Another (relative) newbie question--reputation

[Bestbank Tiger]

How important is your reputation?

I like to build a lot of settlers and expand rapidly, which doesn't leave me time to build up a strong military. So I also make sure I have the Great Wall and United Nations.

Trouble is that forces the AI to always offer peace, so I can't go to war later unless they either provoke me or I break the treaty. Does it hurt me (outside the peace score) to break one or two treaties?

 

[ElephantU]

Yes, breaking treaties does significantly hurt your reputation, and that leads to lots of trouble if you want to get along with the AI civs. "Back-stabbing" an ally is especially heinous, and often AI civs will ally together against you. If you want to trade techs or maps you need to be at peace, but doing so can greatly simplify a spaceship game (and is essential to a One-City or One-Citizen game!).

Later in the game the Eiffel Tower can help repair some of the damage, but don't rely on it...

 

[Peaster]

Reputation doesn't seem to have much effect on the game - at least not in the conquest games I usually play. The only exception I can remember was when my rep sank to atrocious (probably worse, if possible). It was hard to get the AIs to trade maps at the end. But that game had about 20 respawns - pretty unusual.

 

[TimTheEnchanter]

Reputation doesn't seem to have much effect on the game - at least not in the conquest games I usually play. The only exception I can remember was when my rep sank to atrocious (probably worse, if possible). It was hard to get the AIs to trade maps at the end. But that game had about 20 respawns - pretty unusual.

It depends on how you are playing. I agree that reputation means little in Conquest. If all you are doing is charging through the enemy with Elephants or Crusaders, rep doesn't matter much.However, if you are trying to "play nice" with a trade-centric, science driven, minimal military civ, (particularly OCC or I guess early landing games), reputation can be important. Alliances (and the gifts that can come from them) and peace are more difficult to get and maintain with a bad reputation. A clean rep leaves all diplomatic options open whereas a bad rep can limit some of what you can do. How you play determines whether that will actually have an impact on your game.

However, many people try to play with a spotless rep as a sort of additional challenge.