Open Borders vs. Embassy

[Kabloosh]

What exploit do players take advantage of every single game you mean? You'd never be able to sell a one-way open borders for gold in a multiplayer game. Expecting to be able to make a giant wad of cash by doing it in the beginning of the game is kind of silly.

Most players play this game on single player.

 

[smallfish]

I'm all for having Embassies... but they don't appear to actually DO anything in game terms.

Actually, they do.

Say you are in the Renaissance, you've send a caravel out and discovered China. You are in the tech lead, but China doesn't personally know where your cities are, so she can't just send a spy and steal techs or see what you are wonderspamming even if she knows you have X amt of cities through diplo screen.

BUT when you do give her embassies, it personally reveals your capital's location to her, and so she can spy on you (at least your capital city).

 

[green0094]

This is super irritating if you like playing the classical era. It just doesn't make any sense. Can't help your allies and they can't help you.

And for some reason moving <OpenBordersTradingAllowed>true</OpenBordersTradingAllowed> back to writing doesn't seem to fix it...
Open Borders shows up under on the Writing tech icon but when trading it still says players lack the required tech(civil service)...

There must be a way around this?

 

[dexters]

I have to disagree with many of you guys here. Embassies make sense. it's a way for the game to funnel future relationships by starting from the smallest things, like an embassy.

There's also a tinge of logic in it all. If you can't be bothered to set-up an embassy, why do you want open borders? To scout them before you dow?

I've run into situations where I decided I think I want open borders with Civ X for a shorter route to a CS or somesuch, I go to ask for it and realize I didn't have an embassy with them so I couldn't ask for it. Then I also remembered we hate each other.

Seems pretty realistic

As they are used as starting points for diplomacy (civs I have embassies with tend to become friendly more often than not) and not all civs will be receptive to 1-1 embassy trades in the early game, the funnelling effect is actually quite a great way to get that organic diplomacy developing and building it up from there. When you let having no embassies sit for too long, sometimes, you won't ever get to build one with them at a fair price and your relationships with always be sour or keep getting worse.

I don't mind it, I think it is actually a very intuitive diplomatic agreement especially for more casual players.

An embassy affecting diplomatic approach makes sense. Open borders is vague.

I agree that it's a very strange change, and I don't see the reason for it.

I also don't see the reason for the addition of Embassies... they don't seem to add anything by themselves (except for uncovering the foreign capital, which is often already uncovered). I don't get why they thought an extra step was necessary here.

they add a modest positive modifier and seem to color diplomacy.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I have no idea what's the intention behind embassies, but so far they've been very helpful in exploring.

 

[Peacemongerer]

2 quick questions:

- can you also remove other Civs embassies from your capital?
- do you require an embassy with another Civ before being able to "exchange" Open Borders?

It appears that Civs automatically remove eachothers embassies in cases of denouncement (although you can still negotiate to have them reestablished), and war. Outside of that, it appears that embassies stay put.

You need an embassy both ways to exchange evenly. I had a one-way embassy with Austria once bc I didn't have writing yet and only one of us could negotiate open borders (I can't remember which one though; I think it was me).