Questions re: Diplomacy

[yungturk39]

I was wondering if some of you might have some answers to some questions I have about asking your rivals questions.

For example, when you ask a rival "What do you think of..." and they respond "Yes?" you see a list of other rivals that you know in common.

Question 1) Is there any significance to the order in which the names are presented? It's not alphabetical. Does it reflect a more meaningful order, like who they're most to least concerned about, who they know most to least (or least to most) about, based on EP spending? How does this work?

Question 2) What do their responses mean? That is, depending on what they say, do any game mechanics change accordingly? Do they redistribute EPs according to what they say? (i.e. "We're not quite sure what to think of X."). Or is it just meaningless, extra detail that means nothing?

Same questions apply when asking a rival "Why don't you attack?" and the resulting city list that appears. What does the order of cities signify, if anything?

 

[a pen-dragon]

Concerning question 1 I am not absolutely sure, but I believe that this list is in turn-order. It does not matter.

Now the AI responses to such questions are indicative of their diplo relations towards the others. Since the diplo-levels are being replaced by text this makes this a bit less reliable but more immersive than checking the diplo-screen. It definitely is more tedious. What the AI does is dependend on their relations but asking those questions does not influence what they do (almost sure of this).

For the city order I believe that is ordered first by civilization, again in turn-order and then maybe by the time the civilization controls that city. Again, it does not matter.

 

[yturk39]

Concerning question 1 I am not absolutely sure, but I believe that this list is in turn-order. It does not matter.

Now the AI responses to such questions are indicative of their diplo relations towards the others. Since the diplo-levels are being replaced by text this makes this a bit less reliable but more immersive than checking the diplo-screen. It definitely is more tedious. What the AI does is dependend on their relations but asking those questions does not influence what they do (almost sure of this).

For the city order I believe that is ordered first by civilization, again in turn-order and then maybe by the time the civilization controls that city. Again, it does not matter.

Regarding your answer to the AI responses to the “What do you think of…[Rival]?”, this is where I think there may be a hidden level of complexity to the game. You can ask the same Civ what they think about the same rival multiple times and get DIFFERENT answers each time. They’re only restricted to the set corresponding to whether they’re Friendly, Pleased, etc. toward the other Civ.

Also, I’m not so sure the list of rival Civ names is a static reflection of turn order. I think order of names also changes over time.

 

[yturk39]

Regarding your answer to the AI responses to the “What do you think of…[Rival]?”, this is where I think there may be a hidden level of complexity to the game. You can ask the same Civ what they think about the same rival multiple times and get DIFFERENT answers each time. They’re only restricted to the set corresponding to whether they’re Friendly, Pleased, etc. toward the other Civ.

Also, I’m not so sure the list of rival Civ names is a static reflection of turn order. I think order of names also changes over time.

Re: the significance of different Diplomatic answers, I think there is an obvious semantic distinction between “I’m not too sure what to think about X.” and “We’re [you and I are] not too sure what to think about X.” The second could be a subtle form of agreement that both you and the rival you are speaking with need to be concerned about the threat posed by Civilization X.

Anyhoo, I thought this might be an interesting game mechanic.