Sneak peak at upcoming leader screens.

With the introduction of the 2:1 AI Luxury Trade ratio, and the continuation of the "novelty" features "Pact of Cooperation" & "Pact of Secrecy", Firaxis has decided to slightly alter the leader interaction screen to more clearly illustrate their intentions. An anonymous source has "leaked" a screenshot of the new leader screens and I just happen to have a copy.

As you'll notice in the screenshot, it has been decided that any features that may unintentionally make you think that any form of diplomacy can be used when interacting with the AI have been removed. Instead of "false diplomacy", Firaxis decided to make it abundantly clear what you're supposed to when you encounter an AI leader. My source tells me that the new leader screens should be showing up in the next major patch.

You mean they've taken out the "I'm going to lie to you by telling you my troops are just passing through" option??? You used to get an extra a half-turn of war that way.

Well, It's a hard choice, but I would have to chose the third option.

Pretty much.

The last one should be changed to "DECLARE WAR"

fantsu said:

The last one should be changed to "DECLARE WAR"

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"Goodbye" is being left intact so you have a way of getting a few more turns in before you or the AI DoW.

Hahahha, this is seemingly true.

Ghandi be doing the gay hand and looking at me funny.

stormerne said:

You mean they've taken out the "I'm going to lie to you by telling you my troops are just passing through" option??? You used to get an extra a half-turn of war that way.

Click to expand...

How about the "What are you talking about? I don't even know where your borders are!" response?

Maybe soon they'll add in the Montezuma demanding physics for pearls every turn.

I mean, that was real diplomacy, right? The kind you guys want for some godforsaken reason?

I would laugh if it weren't true and spoiling one of my favourite game series ¬¬

It's a sort of wry laughter, to be sure.

So true, I was surprised that Gandhi declared war on me when I was his neighbor during the first gameplay. (Random personalities OFF of course)

I laugh but i'm sad about the game really, the AI leaders are just aggressive boardgame players now, no more alliances, no more co-operation, there is no depth there anymore at all, simply awful.

fantsu said:

The last one should be changed to "DECLARE WAR"

Click to expand...

OK, it's a little "tongue in cheek" humor, but it echoes what a lot of players feel about the diplomacy (or lack thereof) system in Civ 5. Now, I know that the AI has some grand scheme wherein it (the AI) tries to win versus Civ 4 where they merely existed alongside you.

The part of that ideology that I, and a lot of other players, take issue with is the fact that the AI will always declare war on you or each other at the drop of a hat for some convoluted reason. A few of my favorites:

1) A civ on the other side of the map / continent treks a settler over near one of your cities in order to secure a strategic or luxury resource, then a leader screen pops up saying that they don't like you snapping up every bit of land you see.

2) Again, following the same scenario as #1, the AI will become Hostile in the Diplomacy Overview because he / she doesn't like your borders touching - even though they came from across the map and settled next to you.

I'm sure we've all seen cases like that at some point or another. What bothers me about that is the fact that the AI is coded to react to close borders in a predefined way. I'm not a programmer, but if it were possible for the AI to know that you settled a city first and react less aggressively, then I wouldn't have as big of a problem with it. The same holds true for the AI considering you a warmonger even if you've never declared war, but have successfully defended yourself when the AI declares on you - it shouldn't happen like that, because by definition, you are not a warmonger.

All in all, it comes down to the point where you (the human player) knows the AI is going to declare war at some point and the only unknown parts are when and how many. It seems to me that all the victory conditions available cause the AI to go to war by the following logic:

1) Time - More cities = Higher Score = Time Victory.

2) Cultural - Puppet every city you conquer. Increased gold and science production without raising policy cost.

3) Domination - Self explanatory.

4) Science - Conquer more cities, more population for science via higher population and more trading post spam so you can take advantage of the Rationalism tree.

5) Diplomatic - Conquer more cities, more citizens working trading posts, more gold to bribe city-states with.

I could be completely wrong in my thinking, but I feel that the AI is designed to go to war regardless of the victory condition "chosen" at least 85% of the time. As a human player (yes, I realize the AI is limited in what it can do), you can decide to remain peaceful and win through 3 / 5 victory conditions without ever declaring war on the AI. However, the AI will almost always declare on someone - either you or another AI - and no matter how hard you try...you WILL end up being dragged into a war at some point.

Iron Weasel said:

OK, it's a little "tongue in cheek" humor, but it echoes what a lot of players feel about the diplomacy (or lack thereof) system in Civ 5. Now, I know that the AI has some grand scheme wherein it (the AI) tries to win versus Civ 4 where they merely existed alongside you.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say they merely existed alongside you. Some tried to acheive something but diplomacy still meant something.

The part of that ideology that I, and a lot of other players, take issue with is the fact that the AI will always declare war on you or each other at the drop of a hat for some convoluted reason. A few of my favorites:

1) A civ on the other side of the map / continent treks a settler over near one of your cities in order to secure a strategic or luxury resource, then a leader screen pops up saying that they don't like you snapping up every bit of land you see.

Click to expand...

Especially egregious when they claim you got too many troops near their "new" border.

2) Again, following the same scenario as #1, the AI will become Hostile in the Diplomacy Overview because he / she doesn't like your borders touching - even though they came from across the map and settled next to you.

Click to expand...

Not always. Only when you say "You'll pay for this" but that doesn't mean anything since the AI declares war no matter what.

I'm sure we've all seen cases like that at some point or another. What bothers me about that is the fact that the AI is coded to react to close borders in a predefined way. I'm not a programmer, but if it were possible for the AI to know that you settled a city first and react less aggressively, then I wouldn't have as big of a problem with it. The same holds true for the AI considering you a warmonger even if you've never declared war, but have successfully defended yourself when the AI declares on you - it shouldn't happen like that, because by definition, you are not a warmonger.

Click to expand...

It's always nice to be called bloodthirsty by the civilization you just liberated.

I could be completely wrong in my thinking, but I feel that the AI is designed to go to war regardless of the victory condition "chosen" at least 85% of the time. As a human player (yes, I realize the AI is limited in what it can do), you can decide to remain peaceful and win through 3 / 5 victory conditions without ever declaring war on the AI. However, the AI will almost always declare on someone - either you or another AI - and no matter how hard you try...you WILL end up being dragged into a war at some point.

Click to expand...

Against everyone no less. The only allies or friends you can make are with the gold-hungry city-states.

fantsu said:

The last one should be changed to "DECLARE WAR"

Click to expand...

I think it should be "Goodbye (Declares War in 10 turns)"

You know, for variety!

They should reanimate Gandhi though, and put him inside of a Giant Death Robot. It would make clear his intentions...

*Sigh* I want to say there is some nuance to this issue... I really do. I enjoy finding common ground and trying to be reasonable but... this is probably my biggest problem with Civ5 in a nutshell. I could, believe it or not, enjoy the game despite its many other shortcomings. What we have here, though, is a world full of lunatics that are ready to wage genocidal wars at the drop of a hat. This is probably the hugest and strangest problem with Civilization 5. Johnson was on to something big when he handled the diplomacy the way he did in Civilization 4 and Shafer was unwise to discard it and send us all the way back to 1996. This is a return of Master of Magic diplomacy at its worst and is the direct sequel to the game that arguably had the most sane and interesting diplomacy in the entire genre.

AlpsStranger said:

*Sigh* I want to say there is some nuance to this issue... I really do. I enjoy finding common ground and trying to be reasonable but... this is probably my biggest problem with Civ5 in a nutshell. I could, believe it or not, enjoy the game despite its many other shortcomings. What we have here, though, is a world full of lunatics that are ready to wage genocidal wars at the drop of a hat. This is probably the hugest and strangest problem with Civilization 5. Johnson was on to something big when he handled the diplomacy the way he did in Civilization 4 and Shafer was unwise to discard it and send us all the way back to 1996. This is a return of Master of Magic diplomacy at its worst and is the direct sequel to the game that arguably had the most sane and interesting diplomacy in the entire genre.

Click to expand...

I mean, there's a difference between making the AIs play to win and play to just be jerks. The AI playing to win hurts immersion greatly.

Civ5 diplomacy should just be called 1984 Diplomacy.