Diplomacy

Osvaldo Manso · Nov 20, 2014

In my present game of Civ I've noticed something unusual. As you all know, other civs don't use diplomats. However, suddenly, after pressing enter for advancing to the next turn, a message appeared on screen stating "Spies report: library production sabotaged in Delhi".

Delhi is not a city of mine but I have established an embassy there. So, it seems that the ambassador is informing me that one other civ (maybe the Chinese or the Zulus, who share the same continent - I never play Earth) has sabotaged the production in Delhi.

Have you seen something similar?

kirkham7 · Nov 20, 2014

It's been a long time since I've seen it, but yeah, I have seen it before. I know enemy civs can establish trade routes without caravans, perhaps they can sabotage production without a diplomat if they are at war with a civilization?

darkpanda · Nov 21, 2014

Why do you say that other CIVs don't use diplomats? They do use them, except not in the way you expect...
Some details were revealed in that post before.

Cunaxa · Nov 21, 2014

I had a similar message popping up in my recent game but the difference was that I did not establish an embassy to the civilization that got sabotaged. The message appeared in the same round after I established an embassy to the Chinese who were the only civilization I had met at this point (as you can see in the screenshot) so I was quite surprised to find out that the caravan production in Babylon had been sabotaged :lol:

I guess it might be some kind of bug

Mize · Nov 21, 2014

On the sabotage topic, I distinctly remember haveing a barbarian diplomat sabotage the production in my city instead of trying to flee when he was left the lone survivor. It might have had something to do with the fact that the city being attacked had remained undefended at that time. My logic is that the AI wouldn't try to move the diplomat in a defended city (attack 0), but an undefended one is ripe for the... well, not taking, but sabotage.

Otherwise, I too have seen 'sabotage' messages for enemy cities, and I'm almost sure I've gotten sabotaged myself (with invisible diplomats, through a regular unit adjacent to my city), but the circumstances elude me and my memory is hazy. I'm positive that occurences such as these have been discussed on this very forum. In particular, I remember someone saying that he got sabotaged through adjacent bombers!

Osvaldo Manso · Nov 21, 2014

darkpanda said:
Why do you say that other CIVs don't use diplomats? They do use them, except not in the way you expect...
Some details were revealed in that post before.

What I mean is that you can't see their diplomats. Unlike other units you don't get to see their diplomats moving around. It's the same as caravans.

Osvaldo Manso · Nov 21, 2014

Cunaxa said:
I had a similar message popping up in my recent game but the difference was that I did not establish an embassy to the civilization that got sabotaged. The message appeared in the same round after I established an embassy to the Chinese who were the only civilization I had met at this point (as you can see in the screenshot) so I was quite surprised to find out that the caravan production in Babylon had been sabotaged I guess it might be some kind of bug

That's a very interesting situation and (if needed) is a proof that other civs do build caravans.

Osvaldo Manso · Nov 21, 2014

Mize said:
On the sabotage topic, I distinctly remember haveing a barbarian diplomat sabotage the production in my city instead of trying to flee when he was left the lone survivor. It might have had something to do with the fact that the city being attacked had remained undefended at that time. My logic is that the AI wouldn't try to move the diplomat in a defended city (attack 0), but an undefended one is ripe for the... well, not taking, but sabotage.

Otherwise, I too have seen 'sabotage' messages for enemy cities, and I'm almost sure I've gotten sabotaged myself (with invisible diplomats, through a regular unit adjacent to my city), but the circumstances elude me and my memory is hazy. I'm positive that occurences such as these have been discussed on this very forum. In particular, I remember someone saying that he got sabotaged through adjacent bombers!

Your logic on the barbarian diplomat makes sense but it never happened to me before. It's very rare for me to leave a city undefended.

I think I read somewhere that other civs need to "park" a unit adjacent to a "human" city so they can connect by using the "invisible" diplomats and caravans. It's as if they teleport diplomats and caravans and the unit parked close to the city works as a portal or gate. So maybe that's what happened with the bomber you mention.

Osvaldo Manso · Nov 21, 2014

kirkham7 said:
It's been a long time since I've seen it, but yeah, I have seen it before. I know enemy civs can establish trade routes without caravans, perhaps they can sabotage production without a diplomat if they are at war with a civilization?

Yes, that's right but I don't think they need to be at war to sabotage. Correct me if I'm wrong but human players may use diplomats to sabotage without causing war. I see it as terrorism being funded by anonymous countries, just like in the real world. :sad:

Mize · Nov 22, 2014

Osvaldo Manso said:
Yes, that's right but I don't think they need to be at war to sabotage. Correct me if I'm wrong but human players may use diplomats to sabotage without causing war. I see it as terrorism being funded by anonymous countries, just like in the real world.

That's right. But, for caravans, I don't think the AI even needs an adjacent unit, or even diplomatic contact for that matter. It seems that when the AI builds a caravan in one of its cities it simply automatically gets a trade route to the best (current) trade city in the world, as long as it's A) not one of its own cities, B) not a player controlled city, and C) it doesn't already have a trade route with it.

GoldBerg · Nov 25, 2014

Osvaldo Manso said:
What I mean is that you can't see their diplomats. Unlike other units you don't get to see their diplomats moving around. It's the same as caravans.

It has been very long ago now, but i guess i did see an indian diplomat in one game short before he did sabotage production
in one of my cities on another continent, not my mainland.
and
i remember a city of mine bribed by an english diplomat in another game (not sure if i did see an english diplomat unit) -
i bought that city back some turns later, maybe that city was on another continent than the one i originally came from, too.

Osvaldo Manso · Nov 26, 2014

GoldBerg said:
It has been very long ago now, but i guess i did see an indian diplomat in one game short before he did sabotage production
in one of my cities on another continent, not my mainland.
and
i remember a city of mine bribed by an english diplomat in another game (not sure if i did see an english diplomat unit) -
i bought that city back some turns later, maybe that city was on another continent than the one i originally came from, too.

Both situations you describe are really amazing. I'm wondering if the indian diplomat you might have seen was originally a barbarian leader which has been bribed and then turned to indian civilization... Anyone knows if this is possible? I'm not even sure if human players can bribe barbarian leaders (anyway it would be foolish to spend money on them since we can attack them and easily earn 100 coins). Now I'm at work

and so I can't check this.

tjs282 · Nov 26, 2014

Osvaldo Manso said:
Both situations you describe are really amazing. I'm wondering if the indian diplomat you might have seen was originally a barbarian leader which has been bribed and then turned to indian civilization... Anyone knows if this is possible? I'm not even sure if human players can bribe barbarian leaders (anyway it would be foolish to spend money on them since we can attack them and easily earn 100 coins). Now I'm at work and so I can't check this.

It's certainly possible for a human to bribe a Barb-leader instead of killing him. I've done it myself on rare occasions when an undefended Barb-leader has e.g. retreated into a forest, or up a mountain, and I had no (fast) attack units available, so I used a Diplomat instead. You can then use the 'Diplomat (NONE)' to do anything a hand-built Diplomat could do.

And CivDOS AIs can definitely bribe units. I've lost lone vMecInfs fortified in mountains to AI bribery (because it couldn't be killed). I'm not sure if that mechanic would extend to Barb-leaders, though I don't see why it wouldn't, if e.g. the AI had just built a Diplomat and had it handy...

Valen · Dec 7, 2014

Mize said:
That's right. But, for caravans, I don't think the AI even needs an adjacent unit, or even diplomatic contact for that matter. It seems that when the AI builds a caravan in one of its cities it simply automatically gets a trade route to the best (current) trade city in the world, as long as it's A) not one of its own cities, B) not a player controlled city, and C) it doesn't already have a trade route with it.

Actually, in violation of rule (C), I have seen an AI build caravans over and over to the same (very profitable) city. In one game, I'm playing Germans and Babylon keeps sending caravans to London. Why would they do this? The trade bonus from a caravan counts both as gold in the treasury and as light bulbs toward the next technology. AI knows how to leverage caravans and they don't need to do all that tedious movement across the world to do it.

reddishrecue · Dec 7, 2014

Ai does this because most of the time, ais don't have enough gold per turn and might have a difference in its coffers. The ai could also do this because the ai doesn't have enough food to employ tax collecting specialists.

Mize · Dec 8, 2014

Yes, I missed that. The AI also does caravan pushing, and is much more efficient than the player at it.

reddishrecue · Dec 8, 2014

The ai is much more spoiled than player in king and emperor difficulties.

GoldBerg · Apr 12, 2015

reddishrecue said:
The ai is much more spoiled than player in king and emperor difficulties.

...and it's not just like that.
Found that link in another thread
Sid Meier's Civilization (DOS)
---> mobygames.com/game/dos/sid-meiers-civilization/reviews/reviewerId,46500/
it's a game players' critic about Civ1 / CivDos "12 years later", written in 2004,
and he has some strong points ("The Bad") against 'this evil ('crack') game'...

Back to 'the AI and why':
Well,
I guess when they did program ol' Civ back in the 1980s,
this was the fake-and-cheat-AI 'stuff' they could create to-pretend-to-work-like-an-AI (a bit like that Eliza psychologist dialogue),
to work on their customers' dinosaur computers of those days ...flawlessly,
nothing more or less.

The AIs that we are able to create
in those micro-miniature-monster-machines of today
are more and more like bio-logical beings (if the programmers want to do it that way),
able to 'learn' and react in nearly-lifelike rulesets and enviroments and stuff...

Mize · Apr 13, 2015

Well, that's a big part of the reason why this game is as addictive, entertaining and fast-paced as an arcade. More modern games have too many rules, and even though Civ's rules are not what I'd exactly call simple, they're very subtle and do not encumber the game. The AI is fascinating in its own right, it behaves almost nothing like a real 'civilization' would, but it does wonderfully well in the game, sometimes building very interesting empires and creating quite aweome scenarios.

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