A little peep under the hood of diplomacy

[Victoria]

I decided to try the new Civ VI firetuner today as its free and thought it would help with diplomacy

I love this tool already, I can give myself anything in game, gold, promotions, modern armour, all techs
If anyone is interested and cannot work it out let me know

Anyway, I always suspected what you see on the diplomacy tips is the current modifiers rather than their current mood so I loaded up an old game and looked at a civ

Here I am at war with Peter and the current modifiers ar -15 ... but the 'mood slide' shows really low and I guess it just means he is at war as its always here for warring civs

Now I look in Firetuner and it shows -46 for Peter butthe tooltips on the right show only -15. I guess that means his mood will improve

Here a turn later his mood has gone to -44.
This seems to confirm what many have suspected... the tool tips influence which way the mood swings and why sometimes we cannot befriend someone for a few turns when we have all the modifiers.
As long as your modifiers are positive, you will eventually be positive with them.

Still lots to do but nice to finally be bothered to get somewhere

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Good work, never used FireTuner in Civ V so a quick lesson would be appreciated.

 

[Victoria]

Good work, never used FireTuner in Civ V so a quick lesson would be appreciated.

OK , I'll probably whip up a pdf tonight... I am not coder nor used Fire Tuner much before, just a little bit of the V SDK in earlier VI.... that may make my credentials better for creating a PDF
At least you do not need to change code.

 

[cazaderonus]

Nice work incoming Victoria. Again.

cheers. Can't wait to know more

 

[antimony]

I remember there were discussions that the modifiers represented a change in relationship, so that if the sum is negative the relationship worsens. What you found however seems to be that the change in relationship depends on whether mood is higher or lower than current modifiers?

 

[Victoria]

Correct @antimony but its one test... try for yourself if you want

here is the info to be able to add gold, techs, upgrades, units etc in game

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/simple-fire-tuner-for-units-upgrades.26150/

I looked last night at the figures above, its a dull thing to do over time....The outcome is very disturbing.

It seems the SCORE column is in fact the difference between my dip tooltips and their dip tooltips.

So... the AI keeps track of how you feel IF you were an AI player and applies this to what each of the other civs thing of you. The combined figure is the score.....

What happened last night was I was best buddies with Teddy, we renewed or loving friendship a few times and was getting near alliances when teddy went to war. Now personally I am happy with teddy warring but the computer version of me was livid. teddy was on another continent I wanted to move to anyway and now he did a surprise war. Our SCORE dropped from +12 to -7 even though Teddy still had the same modifiers with me.... when friendship came around again... teddy said no

At this stage I can only conclude the AI is basing our friendship on how it thinks I feel.... and when did computers ever do that right?

 

[agonistes]

Holy clark and gable... so as Russia, basically I'm getting a diplo penalty to score from everyone? And its not reflected in the tips?

Glad there is no diplomacy vc yet.

What civs are the most impacted I wonder. Who is the ai most likely to think is unhappy with them?

Could this be an update meant to mesh with the Cyrus/Scythia thing?

 

[Victoria]

I did some more tests.... I am not convinced the score is necessarily used with conjunction with you.
Some other bits and pieces

Here I believe the relationship level is used in the slider on the front diplomacy screen to show what state they are in with you graphically (a bit naff to be a slider)
The diplomatic yield bonus I can only guess is a modifier on how the AI treats you for deals. I have seen little difference in deals between friend and declared friend which matches this (and deals are not in the worth/cost table below) but as there is a random factor involved it needs lots of stats which is just a pain.

Here are the transition numbers which are fairly obviously for the AI changing its mood
Because there is a range and as hinted in patch notes there is a random decision made by the AI as to whether it improves or not. I have no idea how often it considers this decision but diplomacy typically happens at the end of a turn and I suspect this is why they normally want to befriend you but not the other way around, however when I continuously ask each turn they do often say yes but never in the same turn (well at the beginning of the next) ask you to be a friend when I have already asked.

We also have these modifiers which we can only guess at. They seem to modify your chances but the diffidence between worth and cost I cannot suss out. i can guess... Any ideas?
I do know that every time I ask a declared friend to become an ally they do without fail.
I have never seen request assistance....

There does seem to be quite a random factor and some weird effects I cannot explain... for example

I start a game on prince and everyone has positive modifiers with me but everyone slips to unfriendly within 2 turns.
Just so much is hidden from view and with patching changing diplomacy and the possibility of a new VC or at least some sort of league of nations I suspect its not worth creating a guide.

 

[Nigel_Tufnel2]

Interesting stuff! Wheels within wheels... Ever notice you often get a Friendship offer right before an AI DOWs someone? Pretty sneaky, drag me into your negative diplos! Is it the devs attempt for factions to form?

 

[Victoria]

Nice one, I had not noticed.... sneaky buggers

I do strongly believe the game is designed for factions and ganging up on a warmonger, yes

 

[Leyrann]

For the Worth vs Cost, I think "worth" determines what they think taking the action is worth for them (so if it's more positive they consider it more important) while "cost" is what they think it costs them if they accept it from someone else (so if it's more positive they consider it costing them more).

 

[Victoria]

What does anyone else think? Do they agree?

 

[agonistes]

What does anyone else think? Do they agree?

About being designed to gang up on warmongers?

 

[Victoria]

About being designed to gang up on warmongers?

No, about what worth and cost mean

For example is feels to me like I request more research agreements that I get indicating worth is about them initiating something and cost is about accepting a proposal

I think I may try changing some to see what happens

EDIT: I changed unfriendly delegation cost to -75 and now when ever I try and send a delegation to an unfriendly person they say yes. I think I'll change worth to 75 next

Yeah I changed my unfriendly delegation worth for 0 to 90. unfriendly civs will offer you a delegation often, not all the time and my neighbour too 5 turn to offer sonwas clearly struggling about something.


worth is the value of approaching you about something, higher is better
Cost is the value of them accepting a proposal from you. Lower is better.

 

[Photi]

Yeah I changed my unfriendly delegation worth for 0 to 90. unfriendly civs will offer you a delegation often, not all the time and my neighbour too 5 turn to offer sonwas clearly struggling about something.


worth is the value of approaching you about something, higher is better
Cost is the value of them accepting a proposal from you. Lower is better.

assuming these, the AI sure don't value alliances much

 

[Victoria]

assuming these, the AI sure don't value alliances much

Note quite right.
-10/-10 indicates they rarely approach you for an alliance but will always accept your offer
Matches what I see in game too.

 

[Canadian Bluebeer]

The warmonger penalty is supposed to degrade as time goes by, providing you don't do any warmongering.
Checking the score in FT, this does happen.
You can then do things as the tips suggest to make the change happen faster, and it can change them from hating you to neutral.

Of course, if you're gonna kill them anyway, who cares?

 

[historix69]

In my current game as Egypt on TSL Giant Earth I have good relations and a lot of Trade and DoFs with all direct neighbours. No war so far. Borders are a bit tight, but most of Africa is still empty and I granted Open Borders in trades. There is enough land for all civs starting there.

It is around turn 300/1500, most Civs are in Classical Era. I lead in points. (8 cities) I just connected a source of iron and started to research Crossbows (50% Eureka from 3 Archers) when Kongo (4 cities) and Arabia (1 city only) declared war on me, saying they have to save the world from me.

I checked diplomacy screen since it is only a few turns since last DoF ran out :

Kongo : +15 / -3 = +12
Arabia : +23 / -1 = +22

Any idea why the two declare war?

Usually I would now move from defensive army (archer/crossbow) to a bigger offensive army and remove those unreliable neighbours once and for all ... but then everybody will call me a warmonger ...
(Warmonger modifier for Medieval is 12, for Renaissance 18.)

Note :
The only civ which went from neutral to denouncing before was Sparta (-19), probably because of Gorgo's weird agenda, but we have no direct border etc. Maybe Gorgo paid Kongo and Arabia to DoW me ...

 

[Victoria]

You are Egypt and Kongo and Arabia both want your land. This is an overriding factor to normal diplomacy just like it is for you. The devs are trying to Mimic how players play.

My recommendation is to block Arabia at the bottleneck which should not be hard and push Kongo hard. I am not sure where their cities are but while Tanzania has half of Kilimanjaro that other half with hills is mighty fine. Left unchecked Kongo will seriously cause problems anyway so this is a blessing in disguise.

You aim is to only take 1 city at most off Mvemba, hopefully you have Tunisia. You want to waste his troops and completely ravage his entire country... as you gear up Arabia will loose units and try and sue for peace, take peace, resend envoy and you will retain your +22 slowly degrading. You can even bribe them with a luxury for a short term +8-10 to get friends again but it's not a big deal. Ravaging Kongo until they give up most of their cities in a peace deal (no warmonger) is best, especially around that lovely volcano.

Oncevdone Kongo will be your Gimp and you will have 3/4 Africa.
Gear up a fleet during/after that.... TSL is sort of an island map and you need to keep any runaway in check if need be.... Brazil/aus for example

 

[historix69]

This is the Giant Earth map with space for 50+ (?) cities in Africa alone, not standard size. It is also only Prince Level.
I settled cities in real world locations : Khartum (Capital), Suez (Channel City, blocks everybody), Alexandria, Oman (captured barb settler, original Arabia), and more cities in Eastern Africa in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenia (next to Kilimanjaro), Somalia Desert Coast (Iron). I am allied with CS Daressalam (Sanzibar).
Arabia is stuck with Mekka and probably has no troops. It sent a scout and a Great Prophet to Suez but Arabia has not even founded a religion yet.
Kongo placed 4-5 cities where the real Kongo is (from West Coast to East Coast). He built 1-3 Encampments but nothing else.

North Africa, West Africa and Sahara are completely empty (except for the default CS.) South Africa is barbarian territory.

Military Power after a few turns of war :
Egypt 407 (only 2 crossbows so far due to high upgrade costs on marathon. Need to get the mercenary card.)
Arabia 50
Kongo 31 (I killed only a horseman and an archer, but the CS moved 8 archers against Kongo and probably also killed some units.)

Points :
Egypt 176 (1st)
Kongo 102 (12th)
Arabia 66 (18th)

I don't understand why AI starts such suicide DoWs.
The Kongo battlefield is mostly jungle and rivers, so it is not easy and takes a lot of time. Ranged units need a hill or must be directly near target,