open border agreement with someone who had already declared war on me - but the AI doesnt seem to drop open borders for anything other than someone they are about to declare war on. In other words - if your "friend" was not at the point at which they would declare war on your enemy then they arent going to close their borders to them just because they want to march thru and give you a stomping.

International relations can be kind of complex in Real Life sometimes.

It seems to me that in the 1st World War, Luxemburg allowed the German Army to pass through on it's way to France. The Belgians, refused and as a result their country became one big battlefield for years..

I agree that it's frustrating. It's also frustrating to be in the middle position as a weaker peaceful country which doesn't want to cancel it's strategic trades or go to war as the front line buffer, or lose cities in the invasion , then have your friend recapture and keep them.


I believe spreading your religion to your neighbors let's you notice who's marching nearby.

I believe spreading your religion to your neighbors let's you notice who's marching nearby.

sort of. if you control the holy city of your state religion, you have line of sight into every city that contains that religion (whether it's their state religion or not). if you switch religions to one you don't own the holy city of, or to free religion, then you lose that benefit. even tho i know that will happen, it still sometimes surprises me when i make the free religion change and the lights go out all over the world :lol:.

and now for Mickon2007: i see this was only your 2nd post, welcome to CFC :)

learning the ins and outs, and the complete frustrations and :wallbash: of the AI diplomacy drove me nuts when i started out. seriously, i would talk to the screen and say "how can you be mad at me for trading with your worst enemy when i did not even know you existed at the time. how was i supposed to know that you hated him???? how is that fair?" but now the diplomacy is one of my favorite things about the game. it took me a very long time to work it out and experiment and learn how best to use it, and i very much admit i am still learning. the fact that the AI doesn't always act the way you'd expect friends to act is a choice that they made, they won't change it. after all, we can declare war on someone we've treated as our best buddy all along. i've done that plenty of times.

having a civ at Friendly status, if you can find a way to do that without making other civs mad at you, is always a good thing. even if it's someone that you plan to kill very very painfully, because it generally allows you to pick when to start the war, a great advantage since you can prepare and surprise him. it can be quite hard to get good relationships with everyone, you pretty much can't count on it with random opponents. but you can often, with enough practice and luck, try to split your rivals into two groups, your "friends" and your "enemies". you and your friends kill your enemies. that gets rid of your enemies of course, and it makes your friends like you even more, since a mutual war adds closeness. if the rest of the world likes you, that generally makes any type of victory (except space i suppose) easier at the end. and, if you decide your friends have to die, well.... ya know. you just deal with the guilt.

i get a real kick out of sitting there and manipulating the world situation. one of my favorite tricks is, if i get lucky and i have 3 religions and the time to spare, i love to spread religion A to my friends, B to one enemy, and C to another enemy that's close to the enemy that got religion B. B and C are gonna fight at some point, it just about guaranteed. i get to sit back and watch, and i never had to bribe anybody or do anything out in the open. i can jump in and take advantage of the distraction or whatever suits my purposes.

this game has a LOT to figure out. how strong your military needs to be so that the AI doesn't think "oh he's weak i'll attack him", like what seems to have happened to you, is one of those things. the diplomacy is another. what technologies to pick and in what order and how to wisely trade them is another. and how to run your cities the best. and i could go on and on. took me approximately forever and i'm still learning. but that's a great thing, because this complex game doesn't get boring. all sorts of different strategies end up working, i can try different types of games, and so i'm still playing. which is nifty :)

i hope that you have fun, and that you don't feel too guilty if you have to kill your AI friends :mischief:.

i hope that you have fun, and that you don't feel too guilty if you have to kill your AI friends :mischief:.

Yeah for a while I used to launch trans-ocean wars just because my only "enemy" was over there, and me and my two friends were "over here" - I would lose games because long distance wars are expensive and time consuming - ultimately someone like Asoka or Mansa outtechs you as you bleed into the ocean.

Basically I just get the point where I know I need 2-5 more cities, and well, all the land is taken, and well, I know youre my buddy and all but those juicy cities you've got right there sure would come in handy.. so I'm just going to have to relieve you of them:D

The guilt goes away real fast when the victory screen pops up.:goodjob:

Thanx for your nice answers. So finally this "lousy friend" in 1 game made me learn quite a lot through the nice info you gave me in your replies :)

Btw i gave up this one game. I was first tempted to load an earlier stage of the game and prepare myself for the attack, but then i prefered to regard it as a lesson.

Lesson includes: watch your friends territory for incoming enemy troops - and, yes indeed, spreading your own religion helps a lot in watching, whats going on.

KMadCandy: special thanx to your great ideas about diplomacy. I think that experimenting with the things you mentioned will give additional fun to my games.

KMadCandy: special thanx to your great ideas about diplomacy. I think that experimenting with the things you mentioned will give additional fun to my games.

you are quite welcome! just don't try them all out for the first time together in the same game. because that's too much to learn all at once, and then *i* would be another example of a "friend that helps to get you killed" :eek:! :lol:.

The same thing happens to me, my friend lets the person i'm at war with go through his territory and kill me because "we couldn't betray are good friend"

I had the same thing happen to me. Simultaneously, Caesar declares on me and a couple of axes (or something like that) show up in my territory, having travelled through the territory of my pleased neighbor. I thought it would be smart to bribe the neighbor into war against Caesar, which I did. Poof! 4 or 5 units show up in my territory, having been ejected from my neighbor's land. I had done what Caesar couldn't do - I had concentrated his forces for him. I was completely screwed. (I had neglected my military.)

BTW, I recently tried modding some XML files: No leader will agree to Open Borders unless they are Pleased or above. I also modded out a lot of the positive modifiers so it would be much more difficult to get to Pleased. Given that would make scouting and religion spread almost impossible, I also modded both scouts and missionaries so they can enter a Civ's territory without an open borders agreement. I've only played part of a game with these mods, but I like it so far. I think it's a bit more realistic, too. I hope to reduce long distances wars which require marching large armies through other nations.

I've never looked at the files to know how "happy" a leader has to be with you to agree to your request to Open Borders, but I am thinking that they will propose it well before "pleased" - maybe its my faulty memory but I could swear I've had people "annoyed" with me propose it, but again, I might be wrong.... can anyone confirm that the AI will propse open borders even at diplo states where they wouldnt agree to it, if you proposed it?

I've never looked at the files to know how "happy" a leader has to be with you to agree to your request to Open Borders, but I am thinking that they will propose it well before "pleased" - maybe its my faulty memory but I could swear I've had people "annoyed" with me propose it, but again, I might be wrong.... can anyone confirm that the AI will propse open borders even at diplo states where they wouldnt agree to it, if you proposed it?

I don't know about the unmodified game, and I don't have the XML files handy to look at, right now. But with my modifications, I could not propose Open Borders until a Civ was Pleased with me, but I did have a couple of Civ's offer Open Borders to me when they were Annoyed or Cautious. In both cases, they were war allies - I had agreed to declare war against another Civ when they requested it. In one case, they cancelled Open Borders shortly after we ceased to be war allies.

I concluded there is either another property in one the XML files that controls when they will propose Open Borders, or some mechanism that will cause them to offer Open Borders to war allies.

I don't know about the unmodified game, and I don't have the XML files handy to look at, right now. But with my modifications, I could not propose Open Borders until a Civ was Pleased with me, but I did have a couple of Civ's offer Open Borders to me when they were Annoyed or Cautious. In both cases, they were war allies - I had agreed to declare war against another Civ when they requested it. In one case, they cancelled Open Borders shortly after we ceased to be war allies.

I concluded there is either another property in one the XML files that controls when they will propose Open Borders, or some mechanism that will cause them to offer Open Borders to war allies.

My assumption was that if open borders fits with a development strategy that the AI is persuing then they will propose open borders at just about any state better than "refuses to talk" - this seems especially prevalent early in the game if you manage to wall off a bit of land the AI hasnt explored, or has explored but it believes to be unsettled - they want to march their two archers and a settler right thru your Civ so they can plop down a city in whatever location would be most obnoxious toward you.

"No thanks Toku, I'm gonna pass on that opportunity for you to found a city on my backside, and if you wouldnt mind, please tell everyone ELSE that the restaurant is CLOSED until I can support the two or three more cities that will fill in that nice strech of uninhabited land I'm protecting. K? Buh-bye now!"

At least that's what it should say :lol:

Had something veary similar happen recently i got a little testy about opened the world editer granted myself and the barbs innumaral nukes just to release some stress. (oddly enough in some cases i dropped 6 nukes on a stone pit and it was still standing it not being important i moved on)

1. The comp can play middle ground and not suffer diplomatic penalty but the player can not you really can only risk it with a big army on hand.

2. I want the ability to not be forced into talking to the ai every time thay want to talk to me if thay so feel like it thay are allowed to ignore me.

3. Thay always demand things never offer a deal such as (go to war with such and such or ill get miffed at you) or (stop tradeing with so an so or else i wont like you as much) could be a little better if thay you know offered to give you a little gold or if its really important to them a tech kinda like the player has to without risking anyone other then semi positive relations getting mad at you for makeing a demand.

The diplomatic system is so flawed in this game.

I hate it when the AI does that to me. One time Julius marched around the world (almost) to kill me, did it to.:lol:

Post #500! Wow.:goodjob:

The diplomatic system is so flawed in this game.

I wouldnt say that so much as I would say that it's quite limited in that regard. When I think about how many times I've declared war for no reason other than I'm pissed at someone for turning down a trade or I just want their 3 closest cities to insure I can win a space launch etc etc. We (humans) have the ability to do things that are completely illogical or without precedence.

If a "friendly" civ would suddenly declare war for just about no good reason we would all be complaining that trying to appease the AI is useless because they are going to eventually DoW anyway. I would enjoy a certain psychotic behavior from one or two leaders... but if they ALL did it... ugh.

I think we probably have to deal with the insane demands and hard to appease leaders if we want a playable game with a computer controlling 6+ different leaders. In so much as you can at least expect each leader to be played somewhat differently by the computer shows me that enough things are right about the AI.

I think the AI to AI relationships are handled by those invisible modifiers instead of the insane tech demand every 20 turns that has Monte hating you - where as he has a natural -6 vs. Ghandi - I guess on the assumption that Ghandi will tell him to go to hell everytime with those demands without actually ever making them.

It does tend to ingore whatever relationships should have developed in a natural progression -

Humans can be irrational too. One game I killed twelve opponents which left my friendly neighbor as the last opponent (I only had conquest checked). How did I pay him back for his years of loyalty? Well at this time I had about twenty nukes collecting dust in my Silo's and I decided to hit the red button... A few times... Even though my production could easily beat him without mass genocide. This story is relavent because it is people like me that breed hatred among the computers towards humans and will work together for fear that you are as untrustworthy as me. :lol:

Well at this time I had about twenty nukes collecting dust in my Silo's and I decided to hit the red button... A few times...
Sounds Like Something I would do

twenty nukes collecting dust in my Silo's and I decided to hit the red buttonI did the same thing but w/ 8 and the Ottoman's SDI shot all but 1!

I dont know where you got the idea that i suggested the AI go and declare war on freandly targets at the drop of a hat, but as for my play the middle ground comment i just ment that the AI is not really under as much stress to take a side as human players are thay already know who thay like with religion and civics being the deciding factors for a per game basis.

The AI is veary limited thay can only trade tech or resorces or demand actions or gifts from you, unless you are far enough back in ranking then if thay like you may on a rare accation gift you something this may partally be because of the limited methods of victorys thay are allowed to chase and as such dont have a way to formulate methods of chooseing the value of getting your aid in a war so thay are given the only 1 option approch, accept and get a good mark or refuse and get a bad mark ultamatly penalizing the player for what is bad AI programming (kinda like taxing a company and haveing it pass the taxs onto the consumers)

The more i look at this game the more it looks to me like the only way to get this stuff to work in a way that might best mimic realistic without adding uneeded micromanagement or the headache of trying to see past a . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . arguement aka diplomatic negoiation may be to breed in stats kinda like thay have for the games combat system only diffrant.

damn site tryed to swallow this post whole without letting it see the light of day, secoundary note the managers of this site need to deal with the popups and numarus bits of spywear hanging around but i dought thay will do anything about it.

In my opinion, driving war mostly through Civics and Religion modifiers is silly. The AI should be much more likely to go to war with a neighbor, period. If the AI is annoyed with a neighbor, that should almost be a guaranteed war.

I also think the hidden modifiers should be unhidden. Exactly what does it add to the game to have hidden modifiers?

I just played a game against a human who had the same grasp of diplomacy as the computer does. Tried to talk me into moving my armies to kill someone while stockpiling horses on my border. :rolleyes:
I started whipping out an army of spears and a few turns later he attacked me along with the guy he told me to attack. What a surprise. Killed him 40-50 turns later.

In my opinion, driving war mostly through Civics and Religion modifiers is silly. The AI should be much more likely to go to war with a neighbor, period. If the AI is annoyed with a neighbor, that should almost be a guaranteed war.Well there figuring that if they go to war w/ there neighboor, there military size will shrink so there other enemy might go to war and kill them.

I just played a game against a human who had the same grasp of diplomacy as the computer does. Tried to talk me into moving my armies to kill someone while stockpiling horses on my border.
I started whipping out an army of spears and a few turns later he attacked me along with the guy he told me to attack. What a surprise. Killed him 40-50 turns later.Hey it worked out for you because you were smarter then he.

I dont know if anyone has said this already, dont have time to read all the answers but I had this problem too myself and i found the answer.

If you make your friends stop trading with the enemy then the enemy also cannot go through their land, it closes borders or atleast it did when i tried it. Basically if you can see your enemy has a route through your lands by your ally then get the ally to stop trading with them.

Hope that helps.

While i dont know about the person who Origanlly started this thread i can say for myself that after i noticed a few mounted units getting to close to my land by way of this (ally) and looked to see about cutting off the open borders he had but for me he doing the old red letter resistance. (good suggesttion none the less) upon finding that he would not cut open borders even for a bribe thats about when o lost my cool opened the world editer and let fly, 500 or so nukes later closed the game and did something else.

if your neighbor doesn't like you enough to cut off open borders with the other guy, what do you expect? this happens in the real world all the time.

civ operates on a balance of power system, which is the most parsimonious way of dealing with international politics. if they think they can beat you, they'll come get you.

yea, I normally try to keep some sentries in my friends territory this way if somones got alot of guys coming I can pump out military units.

If I could improve one thing about how the AI handles diplomacy, it'd be to make them a little more picky about Open Borders. I think it's fine that Open Borders is generally the start of diplomatic relations. It makes sense, and is "real world" accurate. It opens trade routes and begins generating diplomatic brownie points to help you achieve better relations with the other civs.

But when it comes to war time diplomacy, Open Borders become very, very important, and the AI tends to honor their current open border agreements above all else. I've had an easier time getting civs to declare war on other civs than to close their borders. I was once in a position where a civ pleased with me sat between me and another civ who we were both annoyed with. The belligerant state marched through to me and declared war. My "friend" would not close borders, even when I offered some gold and a couple techs, but he would go to war for just a bit of gold and a copy of my world map. Weird.

Well they might have been pleased or friendly w/ there neighboor. And I know that they don't normally declare war on a civ w/ the name religion.

You obviously know what to do. Stop talking to this guy, CIVS IS SERIOUS BUISNESS.