would it be good to be able to give the AI ultimatums?

i was thinking this when i was playing the other day. The AI next to me was spamming missionaries and sending them to convert my cities (4 missionaries at a time!!).

I asked him to stop and he said no. At this point i would have liked to have told him either 'ok, we accept that' or 'if you keep doing it we will go to war'.

It got to the point where i had to DOW him and take out his missionaries and great prophet he was sending at me. This happened twice. I didnt take any of his cities in retribution (even though he offered one in peace negotiations) but the 2 DOWs destroyed my reputation and everyone else hated me.

I was thinking the ultimatum could lessen your diplo hit with other AIs for going to war over something you've asked an AI to stop doing, although the trade off is it increases your penalty with the civ its aimed at. Maybe not following through with the ultimatum has some negative penalties.

Its the same when you ask the AI not to settle near you and they think its acceptable to build a city within 4 squares of your capital. You get diplo penalty for going to war with them but they effectively forced you into it

Another point is i was only allowed to ask him to stop sending missionaries at me once in the whole of history. Why is that?

Yes it would be good to be able to give them ultimatums that they would actually follow, as well as ask friends for help (donations etc.), and demands that would actually work.

For example threatening them with denouncement if they continue sending missionaries/spies/bully CS, or war as the next step, if they continue after denouncement.

Actually I was thinking about a nice system for that:

So it's not just "random" (in their eyes) denouncement/war after the deed which AI nor the rest of the world actually understand, as in they don't tie together what is happening and why = action > reaction.
So for example you officially say "If we find your missionaries spreading lies again, it's war", and so they act according to this, they either take your word on it or not, so when they proceed anyway, they face the consequences (no warmonger penalty for DoW itself, until conquering cities) as well as you, as you are faced with 2 options upon the deed, either follow with your ultimatum or bend over if you were bluffing and face bad reputation in the world as someone who doesn't stand behind his words > Others won't take your threats seriously and might act accordingly towards you, that being send spies/missionaries/bully CS, but if you act according to your threats, you get rep of someone who "talks the talk AND walks the walk" so to speak, so you get a mild positive modifier and it might prevent others from doing something that stupid to you.

NOW how does THAT sound?

i like that. I would like war to be more of a diplomatic tool than it is. At the moment wars are only useful for conquest and then your reputation is permanently harmed.

I'd like to see penalties for taking cities scaled as to how close they are to your capital. Taking/razing a city 4 squares from your capital is only a minor penalty as it can be justified as 'national security' whereas taking a city on the other side of the world is blatant warmongering

I just wish for a way to randomly insult the AI like they do to the player.

It would be nice to do this like in Call to Power.
In response to the AI spamming you, whether it be cities or missionaries. You have to realize that land is fair game, and so is converting when you haven't founded a religion yet. In this case the AI is not at fault diplomatically as it was honest. If the AI is hostile to you early on it was probably because you denounced them and thus will not care about your opinion on any matter.
In regards to the warmonger hate you've accumulated i find it best to denounce first and see if any other civs feel the same way. If not it's time to work on your diplomacy with other civs before you DOW. To combat missionary/GP spam you need an inquisitor, and/or units to ferry them away(missionaries will die soon after due to attrition).
Another tip I've found is if you receive an early DOF request you can take it that civ intends to forward settle you regardless if you say yes or not. Use units to ferry the settler away so you don't have to rely on a DOW.

monkeymcbain said:

It got to the point where i had to DOW him and take out his missionaries and great prophet he was sending at me. This happened twice. I didnt take any of his cities in retribution (even though he offered one in peace negotiations) but the 2 DOWs destroyed my reputation and everyone else hated me.

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A bit offtopic:
You don't have to declare war - just buy an inquisitor or two. Cities with an inquisitor in them (or on a tile adjacent to it) cannot be converted by Missionaries and Great Prophets - that way you're not only defending your own cities, but you're also killing off the AIs missionaries as long as you don't give them open borders, which can make their religion-spam WAY less effective. You just have to micro your inquisitors a bit (which is easy if you've roads that connect your cities and, if nessesary, wall off the direct way to vulnerable cities with military), then your problems should be gone - missionaries will just die in your lands and their great prophets pull back relatively quickly when they're not able to convert the city they wanted to convert.

And @Topic:
I think the gap between "please go away!" and declaring war is really big. Denouncing is essentially useless and stuipd in those situations, however... there are times when I just can't ressist. I think a good midground would be something like a "legitimate" denunciation - a diplo-hit for the person that you denounce (if civs like you more than them), but no diplo-hit for you.

i didnt have enough faith to buy inquisitors though as it was all going on reconverting my cities after he was sending wave after wave of missionary. He actually killed my religion and i had to wait to spawn a GP in my capital so i could reconvert it

i did manage to get rid of a few missionaries by blocking them with units but it was getting out of hand...

yep, if you have a small, local religion and are near a powerful religious fanatic that doesn't like you enough you can expect this sort of thing. I actually do this same thing to the AI with my religions as they are never smart enough to use inquisitors for anything other than reconversion. Next time if you have the faith and see them doing crap like this, put them on the defensive by taking the religious battle to them. I've found a can waste an entire AI prophet and many missionaries just by sending little missionaries in and turning a few ppl to mine. They will waste a whole prophet on the city if the prophet is near. just another tip. Incidentally, this is why I always gun for Mosque of Jenne lately. you can purchase 50% less missionaries for maintenance uses. That's 3 conversions which is almost a whole prophet of theirs wasted to your 1 missionary.

If you don't have the faith for this kind of thing, then I'd recommend buying an inquisitor early and shuffling him around as needed. It's pretty easy and the range with which he halts nearby conversions is kinda big too, I've been able to apparently cover 2-3 cities by putting him in the middle.

If any AI ever takes Evangelism, beware! Even their missionaries will flip your fully religious cities...it sucks. Keep them away at all costs!

However, that's to be expected - religion is not that different from warfare, if your neighbor is much stronger than you and thinks he gets benefits from bullying you, then he'll not hessitate to do just that - be it by military, or by prophets. ^^ So the basic problem is, well... that he's just stronger than you. While I do agree that a mild "revenge" would feel nice, it wouldn't change anything about the situation, that he's just going to dominate your religion - especially when you can't spread your religion at all.

If you want to save your religion, then you might want to try saving a great prophet, until you have enough faith to buy 1, or better 2 inquisitors, then convert your cities and protect them afterwards. You'll still need to spam missionaries to counter the pressure that comes from other cities, so yeah... if your religion is WAY inferior to a spamming AI, it might just be the better way to give up to it - you can start saving your faith to buy great persons later on and it's probable that such a strong religion gets passed as world religion, in which case you and your neighbors get additional delegates. You'll also get a diplomacy bonus for shared religions.

Yes, yes, and again... yes.

A real diplomacy would allow me to say 'make peace with so-and-so or I will DOW you'.

'Stop sending me missionaries or I will take one of your cities'.

Instead my only option is to DOW and be a war-monger.

The main ultimatum I would like to be able to give is the one about “I see a large number of units on my border. Would you like to DOW immediately, back off, or take a diplo hit?”

It is a long standing complaint that Civ lacks a casus belli system. Such a thing would be a hard patch, but I would think modding the denouncement system would be feasible. So if a civ (player or AI) wants to denounce, they be able to base a denouncement from one or more in-game events. The more qualifying events checked off, the more seriously the denouncement would be taken by the AI civs. Things that currently generate a denouncement request (from an AI or CS) would be scored very highly. Sending missionaries would be low, but converting cities after saying you wouldn’t would be medium. And if you have played honorably all game, but get denounced anyway, maybe that would only be a strike against the denouncer?

beetle said:

The main ultimatum I would like to be able to give is the one about “I see a large number of units on my border. Would you like to DOW immediately, back off, or take a diplo hit?”

It is a long standing complaint that Civ lacks a casus belli system.

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This is the problem with ultimatums. Without some sort of casus belli system - which I agree would be near impossible to patch in at this point - the AI just doesn't have enough mental capacity to understand the possible consequences. Ultimatums would just end up being abused by the human, who has long-term planning and intuition on their side.

I wish. I would love to throw insults at the A.I. and threaten it, and make snide remarks. At the moment, the A.I. is the only one allowed to do that.

I've never found it makes any difference to tell an AI to stop doing anything. It just gives them a negative modifier, then they feel more inclined to do it anyway.

NASAROG said:

I wish. I would love to throw insults at the A.I. and threaten it, and make snide remarks. At the moment, the A.I. is the only one allowed to do that.

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Degrading relations with the AI is easy enough already. I sure would like to reduce the number of dialog boxes that present meaningless choices. At the very least, when the AI insults you, it would be nice to have an option for a -1 diplo hit by insulting back!