Everyone hates me because I won't DoW on them?

[CajNatalie]

The game doesn't reward you for refusing to give help, but only when you actively go out of your way to buddy up. How is stating that a logical fallacy? It's game mechanics.

 

[G-Max]

The game doesn't reward you for refusing to give help, but only when you actively go out of your way to buddy up. How is stating that a logical fallacy? It's game mechanics.

And here we have a logical fallacy known as a strawman argument: Natalie is claiming that I consider the facts of the matter to be one of the logical fallacies that I'm referring to. I don't, nor did I ever.

 

[Tristan_C]

"You have traded with our worst enemies!" and "You refused to help us during war-time!" are ********, broken mechanics. Tributing tech is one stopper for this mechanic but even that has a cost: the "You have traded...!" penalty is worse, frankly, because this one operates before the player even comes into contact with the civ; thus, when we tribute a tech to someone who happens to be the WEnemy of a civilization we don't know, that unknown civ will hate us. Oh yeah, and it stacks with "You refused to stop trading with our worst enemies," once they start coming at us with demands.

It's likely that the human's civ will become the WEnemy of several civs if we remain neutral in their wars (rather stupid since, um, hello, they're at WAR with someone). If we don't take a side, our relations will very slowly move to furious over the course of the game. Personally, I have become the worst enemy of two civs that fought each other & asked me to DoW... many times.

If I must run trade relations with two different nations at war, I'm usually careful to terminate and renegotiate OB every ten turns or so in order to render the agreements unbreakable (and thus immune to enemy demands). To ensure peace with a leader that is Pleased or better, just hit that leader up for 5 gold. Bam... ten-turn, unbreakable peace treaty. I can't remember if a small help request cycles out of an AI's memory faster than a large one, though.

Mansa Musa is worth mentioning here. He trades with everyone, constantly, and thus draws a pile of "You have traded...!" penalties on himself that makes him into the black sheep on the map. Playing neutral is slightly easier with him around, since the DoW's could get assigned to either one of you.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

It all seems quite logical to me - staying aloof and refusing to get involved in other people's wars shouldn't result in everyone hating you. From a gameplay point of view, perhaps it should. From a realism point of view it clearly shouldn't, and no amount of shoddy analogies about Chuck Norris will change that.

Adopting a policy of pacifism, of refusing to fight with anyone, and trading fairly with everyone, shouldn't be the kiss of death for a civilisation. Maybe some warmongering ones will see you as weak for doing it and have less respect for you, and possibly try and take advantage. But other, more peaceful civs should actually see some honour in your stance and respect you more.

Obviously keeping well out of everything is unlikely to win you any firm friends, but also it shouldn't have people gunning for you. How can it offend civs MORE than some other civ rolling over their cities with tanks?

Why should diplomacy be about deciding who it will benefit you most to attack? Why is it reasonable that being nice leads to pariah status? I've had games where I've ended up in the 20th century with 80% of the other civs have closed borders with me and only my large army is stopping them from trying to kill me, and all because I refused to help them all kill each other throughout history.

For the record, I have seen G-Max be rude and obnoxious quite a few times in other threads, and it seems to me that you are all letting THAT colour your response to this thread, rather than just going on what's been said in this thread. I'd say a lot of you have been equally rude and obnoxious in this thread and paid him back with interest. AND managed to miss the point of what he's saying most of the time too. Well done.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

It all seems quite logical to me - staying aloof and refusing to get involved in other people's wars shouldn't result in everyone hating you. From a gameplay point of view, perhaps it should. From a realism point of view it clearly shouldn't, and no amount of shoddy analogies about Chuck Norris will change that.

I completely disagree.
If you refuse to help someone, that should worsen your relations. That is completely fine from a real world standpoint.

And if you refuse to help everyone, than what do you expect.

Adopting a policy of pacifism, of refusing to fight with anyone, and trading fairly with everyone, shouldn't be the kiss of death for a civilisation. Maybe some warmongering ones will see you as weak for doing it and have less respect for you, and possibly try and take advantage. But other, more peaceful civs should actually see some honour in your stance and respect you more.

When two friends ask you to chose one of them. And you flip them off saying: I don't care, both or nether. You can expect them to say nether.

Because they hate each other and would rather lose you than be friends with each other via you. Is that so illogical? (well it is, but that is how life works)

Obviously keeping well out of everything is unlikely to win you any firm friends, but also it shouldn't have people gunning for you. How can it offend civs MORE than some other civ rolling over their cities with tanks?

You can offend someone by refusing to help him.
If you do this enough times it will naturally add up.

I mean, if one of your friends kept asking you for help again and again and again. And you refused each time. What kind of a friend are you? At some point he is bound to realize that.

Why should diplomacy be about deciding who it will benefit you most to attack? Why is it reasonable that being nice leads to pariah status? I've had games where I've ended up in the 20th century with 80% of the other civs have closed borders with me and only my large army is stopping them from trying to kill me, and all because I refused to help them all kill each other throughout history.

If they all hate each other, than you can expect them to want to get you on their side. If you refuse to take sides, than both sides will start thinking that you are working for the other guy.

Keep in mind that more often than not, in real life the mentality of: "He who is not with us is against us." has prevailed.


I mean, if you and some other guy were at war. And a third side was selling weapons to both of you how would you react? Because trading with someone's worst enemy is exactly that. You are trading with him, giving him the money to buy more weapons to fight the other guy.

In fact, I would say that some people would prefer a direct attack to your neutrality.
Because a direct attack is at least honorable and honest.
You are just being a weasel playing both sides.

For the record, I have seen G-Max be rude and obnoxious quite a few times in other threads, and it seems to me that you are all letting THAT colour your response to this thread, rather than just going on what's been said in this thread. I'd say a lot of you have been equally rude and obnoxious in this thread and paid him back with interest. AND managed to miss the point of what he's saying most of the time too. Well done.

We did not miss the point he did.
We (or at least me) do not mind him being rude. We mind him acting like an idiot.

He refuses to acknowledge anything other than his own words.
He refuses to provide any kind of logical response save for: "Oh you are wrong because I say so!"
He calls fallacies in logic where there are none, and he completely ignores his own.
You can't debate with a person that won't have an open mind and an analytical approach to things.

I mean he is not 5 years old so we know he can do better. Hence we feel that he is either trolling or not taking this seriously. And that offends us.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Who said anything about helping friends? Surely trading with them, gifting techs, not invading them etc are all "friendly" or "helpful" to them. I'm just talking about remaining militarily neutral. Not "helping" someone destroy someone else's cities is a million miles from not helping them in times of disaster. I agree that giving the AI some way of guessing the player's actual motives is obviously unworkable, but making it so that someone who refusese to fight in other people's wars ALWAYS ends up being hated by most people, to the point where you can actually become more hated than the people they've actually been invaded by, is just silly.

And selling someone clams isn't the same as trading weapons to them. Even if the happy weapon factory worker becomes more productive because he loves his shellfish diet, no one in their right minds could really accuse you of being complicit in supplying arms to a country by selling them seafood.

 

[Derakon]

You're either with us or against us. There is no middle ground. Black and white.

Those phrases sound familiar? They may be irrational, but they're very human.

 

[Manfred Belheim]

That's the be-all and end-all of human wisdom is it?

 

[G-Max]

"You have traded with our worst enemies!" and "You refused to help us during war-time!" are ********, broken mechanics.

It all seems quite logical to me - staying aloof and refusing to get involved in other people's wars shouldn't result in everyone hating you... and no amount of shoddy analogies about Chuck Norris will change that...

For the record, I have seen G-Max be rude and obnoxious quite a few times in other threads, and it seems to me that you are all letting THAT colour your response to this thread, rather than just going on what's been said in this thread. I'd say a lot of you have been equally rude and obnoxious in this thread and paid him back with interest. AND managed to miss the point of what he's saying most of the time too. Well done.

Where were you guys 3 pages ago?

If you refuse to help someone, that should worsen your relations. That is completely fine from a real world standpoint.

You can offend someone by refusing to help him.
If you do this enough times it will naturally add up.

I mean, if one of your friends kept asking you for help again and again and again. And you refused each time. What kind of a friend are you? At some point he is bound to realize that.

These are all perfectly reasonable points. However, you're neglecting the other side of the coin: if someone never asks for your help, but their enemies do, and you consistently refuse to help their enemies, they should like you more for staying the hell out of their way.

Example: Genghis Khan attacks Gandhi. Gandhi, being a pacifist, does not want to drag any other civs into the war. Khan, however, wants me to join the party on his side. I tell him to piss off. Of course this damages my relationship with Khan, but wouldn't Gandhi respect me more for my pacifism?

Remember: I'm not saying that being neutral all the time should score you zero points with each player. I'm saying that it should score you a net total of zero points from all players combined.

Keep in mind that more often than not, in real life the mentality of: "He who is not with us is against us." has prevailed.

I mean, if you and some other guy were at war. And a third side was selling weapons to both of you how would you react? Because trading with someone's worst enemy is exactly that. You are trading with him, giving him the money to buy more weapons to fight the other guy.

In fact, I would say that some people would prefer a direct attack to your neutrality.
Because a direct attack is at least honorable and honest.
You are just being a weasel playing both sides.

These are all unreasonable points. Again, I'd like to point out Switzerland. A lot of Nazi money was held in Swiss banks during WWII, yet the Allies didn't accuse the Swiss of being Nazi collaborators. We did, however, absolutely despise the Soviets, even though they were actively helping us (!?!).

Also remember that during the Iran-Iraq War, we sold weapons to both sides, and both of them temporarily stopped hating us, or at least didn't seem to care that we were playing both sides.

We did not miss the point he did.

So far, nobody has presented a logically consistent point for me to have missed.

He refuses to acknowledge anything other than his own words.

This is the exact opposite of the truth. I have repeatedly and systematically acknowledged the words of others by obsessively posting point-by-point rebuttals like this one.

He refuses to provide any kind of logical response save for: "Oh you are wrong because I say so!"

Again, this is not even remotely true. My logical responses litter every page of this thread, starting with the OP.

He calls fallacies in logic where there are none, and he completely ignores his own.

Again, the exact opposite of the truth. Not only have there been logical fallacies, but eventually, I started going so far as to point out which statements are logical fallacies, and what kind of logical fallacies they are.

 

[mechaerik]

EDIT:ignore,

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

This is the exact opposite of the truth. I have repeatedly and systematically acknowledged the words of others by obsessively posting point-by-point rebuttals like this one.



Again, this is not even remotely true. My logical responses litter every page of this thread, starting with the OP.



Again, the exact opposite of the truth. Not only have there been logical fallacies, but eventually, I started going so far as to point out which statements are logical fallacies, and what kind of logical fallacies they are.

1: Your rebuttals are nothing more than contradictions put in an intelligent façade, like I am doing right now, except that I am right.

2: Depends on your definition of logical. Under most peoples' definitions, your logic is not logical.

3: See rebuttal No. 1

 

[G-Max]

Didn't you say that you were going to stop posting in this thread?

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

Didn't you say that you were going to stop posting in this thread?

I was gonna, so I ignored you (the ignore feature) but then I saw you post in the c&c forum, and I like posting answers to questions because I'm just like that, and then I realized this was great practice for building resilience to annoyances.

 

[G-Max]

Well, in that case...

1: Your rebuttals are nothing more than contradictions put in an intelligent façade, like I am doing right now, except that I am right.

2: Depends on your definition of logical. Under most peoples' definitions, your logic is not logical.

3: See rebuttal No. 1

1: Many of my rebuttals are, if only for the reason that strawman arguments have been so dominant among my opposition, and there's no real argument against a strawman except to say "I never said that".

2: "Most people" wouldn't know logic if it bit them in the ass.

3: See #1

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

Well, in that case...



1: Many of my rebuttals are, if only for the reason that strawman arguments have been so dominant among my opposition, and there's no real argument against a strawman except to say "I never said that".

2: "Most people" wouldn't know logic if it bit them in the ass.

3: See #1

1: Well, how are we supposed to respond if you keep using the same arguments or types of arguments over and over again? And by arguments, I mean stubborn contradictions.

2:

3: See No. 1

He refuses to acknowledge anything other than his own words.
He refuses to provide any kind of logical response save for: "Oh you are wrong because I say so!"
He calls fallacies in logic where there are none, and he completely ignores his own.
You can't debate with a person that won't have an open mind and an analytical approach to things.

 

[karadoc]

G-Max, we are talking about how a leader of a civilization might feel if you refused to help them in a war, and how they might feel if you refused to hurt them in a way. To me it seems obvious that different people could respond to those refusals in different ways. In particular, I can imagine that some people might be upset by the refusal to help them, but not care about the refusal to hurt them.

You seem to be arguing that the diplomacy points in this situation should be allocated in a zero-sum way, either zero points from both leaders, or +1 and -1. What some of us here are trying to explain is that there are no rules in real life that would force this to be the case. As I said, different people respond to these things in different ways; and apparently there are many people in this thread who have no trouble imagining a leader who wouldn't give credit for refusing to go to war against them. In fact, if I was a leader of a civilization I don't think I'd consider that a plus either!

Isn't that all it takes? A hypothetical leader who would consider a refusal to help them as a negative, but a refusal to attack them as being neutral. It doesn't have to be zero-sum or mathematically pure in any way. It just has to be believable; and I think the fact that many of us have no trouble imagining such a personality suggests that it is believable.

— At the very least, it is believable to us. Apparently it isn't believable to you. But isn't it clear that you and everyone else have already put forward all of your best arguments? You aren't going to be able to convince anyone; and being rude and arrogant and abusive isn't going to help your cause. Carrying on about how you are a master of logic and how anyone who disagrees with you is stupid... do you really think that will help convince anyone? No one is going to believe that you are being logical just because you said so. Just agree to disagree and let the thing go.

 

[G-Max]

1: Well, how are we supposed to respond if you keep using the same arguments or types of arguments over and over again?

You could try a logically consistent counterargument against an argument that I actually made, rather than alternating between logically inconsistent counterarguments against the things that I did say and logically consistent counterarguments against things that I didn't say. Oh look, here's an example:

I can imagine that some people might be upset by the refusal to help them, but not care about the refusal to hurt them.

You seem to be arguing that the diplomacy points in this situation should be allocated in a zero-sum way, either zero points from both leaders, or +1 and -1. What some of us here are trying to explain is that there are no rules in real life that would force this to be the case.

Congratulations! You have posted the first well-thought-out, logically consistent defense of the current diplomacy model.

I still maintain that it's a broken game mechanic that produces radically different results from what we see in real life (again, you fail to address the Switzerland point), but at least now I understand why it's supposed to make sense.

 

[karadoc]

Congratulations! You have posted the first well-thought-out, logically consistent defense of the current diplomacy model.

Well I'm glad I was able to help a little bit. And now hopefully I can help a little bit more, but in a different way.

I'm not sure if you realise this, but your little comment above is likely to be seen as condescending and insulting. It conveys that you see yourself as a kind of high-judge of what is and what isn't logical; it congratulates me for something that should be so commonplace that it doesn't need congratulating; and it implies that most of the other posts in this thread are not well thought out or not logical — including my previous posts. It also hints that you see your own posts and thoughts to be somehow superior.

Are you deliberately trying to aggravate people or is this an accidental thing? I'm just not sure what you hope to achieve.

There's one more thing that I think is important to point out. When you disagree with something you have read on these forums, there are several different possible reasons: maybe you are wrong, or maybe the other person is wrong... those are the obvious two reasons for disagreement. But there are many other possible reasons. For example, maybe it is just a misunderstanding. Maybe the poster didn't articulate their views clearly, or maybe you didn't read it in the way that was intended, and thus the disagreement is just a result of flawed communication. Or maybe the topic is subjective rather than objective and the disagreement has arisen from a deeper difference in values or ideals. My point is that a disagreement is not necessarily a sign that one person is smarter or stupider than the other, and it isn't necessarily a cue to start a personal fight. In general, it's usually best to respond in a way that is less hostile than the person you are responding to, so as not to create a feedback loop of escalating attacks.

That's all I have to say about that. There's no need to respond at all if you don't want to talk about it more, and I hope you don't find this post too insulting!

I still maintain that it's a broken game mechanic that produces radically different results from what we see in real life (again, you fail to address the Switzerland point), but at least now I understand why it's supposed to make sense.

I don't think the game needs to have rules especially designed to support peaceful countries like Switzerland. As I have mentioned, I've played many games of Civ4 in which I haven't been involved in any wars, so Switzerland-like countries can exist in Civ4 with the current rules. I don't think Switzerland needs any special explanation. And from a gameplay point of view, it's probably best that the game doesn't make it too easy to avoid all war. It can still be done, but it takes a bit more effort than simply denying all war requests.

 

[Tristan_C]

These arguments about whether this is "realistic" all suck. But so what? Unless you retain a lot of slaves in real life, size up your neighbors for an axe rush, and believe Ramesses launched a space colony in 1535, real life shouldn't be much of an issue here. The question in Civ4 is how to turn these mechanics to your advantage or, at least, run damage-control to ward off attacks.



So here:

Example: Genghis Khan attacks Gandhi. Gandhi, being a pacifist, does not want to drag any other civs into the war. Khan, however, wants me to join the party on his side. I tell him to piss off. Of course this damages my relationship with Khan, but wouldn't Gandhi respect me more for my pacifism?

In this example your course of action is so obvious and advantageous that I wouldn't see any reason to complain about nuances. Gandhi founds his own religions and has such a high pieceweight penalty that people often refuse OB with him, making him a vessel of pretty-much universal AI hate. This is all purely hypothetical, but if things proceed in a typical fashion, you should literally be standing on tiptoes waiting for Genghis to call you into the war. DoW Gandhi and do nothing, for thousands of years, drawing major "mutual struggle" bonuses from everyone else who DoW's him. Easiest way to keep the psychos off you without flat-out military spam.


I've had this happen in my most recent game, on emperor, in fact. I started in the middle of a continent which I fondly call "The Psychiatric Ward": Genghis, Monty, Cathy, Izzy, Shaka, and JC were all there for the party. But it's been pretty smooth sailing, even amid all these wonderful neighbors of mine. Why? Because there was also Mansa Musa, way off in an easily-defensible corner of the continent! Everyone HATED him. I joined a pile-on that has so far lasted from 2500 BC to 500 AD, marathon, and since no one's actually been able to break Mansa's geographic bottleneck I'm drawing continual "mutual struggle" bonuses from warmongers. Useful.

 

[swilhelm73]

One of the changes I would argue strongly for is that there should be a gradual return to neutral relations presuming no other actions.

It is rather silly that in 1950 you can have -x from "you traded with our worst enemy" when you traded said enemy corn in 2000 BC. And conversely if you and Alexander went to war together against the Persians in 300 BC how much should that effect diplomacy in the modern era?