DoF, why even bother?

[Bamboocha]

It's all in the title.
To me, DoF's are a drag: you get nothing in return and you end up with a bunch of civs begging you for some luxury resources, and they'll end up upset if you don't give them away for free. Why even bother making friends, especially since they'll end up backstabbing you anyway?

 

[TW_Honorius]

friends will prolong DOW. not all ais will back stab you unless you give them a reason to backstab you. plus if there friendly towards you, you get better trade deals.

 

[vexing]

it can theoretically be used to prevent a war declaration to allow RAs to complete.

pragmatically there are plenty of problems with this:
your relationship must be somewhat friendly and in a position where it will deteriorate to make this both achievable and have any value.
your dof causes a negative hit with any civs that dislike the friend and a positive with those who do like the friend, so if everyone is friendly you get more out of it.
if they end up denouncing you, it causes an extra penalty with all their friends.
if you refuse more than two requests the gain of the friendship is more than negated.


in general i never sign dofs, the time to sign would be the last 50 turns of a game where everyone is peaceful.

 

[James T]

Anecdotally, I've experienced fewer and/or slower DOWs in the early turns if I am in a DOF or 2. I've seen this in test-play games where I've restarted the Turn 0 save multiple times.

 

[Glassmage]

You make a DoF so you can backstab them at a later time....

 

[RD-BH]

Early DoFs encourage (friendly) AIs to expand away from your border.
This gives you more time/room to expand.
Of course,
... some AIs lie about being your friend.

 

[vexing]

Early DoFs encourage AIs to expand away from your border.

citation?

 

[NotSure]

I don't take DoF's that often either, but one thing I noticed is that on emporer or below sometimes a neighbor will ask for a DoF, and if you deny them, they'll declare on you almost immediately. This happened to me once in the Egypt domination GOTM and twice in the recent Aztec GOTM. Does the ai program know it has to fight to expand, and is it trying to narrow focus and/or secure one of it's borders? Has anyone else noticed this?

 

[RD-BH]

Originally Posted by RD-BH
Early DoFs encourage (friendly) AIs to expand away from your border.

citation?

None.
This statement is from experience.

Example:
Recent game: continent/stdsize/stdspd
East neighbor: Egypt
South neighbor: Rome
North: tundra
West: ocean

Egypt requests DoF.
I refuse.
Egypt beelines my capital with two city builds.
I DoF with Egypt as soon as I see the 2nd city.
All subsequent Egypt cities settle east of Egypt.
... less than ideal terrain (tundra, etc)
Rome eventually DoWs me.
I request Egypt's assistance.
Egypt DoWs Rome and marches entire military through my territory to Rome.
I keep expanding while Egypt fights my war.
Egypt buys Rome CSs, I make peace.
Rome surrenders, I've expanded, Egypt marches home.

I discovered this behavior after a long series of inland sea games.
If you DoF, and they build toward you?
... they are lying.

 

[Mazer Rackham]

I dislike the way DoF's work, also. That being said, I find them invaluable in the beginning of an Immortal/Deity game before I have an army built up. I've never had an AI declare when we have a DoF and you don't want a multi-front war while you are trying to get your empire established.

I don't like the fact that the AI can request things from you when you are friends but you don't have the ability to do the same to them. I find I have to really watch when luxuries come online when I have a DoF; often when a duplicate copy comes online at the end of a turn, my "friend" will ask for it immediately before I get a chance to sell it off. Their request for gold or GPT are sometimes insignificant, but sometimes really outrageous. Denying a request can lead to a point where the AI becomes hostile after the DoF expires, which really stinks for RAs for the rest of the game.

If playing on a lower level for a GotM or something, I don't accept DoFs. I don't think their is any diplo hit to not accepting and I only find them useful for preventing war. The only other time is when there is an AI who is an obvious warmonger (taking the Honor tree and/or starting multiple wars) and I want to be certain an RA will complete with them.

 

[RD-BH]

...
I don't like the fact that the AI can request things from you when you are friends but you don't have the ability to do the same to them.

Don't use 'Demand', use one-sided trade.

...
I find I have to really watch when luxuries come online when I have a DoF; often when a duplicate copy comes online at the end of a turn, my "friend" will ask for it immediately before I get a chance to sell it off.
...

I manually finish tile improvements.
This allows selling lux/strat on player turn.
... yes, it is annoying.

Use upper-left unit list.
Click listed workers one at a time.
Note turns remaining in lower-left.
If it says (1), manually build improvement.
Note:
... builds countdown 5,4,3,2,1,1 (example)
... so, it might not be on final build.

 

[Mazer Rackham]

Don't use 'Demand', use one-sided trade.



I manually finish tile improvements.
This allows selling lux/strat on player turn.
... yes, it is annoying.

Do you ever get them to agree to the one-sided trade?


I also strive to manually finish tile improvements; but things happen and sometimes I forget. Yes, it is annoying - one of the more micromanagy-tasks to go around to all my workers before pressing "End Turn" to make I don't get hosed out of my resource.

It'd be cool if the resource didn't technically come online until the beginning of the turn or at least you got a 1-turn grace period from the AI before they asked for it.

 

[RD-BH]

Do you ever get them to agree to the one-sided trade?


I also strive to manually finish tile improvements; but things happen and sometimes I forget. Yes, it is annoying - one of the more micromanagy-tasks to go around to all my workers before pressing "End Turn" to make I don't get hosed out of my resource.

It'd be cool if the resource didn't technically come online until the beginning of the turn or at least you got a 1-turn grace period from the AI before they asked for it.

Yes, they occaisionally agree.
Notes:
... usually high number of green 'friend' items for a lux
... strat << non-demanded lux << demanded lux
... I have yet to get a demanded lux free (might not be possible)
... They seem to have a timer ('you already asked' response)
... ... but I haven't seen any code to that effect.
... too tedious to track each turn
... ... so, I ask every 18 turns (set advisors 1/18T)

Grace period preferred over automatic start of turn.
... permits moving endangered worker between turns
... ... also annoying sometimes

 

[vexing]

anecdotal evidence about a game where egypt settled next to you, then you signed a dof, then they settled away from you is hardly conclusive.

if you have those autosaves, try going back to before they settled next to you and sign the dof. then see if their settling behavior changes.

Yes, they occaisionally agree.

post save showing a trade where an ai agreed to give something for nothing.
strategics when they're past usage don't count; they'll always give those for free (eg they put zero value on iron once they have rifling and chemistry and no iron units)

 

[RD-BH]

I offered anecdotal because it was this week (fresh on my mind).
I used this practice extensively on previous series of inland sea games.
I don't have the saves, but should be easy to recreate situation.
I'll see if I can post both from this weekend's games.

Note:
... I found my notes from inland sea games.
... Late April/early May 2011 (pre Jun patch)
... DoF AI built toward me just under 30%
... as data is old, will run new series for FUN 8)

 

[Banman]

I've been finding DoFs useful lately for manipulating global politics to a certain extent: if an AI is hostile to you and neutral or friendly towards a third party, drawing the third party into a DoF will tend to align them with you and against the hostile AI (usually, the hostile AI will become hostile towards your friend as well). Once denouncements start flying, the alignment is pretty firm and can be to your advantage in tight spots. Often, you don't even have to ask your ally to go to war with the enemy --> it'll happen on its own, for what the AIs 'think' are their own reasons. I've found the odd demands for free resources relatively easy to refuse in this context, since none of the other AIs register whether you are giving your friends free stuff or not and if you've assembled a self-reinforcing block of DoFs the mutual-friends positive effects will outweigh having not given them stuff.

Of course, you can easily screw up your foreign policy by not keeping track of global politics on a turn-to-turn basis --> it's pretty irritating that you can't check the diplomacy overview when you're engaged in communication with an AI player. The flip side of the above is that an ill-planned DoF can seriously deteriorate relations with another AI, and of course DoF proposals come out of the blue so it's easy to be taken by surprise if you're not checking the political outlook regularly.

 

[Optional]

I think you're hitting the nail on the head here, Banman, it's about global relationships.

When making a declaration it's more about the others than about the civ the declaration is with.
You can't make a declaration of friendship with a civ who isn't already friendly anyway, so that's not where the gain is. The gain is with the third parties. It makes quite a difference to how they view you.

Some civ may be on the fence about you, envy your wonders, covet your lands and such, but if you share their feelings about other civs they will mostly put their issues with you aside and be cooperative.

If signing declarations of friendship you should mostly do this with civs who are getting on well with others.
If denouncing civs you should mostly do this to aggressive civs who have stepped on quite a few toes already.
Take a diplomatic course that other civs will understand, then they will like you more.

I've seen someone post that a friend will only ask for your support once. Once isn't often. If I have a spare resource it means I wasn't able to do much with that resource anyway. Sometimes they'll ask for a bit of gold. Judge for yourself how important that bit of gold is for you. Most of the time friends never ask for anything.

 

[vexing]

I've seen someone post that a friend will only ask for your support once.

nope.

if/how often they ask for stuff is based on their "neediness" i think, and plenty of civs have high starting neediness.
i'd guess high loyalty, low neediness civs would be optimal friends.

 

[joncnunn]

I'm in agreement with OP

Plus AIs who don't like an AI don't like those who sign DOFs.

As to trade relations; they'll stay friendly without DOF as long as you refrain from the usual list of things the AI dislikes. Unless its your closest neighbor in which case their probably only "pretend friendly".

I'm noting though that at the highest two difficulty levels that its less likely the AI is in the state of need than Emperor.

 

[Optional]

nope.

if/how often they ask for stuff is based on their "neediness" i think, and plenty of civs have high starting neediness.

Yes, the likeliness they ask for something is based upon their neediness.
Other things will likely be factored in as well, like their economy. If players post they have more requests on lower levels, this might be due to the lesser AI economies on those levels.

But can someone post that they have granted a request and that X turns later the same civ knocked on their door again? Even one scrap of anecdotal evidence of this would be nice to have.

As to trade relations; they'll stay friendly without DOF as long as you refrain from the usual list of things the AI dislikes.

Very common is 'They covet your lands'; cannot be helped. Also they can dislike you for having built a wonder or being friendly with a City State. You're going to upset the AI sometimes if you play this game. You'll need to deal with it because preventing is often not possible.