New Add-on: Civilization 5: Diplomacy

[Scramble]

Can you please explain what it is in this game? What can of diplomatic actions are needed for winning in higher levels?

Realize 1 thing.

The AI wants to win.

This means that the best way for you to avoid war is to make it so that it wouldn't be worth it for an AI to declare war on you.
If you are militarily weak, you want to sign pacts of co-operation (and follow them... go to war with them, trade with them, research agreements and so forth), pacts of secrecy against certain opponents (and keep them... don't trade with them, don't open borders, etc), provide gifts of gold, maybe give them your excess luxuries... If you do this, you provide them incentive to stay at peace with you. You see this? They realize that declaring a war on you would lose them those gifts and resources.

If you lack gold and resources, you want to guard your borders... make them think that it will not be worth attacking you.

They do remember past actions... but it is not so cut and dry as a permanent +1 for "You provide us with resources". It is more like "They are supplying us with Ivory, which is awesome, and I could get it by settling over there, or invading him... but it probably isn't worth it, so I will stay friends with him until my research agreement is up, then see how things are going." At least this is how they say it should work and how I have seen it. It is certainly possible that the diplomacy could be completely random, but that seems quite farfetched and unlikely.

If they see you are likely to win diplomacy, they will try to disrupt that by taking out city states. That is a big behavior I have noticed.

 

[brento1138]

I hate Napoleon. He keeps building a giant military and destroying everybody. He always appears to be nice to be, but once he is powerful enough, he grabs me by the throat and rattles me.

I have to say, I like this.

The AI is a bit less predictable now, and more like a human player. We don't know what the AI is really thinking. I believe this is a good thing! It makes the game more challenging and interesting.

That said, I do have a few grumbles about the diplomacy screen. I think more options should be on the table. Won't get into all the details but I think it just seems a bit limited.

 

[noise36]

+1 agrees with the OP.

Besides a happy or angry greeting you have no idea what any civ thinks of you or any other civ.

You have no idea what impact you actions will have, you have to guess your way through every single interaction.

Without the power to make informed decisions they have effectively removed diplomacy from the game.

Then after all that everyone just declares war on you anyway.

 

[UrkSpleen]

I hate Napoleon. He keeps building a giant military and destroying everybody. He always appears to be nice to be, but once he is powerful enough, he grabs me by the throat and rattles me.

I have to say, I like this.

The AI is a bit less predictable now, and more like a human player. We don't know what the AI is really thinking. I believe this is a good thing! It makes the game more challenging and interesting.

That said, I do have a few grumbles about the diplomacy screen. I think more options should be on the table. Won't get into all the details but I think it just seems a bit limited.

Interesting, Napoleon was phased out very early in my game, killed off by a combination of Hiawatha and Rakhmahaeng (sp?). In fact, in my game, Darius has been THE warmonger, so far taking out Augustus and Ramses, in addition to building a loaddd of wonders.

 

[MadRat]

The diplomacy AI seems really passive economically. It seems pretty fine at taunting me and asking for pacts and wars. It even offers research agreements. But What I found funny is NEVER asked for trade deals. I had to initiate all the trade deals myself -

Dippy Question:
If you reply to a war request with "I need 10 more turns" I have noticed that the AI does its DoW sometimes a few turns early - But it always does so first. Is there any negative/positive relations outcome for honouring/not honouring the deal and not declaring war??

Rat

 

[Lord Tirian]

I hate Napoleon. He keeps building a giant military and destroying everybody. He always appears to be nice to be, but once he is powerful enough, he grabs me by the throat and rattles me.

I have to say, I like this.

That *is* pretty cool. Something I liked in my current game was that I was in the lead, score-wise, and (despite being peaceful) that provoked some AIs... so at some point an alliance of three civs banded together and DoW'd on me.

What, on the other hand, annoyed me was that the same DoW made two of my neighbours going from being good friends to hostile because of "warmongering" in 2-3 turns. While I was only defending/holding my chokepoints. What - other civs are annoyed with me because wars were declared on me? That's not sneaky, that's inane. Apparently, the AI really has no idea who's declaring on whom.

Or that I liberated a capital, but an AI back into the game... and it's "hostile" and throwing insults at me? He's being annoyed about me putting him back into the game!? Why even bother in the future...

Cheers, LT.

 

[thk123]

I don't think the diplomacy is broken (and it is obviously is in the game) but I do think removing the numbers has damaged the system. Because you can't see the direct consequences of your actions, you don't know if they have been noted, which means the AI seems to behave randomly. And to be fair, it might be behaving randomly. You just don't know.

An example:

You offer to protect a city state that the AI is at war with. Has this upset him or had no impact?

Presumably, all your actions and inactions add up to form the AI's picture of you, but because there is no feedback, the wars seem random and unjustifiable. The AI occasionally gives hints as to why they are going to war ("You've crushed too many city-states you blood thirsty monster"), but by and large you have no idea.

Given that I don't think Firaxis are going to introduce numbers, I think they just need to add more speech things. Every time you do something that increases/decreases their mood, they come and let you know. Not only would this make the AI seem more rational, but the more frequent communication would help to establish them as a person not some object to get luxury resources through.

Also, when you do an action that upsets the AI and they come to talk to you, maybe you would be given the options to justify your actions. Some will minimize the impact, others might make it worse. However, if you keep using the pacification option, the AI will start saying things like "I don't believe you anymore" and then it is even worse than if you had been like "suck on it".

 

[Taan]

You can see no consequences because they are none. Just gave Japan his worker back (was captured by barbarians) - next round he declared war (we had no borders that were close to each other) but lost (because of poor AI). "Okay - whatever" - press the okay button and thats as much as diplomacy as there is in this game. You can imagine that there is some sort of effect by doing this and that, but after you played a while you just notice there is no reaction whatsoever. Just do what you feel and deal with the random reaction of the AI (and don't forget to hit that okay button).

 

[TheBlackAdderBG]

I hate Napoleon. He keeps building a giant military and destroying everybody. He always appears to be nice to be, but once he is powerful enough, he grabs me by the throat and rattles me.

I have to say, I like this.

The AI is a bit less predictable now, and more like a human player. We don't know what the AI is really thinking. I believe this is a good thing! It makes the game more challenging and interesting.

That said, I do have a few grumbles about the diplomacy screen. I think more options should be on the table. Won't get into all the details but I think it just seems a bit limited.

And how is the AI is like human?I consider myself human,but i never play Civ for wining the game.I turn off all victory conditions so i can play calmly and not to worry that game can stop when some of them are met.Yea i can play "one more turn" ,but is kind of pointless when i know that i lose/win.

 

[thk123]

You can see no consequences because they are none.

My point is exactly that. Because there are no numbers, it feels like the actions are random and for all I know, they are(!) However, what you can't know is whether that worker had any impact. It is possible it had an impact, but your previous misdemeanors rendered it trivial.

By making the game expose everything, we would be able to work out what has no impact which means it could be patched. However, because it is black box we have no idea...

 

[MadRat]

My point is exactly that. Because there are no numbers, it feels like the actions are random and for all I know, they are(!) However, what you can't know is whether that worker had any impact. It is possible it had an impact, but your previous misdemeanors rendered it trivial.

By making the game expose everything, we would be able to work out what has no impact which means it could be patched. However, because it is black box we have no idea...

I wouldn't want pure numbers like civ 4 but rather a bit of hot/cold slider to at least give me SOME idea of what our relations are. Congratulations we have just made an extensive treaty whereby you got 4 luxury resources for 60 gpt and as a kicker i threw in some iron ore for 45 turns. Six turns later you DoW me ???

Smart. Really smart.

Rat

 

[a barbarian]

Diplomacy seems pretty useless to me so far.

e.g. in my last game on 'prince' difficulty the only other civ on my continent, some native americans, appeared to be very friendly and cooperative but would never agree to even a simple 'open borders' agreement. Not even after I returned a worker to them who had been captured by barbarians (they said it was a historical moment of friendship and will be remembered eternally, lol). Then I placed a new city right at their border and snapped up some tiles. Now I thought they will get pretty angry, but instead they suddenly offered all kinds of trade deals

Also, the fact that I found 1 settler and 2 workers from them which had been captured by barbarians doesn't speak very well of the general A.I. which is even funnier since my advisers always remind me not to let a settler wander around alone

Ah and something funny which I think is a bug:
When I am in a research agreement with some civ, and I declare that civ war, the research agreement is terminated but I also get a tech out of it, haha. So it's best to make a research agreement quickly before you enter war

 

[thk123]

I wouldn't want pure numbers like civ 4 but rather a bit of hot/cold slider to at least give me SOME idea of what our relations are. Congratulations we have just made an extensive treaty whereby you got 4 luxury resources for 60 gpt and as a kicker i threw in some iron ore for 45 turns. Six turns later you DoW me ???

Smart. Really smart.

Rat

Agreed, they are either doing things at random or there needs to be more information on why they are doing what they are doing

 

[Taan]

My point is exactly that. Because there are no numbers, it feels like the actions are random and for all I know, they are(!) However, what you can't know is whether that worker had any impact. It is possible it had an impact, but your previous misdemeanors rendered it trivial.

Having played a far amount of games I am pretty sure that they are random

 

[zomg]

The diplomatic AI could probably talk more and make it clearer why its doing what its doing but I havent run into anything too "out there" in its decision making. Mostly they want to be friends until they want my lands and then its time to go to war, unless I'm doing too much warmongering myself then everyone turns a bit colder. There are less "circles" of friendship that existed in civ 4, like religion & civics tended to create. An option for people to see the modifiers would probably please both camps. For me the jury is still out as to whether I like the diplomacy more or less, but in any case it ain't bad!

 

[GoaGalneGbilski]

Have we all been playing different games? Or has no one here looked at how humans play? The AI will declare war if you are worth fighting. They will avoid war if you have the stronger army. They will accept a trade if it works for them. They will backstab you if they can. They will backstab each other too.
I was at war with songhai, but couldn't finish them, since their cities were well defended and I lacked living ranged units. So I asked for a mild peace, which he accepted. The turn after, Songhai's other neighbour, Washington, went to war with Songhai. Washington must have seen that the weakened Songhai were ripe for the taking.

Two things that don't make any sense however:

When they ask to go to war and you agree, they never ever do a fraction of what you do, once I even saw their armies near the borders. They will however like you, if that counts. +5 or whatever civ4 would have said in its excel sheet.

Never ever have I been able to ask another civ to join a war, like they ask of me. Not even if they asked it of me the turn before. Not even when the one I ask about has an army at the asked's borders.

 

[Lacerda]

In Civilization V you cannot make an alliance, you just can't, they'll betray every chance they got.
In Civilization V you cannot manipulate the AI, the AI manipulates you.

The lack of control you have on the AI is the major problem, and the responsible for the raging about the AI. Appreciate the unpredictable.

 

[Thorn]

Realize 1 thing.

The AI wants to win.

This means that the best way for you to avoid war is to make it so that it wouldn't be worth it for an AI to declare war on you.

That's part of the problem. I'm okay with the AI wanting to win but there are other ways to win besides war. I want Civilization 5 not Risk 5.

 

[kaltorak]

Yes, it is not just lack of info. There are many times that it is clear he should be friendly. You can grant him everything he wants. From free resources, to declare war when he asks, to return workers... And they will still declare some turns later. And not just napoleon, but any leader.

So, just adding the numbers saying he loves you, wouldn't help, since it doesn't matter if he likes you.

if you say "well because if you can manipulate them it's too easy", then raise the difficulty until some kind of diplomacy is needed to win the game. It's not my fault that the AI is so bad that it needs to play 8vs1 to be a challenge

 

[Senethro]

I think the Diplomacy AI works great. In the beginning when theres lots of room everyone is friends, signing Cooperation pacts and doing research agreements. Then a few wars break out and theres some uncertainty. Some Coop pacts fail and but Secrecy pacts against whoever is leading the scoreboard abound. Weak players get dogpiled and you'll probably end up betraying a former friend. Its now probably the Industrial era and you'll likely share the world with 2 enemies, 2 grumpy people and 1 friend who should ideally be rich, distant and weak. By the time you've climbed to the top of the scoreboard everyone will hate you, but thats as it should be.

I much prefer that to using religion and weird deals to manipulate the AI into not declaring war and Tech Brokering to double your research output. I don't think it hard or fun to rig the game to make the AI act against its own interests.