i signed a PA and earned "-4 you have traded with our worst enemies!" ???

[KMadCandy]

i'm playing a game with permanent alliances enabled. this is only my second PA-enabled game i think. random personalities are on, so whatever this is, it isn't specific to Louis in his normal form since he's not really Louis.

i've been checking every turn lately whether our DP has lasted long enough for him to sign a PA. this year finally the PA option was no longer redlined. after we signed it, i got a -4 for "you have traded with our worst enemies!" that i was sure hadn't been there before! so i reloaded the previous year to be 100% sure and it truly wasn't.

this is his attitude in year 1902, prior to signing the PA. PA was not redlined any more, for the very first time.

i immediately signed him up for the PA. open borders and the defensive pact were cancelled. that makes sense, we're the same team now so we don't need those agreements, and those diplomatic modifiers go away. so does the years of peace; we by definition have to be at peace now.

this is the same year, immediately after signing the PA. the yellow line on the foreign advisor screen shows that we're a team now. taking this screenshot is all i have done in the game after signing the PA. i haven't talked to any other leaders and i haven't traded with anyone that i wasn't trading with before.

this makes no sense to me

i know that a team situation (PAs, vassals, or teams you set up at the start of the game) does influence interactions and relationships in ways that aren't visible on the screen. their team evaluates their feeling as a whole towards your team as a whole when deciding whether to trade with you, etc. so that can result in you (meaning your team) being someone's worst enemy when they say that they're Pleased or Friendly with you (meaning you personally), because you have a vassal or two that they really don't like, or their vassals don't like you. that can even cause your own Friendly vassals to redline techs as "we just don't like you enough", in cases where you have another vassal that they don't along with. if your entire team isn't friendly with the entire other team (or itself), then the word "Friendly" on the top of the screen is kind of misleading. that refers to you personally, but all the redlines mean "your team" when they say you, and/or "our team" when they say "we", in redlines such as "we just don't like you enough".

but Louis has no vassals and i have no vassals. so i am completely at a loss about how i suddenly got slapped with that -4 traded worst enemies, when i started no new trades at all. if that had been there all along, i'm not sure he'd have reached Friendly to sign the PA even with the OB/DP/years of peace + modifiers still in place.

it doesn't really matter, since the PA is, well, permanent. so he can't break it even if i go around making different people his new worst enemy one after the other, and trading with all of them on purpose. but i am very curious and i just can't come up with any theories. does anybody know what's going on here?

edit: maybe his worst enemy changed when i was put on the team? but i don't see why it would, since i'm not an AI. as far as i know, his worst enemy would be based on how he, and his AI teammates, feel about the other AIs (or me). i don't imagine it would be impacted by how i would in theory feel towards the "enemies" if i were an AI rather than the human player. and i didn't think it was impacted by how the other guys felt towards louis. i mean i've had things like (names pulled out of hat but the cases have happened) cathy demand i cancel trades with peter, when cathy's annoyed with peter but peter's only cautious with cathy. by definition cathy can't be peter's worst enemy if he's just at "cautious" towards her.

louis's worst enemy before we had the PA was qin. every time i talked to him he encouraged me to stop trading with him. mind you, i'd canceled trades with qin after louis demanded that i do so 56 years earlier, and qin was still refusing to talk to me. louis was annoyed with qin and with cyrus, but qin was his worst enemy and he told me so directly.

i was trading with cyrus, who louis was also annoyed with (but they have only one worst enemy at a time). i wondered about the "did his worst enemy change when i signed on?" theory and redid the sequence, at first clicking on louis a zillion times before signing the PA, but he never did the "we suggest you stop trading with..." anybody speech at all. then i cancelled the trade with cyrus before signing the PA with louis. and i still got the -4 tho. so i am still in the dark!

 

[darkkai64]

that is..... scary and weird

 

[elsmurpho]

hmmm maybe he traded with his worst enemy and since your on th same team blames you for when he traded with his worst enemy thats the only thing i can think of

 

[Tatran]

then i cancelled the trade with cyrus before signing the PA with louis. and i still got the -4 tho.!

By cancelling OB you won't get rid of the +4 trade relations with Cyrus you have earned earlier.
Sometimes it decays in time, but in most cases you won't get rid of the +4/-4 trade relations during the whole game.

 

[KMadCandy]

elsmurpho i did wonder about that. he's been telling me not to trade with qin for years, but he's trading qin for deer right now. i mean the guy's not exactly sane 100% of the time even when he is completely himself .

By cancelling OB you won't get rid of the +4 trade relations with Cyrus you have earned earlier.
Sometimes it decays in time, but in most cases you won't get rid of the +4/-4 trade relations during the whole game.

1) i didn't have +4 fair/forthright with cyrus. i didn't have + years of resources supplied with cyrus. cyrus was annoyed with me. i was selling him hit musicals to try to get him to like me, because that was safe. that was safe because...

2) at the time i was selling them, he wasn't louis's worst enemy. up until the time that louis signed the PA, louis repeatedly encouraged me to stop (even tho i already wasn't, so i had nothing to stop!) trading with qin. i mean, i'd been working towards getting a PA with louis for years, i kept an eye on who his worst enemy was. i did the "click his 80 times until he says "we encourage you to stop trading with XYA" thing, all of that. from all indicators that i can see, and i studied everything as closely as i know how, i can guarantee that if cyrus became louis worst enemy, it happened at the time that we signed the PA.

cyrus was annoyed with me. i didn't have +4 f/f with cyrus, and i didn't have -4 you have traded with our worst enemies with louis until after i signed the DP, as the screenshots show. qin was most definitely the worst enemy of the 3 powerful civs that still mattered. all three of them gave me the "stop trading with qin" speech. over and over and over .

so then thinking maybe it was the cyrus thing, i cancelled that resource deal and then signed the PA. same exact thing, instant -4 you have traded with our worst enemies. now i click and click on louis and he won't give me that random greeting of "we encourage you to stop trading with ... ". maybe they never give you that message once you're in a PA, i don't know, i don't play with them on.

but i really can't figure out what the heck is going on here. i can't think of anything except maybe a vassal-type situation causing an instant -4 modifier when we join up as permanent friends . but neither of us had any vassals.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Post the save?

 

[KMadCandy]

it's actually a mod, an event from another board that doesn't end until next month. so i'd have to get clearance from the head monkey over there . if he doesn't mind me posting the save, would you be willing to go to the trouble to look at the save even knowing it's a mod? very simple mod, changes to .xml only, the player's leader traits/starting buildings/UUs, and some clever dialogue for the AIs, nothing that would impact gameplay in bizarre ways like this as far as i can figure! specific worldbuildered map, OCC, but no python/coding funky stuff.

 

[KMadCandy]

i'm now guessing that Louis is assigning himself -4 for trading with his own worst enemy and is reflecting that on me since he's in a team. but it looks like he signed a new resource trade deal with his own worst enemy !

checking saves before the PA:
in 1894 Louis is trading his cow to Qin for Qin's deer. also in 1894, when i talk to Louis, he tells me "We would encourage you to stop trading with our bitter enemy - Qin Shi Huang!"

the AI will redline techs and resources to me as "We will never trade with you, our worst enemy!" but i guess they will sign trade deals with their own AI worst enemies, or at least not cancel them if the AI changes to become their worst enemy? that trade is semi-recent, in the 1872 save it's there, but "cancel trades with QSH" isn't an option which i think means it was less than 10 years old back then. turns are 2 years long at this stage, epic normal speed game btw.

still befuddled. i'm going to play the actual game forward, and for now quit trying to figure out this weirdo convoluted past. if i get permission to upload the mod you'd need to look at the save to try to help anyone interested/confused/smart enough to sort it all out, i'll do that. thanks folks!

 

[Gooblah]

it doesn't really matter, since PAs can't be cancelled, and the leaders will always be friendly..

 

[Melchizedek]

What was Qin's attitude toward you when you signed the PA with Louis? Is it possible that Cyrus' attitude toward you was worse than Qin's? If so, maybe Cyrus suddenly became Louis' worst enemy because he was more ill-disposed toward Louis' new pact brother--namely, you.

 

[KMadCandy]

What was Qin's attitude toward you when you signed the PA with Louis? Is it possible that Cyrus' attitude toward you was worse than Qin's? If so, maybe Cyrus suddenly became Louis' worst enemy because he was more ill-disposed toward Louis' new pact brother--namely, you.

to the best of my knowledge, Louis's worst enemy is whoever HE hates the most. if cyrus loves him and wants to marry him, but he thinks cyrus is the scum of the earth, then cyrus will be his worst enemy. it absolutely doesn't matter what cyrus thinks.

but in fact qin disliked me more than cyrus did, same as qin disliked louis more than cyrus disliked louis.

@Gooblah:"it doesn't really matter, since PAs can't be cancelled, and the leaders will always be friendly.."

yeah i said that in the first post but i still wonder what the heck is going on, it seems really odd!

 

[Melchizedek]

to the best of my knowledge, Louis's worst enemy is whoever HE hates the most...

Yeah, but the question is whether or not another player's attitude toward you can affect Louis' opinion of that player. You know that Louis' opinion of you can be affected by your relationship with another player, so it seems reasonable to suppose it might work the other way around. I don't know that this is the case, but it's the only explanation that comes to mind.

 

[PimpyMicPimp]

I usually play with PAs, and every single one I have ever signed I end up with this out of the blue! It's bizzare, but makes no difference Once they sign, you can't piss them off at all.

 

[KMadCandy]

I usually play with PAs, and every single one I have ever signed I end up with this out of the blue! It's bizzare, but makes no difference Once they sign, you can't piss them off at all.

well at least now i know it wasn't just me . thanks! sure does look weird, and sure does make me glad it's permanent, with all the "omg dude, when are you going to sign this freaking thing?!?!" turns i went thru to get it *giggle*.