Diplomacy, making friends

[tokyochojin]

I played a King level game with the North Korea Civ mod yesterday evening, and spent the whole game being backstabbed and attacked from surrounding civilizations (Japan, Mongolia, Siam) who I managed to stave off with no problem due to my huge tech advantage. I am third in points.

The problem I have is how to make alliances with friendly civs? I am on friendly terms with Babylon, Korea and America yet not one of them will give me any assistances at all, be it luxuries, gpt or even a piece of coal, despite me helping all of those countries in trades, and giving them money in the past. Even trades, for example which would seem like they have nothing to lose. America has 5 wine, which he obviously isn't using, yet he won't do a 1-1 trade with me for one of my luxuries.

What do you have to do to actually create real alliances or trade partners in the game? It is the only part of the game that still really grates on me and I tend to just ignore it on a whole.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Hm, I think all of those civs are in the Devious Friendly mod, that is, they are "pretending" to be Friendly, they will backstabb you soon..

I do however agree, making friends is so difficult in this game, yet making enemies is way easy.

 

[smallfish]

Keep your friends close, but your enemies even closer

 

[tokyochojin]

So, do you guys just ignore diplomatic relations as a whole?

 

[joncnunn]

In general; all signing DOFs do is make all their enemies mad at you as well.

If the civ has decided to do the pretend friendship thing, they will even break a DOF to DOW you. (That's about the only time they'll DOW when you have an active DOF)

Just insist on the AI making up front payment for luxuries & resources so when they break agreements early via DOW, you pocket it and get to resell it to some other AI early.

As to the gift thing within a DOF; I'm afraid that's always is the direction of from the human to the AI and never the reverse.

 

[Securion]

Diplomacy is completely broken in this game, and it havent been fixed despite that the game have been out for years.
Instead, they want us to buy the expansion, for the price of a full new game, and that will maybe fix the problems. We dont really know. If not, then too bad. Maybe in the next expansion.

The sad part is that i will happily throw my money at that damn expansion as soon as its released.

 

[Rebun]

I find i can make a decent long-term makeshift alliance by befriending the friends of my friend/s. This three-or-more alliance relationship usually keeps the civs docile and unlikely to backstab. I also found that you can keep up DoFs with them indefinitely as well, so long as they remain friends with each other. I've kept to this strategy the last few weeks on continents/pangaea (emperor) and if done right, you can even make your neighbouring civ docile and not bothered by you.

The key is the Global Politics screen in Diplomacy Overview. It will tell you each civs friends, who they have denounced and who they are at war with along with lots of other great info, and it will help you find the friends of your friend to add to the alliance. Often you can make two civs friends with each other by having DoFs with them, they will be more receptive of each other this way (unless they have had previous problems, like denouncements). Never befriend someone who has denounced one of your other friends. If you dont feel threatened, denounce civs that your allies have denounced for bonus relations. Always give them tribute when they ask for it, but don't feel pressured to go to war with your friends enemies, you can say no to that without it affecting your relations.

You will most likely still make enemies this way but it allows you a certain degree of control over who you want to be friends with long-term. It is far better then letting diplomacy being based on the chaotic whim of the AI.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

The only three issues with the current Decelration fo Friendship is
- Them 'asking for stuff' while in a DoF but you can't do the same.
- Them denouncing you, and you get a negative diplo hit with EVERYBODY
(i.e - You're friends have found a reason to denounce you)
- Unless you know every DoF in the game, an advisor should pop up warning you
- "Becareful, making a DoF with X, who's an enemy of Y, could greatly harm our friendship with them".

 

[Rebun]

- Them 'asking for stuff' while in a DoF but you can't do the same.

Yeah, that sucks that you can't really demand anything from them, or even try to facilitate an exchange instead but i feel a long term friend is worth more then a lux for 30 turns or a small pile of gold.

Them denouncing you, and you get a negative diplo hit with EVERYBODY
(i.e - You're friends have found a reason to denounce you)

I don't usually get my own friends denouncing me unless i've been an aggressive warmonger, attacked city-states or if the friendship was built on rocky ground in the firstplace. Which are fair enough reasons i suppose.

- Unless you know every DoF in the game, an advisor should pop up warning you

A notification does pop up on the side when 2 civs have become friends, denounced each other or have gone to war. All it requires is that you pay some small notice to the notifications and check the global politics screen regularly.

- "Becareful, making a DoF with X, who's an enemy of Y, could greatly harm our friendship with them".

Yup, thats one thing you need to be careful with when making friends, its important to know their enemies because there is a good chance they will become your enemies. If this doesnt sit well with you, its probably best you find someone else to be a friend. Because of this i generally refuse all declaration of friendships from civs im not related to on sight and check global politics after, if they are clean, i consider befriending them later.

 

[tokyochojin]

Do certain civ traits affect your "friendship" status? In my current game, I hadn't been to war or even killed any units other than barbs, yet still get attacked despite been friendly to everyone while still having the units to back up any attack.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

Nope, but certain Civs have diffrent personalities, Suleiman, Harald, Bismarck, Oda, Montezuma etc. are considered "warmongers" because they tend to easily attack you.

People like Askia, Kamehameha, Gandhi are more loyal to you and are less threatning

For example, an example was given about Ramessess, that guy tends to be pretty weak, and focuses on Culture/Wonders.

 

[TallNSturdy]

I've found that when you are leading army wise that civ's will be your friend but if they think they can steam roll you then they only pretend. In my last game I was friends with Darius for half of the 320 turns of the game, even after I declared war on him and took some of his cities. The best way to keep someone on your side is just like a city state, bribe the hell out of them. Have some extra dye no one will buy, gift it to the one you want to be friends with. Making a trade with someone and they will pay no more than xxx gold to get it, drop off 50 gold or throw in some strat resources you don't need\use. I view it as, if they were always trading me with the worst possible trades for me then why would I want to be friends with them.

After 300 turns, declaring war on everyone (including Darius at some point) Darius still had all positive diplomacy marks (the green ones when you hover over the world Friendly in the diplo screen) including the "We have been to war in the past but he doesn't seem to mind" one.

Just like rl diplomacy isn't give A get B result, if it was then it wouldn't be fun. Still not perfect, and most would say still horrible, but I find if you don't fall way behind in either tech or army then maintaining diplomacy is not that hard. At the higher levels it would probably be impossible with the army sizes the AI has but I play at Emperor now and can still keep friends with people I need to, or at least long enough to make it rain nukes on them.

 

[spider1]

So, do you guys just ignore diplomatic relations as a whole?

For the most part, that's what I do. I play a defensive game and try to win any which way other than domination. I try and be friendly if possible, just to keep the wars down, but it usually doesn't pay off for me. I always keep my military up to date as possible and build most of the city defensive buildings. I've just learned to live with it. Defensive wars can actually be fun if you have a good balanced military. Letting them come to you is most certainly easier and less aggravating that moving your military all over the map. Of course if you can't win by the time your enemys start nuking you my strategy doesn't work as planned.

 

[nokmirt]

Diplomacy is completely broken in this game, and it havent been fixed despite that the game have been out for years.
Instead, they want us to buy the expansion, for the price of a full new game, and that will maybe fix the problems. We dont really know. If not, then too bad. Maybe in the next expansion.

The sad part is that i will happily throw my money at that damn expansion as soon as its released.

Me too isn't it crazy?

Later, I am going to start a game on a Terra map, so I can use some of the tips I have read in this thread. I'll let you know how things go.

 

[Sherlock]

'Diplomacy is the art of saying 'nice doggie' until you can find a rock'.

-Will Rogers

 

[PhilBowles]

Nope, but certain Civs have diffrent personalities, Suleiman, Harald, Bismarck, Oda, Montezuma etc. are considered "warmongers" because they tend to easily attack you.

I've found Harald to be a consistently loyal and reliable ally. He's certainly a warmonger, which can be annoying if you're friends with him since he'll proceed to make all the remaining civs hate you for being his friend, but he will make friends easily (he needs all the friends he can get...), has never backstabbed me, and will usually renew DoFs if you do things he likes, like beating up all the enemies he makes for him.

 

[Lyoncet]

Yeah, Herald is one of the breed of warmongers that doesn't really have a poker face. In my experience, AIs like him and Bismarck are pretty easy to play around because you always know when they're getting unhappy that you exist. Leaders like Wu, Caesar, and in my experience particularly Hiawatha (but only when you're in very close proximity) will wait until you've signed a research pact and had two other civs declare on you, then let you know they were just playing with you and roll 50+ units into your territory.

 

[PhilBowles]

Yeah, Herald is one of the breed of warmongers that doesn't really have a poker face. In my experience, AIs like him and Bismarck are pretty easy to play around because you always know when they're getting unhappy that you exist. Leaders like Wu, Caesar, and in my experience particularly Hiawatha (but only when you're in very close proximity) will wait until you've signed a research pact and had two other civs declare on you, then let you know they were just playing with you and roll 50+ units into your territory.

Hiawatha really, really covets territory in my experience. You can rely on war with him if he's next to you. Harald I tend to describe as a barometer - as you can say it's very obvious when he's not happy; in that he can be a guide to what other leaders think about you. Harald's also generally easy to ignore in his own right because he tends to bite off more than he can chew and gets stamped into the ground early on...