Defensive Pacts

[Sarisin]

I’ve had to abandon the last two game of FFH I played. My current game will likely also suffer the same fate. The main reason is defensive pacts.

My game now is with Perpentach, Marathon (why sometimes 2400 finish and others yr 1801?), Monarch, huge fantasy map. One ai civ was eliminated by the barbs leaving 7 others and mine. Kindros Fir is ahead of me by 300 pts. The other 6 civs are 150 or more pts behind me.

I really have no hope of catching Kindros Fir. He has at least 10 cities. I can never figure out how the ai can support so many cities when I have serious gold problems supporting less (in this case five cities) and an army big enough to defend against barbarians. Anyway, each few turns he picks up a few more pts on me. No chance of another kind of victory except that I would normally go after him with my army.

I really think I could defeat him despite having to leave lots of units on my exposed eastern border where the barbs are still frisky. However, there is no way I can declare war on him. Why not?

Defensive pacts.

In the year 1150, he has three pacts. In all there are 23 defensive pacts – and not one with me. No one has asked me for a defensive pact and every civ has the option redlined so I cannot ask. That would not bother me, but to declare war on Kindros Fir, I would have to battle 3 other civs, plus the barbs. No way.

It just seems in each game the ai is creating all these defensive pacts and eliminating any chance of war. I had the aggressive ai choice selected, but so far there has not been one war, and I don’t expect any with these pacts. If there is one, it would be one declared on me…and I only wish that would happen as I am sure I could defeat any one civ, but not those in the pacts.

Here are my three suggestions to improve the defensive pact situation. And, I know peaceniks think there is no improvement necessary and are happy to play on with the pacts. Not me though as I find the combat in FFH the most interesting and fun.

1. Get rid of ‘em. Make defensive pacts an option when you start a custom game just like raging barbs, aggressive ai, etc. Then, those that like them can have them and those that don’t like them can make it so no civs have the pacts.
2. Allow the defensive pacts, but only for a limited amount of time. For example, Kindros Fir makes a defensive pact with Malakhim, BUT it is only good for, say, 100 turns/years, then, it must end for at least 50 turns. Of course this would not stop him from having pacts with other civs and managing it so he always has at least some pacts going. That’s why I don’t like this option. It probably would be tough to program too I am guessing.
3. Have an unpredictable event occur with a pop-up box that states something like: All Defensive Pacts Are Ended for the Next 50 Turns. That would be pretty neat, I think and might really spice up the game militarily.

One thing I really like about FFH is the various unpredictable events that occur in the game. For example, getting a tech from a goodie hut, having your mine suddenly produce iron, or having your lowly warrior defeat Orthus. I think the addition of more unpredictable events would help shake things up in the later game, which, IMO lags a bit.

Ending the defensive pacts would be one thing. Also, on the negative side, how about a few natural disasters/calamities: a typhoon/hurricane takes out or badly damages a coastal city, tornadoes take out inland cities, earthquakes take out cities anywhere, a swarm of locusts destroys farms, mines explode, aliens land and attack your civ – you get the idea. Or, how about a powerful unit without the loyalty promotion flipping over to your side? Bribing units with gold to join you? To add to the fun, make it more likely that the bad things happen to civs with more pts. and good things happen to the laggards.

FFH is a great game, but, if possible, please do something to improve the defensive pact current situation.

Thank you.

 

[felwar]

Any chance of a diplomatic solution? I find the best way to get around defensive pacts against the AI is to either convince someone else to declare war on them, or convince them to declare war on someone else. This will use up or negate all of the treaties, respectively. Defensive pacts themselves are probably the #1 reason to always keep friendly relations with at least one AI civ.

 

[SchpailsMan]

There are several ways to break defensive pacts, the easiest being having one of the civs declare war on someone (anyone, including yourself, just turn in every negative diplo modifier you can think of and they may just come to it by themselves). If you don't have enough money to bribe an AI into war, you can try going to 0% research for a few turns. If no AI will ever go to war no matter how much you can give them, then you're pretty much diplomatically screwed.

The thing about diplomacy is that you can't just suddenly decide that you need to befriend or trade with civ X and make it happen in a couple of turns, you have to plan it a long time in advance and adjust your diplomatic strategy to the events that occur in the game (state religion changes, war between AIs etc). What I mean is that if there is no way you can bribe any civ in this game, it might be because in this particular game settings things ended up this way, or it might be because you didn't pay enough attention to diplo during the game (which your comment on "in each game..." actually suggests).

I'd suggest digging into the C-IV Strategy & Tactics forum to see how you can improve your diplomatics skills. Defensive Pacts are not an FfH2 feature, and there are already a few ways to deal with them. IMO, they're not broken at all in FfH, but they might require a little more attention to get through (the AI isn't aggressive enough IMO, even with Aggressive AI set on I barely see AI-to-AI wars if I don't push them into it).

 

[Sarisin]

Thanks for your comments, but I DO pay attention to all aspects of the game, including diplomacty in the early part of the game as well.

Still, the problem I have is the absurd requests from ai civs to 'end agreements with other civs' or trades that just don't make any sense at all. Things like 15 gold for Animal Mastery. Of course, I turn them down and this does affect my diplomacy.

IMO if bribing is the only way to get around the defensive pact-itis the game goes into, then there is a problem. I agree with your statement that the AI is not aggressive enough, but maybe in this case the AI is good as it would be very dumb to declare war on another civ who has defensive pacts with three other civs.

What would be the problem with my first suggestion? Giving the player the option of playing with defensive pacts turned off or on. And, c'mon, don't you think it would be fun if in the later game suddenly a pop-up appeared saying all defensive pacts are cancelled?

 

[SchpailsMan]

Still, the problem I have is the absurd requests from ai civs to 'end agreements with other civs' or trades that just don't make any sense at all. Things like 15 gold for Animal Mastery. Of course, I turn them down and this does affect my diplomacy.

Sometimes it's just wiser to agree, if only to preserve relations with those neighbours that actually count.

IMO if bribing is the only way to get around the defensive pact-itis the game goes into, then there is a problem.

Good thing it's not then I only said it was the easiest. Other ways are just less immediate and require a lot of planning and attention. But if all else fails, bribing is usually still feasible and is only as hard as stockpiling cash.

I agree with your statement that the AI is not aggressive enough, but maybe in this case the AI is good as it would be very dumb to declare war on another civ who has defensive pacts with three other civs.

The trick is to make the civs that HAVE the defensive pacts declare war. That breaks the DP. I'm not sure but I guess requesting an AI to stop trading also breaks DPs (but it's usually way harder to get an AI to do it than pushing it into war).

What would be the problem with my first suggestion? Giving the player the option of playing with defensive pacts turned off or on.

That's fine by me. You'll have to ask the team to know if it's doable, but as far as I'm concerned giving the player the choice to allow it or not is ok.

And, c'mon, don't you think it would be fun if in the later game suddenly a pop-up appeared saying all defensive pacts are cancelled?

No.

Random events can be somewhat fun if they happen very rarely, and extremely unfun otherwise. I sometimes rely on DPs as part of my strategy (in Vanilla, I count on those a lot during space race to protect myself from agressions while I concentrate on building the ship... it's not like I played Vanilla a lot these last months but you get the point ), and I'd hate to see my strategy broken because at some point the RNG decided it hates me. Breaking DPs for 50 turns is by no means as casual as carnival escape or losing a single high-odds battle, it sounds more like a small-size armaggedon spell to me. And it can't be compared to goody huts or combat since you actually decide wether you want to trigger those or not, and you have effective means to affect their outcome.

 

[Sureshot]

The only good way to get through diplomacy is to form cliques early on to polarize the entire diplomatic relations. So when someone asks you to break off trade with someoen, be up to date on which of the two parties involved likes you more, and then go along with them. Anytime a war comes up, if so and so is your firend more than the person they want you to declare war on, go for it. If someone you are on good terms with asks for something or even wants to trade you 10 gold for a tech, go for it.

Usually you can then get a PA with your best friend and thats usually enough to overcome being declared on by a few ais at once. But most importantly, by agreeing to friends demands and going along with and supporting others negative actions, you can polarize the world further so that wars are more likely to happen.

LOL i feel like an anti-peace advocate, but it works in civ, and it sounds to me like you don't agree to any of the hate-ons that the AI's are putting out there, so you basically set a trend for the ais where its better to just do nothing and maintain the status quo

 

[Sarisin]

Again, thank you both for your comments. The best thing IMO about this forum is learning from other FFH players and I always learn a lot here.

Incredibly, after writing my last reply, I booted up my game, and guess what?

Within 10 turns Kandros Fir declared war on me!

This of course broke all the DPs and I am well on my way to kicking his butt - I have already passed him in pts. None of his buddies from the pacts have piled on and declared war on me so far too.

You just never know in this game and that's what makes it so much fun.

Still, I would like to see Defensive Pacts tweaked somewhat to allow a bit more flexibility. I also thought about making the universal breaking of DPs one of those buildable rituals.

I absolutely agree that in vanilla civ DPs are more important with the Space Race option - great point! But, in FFH, I see less need for them. The Tower, religious, and cultural victories just seem really tough to me - although I am sure they are doable. In all the games I have played only one cultural victory - the bulk by conquest and a few by time. The DPs just make it hard to happen.

But you have given me cause to think about new ways to play the game and try to avoid the many DPs situation.

Thank you.