Poll: Should Defensive Pacts be nerfed?

Poll: Should Defensive Pacts be nerfed? (We can discuss solution, only vote on if this is a problem)

  • Yes

    Votes: 19 79.2%
  • No

    Votes: 5 20.8%

  • Total voters
    24
  • Poll closed .
There has been discussion in the AI diplomacy thread that defensive pacts can turn into problems when most of the map locks itself up in large defensive blocks. (Often without the player able to find anyone to partner with.)

It has been said that there is very little counter-play available, which makes the option feel overpowered.

Currently there is a long formula that leads to an average of 1 defensive pact wanted, with a potential of many more.

I only see defensive pacts as a problem in those corner-cases where the AIs get real buddy-buddy and form large defensive coalitions.

looked around and found this
"[...]Dokumenter\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\MODS\(1) Community Patch\Core Files\Core Changes\DiploOpinionWeights.sql"
it's easy enough to edit in notepad or something better.
A negative number means they like you more, and a positive number means they dislike you more, I'm thinking to change this for now:

DiploOpinionWeights.sql said:
-- Defensive Pact Opinion Weights
INSERT INTO Defines (Name, Value)
SELECT 'OPINION_WEIGHT_DP', '-5';
INSERT INTO Defines (Name, Value)
SELECT 'OPINION_WEIGHT_DP_WITH_FRIEND', '-5';
INSERT INTO Defines (Name, Value)
SELECT 'OPINION_WEIGHT_DP_WITH_ENEMY', '10';

and instead use this:

suggested changes said:
-- Defensive Pact Opinion Weights
INSERT INTO Defines (Name, Value)
SELECT 'OPINION_WEIGHT_DP', '-10';
INSERT INTO Defines (Name, Value)
SELECT 'OPINION_WEIGHT_DP_WITH_FRIEND', '5';
INSERT INTO Defines (Name, Value)
SELECT 'OPINION_WEIGHT_DP_WITH_ENEMY', '15';

That way large coalitions are at least going to start disliking eachother, especially the one who formed the most DP's, while smaller nations suffer less penalties.
Looking at the settings I cannot find how most of the Diplo settings are engineered to scale with large maps and many civ's
 
Update:
The above settings doesn't help that much, the negative modifier for DP's seems capped at the max value of any one modifier and not tolled up per active modifier, so that Poland in a 12 AI game has 6 DP's with AI's but only a 5 point negative modifier from it with some of them, and a 15 point negative modifier with a few because they dislike Washington.
Searching civ5debugdatabase I cannot find any DP modifiers for AI's that are neutral with each other.

From a historical perspective it doesn't seem realistic at all that two states should dislike each other because they both have a defensive pact with a 3rd friend, but from a gametheory perspective it makes a ton of sense, with 10 agents in a game all of them seeking to "win" very rarely will any of them be happy to have their buddy team up militarily with people around him thereby removing agency and win conditions.

And all the DP's does remove agency and win conditions for any civ that peaks militarily after classical era and are not playing full on warmonger which IMO is a shame.

Starting a new game now with defensive pacts disabled like this:
TechChanges.sql said:
UPDATE Technologies
SET DefensivePactTradingAllowed = '0'
WHERE Type = 'TECH_CHIVALRY' AND EXISTS (SELECT * FROM COMMUNITY WHERE Type='COMMUNITY_CORE_BALANCE_UNITS' AND Value= 1 );
I'm not sure if it works but I really hope it will make the game more dynamic from renaissance and onwards
 
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