Diplomacy

[GoodRevrnd]

People mention hovering over the rival's screen in f4 to see this. It doesn't work in your mod.

What is the tuner by the way?

Aha!! So far I've been the only one that seems to have this problem.

 

[Txurce]

1. Once I start pulling it ahead, all 8 other civs are denouncing and refusing to trade.

2. I need to know where it's possible and which of all the "guarded" civs I can attempt to influence.

3. How can you encourage the AI to spend and release its gold?

4. I attacked Arabia well past chivalry because I wanted his gold (8400!). He had 10 iron units, but an army of BC spears and archers and perhaps 2 longswords. No upgrading? Also, when I had taken 2 cities, he refused to give me any gold but wanted all my gold. When I had take 4 cities, he still insisted on my resources. When I had take 6 cities, he wanted a ceasefire and would give me nothing for it. I attacked the last city and had it down to 1 strength and he still would not budge and would ceasefire only for no gold. It was a tremendous waste. I let ceasefired and waited 10 turns then redeclared war. He still wouldn't off any gold. I took his last city.

5. Is there a way I can get the AI's gold by taking there cities?

1. Once you start pulling ahead, that's what happens. It's in the coding of Civ 5, literally and figuratively.

2. It's hard to influence civs, let alone "guarded" ones. You can trade, denounce the same leaders, and if lucky fight a common foe. All of these things count in your favor. Will it be enough to knock them out of "guarded"? Maybe if you're not ahead, and didn't do something irrevocable like take their capital.

3. You cannot encourage the AI to spend its gold (other than on your resources). If you could, and the AI did so in a reasonable manner, I think it would probably win the game hands-down.

4. The AI almost always reaches a point in a war where it will offer you huge sums of gold, resources, and even cities for peace. It will not do so if it has enough reason to dislike you. You're most likely to rake in dividends in an initial war with an AI - even more so if they started it. A second war, or any war with a civ that already has reasons to dislike you (check by hovering over the attitude status link) is much less likely to result in the spoils you would expect.

5. I think you get a certain amount of gold when you take a city - but if you're asking whether you can seriously clean out the AI's treasury, the answer is No.

 

[cleaner]

A quick question: Shall I load CSD after or before your mod?

 

[gdwitt]

Thank you for your quick reply.
Where is there a good diplomacy strategy article?
1. Does offering a trade a their guarded discount give you a diplomacy bonus? ex. 90 gold for my spices?

2. In previous civs, one could donate gold and techs to improve relationships. Is that working in civ 5/thal's mod?
I haven't noticed if fighting a common foe seems to help my relationship. Last game greece and I were fighting two common foes and he was hostile the whole time.

3. The AI seems to also love spending gold on city-states. I had to spend 2000 gold to get my city-state ally back from civ across the map. This is because they spent around 2000?

4. I don't see this feature in thal's mod: "check by hovering over the attitude status link"
Is this from another mod?


Yes, from the previous ex. Arabia was denouncing me and guarded when I attacked. He refused any settlement gold offers throughout the conflict.

For how to reach this magical point of getting resources it would be nice to have guidance on what actions tip them from demanding all your gold and resources to offering most of their gold. For example, does killing units count? Or does one actually have to take a city?

5. I'll report with more details in the future on what I'm seeing.

 

[Jorlem]

4. The AI almost always reaches a point in a war where it will offer you huge sums of gold, resources, and even cities for peace. It will not do so if it has enough reason to dislike you. You're most likely to rake in dividends in an initial war with an AI - even more so if they started it. A second war, or any war with a civ that already has reasons to dislike you (check by hovering over the attitude status link) is much less likely to result in the spoils you would expect.

This has always kinda bothered me. Once you've beaten up a civ badly enough, shouldn't it logically become Afraid, and want to get you to stop, even if it doesn't like you? Plus, if a civ dislikes you enough to declare war on you, they probably dislike you enough that they won't be willing to grant reasonable concessions in return for peace.

 

[Txurce]

Where is there a good diplomacy strategy article?
1. Does offering a trade a their guarded discount give you a diplomacy bonus? ex. 90 gold for my spices?

2. In previous civs, one could donate gold and techs to improve relationships. Is that working in civ 5/thal's mod?
I haven't noticed if fighting a common foe seems to help my relationship. Last game greece and I were fighting two common foes and he was hostile the whole time.

3. The AI seems to also love spending gold on city-states. I had to spend 2000 gold to get my city-state ally back from civ across the map. This is because they spent around 2000?

4. I don't see this feature in thal's mod: "check by hovering over the attitude status link"
Is this from another mod?


Yes, from the previous ex. Arabia was denouncing me and guarded when I attacked. He refused any settlement gold offers throughout the conflict.

For how to reach this magical point of getting resources it would be nice to have guidance on what actions tip them from demanding all your gold and resources to offering most of their gold. For example, does killing units count? Or does one actually have to take a city?

Look up Gabriel Pyrrhic (spelling may be off). He wrote some threads on diplomacy that are long but thorough as to how it works.

Discounted deals are supposed to give you a diplomacy bonus. Most deals give you some sort of bonus. Gifts also count. What they give is "traded recently" - not a Civ4 style bump.

Fighting a common foe does help, but it may have to be agreeing to declare war, and then following through on it.

The AI tend to not spend that much on CS in VEM, but they aggressively compete for them in CSD - so they either spent 2000g, or sent over a diplomat.

Hovering over the attitude message on the diplomacy overview (or dialogue screen) will show you the AI's true attitude toward you. All positives and some negatives fade over time. This is part of the vanilla game, and of course works in VEM.

You don't have to take a city to reach the gold tipping point in peace negotiations. Killing a lot of their units, or just persisting in a very long war, will do it. The exception is when they have a clearly stronger military than you - then they're less likely to do so.

 

[Txurce]

This has always kinda bothered me. Once you've beaten up a civ badly enough, shouldn't it logically become Afraid, and want to get you to stop, even if it doesn't like you? Plus, if a civ dislikes you enough to declare war on you, they probably dislike you enough that they won't be willing to grant reasonable concessions in return for peace.

All civs aren't equally likely to become "afraid" - it's the least common attitude. Also keep in mind that it doesn't give you the best deals, although you'd think it would.

My sense is that civs are wired to survive only in their first war with you (or multiple wars in which they attack you and there's no lasting damage). After that, if they hate you, survival isn't first. I don't know illogical that is from a historical perspective... and of course it's not illogical at all from a game perspective vs the human player!

I think the civs sometimes declare war due to simple greed or warlike nature, and those are the ones most likely to be "friendly" even after a loss.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Txurce
I haven't done any work on liberation bonuses.


@gdwitt
We're unable to change any fundamentals of the AI with the current modding tools. This includes diplomacy, how it spends its gold or upgrades its units, and so on. For this we'd need the game core only Firaxis currently has access to.

Do you play a peaceful or conquest game? Peaceful get upset at us if we go to war, so if you intend to conquer the world it's best to not try and befriend peaceful players. If you do befriend a peaceful player, go to war, and they denounce you, everyone else will be upset too. We're unable to change this. Gifts don't really have much effect - I wouldn't bother giving gifts to people.

I wish I can view a point summary of how all my trades and gifts to other states are panning out. I need to know where it's possible and which of all the "guarded" civs I can attempt to influence. People mention hovering over the rival's screen in f4 to see this.

Do you mean the diplomacy modifier tooltip? It should display if you hover over the leader's status indicator on the top-right diplomacy popup, like this:

@Jorlem
I've done my best to alter AI willingness to negotiate peace terms, but it's difficult with our limited tools. At least they don't offer huge rewards right after wars start (like in vanilla).


@Txurce
I've seen civs become "afraid" if they're a peaceful leader and we have a significant military advantage. This is the only time any leader will accept "Demands" made of them.

 

[Txurce]

I've seen civs become "afraid" if they're a peaceful leader and we have a significant military advantage. This is the only time any leader will accept "Demands" made of them.

I've seen it less than a dozen times, under those circumstances. Most recent were America and the Iroquois. I've also seen it from Persia and the Aztecs.

 

[Jorlem]

Thank you for that. It really is better than vanilla, its just that I can't help thinking of things that could make it even more realistic. I just wish I could do something like what the Allies did to Germany at the end of World War 1. Ah well, no sense asking about it if it can't be done now. If you don't mind my asking though, do you think this might change when the DLL is released, or does diplomacy need deeper access?

Also, on another subject, do you think it is technically possible for a denouncement to break trade agreements, and if it is, could the AI know to take it into account? For example, let's say I'm trading several resources with India, and India is otherwise about to denounce me, but doesn't, because the AI doesn't want to loose access to the resources I'm trading to it. Sort of an "I hate you, and now I'm boycotting you" type of thing.

 

[Ethos]

I just wish I could do something like what the Allies did to Germany at the end of World War 1.

You think you do, but you really don't. That country will come back in a few years to kill you, and then you'll need to gather some allies to win.

 

[Thalassicus]

Firaxis will only give us access to part of the game core (the part they have proprietary rights over)... similar to how it was done for Civ 4... so I really don't know what will or won't be possible with it.

 

[Txurce]

@gdwitt
Gifts don't really have much effect - I wouldn't bother giving gifts to people.

I find this part of the game interesting, so spend quite a bit of time playing puppet-master. I'm in the closing section of a conquest game where I took the Babylonian capital that resulted in a "guarded" attitude from this peace-loving civ, and have turned him around to a tenuous "friendly" by selling him cities I didn't want, at prices he could afford.

 

[Thalassicus]

Selling cities is something I haven't done because of how you described the results half a year ago or so. It sounds like we should get only a 1) diplomatic or 2) monetary bonus from trading cities... or both with lower values.

 

[Jorlem]

Do the AI civs ask each other to move troops away from borders, or is that only something they ask the player? I was thinking, if it is something they do to each other as well, would it be possible to let the player do that too?

 

[Txurce]

Do the AI civs ask each other to move troops away from borders, or is that only something they ask the player? I was thinking, if it is something they do to each other as well, would it be possible to let the player do that too?

I'm pretty sure this is one of those unaddressable diplomacy factors that make it so one-sided and unsatisfying.

 

[Txurce]

One recent annoying but welcome development is that the AI seem more aggressive in going after CS. I have had as many as five turns in a row of back-and-forth competition for a CS, and I just had to pay 2500g to regain control of a CS ally. Again, all of this is fine with me... but it would be nice to have an InfoAddict-like tool where we knew how much was needed to become the ally of a CS.

EDIT: There may also be a bug here. I have no way of knowing, but... I just tried to buy a CS I was already "blue" with as a test, and 4000g couldn't swing the deal. This is a CS that has not been "in play," and no one is close to the UN yet.

 

[Thalassicus]

In version 9.7 militaristic citystate rewards accumulate in a pool, instead of the previous method of game turns. Say we have X militaristic allies and get a unit every 10 turns (the "threshold"). The threshold depends on how many friends and allies we have on the current turn.


Old Method
We get a unit on turns divisible by the threshold (like 100, 110, 120, etc). This is a simple approach but has problems when the number changes. If our threshold is 10 and we're on turn 99 we'd expect a reward the next turn, but if we get an additional ally and the threshold is 7, we won't receive a unit turn 105 (next multiple of 7). More allies paradoxically delays our reward in the short term. There's also situations where militaristic friends can not give a reward at all, if their friendship drops to neutral before a reward is earned.


New Method
Each turn +1 point is added to a militaristic pool for players with militaristic friends or allies. We get a unit whenever our points pass the threshold, and the pool resets to 0. If we have 9 points and our threshold drops to 7, we get a unit on the next turn with 2 points' overflow.

This approach has several advantages. Say we have 9 points stored and the threshold is 10, but we lose our militaristic friends. If we later get militaristic friends again, the pool is saved so we'll get a reward on the next turn. Points never go to waste.


@Txurce
I suspect that is due to the Angkor Wat bug which should be fixed in v9.7.

 

[Txurce]

In version 9.7 militaristic citystate rewards accumulate in a pool, instead of the previous method of game turns. Say we have X militaristic allies and get a unit every 10 turns (the "threshold"). The threshold depends on how many friends and allies we have on the current turn.


Old Method
We get a unit on turns divisible by the threshold (like 100, 110, 120, etc). This is a simple approach but has problems when the number changes. If our threshold is 10 and we're on turn 99 we'd expect a reward the next turn, but if we get an additional ally and the threshold is 7, we won't receive a unit turn 105. More allies paradoxically delays our reward in the short term. There's also situations where militaristic friends can not give a reward at all, if their friendship drops to neutral before a reward is earned.


New Method
Each turn +1 point is added to a militaristic pool for players with militaristic friends or allies. We get a unit whenever our points pass the threshold, and the pool resets to 0. If we have 9 points and our threshold drops to 7, we get a unit on the next turn.

This approach has several advantages. Say we have 9 points stored and the threshold is 10, but we lose our militaristic friends. If we later get militaristic friends again, the pool is saved so we'll get a reward on the next turn.

This sounds really good (and clever).

 

[gdwitt]

Thank you guys for all the help.
I usually play a bit belligerent and invade every 20 turns, this distracts them from building wonders so I can get them.
I have recenlty found they give me all their gold if I offer them their one or two cities back. After that it's kamikazee warfare and not worth it.
I think these new revisions by Thal will make the game much more fair and fun.
I'll try out all this advice this weekend, including the hovering.