[poll] Friendly Greeting discussion

[MutilationWave]

Trying to bring a couple conversations together here to see how people are playing initial diplomacy. Some of us are having wildly different early games on deity, and I'd love it if together we can figure out if this is the reason or a major contributing factor to the people who are constantly getting warred early in antiquity versus those of us who get to play like me, where I'm largely unbothered very early game.

I always use friendly greeting and make sure to have 20 influence in reserve so I can always do it.

 

[CliffCo]

I only play on sovereign but i always start off with a neutral greeting unless i have hundreds of influence accumulated.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I started by using Friendly Greeting every time I could afford it, but I have gravitated lately to always Neutral: My early Influence is better saved to Suze IPs and hoover up all the bonuses I can from them - and neutralize some of the nearby Hostile IPs that will otherwise harass my expansion.

My personal experience (which does not seem to be 100% shared by others) is that it makes no difference in my relationship with the AI Civs: responding to Endeavors seems to be much more important, and I always try to give positive or at least neutral responses to those: a negative response is almost guaranteed to start down the path towards negative relationships and open war very quickly.

 

[moondog385]

Not for the first few meetings with other civs because I prefer to use influence on befriending city-states.

 

[disjointaccount]

I tend to go friendly if it's someone I'm looking to ally (someone with good endeavor types or that I'd find scary to fight); neutral otherwise. I'm wary of doing friendly if I think there's a chance I want to war them since it'll just cost me more in the long run. Only time I go unfriendly is if I see a clear path to war very imminently (they have one city and it's sitting right next to me undefended).

On a semi-related note, I find early endeavors set the tone for my relationships with the AIs for the long run, and I swear there are hidden personality values or something for the AI controlling this. Maybe I'm just reading into coincidences but some AIs I notice being consistently keener to offer endeavors (off the top of my head, Ashoka, Fritz, Xerxes). Others won't offer one until I do (Cath I've noticed does this), and will then sour very quickly if I don't support what she offers me (even accepting seems to not satisfy her). Also fairly consistent in terms of which leaders will send/accept endeavors at the lower end of neutral whereas others need 10+. Again, I could just be reading into coincidences, but I've definitely played a lot of Civ 7 now and the patterns are there with some leaders. I haven't like taken notes on any of them but I assume if such a thing exists they all have some sort of "endeavor agenda". Anyone else noticed anything like this?

 

[Suicidekills]

I would think if you’re going peaceful, you’re trying to do friendly greetings. If you’re warring or indifferent and have two neighbors, you might want to use the friendly greeting to help keep one of them on your good side (for now), to focus on the other problem. Haven’t tried a negative diplomatic game with like napoleon for example. I wonder if it’s beneficial to use negative greeting in this situation.

 

[Hellenism Salesman]

It doesn’t seem to matter what I do or don’t do in diplomacy. The ones who like me will like me forever, and the ones who don’t will inevitably declare war despite my best efforts.

Every game ends in a world war no matter what, so why spend my Influence to delay it?

 

[Pfeffersack]

Not always, but more often than not. If I have the influence (and don't want to save it for something important) and if there is no direct reason to assume that I will get hostile with the new civ anyway, I will do the friendly greeting. I know that the latter condition isn't clear without more context, but I consider myself more as a builder than a warmonger, so that is what causes my leaning towards friendly greeting. In the cases if not doing it, I mainly stay neutral. Expanding influnce to get more hostile seems rather unneeded - if I want to anger an AI, there are plenty other ways.

 

[uppi]

It doesn’t seem to matter what I do or don’t do in diplomacy. The ones who like me will like me forever, and the ones who don’t will inevitably declare war despite my best efforts.

Every game ends in a world war no matter what, so why spend my Influence to delay it?

Maybe because you want to accelerate it? You don't want all AIs to ally each other and the best way to make them hate each other is ally one and drag them into a war with the other. They'll likely hate each other for the rest of the game.

That neutral greeting might delay that for a few turns too much and then they might ally each other and declare war on you.

That said, I also often do not want to spend the influence on it, especially early on. In Exploration, I have more influence to spend, but often I am looking for targets, not friends, so Hostile Greeting it is.

 

[shaglio]

I almost always pay the 20 Influence hit for a friendly greeting. The only time I don’t is when I’m trying for a Military victory and I want to try to goad civs into starting a war with me. But I usually don’t pursue that victory condition.

 

[evonannoredars]

I used to never do it, but a while ago I tried changing strategy and at least did friendly greetings to the first people I meet (since they'll usually be closest to me and therefore at higher risk of relationship decreases from settling too close/borders touching), n found it makes maintaining good relations much easier since they also seemed more likely to propose/support endeavours with me.

 

[Lord Lakely]

Almost always the friendly greeting. AIs are way more likely to offer you endeavours if you do that.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Never. Ever.
They all must bow, also if you allow them to build an embassy, they will send you spies.
Terrible choice. They Will either give me everything they have, and live confined in their Capital, or face the consequences of utter destruction of all of their cities
so I can plant my trees all over the world.

This is also why it is important that we can gift any Civ techs and gold regardless of "status". I want all civs to be advanced technologically. Not vassalized.
Free, with their only city. With luxuries, resources, everything.
I will unleash then wars within my territory between two or more civs of my choice and enjoy the show...

They all must accept I have border passage, but none of them will ever have border rights with me. They must however be allowed to trespass.
Taking trespass away was one of the worst things that ever happened to the game (Civ V)

It's fun to see Germany with Panzers unleashed against America with F-15, helicopters and Paratroopers...
You can't have this level of fun if you can't dictate which tech, resources, enemy civs get, and force them to declare wars on another Civ with the power of luxuries trading...

 

[Lazy sweeper]

I used to never do it, but a while ago I tried changing strategy and at least did friendly greetings to the first people I meet (since they'll usually be closest to me and therefore at higher risk of relationship decreases from settling too close/borders touching), n found it makes maintaining good relations much easier since they also seemed more likely to propose/support endeavours with me.

Yeah, and then they will send spies to you and disrupt you... Civ V to VII diplomacy is a disgrace... even IV has a lots of undesired effects because of increased "Leaders" agendas, and other hidden mechanics... it's like state intervention... or Neo-Liberism took hold of the game starting with civ IV....

 

[Siptah]

If I have the spare influence and I'm not actively saving for something more important, I usually go with a friendly greeting. In practice, this means I meet half the civs on friendly terms.

 

[Pfeffersack]

(...) They all must bow, also if you allow them to build an embassy, they will send you spies. (...)

Sorry, can't follow you here, but would like to understand: How does denying a friendly greeting makes one safe from getting spyed on? Is that really a direct prequesite? Or is the logic rather "to be safe from AI spies, they have to be eradicated anyway and then one doesn't need to do a friendly greeting with them first"?

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Sorry, can't follow you here, but would like to understand: How does denying a friendly greeting makes one safe from getting spyed on? Is that really a direct prequesite? Or is the logic rather "to be safe from AI spies, they have to be eradicated anyway and then one doesn't need to do a friendly greeting with them first"?

I'm not sure, but it felt to me that everytime I befriend someone, one moment later he decides he hates me and two turns laters I have spies disrupting stuff...Maybe I'm only paranoied--
idk. It's a gut feeling... but it also is a way to make life harder to me, thus the game more challenging. Never trade with anyone, and possibly be at total war with everyone as soon as possible...