Diplomacy

Hi, I haven't been in this forum in a while, but while the site was down I decided to pop in the Civ 2 disk that came with Chronicles and play the WWII scenario as Turkey. Wanted a bit more of a challenge than being one of the big civs, but nothing too difficult.

It was horrible. The AI is disgustingly anti-player. The Allies, Axis, and Russians all declared war on me, while making peace with each other, just for talking to them. The AI acts like a child having a tantrum. The goddamned Neutrals, down to one city, declared war on me for refusing to give them Railroad. Spain allied with me, refused to fight any of my enemies and cancelled the alliance within a few turns. It's ridiculously hard. You can't tech-trade, map-trade, or do anything diplomacy-wise. I quit in disgust, and fortunately the boards had been back up for a few minutes.

My question is: is there any way to fix this ridiculously over-the-top diplomatic handicap? Is there a patch that takes the AI back to the way it used to be? I loved playing WWII when I was younger, on the original Civ 2. Now, it both angers and saddens me that one of my favourite parts of the game has essentially been raped. Is there anything I can do?

Do you play the multiplayer gold version? If so (if I am right) you can change that into civ classic (from classis to MPG is possible). Look at the forum for those patches. With MPG the ai is a lot more aggresive then with classis.

Magic_gorter said:

Do you play the multiplayer gold version? If so (if I am right) you can change that into civ classic (from classis to MPG is possible). Look at the forum for those patches. With MPG the ai is a lot more aggresive then with classis.

Click to expand...

Yeah, it was MPG. I was pretty sure the original Civ i played was MPG anyway though, even though I didn't have the net at the time. But this version has all the expansions, being Chronicles. I assumed this was something that came with ToT or whatever the other one was.

What you describe is normal for the World War II scenario, even for classic. The Russians and Axis are agressive and large, so they naturally bully the small turks. The tribute calculation also involves the sum of the attack values of one player vs the number of units of the other player. (see http://www.sethos.gmxhome.de/ )

You will want to keep your treasury low, and defend the north-eastern city (Baiku?) on the hill very well. If you want to trade with England or America, try keeping the Axis on decent terms. Also, avoid talking to them as much as possible.

You mean Kars, unless you are suggesting he take Batum from the Russians first. But I find Kars pretty hard to defend if the russians break out the bombers...

As to the AI being agressive, when I am the small empires my problem is usually that I can't get enough war (because I want a perfect reputation). Note they all have weak cities that you can use to force peace. the french can loose both their cities in the middle east in a few turns - the allies can loose bagdad and athens easily (bagdad more so) , the germans can loose one of their lybian cities and the russians may have cities weakened by the axis attack.

I TRY to be at war with the french and spanish and to an extent the neutrals (more risky because of their proximity and alliances) because that means I can extract tribute from them when they want peace again and they are a threat that can be managed. The other empires I care avoid until I'm ready to take a city especially the axis - a hord of axis tanks is a disaster.

You mean Kars, unless you are suggesting he take Batum from the Russians first. But I find Kars pretty hard to defend if the russians break out the bombers...

Click to expand...

Kars is correct. To defend against bombers, get flight and place a couple fighters in Kars. Unless I am very much mistaken, even air units get the hills defence bonus, and fighter scramble already places fighters in the same league as attacking bombers. Axis will be harder to defend against, though there might be some merit in turning the ground under Istanbul into forest for the defence bonus (I have not tried this). Try keeping the peace long enough to ship an engineer to America. Then build an airport and airlift freight for nice bonuses. I used that strategy once when playing as the neutrals.

Prof. Garfield said:

What you describe is normal for the World War II scenario, even for classic. The Russians and Axis are agressive and large, so they naturally bully the small turks. The tribute calculation also involves the sum of the attack values of one player vs the number of units of the other player. (see http://www.sethos.gmxhome.de/ )

You will want to keep your treasury low, and defend the north-eastern city (Baiku?) on the hill very well. If you want to trade with England or America, try keeping the Axis on decent terms. Also, avoid talking to them as much as possible.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry Prof., but it's not normal, at least not the 'normal' I experienced when I played years ago. I've been doing some experimenting this week, and I've discovered that the diplomacy has been pretty much completely overhauled, at least in WWII. I don't remember enough about the other classic scenario, Rome, to comment, but it seems as if the AI is just more aggressive diplomatically in general than before, as well as changing exactly which nations exhibit which attitudes.

The most obvious example is playing the WWII scenario as Spain. Once upon a time, Spain was on fairly good terms with the Axis. They would accept you as an ally quite readily if you requested such. The Russians, on the other hand, declared war on Spain the second you tried to talk to them. No demands, no requests, no discussion, just try to talk to them and immediately get declared on. Now, the Russians still don't like you, but the Axis, formerly Spain's friendliest rival in the game, take Russia's old trick of declaring war on you, first turn, just for trying to talk to them.

Something has definitely changed in the way diplomacy is handled, and it is NOT for the better. While I could quite easily still win games like this anyway, there's no point. There is absolutely no fun involved in being at war with everyone, all the time, or in having even the damn Neutrals attempt to push you around and refuse trades. I'm certainly deriving no pleasure from what used to be my favourite part of Civ II.

Oh, I know that MGE has a nasty AI when it comes to diplomacy, compared to classic. I was merely saying that if you are Turkey, at least in my experience with classic, you can't expect to have a nice time with both the Axis and Russians. This is because they are big and powerful while you are very small. The Rome scenario doesn't have such large power differences, so the difference between classic and MGE diplomacy is much more pronounced.

Prof. Garfield said:

Oh, I know that MGE has a nasty AI when it comes to diplomacy, compared to classic. I was merely saying that if you are Turkey, at least in my experience with classic, you can't expect to have a nice time with both the Axis and Russians. This is because they are big and powerful while you are very small. The Rome scenario doesn't have such large power differences, so the difference between classic and MGE diplomacy is much more pronounced.

Click to expand...

So this is an MGE thing? Is there any way to return to the classic diplomacy then? Because I much prefered it.

As Turkey I expect Russia and the Axis to be aggressive, but not ridiculously so. And I certainly don't expect them to make peace with each other and declare war on little old me, along with the Allies. I expect to be able to play them off against each other, stabbing them in the back periodically as I go, like I used to.

I'm pretty sure that there is a patch out there that downgrades MGE to classic (I remember a succession game thread mentioning it), though I don't know if that will solve your problem or just allow classic players to read your saves.

Personally I thought classic needed to be made a little harder - if you only have wars when you want them then you are never in much threat of loosing.

Anyway try becoming allies with the russians on the first turn, taking the easy french and allied cities - getting tribute and building lots of armies quickly from the tribute and selling buildings and then they should take you more seriously.

Also thanks for the tip Prof - I hadn't thought of putting a little city there.

Prof. Garfield said:

I'm pretty sure that there is a patch out there that downgrades MGE to classic (I remember a succession game thread mentioning it), though I don't know if that will solve your problem or just allow classic players to read your saves.

Click to expand...

Will that work on a completely upgraded Conquests though? Oh, never mind, I'll try and find it. The worst that could happen is that it crashes and I re-install.

^^^ Can't become allies with the Russians when they declare war on you for even trying to speak with them. And stealing the Middle East from France and the Allies was pretty much my plan.

Really? I just loaded up my MPG right now started the scenario and formed an alliance with the russians - you have to do it first turn though - i think maybe the civilizations dont know how strong they are on the first turn due to a quirk of how the scenario was created.. maybe

The alliance isnt much use for demanding tribute but it is useful in as far as you now have a strong ally and the russians will have to cancel it before they can attack you.

When designing a scenario, you can set the attitude the different civs have towards each other. On the first turn, MGE "properties" of calculating attitude have not kicked in and you can have a pleasant conversation. Also, I think you are right in the "power" of civs not being immediately calculated.

Once upon a time I designed quite a few scenarios - and them I foolishly exposed my computer to a virus.....

anyway on the main topic - I was trying to do a one city challenge in MPG and I think I came agross the difference in AI. I remember being able to trade reasonably freely soon as I had Marco Polo's and having a shot of winning from New Zealand on the standard map. But now I find I can't trade very easily and they spend half the time at war with me so its pretty near impossible - can't even safely get diplomats over to steal tech.

Still I think that it makes a bit of sense in the WWII scenario that I can't just bully the super powers with the turks/neutrals. Well at least not until I have smashed quite a few of their cities.

BTW my turkish campaign was a sucess.

ScottieX said:

Once upon a time I designed quite a few scenarios - and them I foolishly exposed my computer to a virus.....

anyway on the main topic - I was trying to do a one city challenge in MPG and I think I came agross the difference in AI. I remember being able to trade reasonably freely soon as I had Marco Polo's and having a shot of winning from New Zealand on the standard map. But now I find I can't trade very easily and they spend half the time at war with me so its pretty near impossible - can't even safely get diplomats over to steal tech.

Still I think that it makes a bit of sense in the WWII scenario that I can't just bully the super powers with the turks/neutrals. Well at least not until I have smashed quite a few of their cities.

BTW my turkish campaign was a sucess.

Click to expand...

It makes sense not to be able to bully the big guns, but the Neutrals? With one city left? Declaring war on me for refusing to give in to their demand for Railroad? That's just ridiculous.

Actually, I don't mind giving the enemies Railroad. The reason? It makes it much easier to conquer them later!

Naturally, I make sure that I build the Darwin Wonder, though.

In my game I did find it a bit annoying when the neutrals wiped out a freight I was trying to sneek onto that lovely axis railroad network.

I presume in yours you were dealing with Tehran instead and the annoying thing was that you needed troups in the middle east to prevent the loss of those cities? I've lost bagdad a few times to those neutrals (only once per game, at most!), on the other hand that might actually pay more in terms of partisans than it looses. That is partly because I am so sympathetic towards them after playing them so much.

One of my 'strategies' is to try and loose a city to someone like the barbarians in order to get a few extra units for free. If you loose one of the russian ones later in the game you'll get a lot of partisans - very handy for sneeking by all the enemies and tiding up bombers /cruise missiles/engineers etc/for disbanding in cities or for defending front line cities that dont have any sheilds yet or to rush build a howitzer or engineer.

One thing I am curious about is that I have sometimes let them take more of my cities and I seem to get far less partisans the second time - a factor that doesn't seem to be in the formulae that I see online for partisan production.

Another thought I had was how would a game where all the minor empires (turk, spain and neutrals) were humans (alligned) turn out - and who would get the best of it of the three.

One thing I am curious about is that I have sometimes let them take more of my cities and I seem to get far less partisans the second time - a factor that doesn't seem to be in the formulae that I see online for partisan production.

Click to expand...

You don't get partisans if the enemy is liberating a city. Liberating counts as taking back a city you previously owned, even if you were not the original owner.

Valka D'Ur said:

Actually, I don't mind giving the enemies Railroad. The reason? It makes it much easier to conquer them later!

Naturally, I make sure that I build the Darwin Wonder, though.

Click to expand...

Doesn't really do much if the enemy has one city in a relatively inaccessible area - Tehran. Nor even if they build a few extra cities nearby, which often happens.

@Scottie: Yeah, that was the primary cause of my annoyance. I needed those troops to invade Egypt, not defend the Middle East. And they had a nasty habit of sneaking troops past me if I launched an attack on Tehran.