Diplomacy is a train-wreck!

[Shaithis]

Holy crap, what the hell?

I purchased the game a few weeks ago, and have been playing a long warmongering game as Washington on a large Pangaea map, Emperor level. I am going for a domination win, and have 4 capitals left to destroy. It is ~1800 AD, there are 10 civilizations on the map; one has been defeated.

Obviously, a lot has happened with respect to diplomacy. I am running into some very irrational behavior, and it is starting to get a bit infuriating.

(1): My very first war was against Bismarck, the top-ranked AI, who happened to be a warmonger with lands next to me. Before I declared war, we were on friendly terms. He considered me a backstabber as I did not move my units from his borders when he asked, and denounced me. Makes sense so far.

(2): When I took a few of his cities and destroyed his army (I had a tech lead, so wasn't very hard), he basically capitulated, offering all of his resources, gold, GPT, and half of his cities. I declined, took out his capitol, then accepted a similar offer. Still making sense so far.

(3): By this point, a few other AIs had denounced me. My guess is this has something to do with the "chain-denounce" thing I have seen mentioned on these boards, as I did not specifically have any poor relationships with them. Now, everyone is on "Guarded" status....great....

(4): I decided to go to war with Hamaad, and took him out very quickly. I took a similar "capitulation" peace offer of all of his income, gold, resources, and half his cities, then proceeded to wage war on Elizabeth. I wrapped that up fairly quickly, too, but I did not get a "capitulation" offer this time; she would not even pay me 1 gold for the peace. Hmm.

(5): By this point, my "open borders" with the first two civilizations that I defeated had expired, and they would not trade them to me for any cost. This became a problem as now I had half my cities cut off from my trade routes, and my GPT went into the red. I was essentially forced to wage war on these guys again and raze a few cities just to get my trade routes going again. At this point, I started having issues ending wars; both Bismarck and Hamaad were stubbornly saying "this is not the time for peace!" even when they had no army/economy and I was within a few turns of wiping them off the planet (did not want to be forced to do this due to the unhappiness hit).

(6): Around this time, I notice that Genghis is massing units on my borders. I trade him a bunch of resources for gold on the hunch. Sure enough, a few turns later, he attacks (you'd think that the excellent deal he got on the resources he received would have served as a deterrence...? He never had a chance to win, really; he had more "soldiers" on demographics but mine were much more advanced; infantry vs muskets, etc). I beat him off, then invaded his lands and took his capitol, but I just could not end the war! Even after taking 3 cities and razing 2, he still wanted to fight! When he finally proposed a peace, it was tit for tat; no "capitulation." Makes no sense!

(7): During my war with Genghis, Elizabeth decided to DoW on me. I am still not quite sure why; she had no military, and never actually attacked me. I repeatedly tried to get her to accept a peace, but no dice. I guess that I am actually going to have to go over there and beat her down some more...so annoying.

(8): Throughout all of this mess, the other players have been sneaking in cities between my lands and the players that I have invaded. None of these morons will give me "open borders," not by trade, nor by demand. I have no reason to go to war with at least one of them as he no longer controls his capital. If I DoW him, I will surely have to invade his lands as well to get the computer to accept a peace. What a clusterfudg...

So, WTH is going on with diplomacy in this game? The AI is just pure irrational and stupid. The new luxury resource system is so easy to exploit; dump all of your luxuries on someone for instant cash, then DoW them to get it all back...so obvious that people would abuse this, yet the designers let it slide? And what's with trying to trade for that one luxury that you don't have, just to have the computer demand 6-8 of yours AND 1200g in exchange (are you begging me to invade you, just so you can pull the above crap on me)? The whole research agreement blocking crap is plain broken.

Sid, what happened? Are you even bothering to play your games? This crap has been going on for over 6 months now.

To the community, PLEASE find some fault in my logic or the way I played. I really want to figure out how to enjoy this game.

 

[jojorah]

welcome to the forums, but weve seen these civ 5 critizem posts, they dont realy help the forums. we see these posts way to often they are the majority of posts, please if you want to rant do so in the special rant thread. And is hammad a leader of a dlc civ? I dont reconize the name

Patchs are coming so dont worry it may get better

 

[jojorah]

Btw i agree the diplomacy sucks

 

[DaveGold]

To the community, PLEASE find some fault in my logic or the way I played. I really want to figure out how to enjoy this game

If you enter a declaration of friendship then you've got to be their friend more than they are a friend to you. Sorry if you expected a free ride. The AI expects you to give them stuff as a friend, such as spare resources, and keep away from their borders. They won't give you anything of course. If you refuse to give them stuff they denounce you and the dislike will spread to all the other AI too. Conquer lots of cities and the AI will hate you. Given this, it's pretty hard to get enjoyable diplomacy.

On the other hand, if you're asking "Why don't they like me?" then the answer is "Why should they?". You've stabbed your ally in the back and attacked other nations. It's not a good a recommendation. You've probably done very little that the other nations would appreciate. Open borders and trade agreements don't really seem to improve relations as they did in CIV4. The AIs probably all like each other because they're united in disliking you.

 

[Superluminal]

You've alienated the entire world. You have given the world an existential reason to unite and fight against your imperialist agenda. One of the key architects of this worldwide military alliance inspired the world with the following words:

"We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. We will be fighting for our freedom... Not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution... but from annihilation. We are fighting for our right to live! The world has declared in one voice: We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight!"

Thus no one will trade with you and everyone will DoW on you. It makes sense.

 

[Amylion]

To the community, PLEASE find some fault in my logic or the way I played. I really want to figure out how to enjoy this game.

The fault lies in your "logic".

How stupid would an AI be NOT to realize that you are going to raze their cities sooner or later... Come on!

 

[Some guy]

Lol Perfect explanation.

Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's "a trainwreck".

 

[jojorah]

Ive gotten away with having realy good relations with everone, at the same time as declaring war. It was japan he was being an *** to every one, nearly destroyed the irouis and the mongolians. They called upon my assistence to wipe them out ( even though its on a huge earth and im the farthest awat from japan). I did after about 10 turns of crossing the ocean my muskets and my steel men arrived on there shores in a surprise attack. No military in there citys all was in forein lands. I dominated three citys and got japan to capitulate and make peace. Every one loved me for it and became my allies.

 

[Keejus]

Most of your problems stem from that "backstabber" tag you got back in the start. Once you get that, you will never see a fair trade again, and you should consider yourself lucky if you get them to agree to open borders.

This, in my opinion, is the main problem with the diplomacy. It is very easy to ruin your relations with your neighbor (or the whole world, if you ever backstab someone or get caught up in too many wars), and nigh impossible to fix them.

 

[Callonia]

Oh look, a guy complaining about ais giving him one heck of annoying time just b/c his conquest of the world is sloppy.

Its same thing like napoleon is complaining about other nations refusing to deal with him because napoleon wanna conquer them. If u don't like it, go and kick them off your land, go all the way and cordon the land off, if they violate it, declare war. Declare as often as you want to keep the land unpolluted for your leisurely settlement plans.

Ai have incapacity, nor the programmers haven't put in a option where you tell ai to not settle or culture expand into this hex and that hex or war will happen. So, killing them is only way, and even if the option is still implemented, and they tell u to shove off, dec on them for the insult and to keep them out of ur lands. Problem solved. IF u don't like it, well, don't go to war prepare for defensive wars.

 

[Stormbolt]

Diplomacy could definitely use a bit of work, but the denouncements are understandable. If a RL country invaded someone else for no explicable reason, it would raise a few eyebrows, to put it lightly. In addition, I've always attributed a leader's willingness to accept peace, and the terms that they'll agree with to their personalities. Bismarck and Hamaad aren't exactly warmongers, Elizabeth may not be too open to negotiations, and Kahn is clearly a madman.

 

[SpearMan153]

I wouldn't call diplomacy a train wreck, more like the occasional fender bender.

Were you in a declaration of friendship with bismark or just friendly status?

If you were in a friendship declaration and declared war then you get the BACKSTABBER label and likely no one will trust you for the rest of the game.

Assuming you were just at Friendly status to avoid the later denouncements you could have denounced before attacking, this signals to the world that you don't like bismark. Anyone else who doesn't like bismark is then more likely to denounce him also and join with you in a coalition of the willing. His enemies may then offer you a declaration of friendship.

Also you are usually better of being honest and declaring war when called on your border forces. Even though the ai gets first shot its better diplomatically (unless your already a hated war monger). One trick is to keep you forces back from the border out of sight until ready.

You could also have found a partner to join in the attack by using the Shall we declare war on... option, making it less likely to be isolated.

Elizabeth was probably bribed to DOW on you by Genghis.

The ai is not trading with you because you have been labelled a war mongering rogue nation by world wide public opinion and they won't give you open border out of fear you are just going to scout out their land before invading them to.

They think you are a war monger because you have fought 2 unprovoked wars of conquest. Having taken 2 capital cities, you are likely going for a domination victory and so they believe that they are next. Also the first war you started after breaking your word not to attack means you cannot be trusted.

As for the ai not capitualting after the first two civs, either they hated you too much, or have somehow determined that you will likely attack them again even if they capitulate this time, or have a low "fear" score on their leader flavours.

 

[SpearMan153]

there's a good post in the strategy section called diplomacy by numbers (iirc), that may help get into the ai's head a bit more

 

[Haig]

I think your story reminds me of the most evil german in history.. Kaiser Vilhelm!

I think Civ V diplo has really opened for me, I can be totally friends with everyone (if I'm not next to some crazy fuhrer like Monty or Napoleon etc.) and I see consequences for actions, good and bad.

There's still work for diplomacy but the direction is good, it's very enjoyable now most of the time.

 

[Tatran]

They won't give you anything of course.

Without a DoF.
(There has been 2 DoFs with China + resource gift in the past.)

Spoiler :

 

[Save_Ferris]

Once, just for fun, I offered a civ 100 gold for their 1 gpt for 90 turns. They wanted me to give them 343.

 

[squadbroken]

Wait, let me get this straight, OP...

You act like a treacherous warmonger and the diplomacy sucks because the AI civs treat you like one?

edit: And while the diplomacy in Civ 5 certainly isn't perfect, I'd say it's better than the easily-manipulated joke that it was in 4, where civs would just ignore all your warmongering because you happened to adopt their religion.

 

[PRCouture]

I unfortunately suffer the same problems, economics plummet to hell once everybody wants to buy my luxuries for 200 gold and are all guarded/hostile/denounced towards me. Playing as the Roman Empire, the Classical Age is truly the only time period where i have my suprematical advantage toward the other nations. Of course, it's always been a problem with 'friendy' nations that create cities bordering right next to your nation. Denounced, don't settle near land button, eventually war, and i still get the Brigade of Super-Friends denouncing me like we were playing whack-a-mole.

 

[I_qua_I]

Aside from the 'trade-all-luxuries-for-lump-sum-gold-then-declare-war' exploit I didn't see anything particularly unreasonable about how the AIs in your game were acting. Considering all the warmongering you took part in it should only be expected that they would NOT be very cooperative. In fact, I think the title of this post would be more appropriate if they had behaved otherwise.

 

[jjkrause84]

I've never liked that even in the Classical Period Civ acts like every nation has "modern" morals. It really shouldn't matter too much if you wipe out another nation early on.