Making, Keeping, and Breaking Promises

Hey everyone, I have a question I've been meaning to ask dealing with promises made in the game.

Say I settle close to Spain, and then they ask me not to do so again. Now, I know I'll get a penalty (is it global, or just for the AI I made the promise to?) if I break the promise and settle another city close to them, but what if I keep the promise? Later in the game, I get a message saying so much time has passed that I can consider my promise kept. I have a few questions about this:

1. How many turns do you have to keep a promise to get the promise kept message?

2. How many tiles is considered "close?" As in, if I settle 7 tiles away from one of their cities, will I get the message that I broke my promise?

3. What exactly is the benefit of not breaking my promise? It's easy to see the penalty you get when you break it ("you made a promise that you didn't keep!"), but after I got that nice message saying I could consider the promise kept, I didn't notice any modifier come from it. Hovering over their attitude didn't reveal any kind of green message saying "You made a promise and kept it!" so is there any benefit at all? If so, that seems odd.

4. If they settle a city near me, will that cause a bug which makes the AI think I broke my promise? If so, that sounds like something which should be fixed.

My next question is similar, but deals with making a promise not to buy tiles near the AI. My questions for tiles are:

1. Same as the first question for cities (how many turns until promise kept).

2. Same as second question for cities. More specifically, I only get the diplomatic screen letting me promise not to buy tiles near them after I bought a tile which was against the border of one of their cities. I made sure not to do that again, but one turn I bought a tile on the other side of the city (no where near their border), only to get the message that I broke my promise. That really makes no sense to me, but whatever. So how what is the minimum distance from their city/border that I can buy a tile without getting the penalty?

3. Again, do I get anything for keeping my promise?

Thanks for any answers you can provide. These questions have been in my head for a while, and I thought it was time I figured out the answers to them.

Welcome to the forums.

1. I believe it is 20 or 30 turns for the message saying you have honoured your promise

2. I'm not sure how many tiles. I believe line of sight of their borders is a fair estimate.
It's a fairly easy rule of thumb. If you're expanding in the direction it will trip the flag.
Secondly if you are expandign towards them/their capital it will trigger the flag.
If you grab resources with tile buys near their borders, it can sometimes trigger the don't expand near us flag.

3. Not getting a penalty is a bonus in itself. In Civ5, avoiding penalties is more of the game than hitting certain check boxes to get bonuses. In the XML there is a broken border promise +20 ignored border promise +15 and broker expansion promise +20 ignored expansion promise +15.

So you're looking at either +20 or 15.

This also answers your next set of questions about buying tiles near the AI. The penalties are the same.

As for ignored vs. broker, ignored is a lighter penalty than broken so perhaps if you bought a less important tile or expanding somewhere they dont care as much about, you get hit with +15 instead of the full 20.

I assume cooldown for them considering you have honoured the deal is also the same 20-30 turns for tile buying.

For some context, gifting the AI free luxuries , gold cities, will max you out at -30 bonus to the relationship. So +15/20 for breaking expansion promise is harsh, but not game ending. You can still recover it, and it's only between you and 1 AI, not everyone.

Now breaking a promise to go to war has global penalties too.

4. I believe there is such an issue, I'm unclear if this was fixed? But I haven't see it recently. There was also an issue where AI's will warn you about expansion simply because you're a large empire. This will be fixed in the next patch per note below


To sum up. No positive modifiers for keeping a promise, but you don't get dinged with a penalty.

That above post might be confusing for people who haven't tinkered with the Ai. Here's an explanation: first off, there are many more negative modifiers than positive modifiers. As illogical as it may seem, in the files, a positive modifier is a negative amount and a negative modifier is a positive amount. Still with me? There are different levels of what the Ai considers you as. If you have modifiers totaling to -10 to -30, (you cannot see these numbers), the Ai considers you to be favorable. -30 to -60 and it considers you a friend. Beyond -60 and it considers you an ally. Reverse for the negatives: at 10 to 30 it considers you to be a competitor, 30 to 60, an enemy, and beyond that, unforgivable.

Tldr; more negative mods than positive ones, Ai has a relationship with you, equally able to be positive or negative, and it is very opportunistic.

I left out the thresholds for a reason, as the question is only about the relative effects of breaking/keeping promises. But now that we're on it, the above information isn't right and will be patched soon.

Per patch preview notes:

The opinion thresholds (unforgivable/enemy/competitor/favorable/friend/ally) have been pushed farther apart. They were initally 50/30/10, now 80/40/15.

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Even this isn't quite clear as there are negative and positive numbers. The thresholds currently are

-50 Ally -30 Friend -10 Favorable +10 Competitor +30 Enemy +50 Unforgivable.

After patch it will be

-80 Ally -40 Friend -15 Favorable +15 Competitor +40 Enemy +80 Unforgivable.

I'm actually very interested in seeing this affect the game as I think it will further stabilize relations without necessarily having to add a whole bunch of new modifiers.

First, thanks both of you for the helpful answers.

You mentioned there's a difference between ignoring a promise and breaking a promise. Can you please explain the difference? If I promise not to settle near a civ, and then do so anyway, then that means I've both broken my promise (by not following it), and ignored it (because I broke it). So what's the difference? Is ignoring it the penalty you get when you tell the civ that you'll settle where you want to settle?

Does the patch notes (thanks by the way, never knew about any of that) mean that it will be even harder to become friends since the thresholds have been pushed up(down?)?

Breaking the promise angers them more than just ignoring them. Ignoring them is saying "We will settle in the lands we please" or whatever.

NewOne said:

First, thanks both of you for the helpful answers.

You mentioned there's a difference between ignoring a promise and breaking a promise. Can you please explain the difference? If I promise not to settle near a civ, and then do so anyway, then that means I've both broken my promise (by not following it), and ignored it (because I broke it). So what's the difference? Is ignoring it the penalty you get when you tell the civ that you'll settle where you want to settle?

Does the patch notes (thanks by the way, never knew about any of that) mean that it will be even harder to become friends since the thresholds have been pushed up(down?)?

Click to expand...

Easier to stay at a certain relationship level.

Because of the -50 and +50 cap, it's fairly easy capping at -50 with a DoF and a couple of other modifiers like having same friends. If you move it to -80, it will take more for Civs to go from friend to Guarded.

I told Songhai I wouldn`t settle near his lands. I never view much I say to them as a promise, but this time I was surprised to see a little writing come up to say `You kept your promise`. I didn`t even know it was tracking me, I`d completely forgotten about it. It took a long while, about 30 turns, I think, on Marathon.

I don`t worry about the rest, although I would like turn times to be randomised (more Human).

Unfortunately it's all about common sense.
You can't really enforce some virtual promises.
________________________________________
Marius
border brokers

I absolutely cannot claim to be a player who knows a lot about the inner workings of this game.

But that said I have tried to stay on the good side of the AI's, stressed not doing anything to give bad reactions, not been a warmonger, shared religions...

And the end result seems to me to work out the same as the times I warmonger the whole game and not give two figs about any diplomatic considerations.

The AI's can be "friendly" with you and promptly declare war. They can hate your guts for age upon age of the world and never declare war (all the while being willing to trade with you. Though since I don't have the figures memorized for what silk or "a horse" should go for, maybe it's not as much as it could have been).

Just saying this aspect of the game seems awfully weak to me.

I used to play the Civ 4 mod Fall from Heaven a lot, and diplomacy and good relations were totally useless in that one. Civ 5 seems to be carrying on the fine tradition.

It's possible that there is a lot I am missing. But I have found my games go the same whether I worry about warmonger penalties and try to be a "nice" guy, or whether I don't.

I have just never noticed a single positive difference (or even negative) to a game from any diplomatic issue.

It's not quite the same thing, but the only thing in this sphere that seems to matter are the city states, and that situation is a little different from the AI's. I have never been able to get an AI to vote me world leader no matter what kind of trade I've tried, or how I've buttered them up over the millenia. Only way I've been able to do it is by buying off city states (and actually using the level 3 tenet in Freedom as opposed to straight patronage stuff) and getting globalization.

Relationships definitely affect trade prices, and it is possible to manipulate the AI to avoid certain situations (ie avoid war for a whole game), but yes it is also possible for the AI to suddenly decide that they want your land and go against years of friendship to declare war.

There are positive and negative affects of diplomacy, but they stack up over time rather than having an instant effect (and if you balance good and bad you might never see any effect).

Socratatus said:

`You kept your promise`. I didn`t even know it was tracking me, I`d completely forgotten about it. It took a long while, about 30 turns, I think, on Marathon.

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At Epic speed it's 100 turns. The same amount of turns for buying tiles.