Diplomacy/trade questions

[Joch]

a couple of questions. I checked the manual but did not find the answers.

1. Diplomacy: In my current game on "King", I play Kongo. Rome, Sumer and Egypt are in a semi-circle around my Civ. All three are "unfriendly" and seem to have formed a defensive pact. Sumer has already attacked me, although I beat off their attack and we are now officially at peace. What can I do to improve relations? Ideally I would like to at least carve out Egypt and get it as an Ally.

2. Trade Deal: I made a trade deal with Egypt a few turns ago, trading a luxury resource for gold/open borders, in part hoping it would improve relations. Is there a way to cancel a deal mid-stream? I presume a declaration of War still does, but otherwise do I just have to wait until it runs out? Is there also a screen that shows what ongoing trade deals you have?

 

[chazzycat]

For diplomacy, first impressions are very important because the +/- modifiers you see in the diplo window are actually adding up every turn. I would recommend sending a delegation right off the bat and also getting an open borders deal if you want to be friendly. This buys you some buffer time to figure out their agendas and satisfy them. Of course to avoid backstab wars from friends you still need to keep a strong military deterrent as well.

I don't believe you can cancel a deal midstream other than with a DOW.

 

[montalaar]

thing is, you dont need nor egypt, not any other civ. keep few units on each direction, even if they all go with war on you, you should be able deal with them.
it is practically pointless to keep good relationships as bonuses are too weak.
AI are maniacs who will attack you anyway, at least, in the beginning. dont be afraid go war on them, keep or destroy their cities. domination is so easy now. it all feels so pointless - science, culture, religion, whatever. all my six civ games are to have few good units, keep spam/capture cities until you own everyone and everything. pfff.

 

[redwings1340]

I would recommend sending a delegation right off the bat

Like 70% of the civs I've met have declined my delegation whenever I've tried this. Is there any other way I can improve modifiers early on without risking a trade route through barbarian lands?

 

[MetaSkipper]

Like 70% of the civs I've met have declined my delegation whenever I've tried this. Is there any other way I can improve modifiers early on without risking a trade route through barbarian lands?

Not really. Even waiting one turn can be enough for them to close up. I have a suspicion that you cannot send a delegation (and later on, establish an embassy) if the current relationship value is negative. If you roll unlucky (there's a random good/bad first impressions buff, not to mention any other modifiers that might be active), one turn will shut you out, and you'll be on a downhill ride from there. So, the turn you meet them, send them a delegation if your relations are important. Maybe even send them a small gift. I haven't done intensive testing, but I think small gifts are weighted the same as big gifts.

That said, gifts can be turned down. I once offered free open borders to Cleo and she turned me down for some reason.

What I really want is a way to see how close/far I am from the Declared Friend and/or Alliance threshold. It does me no good to see that Catherine and Gandhi are "friendly" if they don't wanna commit.

 

[redwings1340]

That said, gifts can be turned down. I once offered free open borders to Cleo and she turned me down for some reason.

By the end of my england game, the computers were approaching me with trade deals, asking for 128 gold per turn and two luxury resources for nothing. I didn't play around, but I'm guessing if I reduced it to 50 gold per turn they probably would have said no.

I mean, I did have over -100 warmonger points by that time in the game, so it makes sense that they hated me, but...

A side note, even though I had controlled half the world and every civilization hated me, Ghandi and Pedro denounced Arabia the turn they declared war on me in the modern era of my england game. Once you reach a certain level of warmongering where you just decided to give up on all AI trade deals, the warmongering penalties actually protect you, because it makes it difficult for the AIs to actually declare war on you. If Brazil, Arabia, and Egypt all declared war on me in that game, I might have been in trouble, given my troops were all a continent away from my capital (it would have made the game super interesting, at least, because I think I had enough land to win even if London was taken, but a competent attack might have been able to take London and all my cities on the mainland), but they hated each other too much to organize any sort of coherent offensive. I think Arabia's units couldn't even reach me in the war because Brazil had a carpet of doom that blocked them.