Diplomacy is a Skill

[Archon_Wing]

Anyone can be good at diplomacy; don't attack anyone, brown nose everyone, etc.

The real challenge is to go to war, cripple whole civs, and be a menace, yet still have wide approval.

 

[Victoria]

The real challenge is to go to war, cripple whole civs, and be a menace, yet still have wide approval.

Correct!

I just did a little test as I am looking at doing a grievance guide or at least finish the one 3/4 done. Here was a sequance of events of interest

T13 Scythia meets Ottomans

T14 Victoria Meets Incans and declares surprise war on them for 150 grievances
T14 Scythia meets Incans the same turn

T15 Victoria takes Incan city for 75 grievances

T16 Victoria meets Scythia who has No grievances against me but has -22 diplomacy due to my grievances against the Incans

T19 Victoria takes another Incan City for 75 grievances
T19 Scythia now denounces me for grievances against another player (I have 25 grievances against her, she has none against me)

T22 Victoria now takes the capital, all incan city loyalty grievances are gone

T23 Victoria Meets the Ottomans who have diplomatic grievances against me.

So in the ancient era girvances are decaying at 10 per turn but diplomatic issues due to grievances decat at 1 point every 2 turns
At T23 the diplomatic penalties are
Ottomans are at -13 Grievances from other players against us
Scytyhuians are -30 Grievances from other players against us

Basically the warmongering is still there in dioplomacy and has been renamed to "Grievances from other players against us"
If a player does not know me they cannot get grievances against me but if they know someone who knows me they will get the gossip that I have been a warmonger
The killer is with old warmongering you would get no penalty in the ancient era, now you get quite nasty stuff.

They sort of shot themselves in the foot on this. Warmongering early now will make people hate you for a long time so you give up on diplomacy.
The whole idea of grievances was to decay this hate decently. I am all for negative dip Favor due to warmongering but this level of hate early is just wrong

 

[incroc]

I love it when I'm able to make my target declare war on me, which often takes some trickery. It's mostly knowledge though, being aware of how all the AI's react when you do different things.

For instance, knowing that if you have +10 or more modifiers but they won't be friends they'll almost surely DoW soon has helped me in a lot of games (in Civ V as well as VI). This way you'll find out a bit before seeing the border dance.

Taking care of sending delegations, trading, having open borders etc. also helps quite a bit avoiding war if you want to play peaceful.

 

[leandrombraz]

Considering how many people think the AI will hate you don't matter what and there's nothing that can be done, I would say it's not only a skill, it's a hidden art practiced by the few.

As a huge fan of international trade routes sent to allies, boosted to obscene levels of OPiness by certain policies, golden age dedication and government, I think people miss a lot when they don't even try to play the diplomatic game. I always try to keep allies and in the current state of the game, if you look for those allies in early game it seems quite hard to lose them, as long as you renew the alliance on the turn it end. I didn't try a domination game yet in GS but I played a religion victory game, where you can get quite a lot of grievances converting cities, I didn't lose a single Ally, not even a friend, even though grievance was rampant while I turned their religion into ancient history. The penalty was high but the AI don't seem to care as long as you don't give them time to think, so to say.

Correct!

I just did a little test as I am looking at doing a grievance guide or at least finish the one 3/4 done. Here was a sequance of events of interest

T13 Scythia meets Ottomans

T14 Victoria Meets Incans and declares surprise war on them for 150 grievances
T14 Scythia meets Incans the same turn

T15 Victoria takes Incan city for 75 grievances

T16 Victoria meets Scythia who has No grievances against me but has -22 diplomacy due to my grievances against the Incans

T19 Victoria takes another Incan City for 75 grievances
T19 Scythia now denounces me for grievances against another player (I have 25 grievances against her, she has none against me)

T22 Victoria now takes the capital, all incan city loyalty grievances are gone

T23 Victoria Meets the Ottomans who have diplomatic grievances against me.

So in the ancient era girvances are decaying at 10 per turn but diplomatic issues due to grievances decat at 1 point every 2 turns
At T23 the diplomatic penalties are
Ottomans are at -13 Grievances from other players against us
Scytyhuians are -30 Grievances from other players against us

Basically the warmongering is still there in dioplomacy and has been renamed to "Grievances from other players against us"
If a player does not know me they cannot get grievances against me but if they know someone who knows me they will get the gossip that I have been a warmonger
The killer is with old warmongering you would get no penalty in the ancient era, now you get quite nasty stuff.

They sort of shot themselves in the foot on this. Warmongering early now will make people hate you for a long time so you give up on diplomacy.
The whole idea of grievances was to decay this hate decently. I am all for negative dip Favor due to warmongering but this level of hate early is just wrong

I thought the penalty vanished once the grievance is gone, at least I think I saw that happening in my previous games, I didn't play for like a Month and forgot this stuff. I think the Inca still have Grievances against you, even though they are dead. Before the last patch, the Grievance would be stuck there forever if you remove a Civ, which meant you would get that grievance loyalty penalty on their cities forever. They fixed it this patch by making it decay, not vanish, decay:

Grievances now decay between dead civilizations. Prevents negative Loyalty modifier from hanging around after defeating the city's original owner.

My guess is that it's decaying, reason you still have grievance penalties with other players. Eventually the grievance will be gone and the penalty will vanish all at once, I think.

I didn't pay much attention to exactly how it developed since I wasn't testing but I conquered some Greek cities in early game (Pericles deserved it. He was breathing and I found it offensive), I got this kind of huge penalties even with Civs I didn't met, all this unnecessary rage against me, an innocent being. I wasn't counting turns but I'm sure the penalty didn't last more than the grievance, eventually it was gone and I was making friendship with previous haters. I kept getting penalties later because of religion, once the grievance was gone, so was the penalty. The first Civ I converted against her will was Nubia, the penalty went up with my 300 grievances, then down all the way by the time grievance was gone.

 

[Victoria]

My guess is that it's decaying,

Oh no, it is decaying.. all being tested well.
So it appears that practically all of this grievance 'stuff' has been simply ported across from Warmongering
For example in the grievance thread they could not work out the difference between traking different cities. Well looking at the stats it matches what was happening with the warmongering penalty when they adjusted it for the size of the cities. So warmongering looks the same in diplomacy with the nasty addition of big values in the ancient era which does not help diplomacy and thats not good. They just take those warmonger values and include them in a new area called grievance as a new mechanic on top with some different rules and effects but the values are all still behaving based on the old warmonger mechanics underneath. I'll have to find it in the patch notes for the right %

EDIT: yes, spring 2017 notes
Adjusted Warmonger penalties for City Population:

• When applying a warmonger diplomatic penalty for capturing a city, reduce that penalty if the city is smaller than the average city in the game as follows:
  • If the city’s population after conquest is below the average population of all the cities in the game, reduce the warmonger penalty by the percentage that city’s population is below the average.
• EXAMPLE: Persepolis is conquered and its population after conquest is 6. But the average size of a city in the game is 8. So this city is 2 / 8 = 25% below the size of the average city in the game. Therefore the warmonger penalty is reduced by 25%.

In the example above the screenshot is quite a few turns after so woill have to validate at some stage... but looks about right.
Will update the grievance guide thread for the OP of it. May write one myself just because thye one done is a bit messy but will get his permission.

 

[MrRadar]

In Civ VI diplomacy now is more of an exploit than skill. It takes little skill to send delegations and play to their agendas leading to friendships that grant immunity from AI attacks, so you can get by without building an army, you can buy their open borders for the lump sum of 1 gold; then when time for alliances comes, AI is even happy to pay some gpt for the privilege most of the time; and when you have good relations, you can get good lux deals and your cities will be happy or ecstatic for quite some time without a single entertainment district; and if you're allied with most of the world and friends with the rest, the wars they have between themselves do not concern you at all. You can keep one or two enemies for fun and pillaging. Join a lucky emergency and you can take cities with 0 grievances. And if you start losing friends and allies due to inexplicable expansion of your territory or diverging governments late game - who cares at that point?

@DanQuayle is right: "Diplomacy becomes more important once you respect/fear your opponent". Unless your immediate neighbour is Monty or Chandra, or, perhaps, Amanitore, respect and fear ends somewhere around the turn you meet them . In the case of those two or three, well, past a few dozens of turns. When you kill or befriend them.

In V an almost-exploit was bribing AI into war - very cheap. In VI they got rid of it, but they put in another exploit instead - an unbreakable vow of friendship. With the VI's AI as it is now, I'd almost prefer the return to Civ III rules, where the AI could seemingly DOW you because your unit was in the way of their unit passing through YOUR territory even without a Right of Passage agreement.

 

[Victoria]

In Civ VI diplomacy now is more of an exploit than skill

It is an exploit while you are peaceful and matching agendas.
To be able to war and stay friends is the skill, sailing close to the edge.
These early punishing dip values change it a lot.

 

[MarigoldRan]

The AI's bad enough that getting DOWed because of grievances doesn't matter. If you have the army to take out one person, you have the army to take out 3.

 

[MrRadar]

To be able to war and stay friends is the skill, sailing close to the edge.

Yes, I agree with that, but... after they replaced WM with these grievances, it is not so difficult now, for it to be deemed a real skill. The only wars you may absolutely need to fight are the early ones, and they are rather easily forgotten or easy to conceal, if you kill your neighbour before contacting too many of other AIs. Later you can be an opportunist and exploit emergency wars or, in case you find you're lacking key strategic resources, turn into a 100% dove. Unless DomV, you might not need to fight at all. Even if you neglect making friendships and they DoW you past first few dozens of turns, you laugh at them and just collect pillaged loot and reparations in the end. They may take a city or two from you at the start of the war, so what? They can't make you accept their terms, so you kinda weather the storm and wait out until you can dictate the terms. And AI yields to the player very very willingly.

 

[acluewithout]

Grievances is a much better system overall. But losing all grievances because you wiped out the other guy completely is broken.

 

[tedhebert]

Considering how many people think the AI will hate you don't matter what and there's nothing that can be done, I would say it's not only a skill, it's a hidden art practiced by the few.

As a huge fan of international trade routes sent to allies, boosted to obscene levels of OPiness by certain policies, golden age dedication and government, I think people miss a lot when they don't even try to play the diplomatic game. I always try to keep allies and in the current state of the game, if you look for those allies in early game it seems quite hard to lose them, as long as you renew the alliance on the turn it end. I didn't try a domination game yet in GS but I played a religion victory game, where you can get quite a lot of grievances converting cities, I didn't lose a single Ally, not even a friend, even though grievance was rampant while I turned their religion into ancient history. The penalty was high but the AI don't seem to care as long as you don't give them time to think, so to say.

The thing is... if you play a dom game, normally you will start your warmongering before you get Civil Service and can start on alliances... which means you will have a hard times making alliances at all !

if you don't play a dom game, it's pretty easy to get friendly then allying with 4-5 civs, especially when playing a huge map like I usually do.

The trick is being able to wait until pretty much renaissance before going on your dom spree... getting the 5 alliances BEFORE starting... it's quite hard to wait that long and succeed at it honestly. But when you do, yes it's pretty much as you described, you probably won't ever lose your alliances until you declare on them.
Especially if you can manage to choose unpopular civs to war on first ;-)

Military alliances are pretty good, but usually it's the only alliance your gonna get when playing early dom... but the bonus is nice. I find that it's more than useless when playing a peacful game, it's actually a hindrance, because you might get yourself involved in wars you just don't want !

 

[leandrombraz]

The thing is... if you play a dom game, normally you will start your warmongering before you get Civil Service and can start on alliances... which means you will have a hard times making alliances at all !

if you don't play a dom game, it's pretty easy to get friendly then allying with 4-5 civs, especially when playing a huge map like I usually do.

The trick is being able to wait until pretty much renaissance before going on your dom spree... getting the 5 alliances BEFORE starting... it's quite hard to wait that long and succeed at it honestly. But when you do, yes it's pretty much as you described, you probably won't ever lose your alliances until you declare on them.
Especially if you can manage to choose unpopular civs to war on first ;-)

Military alliances are pretty good, but usually it's the only alliance your gonna get when playing early dom... but the bonus is nice. I find that it's more than useless when playing a peacful game, it's actually a hindrance, because you might get yourself involved in wars you just don't want !

A Friendship is enough to control the diplomatic damage a war cause. It give 30 turns to do your thing and come out at the other side as the good guy, since they can't declare war or denounce you (they gonna love you either they like it or not), plus a +8 diplo to counter the hate once the friendship is over. Currently the AI is renewing friendship even if you got a lot of negative, as long as you do it in the turn it ended, so it's even easier to use it to guarantee that they won't hate you. Send delegates and open borders, make friendships then go explain to Pedro II that the map is too small for you both. Alliance reforce your defense but isn't necessary. I never had to wait into the Renaissance, I always start my spree on the Ancient or Classical, usually Classical.

 

[universecreep]

I think the best diplomacy in a Civ game was Civ IV. It was the most fun because the Civs acted more like actual leaders/governments.

They'd sometimes give you gifts if they thought you were weak or they liked you (rather than demanding tribute even though they are the weakest Civ in the game...sigh). They'd vote for you in UN elections (rather than just themselves). Vassals were neat (albeit frustrating at times) as well.

Even V had more interesting diplomacy. I kinda liked how if you denounced another civs enemy they'd pat you on the back. They also didn't endlessly denounce you for something you did 2000 years ago.

VI's diplomacy needs some definite polishing. Maybe look at all the other Civ game before it and pull some of the best things and incorporate them. Diplomacy and religion are the only real weaknesses in the game. Tweak those, and the game rises to the number one Civ game in my opinion.