I long for more robust communication options between the player and the AI for the next Civ game.
This desire stems mainly from my frustration when I'm being attacked by a Civ through the borders of another Civ who is "friendly" with me but refuses to close off their borders to my enemy. (C'mon buddy; that isn't the behavior of a "friend".) In that case there should be an option for the middle-man to allow open borders only to non-military units. There should also be an option to let that middle Civ know that their open borders are a serious threat to their diplomatic relations with you, but in that case since the option is not available, you can't even request it. If I can't get them to close their borders, I should at least be able to express my outrage, but that middle Civ seems to think everything's peachy. On top of that, AI Civs get the advantage of being able to throw down an ultimatum: give me what I request or suffer a relations hit. Why can't we do the same?
It might also be helpful for the human player to be able to tell the AI Civs why they are turning down a trade request, plea for help, or cancelling a deal. I had a valued ally flip from my (and the Apostolic) religion to an opponent's, and watched my diplomatic relations fall from an overall +15 to something like a -1 in only a few turns. Being not so very impressed with this "dick move" on my ally's part, I closed my borders to him. (I could forsee worsening relations for the next 100 turns until I could flip him back.)
In that situation, perhaps a branching response tree would work well. What are the current deals we have together? Cancel open borders? Absolutely - because - we are disappointed with your new religious beliefs. Revert back and we'll open our borders to you again. I'd like the option to let the other AI Civs know "where I stand" on an issue involving them.
I recently crafted a scenario that generated a truly awesome map. The geography and my choices for city location left me with access to only the ocean to the West; my cultural borders touched the Eastern ocean but I could build no viable coastal cities. The interesting part is that the majority of the Western ocean was almost entirely closed off by a bottleneck that was inside Japanese cultural borders. Within this bottleneck I had only access to Japanese and Portugese waters, out of 10 Civs in total.
At that point Japan became my new best friend, as closed borders with them meant that I was essentially landlocked. I'm suggesting it would be nice in that situation to be able to inform Japan that an open border agreement is so crucial that my only other course of action would be to go to war with them.
This desire stems mainly from my frustration when I'm being attacked by a Civ through the borders of another Civ who is "friendly" with me but refuses to close off their borders to my enemy. (C'mon buddy; that isn't the behavior of a "friend".) In that case there should be an option for the middle-man to allow open borders only to non-military units. There should also be an option to let that middle Civ know that their open borders are a serious threat to their diplomatic relations with you, but in that case since the option is not available, you can't even request it. If I can't get them to close their borders, I should at least be able to express my outrage, but that middle Civ seems to think everything's peachy. On top of that, AI Civs get the advantage of being able to throw down an ultimatum: give me what I request or suffer a relations hit. Why can't we do the same?
It might also be helpful for the human player to be able to tell the AI Civs why they are turning down a trade request, plea for help, or cancelling a deal. I had a valued ally flip from my (and the Apostolic) religion to an opponent's, and watched my diplomatic relations fall from an overall +15 to something like a -1 in only a few turns. Being not so very impressed with this "dick move" on my ally's part, I closed my borders to him. (I could forsee worsening relations for the next 100 turns until I could flip him back.)
In that situation, perhaps a branching response tree would work well. What are the current deals we have together? Cancel open borders? Absolutely - because - we are disappointed with your new religious beliefs. Revert back and we'll open our borders to you again. I'd like the option to let the other AI Civs know "where I stand" on an issue involving them.
I recently crafted a scenario that generated a truly awesome map. The geography and my choices for city location left me with access to only the ocean to the West; my cultural borders touched the Eastern ocean but I could build no viable coastal cities. The interesting part is that the majority of the Western ocean was almost entirely closed off by a bottleneck that was inside Japanese cultural borders. Within this bottleneck I had only access to Japanese and Portugese waters, out of 10 Civs in total.
At that point Japan became my new best friend, as closed borders with them meant that I was essentially landlocked. I'm suggesting it would be nice in that situation to be able to inform Japan that an open border agreement is so crucial that my only other course of action would be to go to war with them.
