Diplomacy: What has worked for me

I have been playing on Emperor and experimented quite a bit with the process. As a result I have found a system that works for me on a reliable basis.

1. Have a respectable army. Doesn't need to be a massive army but more than two units definitely helps.

2. NEVER EVER sign a pact of secrecy. Always say no. Never join in a war with someone. For some reason the AI seems to see pacts of secrecy as aggressive and the pacts don't really seem secret. I'm not saying never go to war just don't do it because someone asks you.

3. Trade resources regularly as well as open borders. Open borders really seems to put the AI at ease.

4. Realize that when they say don't expand near them they mean don't start a new city ANYWHERE. This can't be helped much and is largely determined by how touchy the AI civ tends to be.

Using just the above steps (yeah I know, it is insanely simplistic) I was able to defeat civs one at a time without all out war on me. I have repeated this formula through 5 playthroughs and have achieved the same results consistently.

Scipio Aetius said:

I have been playing on Emperor and experimented quite a bit with the process. As a result I have found a system that works for me on a reliable basis.

1. Have a respectable army. Doesn't need to be a massive army but more than two units definitely helps.

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I have got DOWs when I've had a significant army also. I guess it only starts to matter when your army is bigger than the opponents, like it was in Civ4. That is nearly impossible and very expensive goal.

You need an army of course, since every leader in this game who is in the same landmass, except possibly Gandhi, will attack you eventually, no matter what you do. Since sitting army costs an arm and a leg, it seems to be the best strategy to go offensive until there is no more opponents in the same landmass.

2. NEVER EVER sign a pact of secrecy. Always say no. Never join in a war with someone. For some reason the AI seems to see pacts of secrecy as aggressive and the pacts don't really seem secret. I'm not saying never go to war just don't do it because someone asks you.

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Actually I think joining the war may be a good idea. An AI vs. AI -war is generally a good thing for a human, and as far as I understand, the AI usually won't start that war at all unless you join it (I'm not sure though, thanks to the new "realistic" diplomacy model that hides things like ongoing wars from a player).

4. Realize that when they say don't expand near them they mean don't start a new city ANYWHERE. This can't be helped much and is largely determined by how touchy the AI civ tends to be.

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To me it seems they have already decided to go to war when they say that.

Pact of cooperation is also a good signal. They always seem to terminate it before they start the war, and when they terminate it, it's very likely they will DOW on you.

My findings are as follows

1) Pacts of co-operation is the 'highest' level of relationship you can attain. An AI with this pact will usually cancel it before they consider attacking you. So if they cancel it and you still think you're their friends and vice versa, you only have yourself to blame

2) Pacts of secrecy really are secret. I have signed pacts against Civs who are still co-operating with me.

3) Effects of pact of secrecy on the AI side appears to be
- Penalties to trade. (ie: luxuries they used to trade with you 1 to 1 now require a big markup)
- Chance of a DoW and or military alliance against you goes up.

4) Open Borders -AI uses this to scout your territory. DO NOT SIGN if you have a neighbor with no pact of co-operation and or if you have a weak military.

5) *player end* Use pacts of secrecy and co-operation liberally to poll your constituent Civs (your neighbours) when you wan to attack someone. Civ5 AI seems to see the go it alone attitude that is a carryover from previous Civ games as threatening to them. But if you bring them into a pact of secrecy against X, then DoW on X, they seem less threatened by it and see the player as a pariah warmonger. And I've tested this so far in one game on Emperor. Appears to work.

LESSON - talk to your neighbours. Diplomacy isn't just a one way street or bunch of levers for humans to manipulate. Civ5 appears to attempt (at least in its current buggy unfinished state) to make a truly 2 way street. Things the AI do, the human players are expected to do, such as polling about who they want to fight against, or form a secret alliance against.

Edit: I'm aware some of my findings appear to be contradictory to the OP. Will do more research.

Does the AI really gain anything from scouting using open borders? Blocking off everywhere is pretty hard with the small culture area in this game anyway.

I find if you don't settle towards them they will often leave you alone even if their army is massively bigger. you can event settle one city close and say you won't do it again as long as you build your other cities away from them.

From anecdotal evidence and my own experience, AI no longer has omniscient military view *ie: it doesn't know what units you have.) I has the same access to the information we do via demographics and military advisor. They want open borders to know where your troop concentrations are so they can plan and to attack and to know your troop composition.

This can be seen in how highly they value open borders.

If you get a chance, liberate captured workers/settlers of other civs (instead of keeping them), this seems to give a big boost to relations too.

stii said:

Does the AI really gain anything from scouting using open borders? Blocking off everywhere is pretty hard with the small culture area in this game anyway.

I find if you don't settle towards them they will often leave you alone even if their army is massively bigger. you can event settle one city close and say you won't do it again as long as you build your other cities away from them.

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I usuallly find scouts around my borders. I had a open-border deal with England at my south, and when I got into war with Monty in the North and moved all my forces there; England DoW'ed me as soon as my southern part was empty. And they weren't hostile to me before.

dexters said:

1) Pacts of co-operation is the 'highest' level of relationship you can attain. An AI with this pact will usually cancel it before they consider attacking you. So if they cancel it and you still think you're their friends and vice versa, you only have yourself to blame

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Has anyone ever gotten an AI to sign a defensive pact in Civ V?

Me, me! I got India to sign one!

Roxlimn said:

Me, me! I got India to sign one!

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What were the conditions and your relative power rankings,


Also

-Weaker AI Civs get really nervous when you attack other weaker Civs. I attacked Japan to finish them off on mine. But had Alexander in my back pocket on the other continent as a balance to Napoleon who was #1 in points but I have now surpassed. The next turn, Alex calls me up and wants to cancel our agreement of co-operation. IBT Alex was also complaining about all the troops I had near his cities. But I had them there to protect and augment his inferior forces. But there's no way for the AI to understand this.

This makes sense in a general sense, but I feel there needs to be an option of 'military co-operation' that follows from having a 'secret pact against X' which I do have with Alex against napoleon. That way, the game doesn't see all the units I park in what I consider to be friendly territory and freak out and think I'm about to attack.

On an archipelago map I got my island-neighbour Askia to sign a DefencePact with me..
But only after he attacked, got smashed and offered me all his stuff for peace 3 times in a row.
After that it was coop, pact and research-agreement all the way through the game.

So maybe if the AI finally understands that he can't beat you, he joins you?

I think Gandhi was like 4th at the time or something. Britain had nearly wiped him off their continent before I intervened. I conquered many British Cities, and gifted them to Gandhi en masse. Then I signed lots of agreements to give him luxuries, gold, and units to prop him up. I didn't want to have to intervene again!

Signed Defensive Pact after, though in retrospect, I'm not sure it had a deterrent effect on Elizabeth anyway. Kept the peace, though.

MkLh said:

An AI vs. AI -war is generally a good thing for a human, and as far as I understand, the AI usually won't start that war at all unless you join it (I'm not sure though, thanks to the new "realistic" diplomacy model that hides things like ongoing wars from a player).

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been experimenting with this....
AI seems to be willing to pay alot for cities...
ask them to war by selling cities works very well
use the extra gold to rush buy units in multiple cities to save on maintenance cost.

stii said:

Does the AI really gain anything from scouting using open borders? Blocking off everywhere is pretty hard with the small culture area in this game anyway.

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I've had threats from Civs who had never seen my army about the size of my army despite my army being eight times the size of theirs.

It seems to me from my dealings with the AI, that you can count on an AI as long as you don't share a border with them (or, if you're warmongering, as long as they aren't on the same continent), which kinda of makes sense. If you look at history, this is how it's always been. The enemies of my enemies are my friends. When my enemies are gone, the enemies of my former enemies are no longer my friends (see Cold War, for a recent example).

I think diplomacy is misunderstood in this game. I find I can manipulate the AI into warring against my enemies the same way I could in CIV4, except now I can't do it if they share a border with me and they consider me dangerous. And I would expect once I win, they will turn against me. Or if they win, they will look for a new target.

Anyway, it all comes down to choosing your targets carefully, whereas in CIV4, you didn't have much of a choice because of religion.

I've allied with India with shared border for most of a game. We were fighting the same AI opponent then remained allied until I declared war on them.

I think more goes into it than sharing borders, though it seems to be a big factor in determining mood.

Airey said:

been experimenting with this....
AI seems to be willing to pay alot for cities...
ask them to war by selling cities works very well
use the extra gold to rush buy units in multiple cities to save on maintenance cost.

Spoiler :

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judging by your trade agreement (which is look to me like a smart trade), Ariey, indeed you are a killer merchant

I do agree regarding the proximity issue, IMO the most important factor in diplomacy.

To me, AI diplomacy boils down to:

1) Maintaining trades agreements to keep good rates.
2) Proximity. Never settle next to an AI to keep good relations.

Other then that nothing matters really. POC, Secracy, giving tributes, sharing wars, worst enemy,.... all have little to no effect.

Hence, When I break a deal in my continent, I can still get good trade rates with civs from other continent as long as the civs doesn't meet each others. Also when I conquer cities in another continent, I make sure I don't own any cities bordering another AI otherwise I get a fairly quick DOW no matter how good friends we were.

Re city sales, I found the most important factor determining its trade value is the amount of lux within the city culture. pop amount have relatively less importance.

One last thing, out of all imbalances iin Civ5, City trading and worker baiting are by far the biggest cheese. You can win any battle abusing these 2! (ie: selling conquered cities with AI who have no open border with your current enemy, then placing your ranged units there and killing.....)

(ie: selling conquered cities with AI who have no open border with your current enemy, then placing your ranged units there and killing.....)

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That seems pretty legit to me...the Taliban use the Afghani/Pakistani border in just this way.

At any rate, what, exactly *is* a pact of secrecy? I mean, what, exactly, are we keeping secret from our common enemy?

And, what are the benefits of a pact of cooperation, other than a bit more assurance that the AI won't declare war while you prepare to attack them?

I've tried remaining peaceful so far by just trading, research agreements here and there, and not expanding close to their borders. But there's always this AI that no matter how much I try to be in good terms with, they just don't budge. They keep throwing insults. I haven't done any warmongering except in defense (I was never a warmonger anyway).

Are some AI programmed to hate you till the very end? Should I just give up peace and wipe out this kind of AI civ? Or have you guys ever managed to redeem relationships with this type of AI?

This is the theme song of my King, Standard, Pangaea, Cultural Victory games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRGd0gD0QNE&feature=related