Did they fix diplomacy?

[Sonereal]

At some point, it would be easier to use CivIV's diplomatic AI. At least with that one, you don't feel as if playing a "guess-the-sequence" minigame. Push A, B, B, B, B, A or A,A,A,B,A,A? It doesn't help that the AI is complete garbage at tactical combat and doesn't take into account you're a human in calculating military strength. Right now, since trading means seemingly nothing and research agreements mean seemingly nothing and declarations of friendships meaning seemingly nothing compared to military consideration, there's almost no reason not to use that military you're forced to constantly build-up to kill all the other AI.

I don't know why the devs tried to reinvent this particular wheel.

The people who don't see anything wrong with diplomacy are very good at the A,B,B,A,B,B stuff. Too bad I don't like playing games that railroad you into doing one thing as if it's an FPS.

 

[Kerosene31]

Diplomacy has improved a ton from release. While the AI still does goofy things at times, they seem more predictable without being too predictable. Maybe it is different at various difficulties. I play on king and I get good games most of the time.

Eventually the AI Civs are going to start picking sides and you won't be able to play nice with all of them, but to me that's how the game should be.

There are still strange, random behaviors at times but those are a lot less than in the past.

People just disagree on what the AI should be. Personally I though the Civ 4 AI was the game's weakest point. Things were far, far too predictable. The AI would always make their moves obvious. They made it painfully obvious when they were going to "surprise" attack you.

 

[PhilBowles]

Diplomacy has improved a ton from release. While the AI still does goofy things at times, they seem more predictable without being too predictable. Maybe it is different at various difficulties. I play on king and I get good games most of the time.

Eventually the AI Civs are going to start picking sides and you won't be able to play nice with all of them, but to me that's how the game should be.

There are still strange, random behaviors at times but those are a lot less than in the past.

People just disagree on what the AI should be. Personally I though the Civ 4 AI was the game's weakest point. Things were far, far too predictable. The AI would always make their moves obvious. They made it painfully obvious when they were going to "surprise" attack you.

It's quite often obvious now - usually when you see them massing troops anywhere...

Also, one thing I've noticed on Emperor is that you can rely on being attacked by the AI that starts accumulating city-states, especially if you're aiming for a diplo victory. It seems to be the AI strategy to exploit the fact that you can't make peace with/deal with/gain influences with CSes if the 'parent' civ is at war with you, so it will delay or prevent you going for diplo victory by making sure the CSes are permanently at war with you - often the aggressor civ itself won't make any meaningful effort to attack, it will just refuse to declare peace or will declare peace and then war as soon as the treaty expires.

While in one sense I admire that low cunning in the AI, I think that's an exploit that needs fixing (of course the player can secure a diplo victory in exactly the same way, making it easier than it should be if you have the early financial advantage) by allowing negotiation with CSes independently of the enemy civ; after all in reality city-states and minor nations have been bribed or persuaded diplomatically to switch allegiance during particular conflicts. This would also be fixed automatically if CSes were given a sense of self-preservation - so if their existence is threatened they would agree to peace whoever they were allied with. Would Genoa really let itself be destroyed out of loyalty to the Ottomans, say?

EDIT: The AI has *always* been the weakest point of Civ games. What it hasn't always been is a dealbreaker - there are a couple of new additions to the Civ Rants thread focused entirely on how those people abandoned the game just because the AI works so poorly, including one who testifies to loving the rest of the game's aspects, but can't cope with the tedium of being forced to make so many units to deter aggression every game, and so rely on a single strategy rather than having other options to achieve the same thing (such as diplomatic deals and declarations of friendship that can be relied upon).

I play on king and I get good games most of the time.

So far I've found King the most enjoyable level to play on - so far on Emperor *all* of my games have turned out the same way, possibly partly because I'm still shooting for diplo victory to get that achievement at the same time as the 'win a game on Emperor' one, and that seems especially tough given the above - with the result that in every game I'm forced into a frustrating stalemate when the AI has no hope of doing serious damage to my cities even with a much larger army, but I'm denied my own victory condition based on its way of exploiting the CS mechanic and its financial advantages on that level.

 

[Kerosene31]

It's quite often obvious now - usually when you see them massing troops anywhere...

That's usually your first and only warning though (as it should be). In Civ 4 you would almost always get numerous "I don't like your religion...etc" warnings before troops even massed.

You could go with a small army because you had more than enough warning to build up a few extra units to deal with the stack coming your way.

The diplo victory with CSs definitely needs to be re-thought. I don't even consider it a diplomacy problem, as it isn't a diplo victory at all, but a science and a lot of gold to bribe victory. I'm not sure why they changed this from many past games.

 

[PhilBowles]

That's usually your first and only warning though (as it should be). In Civ 4 you would almost always get numerous "I don't like your religion...etc" warnings before troops even massed.

You could go with a small army because you had more than enough warning to build up a few extra units to deal with the stack coming your way.

The diplo victory with CSs definitely needs to be re-thought. I don't even consider it a diplomacy problem, as it isn't a diplo victory at all, but a science and a lot of gold to bribe victory. I'm not sure why they changed this from many past games.

In past games it was too easy to exploit the majority population rule, and the easiest route to diplo victory was nearly always one that involved no diplomacy; usually it was diplomacy by domination. It's also part of Civ V's broader design to make 'tall' strategies competitive with 'wide' ones, since you're no longer at an automatic "diplomatic" advantage by virtue of having more cities (and hence population).

The 1 vote per nation fixes that, and the city states are a good addition to the victory condition. It's a curious argument that bribing city-states doesn't constitute diplomacy - bribery is a time-honoured diplomatic strategy, and is a very common approach in past Civ games to keep rival civs on your side or, indeed, to persuade them to vote for you in the UN. So in that context the only real change is that the diplomatic (i.e. economic relations) side is now emphasised more relative to the older games, in which either sheer dominance or a combination of economic and military strength were needed.

The key issues are:

- the badly thought-out 'each civ will only vote for itself'. This is forced by the current way the one-vote system works, since Civ V removes any mechanism to choose the 'lead' civs to vote for, however it makes diplo victory entirely reliant on city-states and leads to stalemate or forces other victory conditions if all CSes are eliminated by rivals seeking the same victory condition; it also makes exploits that prevent you/your rivals from allying with city-states effective, as described above. Removing this constraint is easy enough; just choose the leading civs the same way the previous games did (population or map control), or by score, but each civ only gets one vote (or 2 if it built the UN), so that the same condition you rely on to get nominated doesn't automatically give you the edge in winning the game.

Removing this restriction would probably also allow the reintroduction of other UN resolutions, as in Civ IV; since these are effectively unworkable if each Civ is programmed not to vote for anyone else if they propose a resolution, that may explain why they're missing from Civ V.

- The lack of city-state diplomacy. There's no real reason CSes shouldn't allow more diplomatic options - if you can gift them a resource if you have a road to them, for instance (which makes that quest useful, rather than forcing investment in roads for a one-off influence boost), or make per-turn gold payments as with other civs. As well as the above option of allowing CSes to negotiate peace on their own terms.

- The way influence works. I still feel gold should only affect influence up to a point; the quests idea is good, although I agree with criticisms than on higher difficulty settings almost all quests are 'eliminate city-state X' and the more interesting ones are rare, but it's also redundant since aside from killing barbarians, it's usually easier to achieve the condition with gold. I've suggested before allowing gold to buy influence up to the maximum threshold for 'friends', but no further - any excess gold payment is just wasted if you already have partial influence, and you need to achieve objectives CSes want in order to reach and maintain ally status. This would make it a bit more difficult to have end-game bidding wars, but could be compensated for by making quests both more varied and more frequent (for that matter there could always be a "give us X gold" or "give us resource X" quest), and in any case those bidding wars already have the problem that whoever gets the last turn before the UN vote is going to win the CS for that vote.

As I suggested, I think the fact that you can't gain influence with a CS you're at war with needs to be changed - it's already a huge penalty diplomatically that you automatically have maximum negative influence on a CS you're at war with. It's far too strong a penalty if, say, two CSes that want each other eliminated are both at war with you (perhaps because they both have the same major civ ally), but you gain no influence with one for destroying the other, or if your desired GP/Wonder pops in a turn when you're at war with that CS (when you may have been at peace when you started construction). As a replacement, I'd suggest that influence should be positively affected by a shared enemy (so if the Ottomans declare war on me, and so does their CS, it is hard for me to regain influence with them because the Ottomans would be gaining influence by virtue of being at war with me; however I could still act in all the normal ways to increase my influence with them). For this proposal to work, there would need to be a slight amendment to certain Patronage policies (I'm thinking of the one that gives you 20 minimum influence) such that this only applies in peacetime - which is already effectively the case with the current system.

 

[MkLh]

In past games it was too easy to exploit the majority population rule, and the easiest route to diplo victory was nearly always one that involved no diplomacy; usually it was diplomacy by domination.

On IV this depends on difficulty level. On deity, a "proper" diplo victory (especially from AP but also from UN) was probably easier to set up than conquering most of those deity civs with insane troop building bonuses. On noble, it was other way round.

 

[Ruler]

Its not fixed its just different I dont personally like it. Warmongering is the only way to go in higher levels anyway, very rarely you get so good start you can wait.

 

[cman2010]

No, they have not fixed it yet, be prepared to have the AI's act really crazy and erratic probably 9 times out of 10. Some people try to make excuses and say you have to play a certain way to placate the AI. I feel that if they fixed diplomacy a player could try a bundle of strategies when dealing with the AI civs. You would not have to do everything so exact for them not to hate you, which most times they do end up doing anyway. Perhaps they will fix diplomacy in the next patch. I feel that they will look into fixing it, but it will be only one tiny step for making the system better. At this rate it will take them 500 years to fix the game properly and finish what should have been done to begin with.

Sounds like the diplo is still broke to me.

 

[Bad Brett]

That's usually your first and only warning though (as it should be). In Civ 4 you would almost always get numerous "I don't like your religion...etc" warnings before troops even massed.

You could go with a small army because you had more than enough warning to build up a few extra units to deal with the stack coming your.

Seriously, have you ever played Civ 4? In my last Immortal game I had a +5 modifier with Charlemagne and his attitude towards me was "Friendly". I had just conquered my own continent so I was a bit behind in the the tech race and he was even nice enough to give me a free tech as a gift.

A few turns later, without any warning, he arrived with 7 galleons and unloaded 15 infantry and 6 artilleries near one of my best cities. I only had Riflemen. Game Over.

Conclusion:

- Some AI's cannot be manipulated. If you fall behind, they'll come for you. It doesn't matter if you select all their favourite civics, religions and declare war on their enemies. They'll still attack you.

- The AI actually play to win. If you're an easy target, you will get enemies. If you're powerful, they will almost never attack you.

Bottom line is: Anyone who claims that it's easy to manipulate the AI in Civ 4, can't possible have played the game above Emperor. The ONLY way to feel secure is to have a HUGE army OR to manually select AI's, such as Gandhi, that won't attack you,
which I consider cheating.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

i've been curious about diplomacy and this has been an interesting read.

outside of a few small inconsistencies i've seen first hand (like backstabbing from cultures that didnt seem that duplicitous from their cultural descriptions) the only problem i've had with diplomacy is late game CS ally purchases from opposing cultures. I've always had a sniping battle and the timing of when the UN vote comes up in the turn kept me from being able to buy the victory myself. I've only had one Diplomatic Victory (Siam) on difficulty 5 and that was largely due to lucky starting placement as i was surrounded by 4 or 5 CS's and only one culture (Egypt) on my continent (standard continents).

I dont know if that's a problem with the game or just how it works, but Diplomacy (and Domination to a less degree) has always been the toughest for me to manage. I dont like messing with advanced options to make those things easier either (outside of quick combat animations or making things tougher like raging barbarians).

 

[PhilBowles]

i've been curious about diplomacy and this has been an interesting read.

outside of a few small inconsistencies i've seen first hand (like backstabbing from cultures that didnt seem that duplicitous from their cultural descriptions) the only problem i've had with diplomacy is late game CS ally purchases from opposing cultures. I've always had a sniping battle and the timing of when the UN vote comes up in the turn kept me from being able to buy the victory myself. I've only had one Diplomatic Victory (Siam) on difficulty 5 and that was largely due to lucky starting placement as i was surrounded by 4 or 5 CS's and only one culture (Egypt) on my continent (standard continents).

I dont know if that's a problem with the game or just how it works, but Diplomacy (and Domination to a less degree) has always been the toughest for me to manage. I dont like messing with advanced options to make those things easier either (outside of quick combat animations or making things tougher like raging barbarians).

My current Emperor game (although it is coming down to another 'grab the CSes and declare war so I can't gain influence' approach by the diplo AI) is actually playing out interestingly, and gives a window into the way some of the new diplomatic options are presumably supposed to work. I was ahead in points for most of the game, which left me largely unmolested, although Japan became belligerent in a successful attempt to grab my ally Kuala Lumpur.

I've had wars declared, peace declared on sensible terms and relations developing with those empires based on my other relationships. I've had relationships with Polynesia, Mongolia, Arabia and Egypt reinforced by declarations of friendship with one shared by the other civs.

I've had relations with Egypt further improved by denouncing Japan.

I've been able to keep Japan off my back while I built peaceful improvements by forming defensive pacts with Mongolia and Polynesia.

I've had denouncements against me which have strained my previously friendly relations with other states, and that (and possibly also my conquest of Ragusa - the Indians distrust me because they "think I'm a warmonger", very appropriately for Gandhi, but I'm not sure if that refers to the denouncement or the CS conquest - the only war I've started) led to first refusals to renew declarations of friendship, and subsequently cascades of denouncements by Arabia, India and Polynesia (both of whom were friendly with Arabia).

I've even had, for the first time I've seen, a very entertaining message from al-Rashid: "Anyone who has issues with you is worth getting along with. Give my regards to Japan" (it's a shame you don't get the option to respond with anything pithier than "You'll pay for this in time" to these varied and entertaining messages, which add a lot of character relative to Civ IV).

Arabia declared war on me prompted by my acquisition of Tyre as an ally, Arabia themselves having been accumulating CS allies (India, the other power with whom my relations seem most strained, also appears to be trying to win favour with city-states).

I don't know if it makes a difference that I'm playing with a 'standard' map, while my previous games have tended to be on smaller ones (not by choice, I set map size to random - in all Civ games I've always liked finding out how many civs I share the planet with rather than setting it at the start), and therefore with wider scope for interactions between civs, but this is far superior diplomatic play to most I've encountered so far in Civ V.

What emerges is the core of a diplomatic system that has the potential to be as rounded and sensible as it looks on paper - wars are declared when it makes sense for the other civ to do so (to capture a city-state, attempt to capture a resource, or as a result of tension between powers seeking the same objectives), peace declared on a similar basis and future relations dependent more on your later behaviour towards a civ than whether you were previously enemies (indeed 'we were previously at war, but they don't seem to hold it against us' is displayed as a neutral - white - tooltip), and relations overall heavily influenced by who's friends with who, who's enemies with who, who's defending who and so forth. The civs that remain moderately friendly with me - Denmark and Mongolia, and perhaps also Egypt - all appear to be ones that either have no relationship with or are distrustful of those that have denounced me.

If the AI could work like this all the time, it would be well on the way to presenting a superior - or at least more engaging - diplomatic system to Civ IV, and certainly to the three earlier Civ games. I think there would still be issues to fix - war probably should have some immediate negative effects, while everyone I've gone to war with seems to have got over it quickly, and probably more negative effects depending on the outcome of the war (for example the Mongols just attacked me and lost an army - in the war with Japan I razed one of their new cities. And while my relations with Japan are not good, they don't seem bothered by the war any more than the Mongols were). Denouncements have the potential to lead to a cascade of denouncements with affects relations with everyone and for longer and longer periods as additional nations denounce you. I don't know if there is a buffer that reduces the effects of denouncements on civs that are friendly with you (anecdotally there seems to be, but it may not be strong) or less friendly towards the denouncer, but if not there probably should be.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

Of all the civs, I dislike the most playing against Egypt and Germany. They seemed to always DOW at the least likely time I could have predicted. I've had better efforts at diplomacy with everyone except them.

My last game with Korea (last night, science victory, standard continents, Emperor diff. in 1947) had me against Egypt, Rome, America, Russia, Japan, Mongolia and India (who was conquered before I met them). Those were random selects and it could have been a lot worse.