A question about diplomacy.

For me to say that i disliked the diplomacy in Civilization 5 would admittedly be an understatement, however with news of the upcoming expansion i have the question: are there going to be major changes to Civ V's diplomacy?

Is there likely to be a complete work-over of the diplomatic system or just a minor touch-up leaving the basic fundamentals as they are?

Thank you for any answers received.

They promised to rework the diplomacy system and ad religion and espionage.

BUt if they still have the Same AI who is playing to win then they just behave the same in diplomacy even with all the positive modifiers


So its hard to tell. However people usally don't make the same mistake again lets hope firaxis is smart enough to do that

I'm worried that it's going to be worse or at best equally crude.

I read that they'd thrown out the vanilla modifiers and are going to be using shared religion and religion in general to determine modifiers up until the Rennaissance (possibly including the Rennaissance). After that your relations and modifiers will be determined by the policies you share (I have a feeling it's late game policies).

At the surface level this sounds like it could be an improvement. However it's more likely to mean the removal of one crude diplomatic system for another even cruder and more stereotypical. Civ 4 used religion as the main diplomacy determiner and I personally hated it. The Civ 4 world, in all the games I played, split into two factions, those with your religion and those with the other. No diplomacy was possible with civs outside your faction.(ANd if you're going to tell me that's the way it was in world history, I suggest you go and study real world history and not some oversimplistic generalisation about the Christian/ Islamic confrontations of the medieval period). Outside of that particular and very brief period, there are many, many cases of different societies, countries and empires, cooperating and trading despite religious and/ or governmental differences. To set diplomacy determiners and relationship modifiers based on religion just continues to propagate the mistaken and misleading paradigm of religious intolerance, when in fact tolerance was an equal if not more common occurence. (And I write that as a confirmed atheist, with not a thread of religious belief in my body).

The only way this new diplomacy will work, is if it doesn't mean a repetition of the "us" and "them" diplomatic relationship. Ie, If it throws up several different groupings of civs based on religion, and diplomacy is possible between these groupings. Alas this is far too complex for what I think Firaxis are planning.

So, basically,...naah...it's going to suck...believe that, and you won't be disappointed.

Clements, so far I've discovered from articles/interviews:

Diplomacy changing over eras/history, early eras focused on religion, later eras on ideologies

AI civs more forgiving, like not holding grudges over wars fought hundreds of years ago

Research Agreements can be done only with close allies, more reason to have friends with

I'm sure there's more to come.

Greasy Dave said:

I read that they'd thrown out the vanilla modifiers and are going to be using shared religion and religion in general to determine modifiers up until the Rennaissance (possibly including the Rennaissance). After that your relations and modifiers will be determined by the policies you share (I have a feeling it's late game policies).

Click to expand...

This isn't true, why would they lose the old modifiers? People will get penalties for backstabbing, and positives from open borders etc.

Now it's just that there are new plusses and minuses in the form of religion and ideologies (and getting caught when using spies or giving information via espionage to other civs ).
The ideologies are supposed to be Freedom, Order and Autocracy. (Democracy, Communism, Fascism)

And like I wrote above there's at least one good reason to sign Declaration of Friendship: ability to do Research agreements. I hope there's additional rewards too.

And I agree with you that in Civ IV the religion was a bit too powerful of a modifier.

Also I bet that some leaders are more sensitive over religion, Isabella will hate you for being a heathen, and maybe Gandhi loves you for whatever you are..

Haig said:

This isn't true, why would they lose the old modifiers? People will get penalties for backstabbing, and positives from open borders etc.

Now it's just that there are new plusses and minuses in the form of religion and ideologies (and getting caught when using spies or giving information via espionage to other civs ).
The ideologies are supposed to be Freedom, Order and Autocracy. (Democracy, Communism, Fascism)

And like I wrote above there's at least one good reason to sign Declaration of Friendship: ability to do Research agreements. I hope there's additional rewards too.

And I agree with you that in Civ IV the religion was a bit too powerful of a modifier.

Also I bet that some leaders are more sensitive over religion, Isabella will hate you for being a heathen, and maybe Gandhi loves you for whatever you are..

Click to expand...

I wonder if they will take a step back from the AI trying to win the game or else to modifiers have no use the AI will still backstab or hate you when you are winning.

Dennis Shirk talked about some of the diplomacy changes in his interview yesterday with 2K Greg. I can't remember everything he said, but one thing was that the penalty for going for the same victory condition is being removed.

Camikaze said:

Dennis Shirk talked about some of the diplomacy changes in his interview yesterday with 2K Greg. I can't remember everything he said, but one thing was that the penalty for going for the same victory condition is being removed.

Click to expand...

yes
and the warmonger penalty has been reworked so you don't get if you are in a defencive war. You olso don't get a major penalty if you conquer a city state in the past several city states will go into permament war against you because of this instead you will get a lot of negatif influence with some other city states if you conquer other city states. So you will have to work as twice as hard to become their friends

there are olso more modifiers to make friends or to stay friends.

THe AI olso will forget past actions faster So it will no longer be unhappy the entire game because you did that one thing wrong

you can find the discussion here :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=458478&page=11