Partly Open Borders

[King Flevance]

What about making open trade borders cost an amount of money to sustain it? So you don't just want to go around opening trade borders to everyone because you wont benefit from all of them. You will want to pick who you will be trading with. By doing this, you will probably want to "guard" these trade partners as no one else benfits you as greatly.

You seem to be confused a bit. I didn't say there is no negative effects with the second one. I said that there is no positive effects with the second one.

I strongly disagree. Having the second one adds more positives to the first one. If you can't see their cities, you can't trade with that city. By having unit open borders you are able to explore the locations of their cities so that you can gain more money from the first agreement. It is pointless to open borders for trade if you can only see the edge of their borders or only 1-2 cities.

Additionally, I have come across scenarios where 3 civs are in question.

Civ A
Civ B
Civ C

I am Civ B. Civ C and A do not get along. Civ C is my buddy. If I grant him open borders, he can invade A without the risk of A being able to reach him and effectively use me as buffer lands. Even if I personally decalre war on Civ A I would like Civ C sending some troops to the front lines. rather than just sit over there doing nothing.

Settlers are the only reason to not want to allow unit open borders. Hell, sometimes I have had AIs connect my cities to my trade network with their workers. (I am guessing to allow them more trade routes.) And as far as settlers are concerned, I have never had much problems making sure I got all the land I wanted by just holding off on open borders for only a short period. And usually I open them before I am actually completely done expanding.

 

[Lordclane]

1. The old Civ3 system of making a violation of someone else's borders an "incident" wasn't bad. If you were just passing through, you could get away with little more than some negative diplomatic points. If you tried a prolonged stay, eventually you'd HAVE to go or declare war.

2. What about an option for open SEALANES. If these were separated you could allow naval traffic, but not land-based incursions. Also, a "Law of the Seas" could be added to the list of UN motions.

 

[K.F. Huszár]

I totally agree with making to kinds of Open Border agreements.

One for trade and one for troops.

And more, what about a forced open border agreement in which only one party is allowed to move and station troops in the others' terrirtory?

 

[occam]

i wanted to pinpoint that just wanting to have some feature for you does not mean it adds value to the game. People should consider the balanced interesting decision point before spamming nice-looking but game-breaking ideas.

Could you go over again where you established the 'game-breaking' nature of this idea? Please note, some game mechanism having only positive effects does not remotely qualify as 'game-breaking' --- quick example: having your workers improve your worked tiles. Entirely positive, every good player seeks to do it, the AI does it, but not 'game-breaking.' If this is your test for 'game-breaking' you need to go back to the drawing board.

In other words, finish this sentence: if we had more than one type of open border, no one would play the broken game of Civ any more because ...............??

Your use of the word 'spamming' confirms the suspicions that you are a bit reckless with your rhetoric. I have glanced over the threads in which the original poster has been involved, and s/he (Lordclane) does not seem to be a spammer of any kind, let alone game-breaking ideas.