ConShonnery
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 18, 2018
- Messages
- 17
^ Really, I'm not very good at it. I try to play reasonably peaceful and the whole continent ends at war with me.
In my current game as Germany, I started on a continent with Mayans, Shoshone, America, and Carthage. As this is one of the things I know I need to get better at, I decided to play with Transparent Diplomacy so I could actually know when I made mistakes and such.
Shoshone picked Progress like me and didn't share a border, so I think I'll try to befriend them. Even get a DoF and research agreement at some point! Great. Then a few turns later, they ask me to join them in a war against the Mayans. Well, I'm not really into that because I don't want to get warmonger penalties, so I say no: -30 relationship because my recent diplomatic actions disappoint them. That's enough to entirely cancel out the DoF.
Often when I say no to going to war, the AI ends up not going to war. But this time they did, and I didn't want them to swallow up the Mayan empire and then snowball military with the extra production, and I figured I could get some points back for fighting against a common foe. So I DoW on the Mayans and help Shoshone out, and I take 1 city and leave the rest of them. But they fail to take any cities, and the penalty for my warmongering (-18, I think it was) is worse than fighting against a common foe (+15). PLUS I now get the territorial disputes penalty because my captured city barely touches a Shoshone one: -25. So now they hate me even more.
By the time our DoF expires, I still have a diplomatic actions penalty (notably smaller), warmongering penalty, and the territory penalty, but the bonus for fighting a common foe has faded into negligible or gone entirely, so now I'm REALLY negative. Plus we are apparently fighting over the city state that is nowhere near them and in the corner of my empire, so another -30 points. Anyway now they are basically hostile and I have no chance of salvaging it, eventually they and the Mayans DoW me.
I also get modifiers such as "Your behavior infuriates them!" and "You are competing with them, and they know it!" which give HUGE negative modifiers and do not seem to ever dwindle.
So I guess my question is -- which of these things should I have done differently, and what else should I have done? The only "active" thing that I can seem to do to improve relationship with somebody is give them gifts under the "trade partners" banner, which nets me about 1 pt GPT of value, and fades pretty rapidly -- barely seems worth it. If the trades are neutral/fair such as a luxury for equivalent GPT, like I had with all of the civs, the trade partners bonus tends to be very small (10 or less). Plus there are a lot of things that will just happen (You are competing for Wonders! -15 pts) that I have no idea about or control over unless I *only* go for Wonders that no one else has possibly unlocked.
I would love any advice, thanks in advance.
In my current game as Germany, I started on a continent with Mayans, Shoshone, America, and Carthage. As this is one of the things I know I need to get better at, I decided to play with Transparent Diplomacy so I could actually know when I made mistakes and such.
Shoshone picked Progress like me and didn't share a border, so I think I'll try to befriend them. Even get a DoF and research agreement at some point! Great. Then a few turns later, they ask me to join them in a war against the Mayans. Well, I'm not really into that because I don't want to get warmonger penalties, so I say no: -30 relationship because my recent diplomatic actions disappoint them. That's enough to entirely cancel out the DoF.
Often when I say no to going to war, the AI ends up not going to war. But this time they did, and I didn't want them to swallow up the Mayan empire and then snowball military with the extra production, and I figured I could get some points back for fighting against a common foe. So I DoW on the Mayans and help Shoshone out, and I take 1 city and leave the rest of them. But they fail to take any cities, and the penalty for my warmongering (-18, I think it was) is worse than fighting against a common foe (+15). PLUS I now get the territorial disputes penalty because my captured city barely touches a Shoshone one: -25. So now they hate me even more.
By the time our DoF expires, I still have a diplomatic actions penalty (notably smaller), warmongering penalty, and the territory penalty, but the bonus for fighting a common foe has faded into negligible or gone entirely, so now I'm REALLY negative. Plus we are apparently fighting over the city state that is nowhere near them and in the corner of my empire, so another -30 points. Anyway now they are basically hostile and I have no chance of salvaging it, eventually they and the Mayans DoW me.
I also get modifiers such as "Your behavior infuriates them!" and "You are competing with them, and they know it!" which give HUGE negative modifiers and do not seem to ever dwindle.
So I guess my question is -- which of these things should I have done differently, and what else should I have done? The only "active" thing that I can seem to do to improve relationship with somebody is give them gifts under the "trade partners" banner, which nets me about 1 pt GPT of value, and fades pretty rapidly -- barely seems worth it. If the trades are neutral/fair such as a luxury for equivalent GPT, like I had with all of the civs, the trade partners bonus tends to be very small (10 or less). Plus there are a lot of things that will just happen (You are competing for Wonders! -15 pts) that I have no idea about or control over unless I *only* go for Wonders that no one else has possibly unlocked.
I would love any advice, thanks in advance.
