No way to repair relations?

Roto-Router said:

Returning an AI's units (workers) to them is the only thing I have found to positively improve relations.

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^ this.
the only other things you can do are denounce a leader they've denounced,
or befriend a civ they're friends with... which is temporary at best because most likely they're going to end up at war, and then this turns to a negative.

it'd be interesting if there were more diplomacy positives, rather than 100 ways to strain relations and three ways to improve them. also decay over time, eg after 1000 years they should forgive you for that one war.

returning workers
denouncing someone they have denounced
being friends with someone they are friends with

Ummm... Returning workers? I have returned workers I've saved from barbs before but how do you return workers that you've captured in a war?

B1sh0p said:

Ummm... Returning workers? I have returned workers I've saved from barbs before but how do you return workers that you've captured in a war?

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civ a loses worker to civ b, if you fight civ b you have option to return worker to civ a

Hmmmm... Would be nice if you could return workers that you captured from them at the end of a war. I've never liberated a worker in the way you described.

So i've got to say I find that I'm disagreeing with you guys who said it's impossible to keep an alliance afloat.

Ghandi and I have been best buds since the beginning of the game. It's 1900 now and we still have a very strong relationship, dispite his just passing me in landmass and cities. Time will tell if this holds true, but I expected him to turn on me long ago but he's still very friendly.

One thing I have to stress is to NOT horde Gold if you're working with an ally. I had stockpiled 20,000 gold waiting for a tech so I could do a massive military upgrade. Then Ghandi comes over
"Hey bud, could you borrow me 7,000 bucks? Mkaythanxbai." Since I wanted to keep him as an ally and not get a negative for not helping him, I had to give it to him. That sucked. Lesson learned.

But moral of the story seems to be that as long as you're willing to bend over backwards, give a little gold here, and a luxury resource there (better to sell them as soon as you get them, so they can't ask for them for free) it's entirely possible to keep alliances in place, even into the late game.

I suppose one could say that it would be easier to just annihilate him, and that's true, but I'm going for a diplo or cultural victory here. So having 1 less nation to worry about really helps. We have a kind of canada/usa relationship going on here, with the longest undefended border in the world. Really frees up my military to focus where it's needed.

I just really hope I don't end up being wrong, and get screwed. I'll let you know how it turns out.

B1sh0p said:

So i've got to say I find that I'm disagreeing with you guys who said it's impossible to keep an alliance afloat.

Ghandi and I have been best buds since the beginning of the game. It's 1900 now and we still have a very strong relationship, dispite his just passing me in landmass and cities. Time will tell if this holds true, but I expected him to turn on me long ago but he's still very friendly.

One thing I have to stress is to NOT horde Gold if you're working with an ally. I had stockpiled 20,000 gold waiting for a tech so I could do a massive military upgrade. Then Ghandi comes over
"Hey bud, could you borrow me 7,000 bucks? Mkaythanxbai." Since I wanted to keep him as an ally and not get a negative for not helping him, I had to give it to him. That sucked. Lesson learned.

But moral of the story seems to be that as long as you're willing to bend over backwards, give a little gold here, and a luxury resource there (better to sell them as soon as you get them, so they can't ask for them for free) it's entirely possible to keep alliances in place, even into the late game.

I suppose one could say that it would be easier to just annihilate him, and that's true, but I'm going for a diplo or cultural victory here. So having 1 less nation to worry about really helps. We have a kind of canada/usa relationship going on here, with the longest undefended border in the world. Really frees up my military to focus where it's needed.

I just really hope I don't end up being wrong, and get screwed. I'll let you know how it turns out.

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I hope it works for you. But... giving stuff away for free is one of the complaints. You HAVE to give them one-sided trades, and you can NEVER ask for a one-sided trade in return.

True, but you have to weigh the options. Right now I've only got Greece and Babylon to worry about. I'm twice the size in land and military of both of them put together. Whereas if I was not on friendly relations with Ghandi, I'd have Greece and Babylon as minor players, and Ghandi who is my match in land, military, and tech. Not to mention it would be me against 3, with one of them my match in every way. But instead it's 2 superpowers against 2 minors. Money in the bank.

So a few resources, and a little money, has bought me an easy win. So long as he doesn't backstab me, which we'll soon see.

B1sh0p said:

But moral of the story seems to be that as long as you're willing to bend over backwards, give a little gold here, and a luxury resource there (better to sell them as soon as you get them, so they can't ask for them for free) it's entirely possible to keep alliances in place, even into the late game.

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it's entirely possible, but i don't think you're really friends with benefits. you'd probably be in the same position right now but 7000 gold richer if you had declined his request for friendship.

I found the best way to maintain good relations with an AI is to avoid declarations of friendship and denouncements, maintain 3rd place score and field a respectable military.

Getting involved in declarations opens you up to negative modifiers in two ways; you don't make enemies of some AI's enemies, and you aren't pestered by constant requests for donations (generally). Engaging in denouncements obviously ticks off the AI you denounce, plus their friends.

Maintaining a non-lead score and fielding a respectable military both serve to keep you from being the defacto target; high scoring civs are generally envied and targetted, at the very least targetted for denouncements. Keeping a decent military should be obvious, but if not, the AI will be more hostile towards weaker civs.

Outside of the dual-edged sword of declarations of friendship, there's no way to improve relations significantly except to return workers. You'll almost never get the opportunity to return enough workers to make a meaningful impact on relations, espcially with the bug that prevents twice-captured workers from being returned.

I think the AI needs to be "afraid" a lot more. Currently it is probably using a unit strength factor. So the AI usually has more military and so they are not very often afraid. I really think they should use some other factor and be afraid a lot more. How often does the hostile or guarded DOW and get stomped? Every time. It's my strategy. Get DOW and sack as many cities before the first peace offer.

I think after such an ass whipping (every single war), he should be afraid and take even deals, or bad deals.

From here, if he gets some love from the dominant civ (me), then he can slowly build up to friendly.

As it is, you see afraid every 10 games and it's usually in the first 20 moves and it is just more ridiculous AI behavior. Game Starts ---> AI is Afraid. 20 turns later he is hostile. 70 turns later he is dead after DOW on me.

Use afraid to work back to neutral or friendly. Afraid should be more common for lousy war AI. As it is, they just get stomped and keep all their bluster. In fact the hostile diplo screens make want to just exterminate them for their ignorance. My 5 units take 10 cities and he is still hostile and blustery. AI needs to recognize that it sucks in battle and should be afraid of my five units, despite having walls, despite having 20 units, despite having tech lead, despite having economy lead. It is losing.

EDIT: Not sure where I wanted this post - "You are expanding too aggressively" when all you are doing is taking existing Civs cities. Seems like a jip. I didn't put those cities there, stupid did. I just made them flourish."

They've all denounced me and am trying to figure out how to denounce myself in order to mend ties.

In Marbozir's Arabia let's play, he maintains Friendly relationships with Sweden for the entire game, and Montezuma for 99% of the game (until he took his capital). He played a completely warmongery game and won by a domination victory. While maintaining DoFs with many civs.

In my experience, unless you really, really screwed up diplomacy wise, you have one chance to make amends- picking ideologies. I've been enemies with someone for the entire game (Not at the point where they only give me 3gpt for luxuries, but 5 instead of 7 is reasonable)- then we both pick the same ideology and end up going to war with the same civ. You can expect them to sign a DoF in the future once this happens.

There's a few things that you can do in order to not get chain denounced / warred.

Let's say you're in a triangle. You got yourself, William, and Shaka. You know Shaka is going to declare war on one of you. You have a few options to mitigate this disaster: You can...

1. Befriend Shaka. If you have a trade route up with him, he's more likely to go after William than he is to go to war with you. If you don't have a spare caravan, trading a luxury for 7gpt counts as a trade as well.
2. Pay Shaka to go to war with a city state or with William. If Shaka is at war with someone else, he won't go to war with you. And if he does, he will most likely accept white peace 3 turns in, because the civ AIs -hate- being at war with more than one person at a time. In the case where he declares war with you, if you white peace out he's most likely going to accept 6-7 gpt trades / lux, which is near optimal.

if Shaka goes to war with say William, you can denounce / join in on the war, and William will literally be your best friend for the rest of the game. "We were at war with a common enemy" is great. And if you paid shaka gpt to war William, that's canceled when you declare war.

B1sh0p said:

I had stockpiled 20,000 gold waiting for a tech so I could do a massive military upgrade. Then Ghandi comes over
"Hey bud, could you borrow me 7,000 bucks? Mkaythanxbai." Since I wanted to keep him as an ally and not get a negative for not helping him, I had to give it to him. That sucked. Lesson learned.

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Wow. Tell me it isn't so. 7,000 gold just so you didn't get the very small negative diplomacy of telling Gandhi to shove off?

And Gandhi is friends with everyone.

The only benefit that I've found from giving 'stuff' to civs i.e. gifts or tribute is the "We've traded recently"
A 5 gpt is enough to produce this effect and that doesn't change over the course of the game from the start to the end. Giving beyond this amount doesn't do anything. Giving them 1000GPT won't have any effect beyond what you get from giving 5GPT.

Generally speaking ideologies have the most influence on relations and civs with different ideologies will inevitably end up hating each other while some civs that had past grievances tend to become more friendly with each other if their ideologies are the same.

But to repair relations you can start by.

-Giving the 5GPT
-Sharing your religion (religion is the most powerful way to make friends in the early game and if you share a religion to a Civ they will usually always want to be friends. Religion loses its influence later on though)
-Try and get them to adopt your ideology with tourism (not always possible)
-enact World Council resolutions they like
-if you aren't in a position to control the World Council check to make sure if it isn't possible to give your vote to this civ you want to be friends with or any friendly civ (this can be beneficial if you don't have the votes to get elected to the WC). As an example lets say 2 civs are tied to host the WC: One shares your ideology & is friendly the other has a different ideology and hates you. If you vote for the friendly civ that has your ideology you give them the power to enact resolutions that are highly likely to benefit you. You also get a real good diplomatic boost which even carries over even if they were going to win the WC regardless.
Essentially it's like giving that civ a vote of confidence from you but they have to win the WC for you to get the diplomatic bonus.

-denounce the same leaders they do (its easier choosing one side then staying neutral all the time)
-form a friendship with a civ they are friends with
-send them a trade route (possibly but im not sure about this one)
-if you can avoid having close borders (you get no contested borders bonus & reduces their likelihood to 'covet your lands'
-Liberate a city or a captured civilian unit, i.e. worker or missionary (I think this gives a permanent bonus)
-Build a Landmark in their territory (this also gives a permanent bonus)
-Recall their civilization to life (if they have been destroyed before)
-Share intrigue with them (you get intrigue from spies or diplomats in capitals). This works well if you have a spy or diplomat in a capital of a civ that you don't like and especially if they are always going to war. You gets heaps of spy intrigue and it can offer quite strong diplomatic bonuses to you.

B1sh0p said:

...1) Taking out a CS....

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The worst thing you can do diplomatically. In saying that with the recent patch you might just get away with it if you do this in the ancient era.
The AI can sometime be very fickle when messing with Cs, sometimes they don't really care. Even if they don't pledge to protect they can instantly go hostile.

Roto-Router said:

Returning an AI's units (workers) to them is the only thing I have found to positively improve relations....

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Multiples of the same diplo modifier don't stack, the same goes for trade in their favor. As an example on one turn you give 5gpt for free, on the next you give a free luxury. You will only have 1 "we traded recently" diplo modifier. It would be interesting to see if multiple free luxuries on the same trade is more beneficial than 1 free luxury. Freeing CS workers does stack, however.

lockandload said:

Wow. Tell me it isn't so. 7,000 gold just so you didn't get the very small negative diplomacy of telling Gandhi to shove off?....

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The negative diplo modifier for refusing got patched out many moons ago. It is one the primary reasons for the AI to have a DOF with you, and that is the ability to ask for stuff for free(you can't do this).