Diplomacy and relationship management got the axe in CivV

[Unionfield]

Simply put: outside of the normal territorial proximity and historical trait modifiers (like Montezuma being aggressive), there is absolutely zero depth to diplomacy and international relationship management.

Social policies have no effect on how other nations view your nation.

There is no religion modifier.

Your relationship with certain City-States have no effect.

So on and so forth, you get the point. The overarching issue is that you seem to be able to change your relationship with other leaders, a complete 180, with little to no effort.

Am I missing something or has CivV made the franchise a turn-based Total War game (at least in this regard)?

 

[Earthling]

Lots of us were guessing at this before release. It's very much like the civ3 AI in some ways and that's what we get for lack of transparency or clear diplomatic preferences, wild swings (and manipulating one AI in a wild swing against another is quite possible) But perhaps this could be clarified with more playthrough?

My analysis is still the following: Diplomacy with neighboring/same-continent civs will involve some trading, some of those tech and secrecy pacts, and some quibbles over land and so on.

I would worry that diplomacy with any distant/overseas nation will not matter one bit - you literally would have almost no interaction with them and they probably just start off cautious to you as well, so unless you have specific plans to conquer overseas that just gets ignored; tech + resource deals probably will not prevail.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

This is something that worries me as well. The diplomacy doesn't really have to be super in depth but not being able to see basic things like what Civ A is trading with Civ B and to whom Civ C is allied with is just plain unforgivable.

 

[Unionfield]

By the way, where is it that you can see what level your relationship is with other leaders? This seems like the most basic way to keep track of your relations, and it has been there since the original Civ.

 

[Buccaneer]

I would hope that we would see a relationship popup with a civ in the same manner we see with a city-state.

Relying on facial expressions is tough since it's hard to make out some of them. Maybe the point is that diplomacy will be somewhat random, flopping around just to give us some semblance of gameplay?

 

[Ganja]

I've been playing all day now and can agree with the OP that diplomacy has little depth. I am very dissapointed with this aspect. The game has become more of a war battle game, I dont feel the diplomacy module of Civ5 is anywhere near as good as Civ4. I really do miss that screen.

 

[Tarkhan]

I never noticed much depth in civ4's diplomacy either.

I don't miss all the tech trading, or religious blocs, that's for sure. I could get a religion and basically bend the AI's to do what I wanted them to by switching to their chosen faith.

While Civ5's diplomacy may not be deep, at least it isn't so obvious, and based more around how much of a threat you are to them.

 

[Badesumofu]

Civ4 had almost no depth to diplomacy. You could always see exactly what everyone thought of you, and why. You give them something, the number increases. I dunno, I haven't played Civ5 yet, but I suspect that the perceived lack of depth is a result of people not understanding the system yet.

 

[Oerdin]

Simply put: outside of the normal territorial proximity and historical trait modifiers (like Montezuma being aggressive), there is absolutely zero depth to diplomacy and international relationship management.

Yep, they keep dumbing down games these days to appeal to 10 year olds and the result is a complete lack of depth in most games including Civ5.

 

[Vanadium]

I didn't find diplomacy very good in civ 4 ...I'm still playing my first game of civ 5 and I do agree that it doesn't seem very complex right now but I'm still enjoying the fact that the AI doesn't demand a tech from me every turn.

diplomacy was still the same buy your way into the good graces with the AI ...spamming missionaries and switching religion to suit was more tedious than it was "good diplomacy"

 

[shinkicker]

Not many strategy sims do Diplomacy well. It's too dependent on unpredictable human variables.

Civ 5 isn't even as fleshed-out as 4 was, and that's pretty bad. I'm in the midst of playing Victoria II as well, and it's a huge come-down from the diplomacy in Vicky 2 to what we have here in Civ5.

But neither is all that realistic.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I think some people here are failing to understand that having complex diplomacy and simply providing the player with much needed information like how different AI players think of each other are 2 very different things.

Did Civ 4 have a very complex diplomacy system? No.

Did Civ 4 allow you to see who was friend with whom so that your acts of diplomacy weren't based on complete guesswork? Yes.

Does Civ 5 do that? No.

 

[need my speed]

Civ 4 did do that actually.