Not enough benefits to having good relations with the AI

[newarkinvaders]

. The only thing that still irks me is the trading. I don't expect to get some cotton and gold out of America for my salt. I just want cotton for salt. And if we're friends, and they have the money, why ask for extra gold from me instead of a straight-up RA for RA deal.

If they thing you can afford more they will ask for more . Pretty sure if they are in unhappy they will give you a fair trade because they need the resource , otherwise they will try and squeeze you . shop around .
the RAs are the same and i think they want more if you are a head because you would gain too much of a lead .

Mechanically its a good balance although often in reallife the most affluent country with the most to trade can set the pricing

 

[Zaldrizes]

If they thing you can afford more they will ask for more . Pretty sure if they are in unhappy they will give you a fair trade because they need the resource , otherwise they will try and squeeze you . shop around .
the RAs are the same and i think they want more if you are a head because you would gain too much of a lead .

Mechanically its a good balance although often in reallife the most affluent country with the most to trade can set the pricing

Yeah, I'm finally getting the hang of it. The funny thing is the most peaceful civ on the map is the one giving me the best deals even though the war-torn ones aren't asking for anything, even though I'm friends with two of them. But that peaceful civ has been able to grow very tall thanks to that peace, so that can explain their unhappiness. And even though those warring civs are unhappy and also my friends, they don't seem to want much even though they never gain a city and often lose troops AND often rank at the bottom of the approval ratings. I assume their constant warring has set them behind a bit in tech, so they therefore charge me when I want an RA with them. I get it. I think. At least when I tell myself that, it makes me feel better!

 

[Quineloe]

The thing that sucks the most is that a diplomatic victory doesn't depend on your relations with other civs at all, so not only do you not get a payoff in terms of in-game benefits, but it is also - ironically - completely irrelevant to your ability to win a diplomatic victory.

Pretty much this is what annoys me about the diplomatic victory. In Master Of Orion 1, diplomatic victory required you to alienate the main competitor from the rest of the galaxy while also maintaining decent relations with the other races.

In Civ 5 diplomatic victory everyone votes for themselves and the player who allied all city states wins.

 

[b7fanatix]

An important thing to remember about requests for freebies from your frends - they only ever ask for resources that are in surplus. Eg. You have two Silk , one Cotton and one Wine available, they will ask for one Silk. They will not ask you to give away your last copy of that luxury, so your happiness rating won't be affected, so long as none of your luxury tiles get pillaged.

Of course, people who are good at micromanaging/trading will ensure they never have any large surpluses of anything to begin with, which cuts down on such requests.

 

[b7fanatix]

Rohili:


AIs that are currently at war with the same AI will not assign your warmonger hate; so as long as you engineer it right, you can make everyone war with your target, then conquer him, and everything will be hunky-dory. In addition, liberating city states and ally civ cities will negate warmonger penalties, so you can continue warring with everyone pretty much patting your back while you do it.

You learn something every day!

So If I declare war on Carthage when they're already at war with Austria, Austria will not assign me any warmonger points for my DoW? What about capturing Carthage's cities, again you're saying Austria gives me a free pass on this one?

Does it matter whether Carthage or Austria was the aggressor in that war?

Or is it the case that

a) your friends never see you as a warmonger

or

b) you get less of a warmonger score for capturing cities of, and declaring war on, states the AI doesnt like, than ones it is neutral to?

What about my other friends, and Austria's other friends, are they also going to see my actions positively (helping out a friend, beating up a warmonger) or are they just going to see that i declared war on someone and captured someone's cities, therefore i need to be stopped?

In my games i play it safe and never declare war on anyone. My wars come about as a result of being attacked or defensive pacts only, and i never wipe civilisations out, though by reducing them to one city you can pretty much guarantee that someone else will.

My problem with the diplomacy in this game (apart from the undocumented rules going against everyday morality so often) is that you get backstabbed by your friends in over half the games i play. The AI seems to do this far too lightly and frankly it seems no leader is immune. Catherine the Great, Augustus Caesar, Bismark, Elizabeth, Ghandhi, Wu Zetian, Heile Selassie to name but a few. 5000 years of unbroken declarations of friendship, no contested borders, 5 or 6 positive diplo modifiers, fought against a common enemy, asked for help and provided it, forgiven for spying, my army is about average on the demographics screen, BACKSTAB!!

Ethiopia was particularly annoying. Friends with him for 5000 years, assumed he was low on agression, I get attacked by Russia, suddenly he backstabs while i am busy with the Russians.

What is the point in bending over backwards to please other AIs when they are going to do this to you anyway?

 

[Rohili]

My problem with the diplomacy in this game (apart from the undocumented rules going against everyday morality so often) is that you get backstabbed by your friends in over half the games i play. The AI seems to do this far too lightly and frankly it seems no leader is immune. Catherine the Great, Augustus Caesar, Bismark, Elizabeth, Ghandhi, Wu Zetian, Heile Selassie to name but a few. 5000 years of unbroken declarations of friendship, no contested borders, 5 or 6 positive diplo modifiers, fought against a common enemy, asked for help and provided it, forgiven for spying, my army is about average on the demographics screen, BACKSTAB!!

Ethiopia was particularly annoying. Friends with him for 5000 years, assumed he was low on agression, I get attacked by Russia, suddenly he backstabs while i am busy with the Russians.

What is the point in bending over backwards to please other AIs when they are going to do this to you anyway?

Exactly. Even if you do everything you can to please the AI, they will backstab you eventually if there is some benefit to it. Might as well be the backstabber than the backstabbed.

 

[Fish Man]

It seems that there are just too few reasons to have good relations with the AI in this game.

In order to be on good terms with the AI, you must not:
- Spread your religion in their lands (if they have founded a religion of their own, which 80% of the civs will have)
- Go to war with ANY other AI, and especially not capture any cities
- Table or vote for any resolutions that are against their interests
- Vie with them for influence with a CS that they are interested in
- Break any promises you make to any AI
- Build any wonders that they want

In other words, your options to further your game are severely limited if you want to keep the AI happy. The inability to go to war and conquer cities without offending other civs is particularly crippling. In return, what do you get?
- Ability to trade resources at a fair price
- Open borders
- Research agreements
- Greater willingness to stop spying on you/spreading their religion in your lands when asked

That's about it. None of these items are particularly necessary to one's game. Take resources for example - my allied city-states tend to give me so many resources that few of the other civs have resources that I don't have.

IMO, there needs to be more benefits to maintaining good relations with other civs. Otherwise, it just isn't worth the trouble. For example, perhaps the gold return from trade routes to other civs could be modified by their attitudes towards you- a "friendly" civ will yield 50% more gold, while a "denouncing", "guarded" or "hostile" civ will yield 50% less. Individual civs should also be able to issue a trade embargo against your civ if they hate you enough (instead of this simply being a WC resolution). IMO, this would make it more worthwhile to keep other civs happy.

You forgot DoFs, making DoFs with the same leaders, and denouncing the same leaders. These three bonuses are the biggest and will net you the most diplo points.

 

[b7fanatix]

I appreciate my view is jaded by mostly playing Vanilla (I only got G&K recently) where the AI is supposed to be more aggressive, but it seems like AI Civs don't suffer diplomatic consequences for backstabbing the player, the same way i'd get them if i did it to them, or even an AI vs AI backstab.

Yes, I've inadvertently caused an AI vs AI backstab, by getting a Defensive pact with Civ A, who was friends with Civ B, and then Civ B DoWs me. Within a few turns the whole world has denounced Civ A, and within a few more, Civ A has four major powers at war with it.

However, Dido attacked me at least a dozen times in my first game with her, every single time with an active declaration of friendship going, having just begged for, and been given, free stuff. I kept accepting her requests to see if people would hate her. They never did, despite being rather small and weak as time went on, no-one condemned her once.

In my last game, I was sharing a continent with Ethiopia, we'd been mates for 5000 years, he'd been constantly begging for my surplus silk and i'd been giving it away free. Then he attacks me even though his army's smaller because i've just been DoWed by a runaway Russian CiV. I take 3 of his cities, leaving him with one. Now our mutual friends think i'm a warmonger, and still like him. Nobody decides the wipe out the pathetic rump of Ethiopia for me.

Double standards.

I'd like to be able to make some meaningful friendships in this game. People say that the most important factors are proximity and army strength. IE. The only civs you can trust are ones on the other side of the world - great, what use as friends are they then, if we can't watch each other's backs, only trade/RA? And as for the army thing, well yes, you have to maintain a reasonable fighting force. But throughout the whole of history, never once let the other guy overtake for one moment, even if you just researched a new round of science buildings that need building in all your cities, while he's just got his unique unit and is spamming it, neglecting all else?

So , Canada has at all times maintained an adequate force to prevent the US Army from invading , ever since it's formation, has it, because after all friendship alone is not enough?

Of course, leader personalities do get randomised a little at the start of every game. Is there a way of telling the person you decided to make friends with is a sociopath?

1) If they're hard to initially make friends with. Eg. Wu Zetian of China seldom accepts a declaration. You have to keep giving her beneficial trades and DPs till eventually she suggests it. Often, they have no other friends too.

This could mean they rolled low on the Friendship Willingness (ie. Reserved) . Or they could be a sociopath.

2) How many other Civs did they launch unprovoked attacks on, how often to they suggest we attack a 3rd party. If the victim is entirely innocent, this could mean you're keeping bad company?

It's no good :-( Heile Selassie passed both of the above tests, but still chose to backstab me when he got his Unique Unit.

 

[tiger12348]

My problem with the diplomacy in this game (apart from the undocumented rules going against everyday morality so often) is that you get backstabbed by your friends in over half the games i play. The AI seems to do this far too lightly and frankly it seems no leader is immune. Catherine the Great, Augustus Caesar, Bismark, Elizabeth, Ghandhi, Wu Zetian, Heile Selassie to name but a few. 5000 years of unbroken declarations of friendship, no contested borders, 5 or 6 positive diplo modifiers, fought against a common enemy, asked for help and provided it, forgiven for spying, my army is about average on the demographics screen, BACKSTAB!!

Ethiopia was particularly annoying. Friends with him for 5000 years, assumed he was low on agression, I get attacked by Russia, suddenly he backstabs while i am busy with the Russians.

What is the point in bending over backwards to please other AIs when they are going to do this to you anyway?

Different ideology is a real killer, along with any of the following modifier guarantees a backstab IMO:
Declare friendship with the AI's enemy
Denounced by the AI's friend.(This friend usually believes in the same ideology as the AI, which is different from yours, so it can happen easily.)

Once the ideologies are chosen around the world, its much easier to befriend with the AIs happened to make the same choice as you. Even if you have been at war with them for the past 5000 years, denouncing each other everytime a peace treaty was signed.

 

[Roxlimn]

b7fanatix:

1. It doesn't matter who started it.

2. War allies will not see declaration or city captures as warmongering.

3. Civs who are not in the war will assign you normal warmongering points.

My problem with the diplomacy in this game (apart from the undocumented rules going against everyday morality so often) is that you get backstabbed by your friends in over half the games i play. The AI seems to do this far too lightly and frankly it seems no leader is immune. Catherine the Great, Augustus Caesar, Bismark, Elizabeth, Ghandhi, Wu Zetian, Heile Selassie to name but a few. 5000 years of unbroken declarations of friendship, no contested borders, 5 or 6 positive diplo modifiers, fought against a common enemy, asked for help and provided it, forgiven for spying, my army is about average on the demographics screen, BACKSTAB!!

Ethiopia was particularly annoying. Friends with him for 5000 years, assumed he was low on agression, I get attacked by Russia, suddenly he backstabs while i am busy with the Russians.

What is the point in bending over backwards to please other AIs when they are going to do this to you anyway?

Many AIs have backstab ratings. Some are higher than others, but they all have it. Expecting otherwise is frankly, naive and foolish. You should actually be the same in RL. You are going to get backstabbed at some point by someone, sometimes this person will be your friend. Don't expect otherwise.

At the same time, backstabbing does carry backstab penalties, both to you and to the AI. If you and your friend AI only have one common enemy who hates you both, then obviously backstabbing you isn't going to cost it a whole lot. Vice versa applies. Don't think that players don't do this. Rohili obviously does. That's what the AI is modeling.

Backstabbing AI generally get hated on a lot by other AI. If you do the same, you're also going to get hated a lot. You won't get the usual deals with AI Civs if you're hated. It's up to you to decide if it's worth it. Sometimes it is, but generally, it's not. To put it simply, it's just business. It's a game. Don't assign Friendship is Magic values to Declarations of Friendship in Civ.

 

[yasinbin]

learnes a ton from these posts. I am a newbie in civ game....i always get back stabbed even if i play all nice. i know a few reasons now why