Diplomacy is still broken?

[Roxlimn]

It doesn't hate you for declaring war now, it hates you for taking cities, even from their enemies or from wars you didn't start

SOME AIs will hate you for this. Some won't. Genghis Khan is famously friendly to warmongers. I've been total friends with him while waging war every which way.

The RP you're asking for is absolutely there.

 

[Chiatroll]

I mostly hate how hard the DOW penalty is.

I love me some warmongering but I can generally expect to be defending against almost every civ on the planet at once and it feels a bit harsh since it's impossible to get a Domination win without this hit.

Also I think denouncements are a problem because everyone seems to lose opinion of you when you are denounced which causes everyone else to denounce you and then you are in PR hell before you know it chain denouncements and chain wars while the AI's all pat each other on the back for their own denouncing of the guy they don't like.

I played a Suleiman game recently where I went to war with France at France's suggestion against morocco and took the capital then every got mad and denounced me all around the table then 3 people attacked me including France because I helped France out.

It wasn't even smart for the AI because some of them were crushed almost instantly by my Suleiman in an archipelago navy so they committed suicide and wouldn't end the war until I wiped and razed their entire civilizations off of the map. Everyone else got pissed off because I defended myself.

This was emperor difficulty, huge, archipelago map, 22 civs, marathon difficulty. Wars once I got Navigation. Until end game

 

[Rohili]

Oh you'd best read the thread again. It was kaltorak who said the system was a failure for being what it is. I maintain my position that Civ V is fine the way it is and the AI should be even more aggressive, and that if someone doesn't like the intentionally more competitive and less transparent nature of the AI, they can and should play something that suits their tastes better instead of insisting it's a failure.

EDIT: also, the topic itself is asserting that the diplomatic system is broken. So how exactly am I the rude and arrogant one here? Because I disagree with you?

No, it's perfectly fine to disagree. There are clearly people who prefer the AI to be more gamey and people who prefer to the AI to act more realistically. There is a valid discussion to be had on which type of AI will make for a more enjoyable game.

What is rude and arrogant, is to simply dismiss from the outset those who prefer a more realistic AI as playing the wrong game and being "in denial". You are not actually engaging with their views but simply dismissing them on the basis that they are inconsistent with what you think is the nature of Civ V. You are basically saying, "This is what the game is, deal with it or play something else", rather than "I disagree with you, I think the game should be X because of the following reasons..."

 

[elijahfire]

I am not playing a competitive game, civ is not an e-sport. I am playing a game about civilizations, empires and leaders. I want the leaders to have personality and act as close to that personality as possible.

I want Isabel to love me if I adopt her religion or hate me if I don't.
I want Ghandi to not declare war, or only declare war to warmongers.
I want Montezuma to act crazy and attack without even having the upper hand.
I want shaka to attack a lot too, but beeing more powerful, not like crazy montezuma.
And so on.

The AI doesn't behave like a human right now. It's what they tried, but in a game as complex as civ, its normal that it doesn't work.

I understand what you are saying, it makes the game more fair. But in the end, it makes it fair by mostly taking away the diplomacy aspect of civilization. I prefer it beeing less fair and more a game about empires and civilizations. I don't mind fairnes in PvE games.

I totally agree, while AI shouldn't be totally predictable, each leader should have a personality associated with their historical views.

 

[danieladler]

The feeling that you play your civ against the teamed up AI civs doesnt go away with BNW. There is still no pont in building up relations with a civ because how much you ever do for it, it will join the others in denouncing you or dow'ing you. On the other hand it would be perhaps even worse if you could have guaranteed eternal friendships with civs....

 

[newarkinvaders]

There you are right, the collaboration nature of the diplomacy kind of works.
But it is still no excuse for things like AIs hating you when you take a city from THEIR enemy after they asked you for help, or when atila declares 3 times war on you, and you finally have to hit his cities so he doesn't bother you anymore and they still call YOU a warmonger for capturing cities. Give me a break, I'm making your enemy pay, the one that has been bothering you all game long, and instead of beeing happy... "you are a warmongering menace!"

I dont often see this . The round of denouncements works both ways and if you denounce the mongols to your friends before you attack him they will often join in with a denouncement of him and will be happy when the menace

 

[mike3640]

Hmm I have slightly changed views after reading some of your points. I agree that it is cool that the AI plans ahead like that but I did have 500-800 gold (Sorry don't remember exact amount) and had not actually gone to war yet with Poland. I do still think the Diplomacy needs more work and transparency because it currently makes AI relations lopsided and meaningless. Yes I get that yo get a stack of gold in trade dealings but I also want to play a game that involves some level of actual diplomacy. If sharing a religion, have numerous trade routes with each other, as well as numerous trade deals and DoF isn't enough to actually have good diplomatic relations with a Civ then yes there IS an issue I take with that. Despite other's posts and my own poor choices in words; I am not mad I was "outplayed" (AI war strategy is still bad so I did win the war). I am annoyed and disapointed that I decided to forgo my usual warmonger game in favor of trying to be diplomatic, cultural and religious and this is what happened. I have no problem with odd DoW but this should have been a pretty clear cut allies for the moment at least kinda of thing.

 

[mike3640]

I will also cede the point that my thread here uses poor choices of words as I had a long day prior to writing. If i re-wrote the thread I wouldn't use the term "broken" but I would say it needs more work for sure. If it was Attila or Monty that attacked me I would not have made this thread as I should have known better. All I would have liked is some kind of clue that our relations weren't ideal. It is pretty rare historically(I know this is Civ not always the best argument) that two nations would go to war without even a hint of negative relations between the two.

 

[dexters]

With BNW i thought the AI and diplomacy was supposed to improve but I find that it is exactly the opposite. My last game Rome gave me a DoF, asked me to declare war on Poland in 10 turns (Which I agreed to) and signed a research agreement with me. All on 2 turns. 2 turns after the DoF Rome decides to forgo declaring war on Poland with instead attacking me. So basically I spent 250 gold for no reason for a brainless AI attack? This game needs work.

You want to be renewing your DoF BEFORE they expire.

I think they are up for renegotiation after 20 turns, but last 30? (IIRC) geeze, I really should know this stuff off the top of my head.

What happens with the AI is sometimes if it expires, their opinion of you changes you lose -35 DoF bonus and -15 with other Civs who are also friends with them. So it can have a knock-on effect of causing everyone to dislike you more.

Not unrealistic and it's not opaque, the DoF ended, relations change. But you can massage it by keeping the DoF-ball rolling by renewing them before they expire. If there are bigger underlying changes to their grand strategy AI or if their opinion of you worsens even with DoF, they will refuse to renew and in those cases, at least get a good bit of warning that your relations with a civ will change in short order.

Also, it is true that sometimes AI will offer a fake DoF to screw you over or denounce you (a backstab) even with DoF and just break off your friendship with no notice. You can't control those things, but you can plan for them.

 

[mike3640]

No your not understanding, They DoF then attacked me literally 2 turns later. After 20 or so turns I wouldn't be offended. But 2 turns prior to attacking they asked me to attack poland, DoF, and signed a research agreement.

 

[Clement]

The AI in civ5 doesn't work like you want to. It is intended. I agree with you, it sucks, this is an empire game and we got chess players instead of leaders with personality.

Those "moves" are intended, they tried to make the AI play like a human, regarding diplomacy. Which is a total fail in my opinion.

Agreed 100%, i said this two years ago and i still feel the same, but they took away the magic of the Civ series, of making me feel i was a world leader and demoted me to being a board-game player with all these ridiculously arbitrary rules like un-razeable capitals, the game is a lot better than it was but this lost realism can never be recovered in 5, only Civ 6 might bring it back if they feel like it.

The last quarter of each game is where this "playing to win" AI is most obvious as all hell breaks loose between previously reasonable Civs that are now having their behaviour overidden by a desperate need to win against the clock, imagine in the real world if some nation had to "win" by the year 2000, the US would have invaded even all their allies in "trying to win."

I wouldn't be surprised if the single player experience was sacrificed for the multiplayer experience, if so it was a poor trade-off for me because single player suffered greatly in terms of being able to suspend one's disbelief (something Sid himself talked about in a seminar i saw on youtube) and multiplayer i have never been interested in.

 

[Miravlix]

I don't understand a word the OP is saying.

To me he is complaining that the system is working well, by claiming it's broken. It makes no sense.

The current system isn't broken, it works perfectly if you bother learning it, BNW fixed a HUGE problem with G&K, that players would turtle then take over all the AI's cities, now you can't get away with that stupid exploit.

 

[dexters]

No your not understanding, They DoF then attacked me literally 2 turns later. After 20 or so turns I wouldn't be offended. But 2 turns prior to attacking they asked me to attack poland, DoF, and signed a research agreement.

That is the fake DoF I talked about in the same post. Not hard to guess. If a Civ had little to no dealings with you and or even have some antagonism in your history and they come up and DoF, it's fake.

Not always the case but it can happen. Ai fooled you.

 

[Scarpa]

I am annoyed and disapointed that I decided to forgo my usual warmonger game in favor of trying to be diplomatic, cultural and religious and this is what happened. I have no problem with odd DoW but this should have been a pretty clear cut allies for the moment at least kinda of thing.

I was going to stay out of this due to the tone of the rest of the thread but it seems you are just being stung by lack of experience in that part of the game.

Here are a couple loose rules I use to avoid the really insane/inane AI behavior:
- Never, ever, ever sign a Defense Pact or go to war 'with' anyone. There's not a single reason I can think of where this benefits the human player given how terrible the AI is at war.
- Don't sign any Declaration of Friendships unless you intend to use them, meaning making lump sum gold trades or RAs. They can be dangerous as you already found out. Even if a backstabby AI has signed an RA with you, expect to lose it.
- Aggressively 'recon' the diplomatic state of the world often. Sometimes pitfalls can open up without you noticing like the wrong people having a DoF exposing you to a denunciation chain.
- Always weigh the AI motivations against what you would do as the devious, backstabby, exploitative human you are! This will help you figure out things quicker like 'hey why does Rome need my help if they have an army twice as big as mine and they mostly are milling about my borders?'

I agree the diplo game in Civ is 'gamey' but it is still fun and really very predictable once you have been burned a couple times.

 

[mike3640]

I think Clement understands what I'm trying to say. I like the feel of being a world leader with real diplomacy. I understand fake DoF etc, etc. But to constantly trade for over 200 turns with a civ, have trade routes with that civ(both ways), declare friendship, research agreements etc. This does break immersion. No nation state in history is going to give up money, research, and a military Allie arbitrarily. The fact is I personally feel that is a stupid diplomatic system where a civ would declare war in that situation. If Rome had given me any inkling in the previous 200 turns that we had any issues than I would not have made a thread whining about diplomacy. My personal opinion is I want to play an immersive game where I feel my diplomatic decisions matter.

 

[mike3640]

Thank You Scarpa for providing a little more insight as opposed to unnecessary hate. I'll be going back to warmongering for my next game. No need to guess the AI's position towards me if I'm a global threat

 

[dexters]

Thank You Scarpa for providing a little more insight as opposed to unnecessary hate. I'll be going back to warmongering for my next game. No need to guess the AI's position towards me if I'm a global threat

To be fair your thread title has nothing to do with what you actually described and is quite wrong . It's unfortunate because several people are trying to explain what happened to you and you're rightfully getting critiqued for being tricked by the AI and have a bait title that tend to attract random people with random complaints.

 

[mike3640]

I agree, I used a poor choice of words which I do/did apologize for. I will still debate that there is a big difference between being tricked by the AI and a poor diplomacy system. Like I said, 200 turns ish of positive diplomatic relations plus a DoF and research agreement 2 turns prior to war is, IMO, a poor system of diplomacy. Do I agree it makes for a more competitive game? Yes I do but I would argue that for more casual Civ players like me I think that system is foolish.

 

[Tachii]

Aside from 1) the warmonger status that takes forever to get rid of, 2) can't do crap when the AI invades your city-states/other civs without taking a diplo hit yourself, diplomacy is fine.

The backstab can get predictable if you know which civ is likely to do it. Also, if your neighbour is building a huge army and the only one near them is well, you, you can be damn sure any DoFs is just for show. While this game tries to be "unpredictable", if you play smart and actually pay attention to your surroundings, it's rather a good challenge, not some random fight.

 

[Dux1]

Agreed 100%, i said this two years ago and i still feel the same, but they took away the magic of the Civ series, of making me feel i was a world leader and demoted me to being a board-game player with all these ridiculously arbitrary rules like un-razeable capitals, the game is a lot better than it was but this lost realism can never be recovered in 5, only Civ 6 might bring it back if they feel like it.

No Civ game has ever felt even remotely like a simulation of being a real world leader. They have always been games filled with arbitrary rules and abstractions galore. What world leader in history ever lived for 6000 years?

The AI should be trying to win. In Civ5, it only sort of does.