I think it kinda sucks that your relations with other civs are so heavily dependant on grievances generated from others, even, as many have pointed out, against civs that they have yet to meet. The effects of these are definitely felt most in a religious/domination game, due to the massive amounts of grievances you can potentially generate. While the latter makes sense, and the former is somewhat understandable, even in say, a tourism game, if you razed someone's city early on because you wanted to settle there or something, you'll practically have negative relations with everyone else for the rest of the game, so much so that it might be better to simply remove said civ from the game (along with their grievances) entirely, so as to secure better diplomatic relations with the rest.
That being said, I think it's also too easy to simply renew friendships and alliances the turn they expire, circumventing the negative relations penalty from grievances and securing another 30 turns of safety, indefinitely. One change that I'd like to see is for friendships to be available only after 5 turns, after they expire, so as the world has a chance to change their opinions of you if you do/did something egregious.
By disabling the ability to quickly re-establish alliances, excess grievances generated may contribute dozens of negative relations points which would quickly lead to the breaking down of relations between civs, which is why I think adding/changing several diplomatic and militaristic policy cards to this end is quite suitable, representing a way to devote your resources to improve and repair diplomatic relations with other players.
That being said, I think it's also too easy to simply renew friendships and alliances the turn they expire, circumventing the negative relations penalty from grievances and securing another 30 turns of safety, indefinitely. One change that I'd like to see is for friendships to be available only after 5 turns, after they expire, so as the world has a chance to change their opinions of you if you do/did something egregious.
By disabling the ability to quickly re-establish alliances, excess grievances generated may contribute dozens of negative relations points which would quickly lead to the breaking down of relations between civs, which is why I think adding/changing several diplomatic and militaristic policy cards to this end is quite suitable, representing a way to devote your resources to improve and repair diplomatic relations with other players.
- Solidarity (Diplomatic): Doubles the effects of alliances, embassies and trade routes on relations
By sacrificing a diplomatic policy slot, you are able to essentially gain 30 or so positive relation points, which allows you to keep good relations for some time, so long as you don't go overboard on conquests or religious conversion too fast. In addition, this then makes it worth it to send favourable trade deals (+10), which gives you even more breathing room to re-establish alliances.
- Foreign Relations (Diplomatic): Grievances decay at an additional 1/turn per level of diplomatic visibility, 2/turn for allies
Losing a diplomatic policy slot in this case helps you get away with religiously converting allies, though it would cost you Wisselbankin or Merchant Confederation, which you'd probably be using at the time.
- War Accords (Militaristic): -4 combat strength on all units, generate half as much grievances and lose less population when capturing a city
Having your troops abide by established humanitarian rules of warfare reduces their efficiency, but will be seen as less atrocious. More merciful treatment of civilians also means less population is lost when a city is captured.
- Propaganda (Militaristic): In addition, grievances against civilisations you are at war with will drain at a reduced rate.
The excessive amounts of militaristic policy slots from most T3 governments would be put to better use.
