List of diplomacy bugs

[sanchopanda]

There are many diplomacy bugs which do not only feel wrong, but are very annoying because of their impact on the game. I made a list of the bugs I encountered so far:

- Harald Hardrada said that he likes my fleet although I had neither a ship nor a harbor. Maybe he had no naval unit, too? Still weird. Map was Pangaea.

- I converted an English city to my religion, promised to stop converting their cities, converted one of my own cities (it had no religion and was far away from England) and I got a denouncement because I broke my promise.

- An enemy Apostle killed itself in a suicide mission and Egypt blames me for converting one of her cities. Not only that it wasn't me, all of her cities were already converted (by someone else having my religion).

- Mvemba á Nzinga accuses me to not fight against the barbarians in my territory. I did nothing else but fighting barbarians and there were no barbarian camps or units left. A few rounds later he said that he likes me for killing those barbarians - I did not kill a single unit. This pattern repeated multiple times.

- Mvemba á Nzinga is mad again because I don't convert his cities to my religion the same round I found it.

- Egypt dislikes me spreading my religion to their cities. All of their cities had no religion and there was no Great Prophet left. Maybe they focused on religion but failed to get one? Very annoying because it stops me from converting the cities (we were good friends).

- Egypt calls me weak, I build one more unit and they call me mighty. The trigger should not be an exact number, that feels just odd.

- England notices my near citits and my strong military - I had no unit near her territory and all my cities were 27+ hexes away. That's everything else but near.

- Some AI settles next to one of my cities and wants me to move my troops away from their borders. They were just guarding MY borders and there is no way I will move them. The AI should ignore all units that are within my own territory.

- Got a notification (right side of the screen) that my friendship with Egypt has to be renewed. Egypt don't want to be my friend anymore. Next turn they ask me for friendship. Does not feel right. Maybe just some overlapping?

- AI does not want to trade Open Border vs. Open Border. Clicking "What would you give me" results in the exact same deal and the AI accepts.

- After a joined war the allied AI either denounces me or I get a warmonger penalty. That's just crazy, they fought at my side! It does not matter who asked for the joined war, me or them.

Hope those will be fixed in the near future.

 

[sanchopanda]

Just found another bug. If you convert a previously conquered city to your religion, the current and the previous leader are mad at you (if both have their own religion)...

 

[Takfloyd]

Here's some more severe diplomacy bugs:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/ai-diplomacy-deals-is-broken.602142/

There's a consistently reproducible way to make the AI give you ALL their stuff in exchange for 1 gold literally any time you want.

 

[Pnothy]

I sent a delegation to the Greeks. Next turn, my informant told me that the Indians (which would be me) sent a delegation to the Greeks. No kidding

A minor flaw, I smiled when it came by.

 

[sanchopanda]

Just got my next bug. Egypt and I were friends the from the start of the game, had an active alliance, active open borders, an active defensive pact, multiple trade routes and some other trades. The current diplomacy points were +65/-8. And suddenly she declares war at me for no reason. Even while at war my diplomacy points were still very positive. My military is good and I am not going to win the game. So there are no reasons for this war, this is just randomness and pure frustration. Civ 5 had the exact same problem in the vanilla version. In addition to that her units were not upgraded, although she had the tech to upgrade their crossbows. No question she would loose that war.

Besides that there is another bug with open borders. There was a time when we had no open borders for a few rounds and their units were still in my territory while I could not walk on her territory. They did not move and blocked everything in my empire.

And there is another bug with AI units that gets stuck. There is an Egypt Great Admiral which is stuck on the same tile since the start of the game - it's still there, as if she had forgotten that unit. There is an Egypt knight inside my encampment that is stuck there although the declared war on me. And there were multiple times crowds of units (England and Egypt) that did not move for 20-30 turns. Well they started moving when I used my battle ships

 

[Sascha77]

- Egypt calls me weak, I build one more unit and they call me mighty. The trigger should not be an exact number, that feels just odd.

Same thing happened to me with Harald. I had one or two ships, which he called "a weak navy". Then I build one more ship and all of a sudden he's impressed by my "mighty navy" ..

No idea how the game calculates this. Do you need to have more ships than him? A certain advantage in navy strength over him? A certain navy strength relative to your tech-status/current era?

S.

 

[sanchopanda]

Do you need to have more ships than him?

I think that the tech progression does play role, advanced units seems to have a higher value for whatever calculation is used. Maybe the calculation is based on their attack power? But since you both are progressing in the tech tree, it's not relevant in the long term. It's mostly the number of units and that's why this can change from one turn to the next. It's the same with Egypt's agenda and with the commercial agenda.

 

[krc]

- I converted an English city to my religion, promised to stop converting their cities, converted one of my own cities (it had no religion and was far away from England) and I got a denouncement because I broke my promise.

This is reproducible. Apparently, the AI thinks you are promising to stop converting _any_ city anywhere (including city states, your own cities, or cities if a different AI. If that's supposed to be the case, then I won't likely ever make sucha promise....

 

[Sascha77]

Not just bugs/weird behavior here but also some wishes for new/expanded features:

- AI will agree to insanely disadvantageous deals for them.

- AI start whining about their agendas way too early. Like Congo who will complain about me not spreading my religion to him, two turns after I founded it. Money-/income-based disapprovals come at times when I'm making lots of money and/or have a good amount of gold in the bank. 350 Gold and 20 - 30 GPT ain't "heading toward bankruptcy" in my book.

- AI lacks a "begging-dialogue". As in Civ V where they said something like "Unfortunately, things aren't going well over here .." when they were trying to mooch stuff off you. In VI they simply say "what can I do for you?" when they beg for money/resources.

- Some AI (I'm looking at you, Gorgo) will *always* suggest deals on the first turn they discover you, then declare war on the very next turn. Gorgo followed this procedure to the letter in all three games I had her in.

- Diplomacy screen needs a counter/status-display for denouncements. Meaning I want to be able to see at a glance how long ago someone denounced me/I denounced him and how long the denouncement will still carry weight.

- Would be nice to see tech-trading (or at least "boost-trading") make a comeback. Maybe not all the way through the game. Really late techs are just too complex to be able to share them instantly, IMO. But stuff up until and including, say, the Renaissance should be fair game.

- Diplomacy-screen doesn't seem to have an option to make AI-players declare war on other players (as in Civ IV/V). All I can find so far is the "joint war"-option, but I'm the kind of bastard who likes to get other people to do my fighting for me ..

- Diplo-screen generally needs more info. How many turns until I can peace out? Why are certain dialogue-options missing sometimes? Why can't I also denounce the AI for specific reasons?

Oh, and yes: Where's my friggin diplomacy-overview / deal history? How can a feature like that be missing?


S.

 

[Sascha77]

Update:
Started a new game on Emperor/Marathon as Pericles. Everyone and their grandma are constantly declaring on me (including Civs that haven't met me ... again). But that's not the point.

The point is this: Trajan (who is between wars/denouncements with me for some reason, lol) just sent a settler towards my lands. I had plenty of military units in the settler's path since I was heading that way to clear a barb encampment. And since he's been such a little biatch this game, I decided to DOW to grab his settler. However: I can't declare on him for some reason - the "declare war"-button is missing. So I denounced him. But that didn't do anything. The diplomacy-screen listed him as "denounced for 30 turns", and still no DOW-button. So I waited a few turns and now (3 or 4 turns later), our relationship is listed as "unfriendly" in the diplomacy-screen, but when I hover over his portrait on the main-screen it still says "denounced". Still no DOW-button, though. What am I missing? Are there automatic, but "undocumented" periods of non-aggression after a peace-deal (like in Civ V)?

I'm currently in the classical era and on Oligarchy.

S.

 

[Agent327]

"Your delegate X reports that Greece is expanding, adding the settlement Berlin." Seen this twice, so it's not a glitch. What it means, however, is that Greece conquered Berlin. (A few turns after Greece and Germany sign peace, so yes, they were at war.)

- Got a notification (right side of the screen) that my friendship with Egypt has to be renewed. Egypt don't want to be my friend anymore. Next turn they ask me for friendship. Does not feel right. Maybe just some overlapping?

It depends. If they asked for the friendship declaration (I've noticed), they will offer to renew (or not), but not accept your proposal. Not necessarily a bug. (Although it does seem inconsistent.)

 

[Sascha77]

- Got a notification (right side of the screen) that my friendship with Egypt has to be renewed. Egypt don't want to be my friend anymore. Next turn they ask me for friendship. Does not feel right. Maybe just some overlapping?

I have yet to get the AI to declare friendship when I ask them to. So far, the process has been as follows:
1. AI ask me for DoF, I agree.
2. Friendship ends, relationship is still super-positive
3. So I try to renew, but AI will turn me down.
4. Two or three turns later the AI player will ask me for DoF again.

S.

 

[Deaga]

I know it's possible to have them agree to your friendship proposal, as I did that a few times in some games. But most of the time it really goes as you've said, they refuse your offer and then offer you friendship on their next turn. >_>

 

[Estoqua]

It's also impossible to prolong friendship, when you are allied, which is kind of stupid, since you might end up getting a DoW right after the alliance ended, for joint war warmongering on request of the same AI for example XD

 

[Swordfishtromobone]

I've already experienced most of the bugs reported here. A few more, that I didn't notice reported yet in this thread: in peace agrements, "cede" does nothing.

If you conquer a city, and then make peace, and the peace agreement includes them ceding the conquered city, they will still denounce you, a few turns later, for occupying "their" city. I thought the point of ceding was that they would now consider it *my* city, not theirs?

Trading is insane. If you modify a proposed deal by offering MORE to them than they requested, then the deal is refused, and new offer is MUCH worse. Makes no sense. Also, I think it's a bad idea to not be able to edit the deal proposal in all it's details - now you can't remove items, and your ability to edit some things is restricted. This is just annoying. I don't see the point of these restrictions.

By the way, says a lot about the quality of the game overall, that despite these many bugs, I'm thoroughly enjoying it. More than I have any other Civ installment at release time.

I really hope though that these bugs are addressed as quickly as possibly - and especially diplomacy gets a lot of attention; as it stands, it's a nest of bugs.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Same thing happened to me with Harald. I had one or two ships, which he called "a weak navy". Then I build one more ship and all of a sudden he's impressed by my "mighty navy" ..

No idea how the game calculates this. Do you need to have more ships than him? A certain advantage in navy strength over him? A certain navy strength relative to your tech-status/current era?

S.

Firaxis should definitely add a "neutral zone" {weak , neutral :|, mighty }
All of those stats are calculated compared to the AI itself.

 

[Estoqua]

I had another interesting bug. Cleopatra and some other AI were denouncing Russia, which I had eliminated a few turns earlier.

Another bug (?): Cleopatra warned me about spreading religion to her cities, when I only killed an apostle from another religion near the border and I was even spreading her original religion, which was pretty much dead at that point.

 

[PyroGnome]

I was friends and had open borders with China. I told them not to settle new cities near me when I saw that they had a settler right on my borders. He apologised and promised he wouldn't. THE VERY NEXT TURN that settler builds a city LITERALLY on my border. It gets worse.

I had a SINGLE unit move through that new territory (which should not have been there) to get home. They gave me a warning to remove my troops (why? we're friends with open borders, and you just f--ked me), which I did. Several turns later he denounces me for breaking that promise, which I didn't, WHILE HE HAS 4 UNITS CLUSTERED AROUND MY GODDAMN CITY?!

So not only does the AI ignore requests, it lies, AND is a disgusting hypocrite with no sense of logic at all. I was really enjoying this entry into the series but holy ****, it's ruined. Can't play this garbage.

 

[PyroGnome]

Also having my relationships ruined for no reason at all. Making promises, making SURE to not break them, then being told I broke them anyway. This is particularly bad with ANYTHING to do with religion. If you are playing against a religion-heavy civ you CAN NOT be friends with them if you use even a single religion unit for any purpose at all, even in your own territory.

 

[Wario Mario]

- If the AI asks you to move your troops away from the border and you responded by declaring war, that war is automatically a surprise war, no matter what.

- Denoucing lacks a "reason for this" prompt (At least for the player). You should be able to give a reason for denouncing, which should in turn affect what the other civs think of the target.

- Warmonger penalties are blanket, rather than adjusted for diplomatic situation. That is, the victim of a war declaration/city capture should take the full penalty, but other civs shouldn't care as much as the target (unless they are allies). Hell, enemies of the target/warmonger civs should be able to give a warmonger bonus. And yes, war ALLIES really shouldn't get warmonger penalties.

- Liberating a city-state should instantly make you suzerain, no question.

- The AI often fail to follow their own agenda. Now, a backstabbing lying AI might spice things up once in awhile, but that loses its edge if backstabbing lying AI is the default. For example: Teddy Roosevelt declaring surprise wars on his own continent, or that guy who hates city states becoming a suzerain.

- The AI seldom, if ever, keeps their promises to you. And when they do break them, you don't have any recourse (there's no "promise broken" denounce for the player like the AI has), there's no Casus Belli for it, etc.

- There is no reason not to play "wide". Sure, more cities mean the district costs will eventually get really high, but you're still better off with more cities than less, regardless.