First impression of you

[Piruparka]

What is this diplomatic modifier about? Almost everybody has a bad first impression of me, so they turn unhappy within two turns after meeting. Any ideas on this?

 

[Siptah]

I think it is indeed random.

 

[Katakanja]

Almost everybody has a bad first impression of me

It's ok, we like you!

 

[Siptah]

It's ok, we like you!

Yes, as a member of this community and for leaking the pre-release let's play before schedule. I still remember that awesome Pericles starting location.

 

[bbbt]

I've never figured it out either. I wonder if it's influenced by difficulty level? But yeah it's almost always negative for me as well.

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

One of the streamers ( I can't recall which one) said he heard it depends if you meet them with a military unit or a scout. Haven't confirmed or tested this

 

[Leyrann]

It's a random starting modifier. Average value seems to depend on difficulty level, so on the level most people here play it's (nearly) always negative.

 

[Piruparka]

Yes, as a member of this community and for leaking the pre-release let's play before schedule. I still remember that awesome Pericles starting location.

Haha, I hoped you had forgotten. That was a shi**y day, I tell ya.

 

[MantaRevan]

One of the streamers ( I can't recall which one) said he heard it depends if you meet them with a military unit or a scout. Haven't confirmed or tested this

I am very interested in if this is true or not. It would certainly shake up the early build order.

 

[Sporally]

I just saw a stream

(go to 7:10) where it was mentioned that the type of unit does have an impact on the first impression modifier. Has anyone ever confirmed it or is it just from your experience?
Also - many argue that it is totally random. Doesn't different civs have different first impressions typically or is all that also differently from game to game? I could imagine that Macedonia would most often have a bad first impression compared to for instance India.

 

[Victoria]

I will test the unit type, but my experiences indicate no difference, I used to use scouts a lot and get lots of bad ones on deity.
I have also looked at different leaders a bit amd it does not seem to matter but will check more

First impressions are

A modifier that affects diplomacy to give variation to a leader at the beginning of a game, and to be fair we all make first impressions of people that can be wrong

More importantly it makes diplomacy harder at higher levels and easier at lower ones, initially

I think its

Deity -2 to -8
Immortal -1 to -7
Emperor 0 a -6
King1 to -5
Prince 2 to -4

And so on.

I have tested this and it degrades 1 point per 10 turns

 

[Sporally]

Thank you. This is some interesting information. I guess it also depends on the game speed, but I guess we're talking standard game speed.

 

[Victoria]

Yes, I only play standard, size, speed, continents.
This decay is the same on all difficulties
First impressions on a high level are a pain which is why early empire and its open borders is very useful. Also an early joint war, do not stand there and let people joint war you, joint war someone else for no negative affect and a +5 with that civ for the joint war that looks like it decays a point every 40 turns... At least the first point decays that slowly... This also may explain why you get joint warred a lot, its the civs making better friends with each other.
Also it looks like a civ will not joint war you if neutral, it may not even declare if neutral, I dunno, makes sense. So trade that cotton that has no use for 40 odd turns anyway.... That trade sadly decays very fast and seems random in amount but hell, anything to counteract those bad first impressions.
I might add this is what is important on emp-dei early game. It is designed so a skilled player can maniplulate what happens to a degree rather than saying "everyone hates me so I am going to kill them all".... Or "diplomacy is broken"....things I see way too often in the forums. Firaxis has been manipulating diplomacy in all patches to try and get us to play it properly, I'm trying to learn it because it does seem to really help and also is a different perpective to play that keeps things interesting and complex

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

I just saw a stream

(go to 7:10) where it was mentioned that the type of unit does have an impact on the first impression modifier. Has anyone ever confirmed it or is it just from your experience?
Also - many argue that it is totally random. Doesn't different civs have different first impressions typically or is all that also differently from game to game? I could imagine that Macedonia would most often have a bad first impression compared to for instance India.

I mentioned this earlier, but after some further play testing it appears that Hadrian has some bad information. It seems to be totally random.

 

[Victoria]

You soon start realising many youtubers just make it up as they go along

 

[Leyrann]

You soon start realising many youtubers just make it up as they go along

I suppose it's the same everywhere. I'm quite often astounded when I watch a league of legends youtuber, typically far better than I am, and how they sometimes don't know basic stuff.

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

There's only a couple I have really learned anything from. Marbozir and FilthyRobot. I'll check out @MadDjinn soon

 

[isau]

I haven't tested extensively, but here is what I believe to be true about the "first impression" modifier.

• The name of the modifier in the database is STANDARD_DIPLOMACY_RANDOM
• This modifier has an argument called "Difficulty Offset" with an unusual type: "LinearScaleFromDefaultHandicap." It starts at 0 and is one of the rare ModifierArguments with something in the "Extra" field (a value of -1). I believe this means that for each difficulty level you increase, the value gets offset by -1.
• It appears to decay at a rate of -1 every 5 turns (unsure if this is affected by gamespeed)

Unknown:

• The actual random range of the roll. I just know that it appears to be offset by difficulty. A dedicated tester could probably find out more.

 

[MaximusPlatypus]

I've looked at about 20 "meetings" since this thread came up, (regardless if it's a military unit, civilian unit, I met them in the field, they met me near my city, etc etc) the range on Deity is always between -2 and -10. Obviously a small sample and not a scientific study, just reporting my observations

 

[Victoria]

-10? Never seen that, will have to run some start/reveal alls. Best way to get a good sample
@isau
The decay in my testing on emperor shows 10 turns for every civ so it may not be the same , or may be modifies from those settings however the randomizer ... If it has a range of 6 fits.
Maybe standard speed is x2 for decay