Diplomacy/Victory types rant

[civIII]

Right now i'm playing at emperor/immortal level and diplomacy and the victory conditions are starting to piss me off. I don't see the point of diplomacy since it's completely nonfunctional.

If you try to be friendly and avoid wars, you get DOWed and crushed. If you do anything to compete with other civs, you get denounced and it's impossible to do anything other than sign RAs with them. Expand too fast, ally too much, etc. If you fight back, you get denounced by everybody and again, diplomacy is ruined. I've never had a game where i've been on good terms with most of the other civs.

For victory conditions. The biggest problem I see is that to be successful at this level, you have to make a strong army. If you have a strong army, you will not get DOWed. However, there's no point to anything else except war, since if you have an army strong enough to stave off DOWs, you can just attack and take over the world. Apart from a culture win, which I find really boring to do (my comp sucks and hitting next turn for 50 turns while I wait for the culture to accumulate with 1 minute waits between turns sucks), I have to force myself into the scientific and diplomatic victory conditions instead of just fighting. For example:

Scientific: I still gotta build an army to protect myself. With a science focus my medium army becomes centuries ahead of the AI. My mechanized infantry chill in my cities while I watch knights and lancers gallop around.

Diplomatic: I'm spending huge amounts of money on city state alliances, when if I spent them on units i'd be able to win through conquest. In addition, to get that money you need a moderately sized empire. Any hope of raising money through diplomacy by trading is ruined. I'm either hated for expanding too much or because I DOWed someone to expand my lands.

Are there any tips and tricks with regards to diplomacy that i'm missing? Or some that have to do with the other victory conditions?

 

[S.K. Ren]

The trick is to diplomacy is like sailing: Watch for storm clouds(see whos making alliances and who is at war), keep an eye out for the reefs(back stabbers), and keep good relations with the port(peaceful civs) and not with pirates(unless you are one)

I usually wait until a few wars break out before I take sides to see who is best to ally with. I also keep an eye on their reactions (Friendly, Neutral, etc.), if I see they covet your lands, never ally with them for DoWs are only a matter of time. Secondly join wars with people you want on your side, even if it means pissing off someone else. Unless you are a powerhouse or have your borders always on alert form surprise DoWs its kinda hard to stay friends with everyone.

Another thing to keep in mind is if you DoF someone and refuse to help them, they NEVER forget it. So in my opinion its best to pick 1-2 allies that you know you can trust and always help when they ask.

Finally you can do the Open Border for Gold test to see just how friendly they really are.

 

[smallfish]

Build up your econ

Get to 100,000+ gold, with 1000+ gpt.

Plan amphib invasion with a nuclear opener, depending on how many uraniums you have.

There, problem diplo solved.

(warning: may take more than 500 turns to do)

 

[Dogmouth]

I agree with OP, at least on the second part of his/her comment. On Emporer and above, you absolutely must have a large army to avoid being dogpiled. Nonetheless, a couple of idiots always declare war on you, and there is really no point in having your army sit around when you have a chance to capture cites. Thus, in my case, I always end up capturing cities, and my games always drift into something like domination, although I often force myself to (artificially) choose other options. It's frustrating when you're trying to see whether you can pull off a relatively peaceful culture or science win.

 

[KokeenoPokameso]

I'm only playing on King right now but even here I can see what your talking about. So much time is spent building up a army to recent Dow that it seems silly not to do anything with them. Like you say it is almost impossible to maintain decent relations with another other civs that their really is little to discourage you from Dow a neighbor with some nice territory or wonders.

It needs to be easier to maintain decent relations with your neighbors and their needs to be more to be gained from this. To often I end up with a bucket load of spare luxuries and no one is willing to trade with me either for other luxuries or gold.

 

[limitedwhole]

I play on the huge map and don't seem to have these problems. Maybe its map size, maybe you are just getting all hostile civs.

You don't have to have a huge army to defeat an invasion. I defeated an Egyption force of 1 Horseman , 2 Pikemen, 1 Archer, 1 Warrior, and like 7 Egyptian War Chariots, but dealing what casualties I could with 4 Archers and 1 Spearman I had posted nearby. I had 1 Swordsman, and 2 Pikemen being produced (at places with no barracks). My great general spawned and I moved my new army up the road to unite with my remaining two archers. I then took out the remaining 7 units of the egyptian army. Since I didn't build them in barracks, they got promotions which I used to heal them. I then took back the city. It sucked to lose 3 of the four population, but whatever it grows back pretty quickly. War happens. I did get a nice sum of gold form pharoah after slaughtering his army and since I signed a peace treaty rather than pressing into his territory to raze his border towns he immediately changed to friendly.

At the same time I had a hot border with the siamese. I had attacked on ethere settlers that had snuck through by trespasing through a city state. We had a constant border flareups. But he had to cross a river to get to me and I had 2 archers and 2 spearmen posted and trees and hills on my side. I lost very few units and slaughtered many Siamese. I also befriended teh warmongering Mongals who were on the siamese other side and sold them 5 of my excess iron which they used to build an impressive army. The siamese were pretty much screwed at that point capable of doing nothing but trying to defend two long borders.

Through all this I think I had like 1 BArracks and only generated a few units form it as it was a town that had not grown big. The archers were produced with the republic. I spent very little focus on warfare and defeated two onslaughts at once one of which was a constant festering border conflict.

The other player on teh map was Hawawatha who befriended my. I kept trying to get him to enter the war against egypt. He did AFTER I had defeated pharoahs army LOL. I ended up on friendly term with Egypt, Mongolia, and Iriquois. Siam had no choice but to be mearly leary.

Anyways, defensive warfare is definately possible. I think the key is to settle a couple of extra cities. Also important is that you don't have to have all super units. Just ripping a few extra units off without Exp here or there adds up.

Brian

 

[The Pilgrim]

I pretty much agree with everything the OP said. That describes my feeling for a long time now quite accurately. Hopefully some changes will be applied in the addon. Although you don't need a big army for defense, you do need it to prevent the DoW in the first place. Currently AI aggressive nature causes it to check demographics, to see you're weak and tiny and to DoW. You crash one leader, another one joins the party. You crash him too and so on. You end up with conquest since anything else is kind of pointless in such situation. Still you can choose to play defensive, not counterattack, stay in your borders and make peace the moment it becomes possible. And then to get DoW'ed again, get your RA's canceled etc. You can. It even might help to keep good relations with 2-3 trading partners. Whether it make sense or has anything exciting about it it's a different question.

 

[joshua43214]

I shared your opinions about diplomacy for a long time.
It was only after watching some of MadJinn's long plays that I understood what I was doing wrong.

I do agree that parts of it are broken, I hate the random change from "I love you, lets be friends fro life," to "I hate you, and you will die a fiery death." You have to follow who is both at war, and who is friends. If you get denounced by someone, you will usually get denounced by all their friends, and some will use it as an excuse to DoW. Denouncing someone before you war can cause troubles if they have allot of friends. The Ai seems more tolerant of DoWing someones friend, than denouncing them. If someone has been denounced by allot of folks, denounce then DoW and watch the DoF's roll in. Some civ's I never RA with(Greece and Hiawatha) because they will often break the RA, others like Rome or India will never break an RA unless your really make them mad.

I try to get the other civs to war with each other, you get a "we traded recently bonus," and they get otherwise occupied. Map choice plays a role as well, if you get stuck with several close neighbors, they will DoW. Play archipelago, you can hold off any invasion with a couple boats and archers.

 

[joncnunn]

In my own game, I held off
4 Frigates & 3 Riflemen with just 1 Crossbow & Frigate, (and city bombard)

Oh and because the AI was doing its "pretend friendship thing"; I signed defense pacts with two other civs & took out a large loan from the AI about to DOW the turn I saw their forces right off shore for some free cash.

 

[tetley]

I just won a diplo victory right when I had the Ottomans' borders surrounded by tanks and 12 stealth bombers within striking range. Kind of disappointing, really.