Diplomacy Doesn't Matter

[Dactyl]

I have been playing at the Immortal level, and I must say that diplomacy just plain doesn't figure in as a factor in the game. The fact is that at this level, you have to play aggressively if you intend to win, and that means going to war, and being branded as a warmonger. Not that it really matters. I've learned that I don't need to worry about what the AI's think of me. It doesn't really make any difference in the game. There should be some penalty for being denounced by one of the AI civs. For example, they could make it so that when you are denounced, trade is embargoed and all trade routes to their cities is ended. That could really hurt financially. In general, diplomacy is way too simplistic. I would like to see some effort put into making it more of a factor that I'm required to keep an eye on throughout the game.

 

[dexters]

I have been playing at the Immortal level, and I must say that diplomacy just plain doesn't figure in as a factor in the game. The fact is that at this level, you have to play aggressively if you intend to win, and that means going to war, and being branded as a warmonger. Not that it really matters. I've learned that I don't need to worry about what the AI's think of me. It doesn't really make any difference in the game. There should be some penalty for being denounced by one of the AI civs. For example, they could make it so that when you are denounced, trade is embargoed and all trade routes to their cities is ended. That could really hurt financially. In general, diplomacy is way too simplistic. I would like to see some effort put into making it more of a factor that I'm required to keep an eye on throughout the game.

It could be a lot better. I'm hoping future patching move it closer to BNW level of diplomatic stability but I don't agree it doesn't matter.

Always good to have friends to call in for a joint war or an ally with guaranteed peace on one of your flanks.

 

[Zuizgond]

I no longer care about diplomacy in Civ6. AI seems to declare war randomly so it's pointless to try to please them.

 

[TomKQT]

The system of agendas seemed as a good idea and after watching the pre-release dev videos I was actually looking forward diplomacy in Civ6. It seemed that it would actually finaly make some sense and that all diplomatic actions would have some real and well-defined meaning.
The reality is very bad. Agendas are hard to satisfy and feel mostly random to me (sorry mate, I won't stop building wonders / sending envoys / whatever just to make you feel happy) and in the end it doesn't matter anyway, because warmongering is too strong etc.

It's nice to be able to trade with some AI, but if you're denounced by everybody, you simply ignore diplomacy completely.

 

[elitetroops]

Yeah, there's no point at all trying to satisfy the AI. The agenda system is broken, warmongering penalties too high and you don't gain any significant advantage from having friends.

The agenda's seemed like a good idea, but the implementation is awful. Seems they are mainly on/off triggers where the AI can go from complementing you for satisfying their agenda in one turn to denouncing you the next turn for not doing so. Even Gorgo, who's agenda says "dislikes civilizations who have never gone to war" was giving me negatives and complaining that I was a coward around turn 100 after I had already killed 3 AI, the last one in a joint war together with her which ended about 10 turns ago. In addition, the positives from satisfying their agendas are far too small in comparison to the negatives you get. Often being in a different government can give a larger negative than satisfying both their leader and hidden agenda combined. And sorry, if I'm 2 eras ahead, I won't be in the same government as you.

 

[The Highwayman]

The AI hates me no matter what it seems. I've gotten a green smiley once I think. Victoria compliments me on my expansion vs her agenda one turn and tells me I'm treading on dangerous ground the next. Trajan tells me I'm not expanding enough when I've got 5 cities vs his 3. And yeah, I'm not going to stop playing the game, i.e. creating wonders, changing governments, sending envoys to city states, just so you can only denounce me every turn instead of declaring war.

I agree it was an interesting concept to have the hidden agendas, but it just doesn't work. There's no benefit really. For the 500th time I'm not giving you open borders buddy so you can park your elephants and warriors on my tiles for no rhyme or reason.

 

[greygamer]

Yeah it's a mess. Twice Teddy gave me the "thanks for keeping the peace" message, after I gave him a peace treaty after taking his cities.
Pretty much anything you do seems to end up in denouncement, maybe you can go for a science victory without that happening?
Of course the upside is each denouncement hands you a CB so you can burn their empire to the ground without consequence (provided you don't touch their cities of course).

As has been posted in this thread it doesn't really matter as you don't need anything from the AI for the most part.

 

[TomKQT]

Is there even an agenda which would make the leader like you more when you ARE warmongering? I mean - is there a leader who likes somebody who's often going to wars?
(I'm not paying attention to agendas very much, so I really don't know.)

 

[McSpank01]

Diplomacy is clearly the one big area where a good fix would bump the game up a few stars. For me there are a number of problems:

1) Passive AI means that even if the entire world denounces you, they either won't declare war, gang up on you or even if they did they would not threaten you. So there is very little incentive to stay on their good side.

2) Trading partners / Allies are barely beneficial. I've attempted to create trading blocs and alliances which should have created a sort of Cold War situation. But it didn't work out like that. In fact nothing changed. In Civ V there was a bit of a situation where civs would group together by ideology, but that doesn't really seem to happen here either. Having a strong alliance gets you nothing, mainly because the way civs structure their deals for resources don't make any sense and I can usually get a decent amount of Amenities without having to do too many deals.

3) The agenda system just means that everyone hates everyone. The only way to stay neutral with anyone is to basically do nothing, and in fact that gets you nowhere either because so many civs have agendas based on you being strong or large. Often a hidden agenda completely conflicts with the seen agenda, and so you still end up on minus points. Declaring war on anyone basically destroys your rep with everyone almost permanently (if you capture cities).. but since the incentive to conquer nearby capitals is so large and the punishment for being denounced so small it doesn't make sense to NOT go to war.

 

[Stringer1313]

I disagree with people who don't like the agenda system. Unique personalities have always been a weakness in civ games and I'm happy that they've taken a bold turn for the positive. People are complaining that they restrict you, but that's the whole point--to pose a challenge.

The problem is that I agree with the other comments about how pointless others' attitudes are, which essentially makes those unique personalities pointless. Everyone denounces you, there's no real penalty for it, and hardly anyone one DOWs after Ancient era, or DOWs effectively.

There definitely needs to be more concrete benefits or harms to friendship / denouncing. I thought Civ:BE took that in a positive direction and was sad to see that not implemented. I think the no-trade-routes idea is a good one.

 

[McSpank01]

I actually like the Agenda system, it makes civs more understandable and gives them a bit of a personality. I just think that somewhere in its implementation it hasn't quite worked out. I wonder if its the hidden agenda that is a problem because it means you can have two very conflicting agendas at work at the same time (I might be wrong). So say if a civ liked other civs who were sprawling with large populations, but hated civs who made lots of money they often they will just cancel each other out as you often have one with the other.

I would prefer a set of diplomatic blocs to be set up during games, which would happen before. My experience is that doesn't really seem to happen, everyone just mostly hates everyone else.. but never go to war.

 

[beorn]

My view is that the overall big picture regarding diplomacy is very positive. Compared with past Civs, I really care who my neighbors are. Most are aggravating, but in distinct ways. They have definite personalities. Depending on my strategy, some can be worked with, while some cannot. This really helps in a gaming genre where by the time the mid-game arrives, it can devolve into a boring slog. I would say that, as long as I play at a high enough AI level, these distinct personalities are mostly effective at keeping my interest. (This was most certainly not true for me in V.)

However,
1) What started as a good idea, this "quick-to-war in early game, slow-to-war by mid game" undermines diplomacy. I think because it's overdone, both from a historical and a gameplay perspective, and it tends to overwhelm the rest of diplomacy. When people say that they don't care what other leaders think, this is largely because experience says that every rival will attack early, no rival will attack late. An exaggeration, perhaps, but too strong a tendency.

2) The secondary (hidden) goal is a work in progress. a) It is so easy to figure out, that the mechanism for making it visible is worthless. b) The opponents' messages related to this goal tend to be absurd. In a close game, first you are wonderful, then you are terrible, then you are wonderful. Just silliness -- but more to the point, why is that leader informing you that you are bankrupt or militarily weak? That's crazy! What they really would do is try to take advantage of you, whether attacking or undermining your suzerein status or settling close to you, figuring you can't do much about it. The game seems so anxious to broadcast these secondary goals, that the goals themselves become meaningless... And, in any case, these secondary goals should develop situationally. Stuck on a smallish landmass, they should hate expansionists, for example.

3) As other have said, there needs to be more benefit/cost to diplomatic stances. My stance towards nation A should affect trade, flow of ideas, ability to react to an attack, nation A's stance towards me, as well as nation B's stance towards me. Ditto that nation's stance towards me.

4) As an overall direction a) behavior towards that neighbor over the past 50 or so turns should be the dominant factor in diplomacy, and b) diplomatic stance should have concrete effects on each country's economy (and possibly culture, military, and "happiness")

Of course, players views will differ depending on whether they are builders or militarists, and whether they play at a level that results in serious competition.

 

[blasto]

Selling extra resources is definitely useful.

 

[greygamer]

Selling extra resources is definitely useful.

So my experience is selling a resource gets me no more than 110g (over 30 turns = <4gpt) and I rarely need such a small amount. On the other hand a peace deal can get me hundreds of gold.

 

[SaMatra]

The only thing I do in diplomacy screen is exchange my luxury for theirs, for everything else I just press ESC until they sod off.

 

[GhostSalsa]

When designing a lot of the agendas, they forgot to ask, what is the game reality for the player?

AI hating you for having less culture, armies, or cities than them on turn 20 or so, is as valid within the game reality as them hating you for not being a basketball player. They have bonuses in all those things. Why give 15-odd AIs elaborate, differentiated code that in every case works out to "hates human players because they don't have my bonuses"? Because the devs didn't think it through…

So right from that point it would be better if AI judged you based on global player benchmarks (which also I'm sure would delight the "complex tedious math lover" crowd here in the forum) and the choices you make within the scope of the possible (build something other than a theatre district for 20 turns after unlocking them, ok Japan gets testy now).

But even leaving that aside the AI needs to just stick with liking or disliking specific other players for long times. AI attitudes should work more like npcs in adventure games: they give you a first impression of being trustworthy, weak, agressive, what you do slowly changes how they regard you, really very simple relationship dynamic. Then graft onto that a mechanism for stirring things up, which is that at any "moment" when friend statuses are in place, half the friends intend to stay loyal and half begin to contemplate betrayal. Warmongering "penalties" operate on the same principle: half the friends of a DOW-er or city taker are content that their trusted ally is shoring up strength, half are weary and contemplate betrayal. Then graft on some simple panic buttons for when any ally gets too big snacking on the neighbors

 

[FurballRocker]

The diplomacy system in of itself i find quite good in Civ6 but the effectiveness of the AI is quite poor even on diety which undervalues the improved design of the new diplomacy system as you don't really need to keep the AI's happy.

I usually become friendly with at least one civ in every game i play now and in my last immortal game i had an ongoing alliance win 3 civs until the end of the game which i won by tourism victory.

You just need to find their agendas and play to them which is often quite easy as agendas often mean they love you if you do something well. In fact a number of civs are actually very easy to become friends with while trying to dominate.
Russia loves you if you have good culture and science....which you should do if your dominating.
China loves you if you avoid wonders and with most wonders not really being worth obtaining that is easy to do.
Germany loves you if you don't suzeran city states which with there being very few suzeran bonuses that are actually any good that again is easy to do and i just slowly give envoys for the 1-6 bonuses without getting suzeran and then maybe pick one or two CS with great bonuses to suzeran.
Then there is the easy random ones such as liking you if you have high industrial output which you should have.
Liking you if you have high population which you should have.
Liking you if your people are happy which they should be.

Yes some are much harder to please or seemingly impossible such as scythia who thinks your a warmonger if you go to war and thinks your weak if you don't.
England will likely always hate you as your almost always on a different continent to them.
Spain seems to be bugged as i can never get him to like me even if i convert myself to his religion.
Aztecs will almost always hate you as you will have more luxuries than him although i was lucky a few games ago and he had the random agenda to like people with large populations so i managed to keep him happy if not actually friendly for that game.

An easy way to get huge bonus points with anyone is denounce a civ they have denounced.

Now there are obviously a few completely selfish things which will completely destroy your relations with the AI such as heavy warmongering and converting cities of civs who have their own religion which is in effect religious war and this annoys the AI quite rightly.
The warmongering is generally quite easy to avoid or mitigate heavily unless you are specifically going for a domination victory where you are a warmonger trying to take over the world...what do you expect?!
You can do early game wars with no warmonger penalties which can secure you more than enough space to build a large empire which means you can often easily win any victory without further conquest.
You can often have one warmonger war later on to deal with a potential problem which will give you warmonger hate for a while but it does diminish over time and you can avoid being being DoW'd by keeping a reasonable sized military, generally just upgrading your units you built for your initial conquest.

With all that in mind, navigating the diplomacy system is a lot clearer and a lot less random than in previous games but it is more let down by the passive or ineffective nature of the AI at peaceful or aggressive expansion.
Past the early game and really once you know what your doing even in the early game the AI never really poses a threat which kind of makes the much improved diplomacy system pointless as you don't really need to keep the AI happy apart from for better trade deals but then you should have commercial districts in every city which will soon be netting you hundreds of gold per turn anyway without even building any building in them.

 

[Karmah]

The system with agendas, casus bellis and free war period is a good one. Its the implementation they did that sucks. Getting rid of some stupid agendas, tweaking numbers to get a more stable and rational interaction should be sufficient. But right now, the leader community is too close to Arkam asylum.

 

[Magil]

I wrote up a very good summary of my own feelings on this matter elsewhere that I'll just paste here:

I mean I typically can be friends with at least some of the AI players but my problem is that it usually doesn't feel like it was due to any conscious effort on my part. The AI that starts next to me and crowds me is going to hate me no matter what because I am going to kill that guy and take its land. Probably get knocked out of the game. Then the other Civs will either hate me or not after that. I have very little impact on that. I've tried giving them free resources, but the positive diplomatic modifier doesn't seem to make a meaningful difference to their opinion of me. I always send delegations/embassies the turn I meet a new Civ to get that going (but if I don't have it later sometimes they will or will not accept them seemingly at random). And some people are going to hate me because their agendas cause them to hate people who play the game well. Other people will like me because their agendas cause them to like people who play the game well. Either way, I'm not going to stifle my empire just so an AI player will be my friend, since I gain so little out of it and there's also little price to pay for them all hating me.

It's not that I can't be friends with them. It's just that (a) there's not enough reason to be and (b) it doesn't really feel like my actions have much of an impact on their opinion of me.

I hate to say Civ IV did it better because it's almost a mantra at this point, but really, I did like how Civ IV did it: if you have X positive diplo modifiers, they are pleased. This means they will make certain deals with you and the "Pleased" indicator is clearly there for you to see. Certain leaders will consider attacking you at this point, but most will not. If you have Y positive diplo modifiers, they are friendly. Again, "Friendly" is clearly displayed, they won't backstab you (except for very few leaders, I remember Catherine would), and they'll accept more deals. If you don't have very high diplo modifiers either way they are neutral. Etc. Numbers very clearly translated to relationship states, and those relationship states told you what you could do. VI is very different. I can have all positive modifiers and be "unfriendly", because there's some behind-the-hood workings going on. There's speculation on that, but nothing confirmed. And even if I do get the "Friendly" popup with a Civ, that doesn't mean they'll sign a Declaration of Friendship (you know, like you might expect). What does "Friendly" even mean in that case? Sometimes, they'll sign a DoF. Sometimes they won't. I don't know. About the only thing that seems consistent is if you dip very low in relations they will hate you forever (usually due to warmongering). If numbers very clearly translated into relationships which very clearly translated into applicable diplomatic interactions, then it'd be better.

Plus, in Civ IV, they would tell you why they were refusing a deal. Also very helpful. "We have enough on our hands right now"--they're going to war with someone (possibly you, better watch out) or already at war. "We just don't like you enough"--not enough modifiers. "We would have nothing to gain"--either already have that resource or they're refusing war because they don't feel like they can capture and hold territory. "We couldn't betray our close friends"--they're not going to backstab someone they like. Etc. etc.. Seriously, this transparency is a good thing for a strategy game, because it lets you plan and react to changing situations. But you know why they're changing, and that's important!

The biggest problem I have with Civ VI's diplomacy is that it's not transparent enough. I don't know what those numbers mean, since a lot of positive modifiers can get me good deals with an AI, but only sometimes. Why sometimes and not other times? What's going on "behind the screen" in relation to the numbers clearly visible when I view my +/- list? What I want is to have some hard and fast rules in place, like "If I get to +20, they'll sign a declaration of friendship. If I get to +30, they'll sign an alliance" as a quick example. If the way the modifiers work needs to be rebalanced around that, then so be it, but let me plan a strategy around this. Exceptions are fine, as long as I can pick up on those based on observation. Thus far I have not been able to in VI. Maybe someone can tell me otherwise. But I'd rather the exceptions were like "in this case, +20 doesn't put them at Friendly, so I know I can't ask for a DoF. This leader wants +25 instead".

 

[elitetroops]

The biggest problem I have with Civ VI's diplomacy is that it's not transparent enough. I don't know what those numbers mean, since a lot of positive modifiers can get me good deals with an AI, but only sometimes. Why sometimes and not other times? What's going on "behind the screen" in relation to the numbers clearly visible when I view my +/- list? What I want is to have some hard and fast rules in place, like "If I get to +20, they'll sign a declaration of friendship. If I get to +30, they'll sign an alliance" as a quick example. If the way the modifiers work needs to be rebalanced around that, then so be it, but let me plan a strategy around this. Exceptions are fine, as long as I can pick up on those based on observation. Thus far I have not been able to in VI. Maybe someone can tell me otherwise. But I'd rather the exceptions were like "in this case, +20 doesn't put them at Friendly, so I know I can't ask for a DoF. This leader wants +25 instead".

It seems the number you see is a per turn modifier that adds to some running total, which in turns determines how much they like/dislike you. If you have negative relations for a long time, then you might need a very long time at +20 for them to become friendly with you. I don't think we know the exact details and math behind this system yet. It would indeed help a lot if they showed the actual value at the time, so that you can know how long it takes to get them friendly at +XX. For now you only have the bar that fills up depending on how much they like you.