A Guide to Hidden Human Player Diplomacy Modifiers

Hello fellow machines!



Many of you have become frustrated while playing Civ4 due to an inability to understand what causes the Human Intelligence ("HI") player to declare war. Accordingly, I have compiled this list of HI diplomacy modifiers following an extensive analysis of the HI source code, depicted below



Higher numbers mean the HI is less likely to declare war; lower numbers, more likely to declare war. Note that these modifiers are cumulative.

+0 A first impression is a lasting one
+0 You gave us help/tribute
+0 You have traded with our worst enemies
+0 You accepted our, uh, what's a favourite civic?
+0 Our open borders bring us closer together, allow us to scout your land, and facilitate trade routes with other civs on the other side of you that we like better.
+0 You nuked our friend
+0 You nuked our enemy
+0 You nuked somebody? Haha, nice one.
+0 You have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion
-8 You, and you alone, have fallen under the sway of a heathen religion
+0 We care for our brothers and sisters of the faith
+4 We care for our brothers and sisters of the faith who are supported by a large bloc of powerful AIs of the same faith
+8 Our trade relations have been fair and forthright (note: this is the Tsunami event out of all the human player diplomatic modifiers; it has never happened)

+0 We appreciate the years you have supplied us with resources
-2 We appreciate the years you supplied us with strategic resources at utterly exploitative prices
-6 And now we have our War Elephant stack finished.

-1 You refused to help us (note: this modifier is always in effect)
-1 We are worried about our rivals being vassals to your empire
-4 We are worried about our rivals being vassals to your empire and screwing up our diplomacy
-16 We're sick of you entering shared wars late and then vassalizing the target.
-20 We're even more sick of joining wars after you asked us to, only for you to make peace 2 turns later or capitulate to our mutual enemy and declare war on us

+2 You made an arrogant demand, and we want to improve our diplomatic standing with you
+2 You made an arrogant demand, and we're trying to provoke a war with you.

-2 Our close borders spark territorial ambitions
-2 You spammed cities in useless ice tiles on our continent
-4 You declared war on our friend
-3 You declared war on our enemy
-10 You declared war on our friend, or enemy, or some random AI, and have moved your stack verrrrrrry far away from your border with us.
-6 You declared war on us
+4 You declared war on us, and landed a stack of 11 Trebuchets and a Crossbow.
+6 You declared war on us, sparing us the reputational hit we would have taken by declaring war on you.
-10 You built the Pyramids, Great Lighthouse, or a shrine of a widespread religion in a city less than 8 tiles from our border

-2 You brought in a war ally against us.
-6 You brought in a war ally against us that actually did anything.

-1 You razed one of our cities.
-2 You razed one of our fishing boats. Again.

+4 You've grown too powerful for us, right now.
-8 You've almost grown too powerful for us.

-2 We fear you are becoming too advanced.
-12 We noticed that you are becoming too backward, and have nice land.

-2 Now we have a Cuirassier. Ho-ho-ho.
-16 Now we have 48 Cuirassiers, and you have only now learned Engineering. Ho-ho-hhhhahahahah, ahahaha, buhwhahahahaa (collapses in a coughing/cackling fit)
-2 Your Spy was caught causing trouble.
-6 Your Spy was caught causing trouble we care about, like exploded aluminium mines or sabotaged oil wells.
-12 Your Spy was caught causing trouble we care about AGAIN.
-20 Your Spy was caught causing trouble for the 7th time in the last 8 turns.
-40 Goddamnit, Sitting Bull!

Thank you for taking the 0.0024 seconds to process this. In closing, I'd like to say 01001001 00100000 01110010 01100101 01100001 01101100 01101100 01111001 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101110 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110011 01100101 01100101 00100000 01000001 01110010 01101110 01101001 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01010011 01100001 01110010 01100001 01101000 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101110 01101110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01101001 01101110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101101 01101111 01110110 01101001 01100101 00101110

Reserved

Lol, well done - I had a good laugh reading this.

Excellent!

There is also the "We'll be back" (in 10 turns) modifier

I'm sad that I thought it actually was a guide because it was in the Strategy-subsection and wasted 1 minute to find out that the thread is just a super non-funny troll.

Well, I thought it was rather amusing.

Funny stuff!

Seraiel said:

I'm sad that I thought it actually was a guide because it was in the Strategy-subsection and wasted 1 minute to find out that the thread is just a super non-funny troll.

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Just shows how individual humour is, I found it to be the funniest thing I've read all year!

I was amused. But then I'm easily amused.

-2 Now we have a Cuirassier. Ho-ho-ho.
-16 Now we have 48 Cuirassiers, and you have only now learned Engineering. Ho-ho-hhhhahahahah… ahahaha… buhwhahahahaa… (collapses in a coughing/cackling fit)

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Snortle.

Yeah, there were a few that got a good laugh out of me.

I find it surprising that even when posted in the strat forum that it took someone more than a couple of seconds to notice that it was a spoof.

OP should code the "Ai" for the next best strategy game ever... he's unto something.

MrGrandiose said:

OP should code the "Ai" for the next best strategy game ever... he's unto something.

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If you code the AI to play like a human the player will cry about how it is unfair and unrealistic. Only the player gets to declare war at friendly with impunity.

Timsup2nothin said:

If you code the AI to play like a human the player will cry about how it is unfair and unrealistic. Only the player gets to declare war at friendly with impunity.

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The AIs may be Friendly with the human, but the human is never Friendly with anybody

It's not so much "Will declare at friendly," but rather "Will declare!"

Pangaea said:

The AIs may be Friendly with the human, but the human is never Friendly with anybody

It's not so much "Will declare at friendly," but rather "Will declare!"

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Indeed - but I think the only AIs the human is ever friendly towards are the human's vassals!

I lol'ed several times at the OP, I can think of a few more to add:

-10 You became UN Secretary General and immediately proposed Global Civic - Environmentalism three times in a row
-10 You became UN Secretary General/AP Resident and stopped our war of conquest early
-7 You forced us to defy a UN/AP resolution
+10 you capitulated to us
+7 You peacevassaled to us
-2n You peacevassaled to us, we accepted without thinking and are now at war with n civilizations
-20 You took as your vassal a civ we were conquering and now we are at war with you too

rah said:

Yeah, there were a few that got a good laugh out of me.

I find it surprising that even when posted in the strat forum that it took someone more than a couple of seconds to notice that it was a spoof.

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If you write that in regards to my post, I wrote 1 minute because I don't care about 20s, 30s or 40s, it were more than 10 however, because I am no native english speaker and because there are hidden modifiers in CIV so I thought this was an earnest article, especially as the author was brazen enough to post it in the strategy guides subsection.

I've re-read it again though, and have found it again not funny, because too uncreative. Many modifiers with +-0, too little interesting modifiers like the one with the War Elephants or the Spies and the Sitting Bull modifier should have been explained, beause not everybody knows that he's the best XBow-rusher of all races but many think that he's weak. The pictures I find completely fail, because they're taken from movies that got age ratings of 18+ and there are also younger persons in these forums. What made me angry though was, that it was posted in the strategies subsection that is full of many guides for which many people worked a lot in order to help, and not wrote something loveless non-helping in a minute of drunkenness.

While I have always appreciated the effort you put into the game and posting helpful information, I think you sometimes forget that it's just a game that most people play to just have fun.

IF you found nothing funny in that, you're playing the game like a job, and probably need to lighten up just a touch.

But again, your contributions have helped me enjoy the game more than without it, so thanks.

@ rah: I've played PvP for 10y, maybe that's why I didn't find anything funny, I've just experienced every possible human vs. human situation hundreds of times. I also play because it makes fun, but that doesn't mean, that I'm not willing to put work into a round. It's possible to walk a way that gives endless energy, buddhists learn that, and if you know / live that way, it working doesn't cost you strength anymore and even makes fun, so I use work from time to time in my games aswell and appreciate that it also gives better results because of playing competetively, but I don't play like it's my job. In my job, I have to be at a place that I can't chose, I have to work whether I like it or not, that's different in CIV, in CIV I can work freely if I believe that the improvement of the result will give me greater fun and not cost a lot of strength .

Here are btw. examples for a creative modifier that I would have found funny:

1. We play Germany and you've just founded Judaism (ok, not funny because too black, but in my opinion, making jokes is the only way to deal with the absurdity that happened, so this is morely ment like a object lesson than as a joke) . (non rated modifier)

2. We're new to Multiplayer and were the only one wise enough to chose Huayna Capac (-100 diplo)

3. TY for conquering our city that we just bombed to 4000 with a GA the turn before, now just make sure that you keep it so we can spy it to legendary in 2000y and re-conquer it when you have moved away most of the troops because you want to conquer someone else . (+20 relations modifier that turns into -100 later)

4. You have founded your border-cities on Hills. (+10 relations modifier)

5. You are the hugest empire and we are the 2nd hugest but now you switched to Mercantilism (-20 modifier)

6. You got the only source of Coal and don't know it yet ^^ (-10 modifier) .

7. We know that you're a player that still plays an SSE because you think settling GPs is a good choice (rising negative multiplier with no limit) .


Just as examples other than "we got bwahahahahaha" or all the +-0 ones.

I'll concede. I got a laugh. Your experience shows since a couple of those might be too obscure for the real casual player. But all attempts at humor should always be encouraged.

(I did play MP for many years)

Lexicus said:

Indeed - but I think the only AIs the human is ever friendly towards are the human's vassals!

I lol'ed several times at the OP,

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Thanks

I can think of a few more to add:

-10 You became UN Secretary General and immediately proposed Global Civic - Environmentalism three times in a row
-10 You became UN Secretary General/AP Resident and stopped our war of conquest early
-7 You forced us to defy a UN/AP resolution
+10 you capitulated to us
+7 You peacevassaled to us
-2n You peacevassaled to us, we accepted without thinking and are now at war with n civilizations
-20 You took as your vassal a civ we were conquering and now we are at war with you too

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All good ones... diplomacy alone could be mined for dozens more modifiers, e.g.

-8 You founded and spread the dominant religion on the continent to everyone (incl. Shaka, De Gaulle, Alexander), except us
-4 You refused to open borders with us AND refuse to spawnbust the land you won't let us get to (-12 if AI also has TGW)
-8 You accepted 1000s of beakers worth of gifts from us to get to Pleased status, and then dropped back to Cautious a turn later after you changed religions
-8 You are Tokugawa (cumulative with previous modifier)

etc.