Japan and Xenophobia

T

tmarcl

Prince
Joined
Nov 11, 2001
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382
Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Tokugawa never gives Open Borders? In every single game I've played, Tokugawa never likes me enough to give me Open Borders. Every other civ is banging down my door as soon as I get Writing, but with Tokugawa, I could offer him all my gold, resources, cities and techs, and he still won't sign Open Borders.

While this post is a bit rantish, I am serious with the question.

Marc
 
If the Open Borders option is red, that just means Tokugawa is annoyed with you for some reason. As long as the option is in white, I have been able to get open borders with every leader.
 
I've had open borders with TOkugawa ... but it can be hard to maintain for any length of time. He's essentially the anti-social sort and typically doesn't get along with many people ... including the AI :p
 
It's a nice little historical trait; the Japanese were fairly standoffish through a lot of their history. Tokogawa also hoards his techs in my games; he's almost as bad as Alexander, who I'm really starting to dislike.
 
In my current game, I'm Tokugawa and the leader that's hoarding techs is Victoria. She won't trade a single tech to me. Maybe it's because she's in second place.
 
Well, he may be isolationist, but you can't complain he lacks personality :)
 
I've had open borders with Tokugawa for about 2000 years in my current game. He's really been a pain when it comes to trading though.
 
I can understand him being isolationist when he's on his own continent/island, but it just seems kind of silly to me when he can be in the middle of 4 other civs and still not want to trade or open borders with any of them.
 
Open Borders with him is possible, and I've even had games in which he offered the deal to me. I'm not sure what the diplomatic situation was with him, but I never agreed to go to war with him, and we certainly never shared the same religion. I may have givin in to pleas for help in free tech though, largely because at the time I wasn't in the position to risk war with anyone.
The deal ended as soon as I felt like going to war with him.

In another game, however, he was completely uncooperative, even when I did help him, and gave him free resources. Never wanted to trade or open borders, not ever. I eventually destroyed him, because I wanted to convert his cities to the three religions whose shrines I possessed. Gained a fourth religious shrine from that war.

I don't play on a very high difficulty. The money I was making from spamming four(and later five) religions all over my empire and people I had open borders with, was absolutely obscene.
 
In my current game I have Open Borders with Tokugawa as well as a defensive pact (with 2 periods where it wasn´t in action because of wars, but afterwards it got immediately redeclared ;) )

But many of the other AI leaders don´t seem to like Tokugawa.
 
The LeaderHeadInfos xml file dictates the leaders personalities.
One of the statistics in the file is the "OpenBordersRefuseAttitudeThreshold". For most leaders this is set to "Annoyed" or even "Furious" but Edo Tokugawa is set to "Cautious". Meaning he will always refuse open borders unless cautious or better. Leaders like Asoka and Elizabeth will sign open borders even when furious.
There's also a value for open borders in the statistic for "ContactRand" (I think this effects the likelyhood of the leader initiating contact). For all leaders this is set to 20 exept Edo who has it set to 80.
Personally I think this is one of the features that makes each game so unique. I wish they had even more variable/extreme personalities for the various leaders.
 
I got open borders in my latest cultural victory game with him pretty early and then flodded him with christian missonaries, when he converted to christianity it was fairly easy to keep the borders open.

however, when I switched to Free Religion (situation was getting really bad with the stronger AIS that were buddhism and constantly annoyed wtih me) to lose the relationship penalty with them he dropped OBs after a few turns and declared war after a few more. Luckily I was expecting this or I would have lost a city, maybe two, to his 15 unit army instantly popping in my territory.
Since I was filthy rich from religion / Cottage spam I switched to uni suffrage and rushbuilt a tank/bomber army and took him out =)

the key really is to be on good terms with him so you can get OBs, gift a few cheap techs, maybe share some of his civ forms, and once you're in, convert him.
 
In every game I've been in with Tokugawa, I have never had open borders with him. Not once. I can give him free resources or money, but he will never give back. And usually he starts demanding things from me early on... but on the other hand, I don't think I've ever fought a war with him, either. :crazyeye:
 
Personally, I always play with random AI personalities selected.

I just don't like having pre-knowledge of what my opponents' strategies might be. For me, this keeps the game more exciting. (I never look at the Settings screen either, for similar reasons).

If my civilization is stumbling around discovering the world, and I meet another leader for the first time, why should I instantly be able to think "oh-ho, it's Tokugawa, I better dash across this strip of land and found a city before his borders cut me off, because I know he'll be less likely to open borders with me"?

It's very nice to have that option in there. Tokugawa never signs OB? Randomise him, and then try and suss out what sort of man you are facing THIS game.

"Oh look, it's Montezuma, well, gosh, I'm going to need to pump up my defences a bit then..."

Versus

"Hey, so, what's this Monty chap like? Oooh, a free tech? What a nice guy"

:)

Happy civing, people :)
 
Is someone going to tell me now that random personalities ONLY affects traits? :)
 
kung-fu-stu said:
The LeaderHeadInfos xml file dictates the leaders personalities.
One of the statistics in the file is the "OpenBordersRefuseAttitudeThreshold". For most leaders this is set to "Annoyed" or even "Furious" but Edo Tokugawa is set to "Cautious". Meaning he will always refuse open borders unless cautious or better. Leaders like Asoka and Elizabeth will sign open borders even when furious.
There's also a value for open borders in the statistic for "ContactRand" (I think this effects the likelyhood of the leader initiating contact). For all leaders this is set to 20 exept Edo who has it set to 80.
Personally I think this is one of the features that makes each game so unique. I wish they had even more variable/extreme personalities for the various leaders.
Click to expand...

Ooh. Thank you, kung-fu :)

Marc
 
As said above, it's historically accurate. Japan was very isolationist during the reign of the Tokugawas.
 
Lord_Iggy said:
As said above, it's historically accurate. Japan was very isolationist during the reign of the Tokugawas.
Click to expand...

Ditto that.

Historical accuracy is also why Isabella is hostile towards all of different faith.
 
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