Embassies

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iamdanno

Warlord
Joined
Jan 16, 2012
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Oklahoma City, OK, USA
Lately, I've just completely stopped letting AI civs set up embassies in my cap. I feel like they steal fewer techs that way. I can still get DOF with (some of) them. Am I hurting myself long-term?
 
iamdanno said:
Lately, I've just completely stopped letting AI civs set up embassies in my cap. I feel like they steal fewer techs that way. I can still get DOF with (some of) them. Am I hurting myself long-term?
Click to expand...

I've been doing the same, mostly. I'll never give an embassy to certain civs (Russia, Mongolia, etc.) unless we've been friends for a REALLY long time, but for someone like Gandhi, who doesn't pose a big threat to rush you, an embassy can push you into the DoF threshold.
 
I obviously have no way to prove this, but I think so. I get DoW'd noticeably less often when an enemy civ doesn't have an embassy and thus can't see my capital; from this, I'm pretty sure the AI actually has limitations in that department.
 
What rips my knitting is that despite turning a Civ down for an Embassy, they still bug you every turns for it. Why isn't there a "NO MEANS NO".

And even if you do give in and grant an embassy, they're still on your back every 10 turns or so begging for open borders.
 
Its not so much usefull because you will missing 50 gold each 30 turn for open borders.

If you have a friendly neighbour with a DOF its usefull to sign open borders with him


Its usefull in the early game to know where there capital is so you can know if you want to be friends or not for example if she is surounded by 3 AI and they all hate them then no.

If the enemy is hostile from the beginning don't bother signing embassies because they will steal constantly.
 
apocalypse105 said:
Its not so much usefull because you will missing 50 gold each 30 turn for open borders.

.
Click to expand...

I must admit not hearing that before.

I can't understand the rush for embassies. If an AI is unfriendly towards you and wants an embassy, normally DOW follows.

And I won't let them establish an embassy for 25 gold or whatever early in the game. I figure if they don't know where you are they can't expand towards you. Probably doesn't work anyway, but it is satisfying.
 
Deggial said:
And you will miss the positive diplo modifier you would get for shared embassies. You might not be very eager to get this modifier, but we have a saying in Germany: "Kleinvieh macht auch Mist." (= even small things add up).
Click to expand...

Not to mention the Ai actualy sometimes needs to go through you're borders to either explore but mostly because they want to declare war and capture a city from a other AI

I've seen isabella declare war on me just because I refused open borders and she was allready at war with england and wanted to capture york which was on the other side of my empire
 
apocalypse105 said:
Not to mention the Ai actualy sometimes needs to go through you're borders to either explore but mostly because they want to declare war and capture a city from a other AI

I've seen isabella declare war on me just because I refused open borders and she was allready at war with england and wanted to capture york which was on the other side of my empire
Click to expand...

Uncannily like a human player. :D If you need to take out a runaway and a civ w/o open borders is blocking the way - he/she will be the starter before the main course.
 
I won't trade embassies to civs unless they already know where my capital is, so I'm not giving them new information, or I need to sign a DoF for research agreements. The AI is still perfectly capable of finding you without an embassy, but they can't steal tech in your capital unless they've seen it first.
 
apocalypse105 said:
Its not so much usefull because you will missing 50 gold each 30 turn for open borders.

If you have a friendly neighbour with a DOF its usefull to sign open borders with him


Its usefull in the early game to know where there capital is so you can know if you want to be friends or not for example if she is surounded by 3 AI and they all hate them then no.

If the enemy is hostile from the beginning don't bother signing embassies because they will steal constantly.
Click to expand...

I also never trade or sell my open borders to anyone (1.67 gpt? Big Deal!). That started because of the AI missionary spam. With open borders, there is no attrition. So now, if AIs want to come through my land, they have to declare, or at least get damaged. I guess I must be an isolationist at heart.
 
Biologist said:
I won't trade embassies to civs unless they already know where my capital is, so I'm not giving them new information, or I need to sign a DoF for research agreements. The AI is still perfectly capable of finding you without an embassy, but they can't steal tech in your capital unless they've seen it first.
Click to expand...

Hum; I'm going to try this on my next game to see if it will cut down on the annoying spy attempts.

It does appear that (on Immortal level+ in G&K) that the AI loves to fill future city spots you've left vacant near your capital if it knows about it. On water maps, it sends the settlers without escorts providing a free source of workers to the human.
(In fact in one game it was looking for the closest possible tile to my capital; its like the city spot selection code thought its city would work tiles already within my borders [SMAC/Civ III where founding a city near the border moved the border])

I've not been a fan of selling open borders to civs that might actually use it for a long time (G&K gives even less reason to sell them due to Missionaries); their units got in the way of my own units, in particular my workers)
 
Biologist said:
I won't trade embassies to civs unless they already know where my capital is, so I'm not giving them new information, or I need to sign a DoF for research agreements. The AI is still perfectly capable of finding you without an embassy, but they can't steal tech in your capital unless they've seen it first.
Click to expand...


This is the problem. It is extremely likely that the AI knows where all of your cities are with or without embassy.
 
I generally try and get on good terms with most of the AIs on the map, which requires embassies. Defensive pacts and open borders can be real useful if you're near a warmonger or trying to spread your religion. I do try and do it on equal terms though, I don't like having someone know where my capital is when I don't know where on the map they are.
 
sufficiency said:
This is the problem. It is extremely likely that the AI knows where all of your cities are with or without embassy.
Click to expand...

This is what I'm in fact going to test on my next game. (Which will be as the Dutch since I'm going thru all civs) But I won't do that until I finish my current game (as Austria) so someone else may want to test this as well so we get faster results. (In fact, the more people testing this the better since we'll get more data points)
 
sufficiency said:
This is the problem. It is extremely likely that the AI knows where all of your cities are with or without embassy.
Click to expand...

In some ways, maybe, but not for the purposes of espionage. I played a Mayan game on small continents where I captured my continent and denied access to all remaining AI civs (no embassies and no open land near my cap). My capital was inland, so no surviving AI was able to get near it. No techs were stolen that entire game.
 
apocalypse105 said:
Not to mention the Ai actualy sometimes needs to go through you're borders to either explore but mostly because they want to declare war and capture a city from a other AI

I've seen isabella declare war on me just because I refused open borders and she was allready at war with england and wanted to capture york which was on the other side of my empire
Click to expand...

I've had a few games where a neighboring Civ tries to sneak through a settler and escort pass my empire--usually to try and ninja plant a city right next to a luxury I don't have yet in my borders. After buying tiles to close borders around the AI settler blocking the way, then denying open borders, I've been denounced.

It seems quite likely that you take a massive diplo hit if you are in the way of another AI's units trying to pass through.
 
They also can't covet what they can't see.
 
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