Quick Answers / 'Newbie' Questions

I did not read all the replies, but to test the rep you merely need to make a deal offer they would always execpt, unless your rep is broken. One such way is to check on their gold and if they have say 100, ask to borrow it and pay them way too much, say 20gpt. If they say no, your rep is shot.

You can also try a deal like my tech for your tech and find one they accept. Then change the offer and add your paying 1gpt. If they now refuse, you know why.
 
I did not read all the replies, but to test the rep you merely need to make a deal offer they would always execpt, unless your rep is broken. One such way is to check on their gold and if they have say 100, ask to borrow it and pay them way too much, say 20gpt. If they say no, your rep is shot.

You can also try a deal like my tech for your tech and find one they accept. Then change the offer and add your paying 1gpt. If they now refuse, you know why.

It's definitely my rep. that is toast. For a long time, I couldn't figure out why. My 5:28 post, near the bottom of page 130, is my hypothesis about why. Roughly, whether or not civ x cares that you broke a trade deal with civ y depends in part on whether or not civ x is at war with civ y or not.

It's really annoying that:
you can have MPP with x and trade with y
y attacks x, so you war y and break trade with y
later x won't trade with you - when you broke the trade deal to HELP x.
x's attitude: "you killed lots of y's army & destroyed their cities? great! you broke a trade deal with y to help me? i won't trust trades with you in the future."

but, i can see that it could get very hard to code reputation so that it was responsive not just to broken trade deals, but the conditions under which the deal was broken.
 
It is not unreasonable that you would not trust the word of someone that broke their word with anyone, regardless of the reason.
 
It is not unreasonable that you would not trust the word of someone that broke their word with anyone, regardless of the reason.

I appreciate your concise, informed, on-point replies.

If x's choice was "Trust or Not", and x could only look at my trade record, and not the conditions under which the trade record was formed, then I agree that it's not unreasonable.

But suppose I had been in an MPP with x, repeatedly, and not got out of war early. And suppose I had always been faithful in my extended repeated dealings with x. So x does have reason to think, sometimes I break trade agreements. On the other hand, if x looks at the conditions under which you break trade agreements, then the vast preponderance of evidence is: I will not break a trade deal with x. I think that's the rational conclusion for x.

As I said, I think the reasoning I outlined could be hard to code into an AI. And in light of that supposed difficulty, I don't particularly fault the game or Firaxis. But I still think it's annoying. :lol:
 
It is not unreasonable that you would not trust the word of someone that broke their word with anyone, regardless of the reason.

I think you nailed it. MPPs is something to stay away from.

They certainly constrain you and can have negative consequences. But, it seems like they can be useful. If you have scary neighbors, then an MPP with a powerful civ could deter the scary neighbors. And if it doesn't deter the neighbor, the neighbor might be able to inflict much less damage on you. The latter is what happened in this particular game: the neighbor was crippled, and I got some territory. Of course, my current allies and likely future enemies also benefited.

Are alliances post-attack-by-scary-neighbor a better way to deal with situation?

Or just accept that you are going to lose some territory and/or be engaged in a costly , unprofitable war?
 
It is not unreasonable that you would not trust the word of someone that broke their word with anyone, regardless of the reason.
Yes, but after a couple thousand years it's stupid.
I appreciate your concise, informed, on-point replies.

If x's choice was "Trust or Not", and x could only look at my trade record, and not the conditions under which the trade record was formed, then I agree that it's not unreasonable.

But suppose I had been in an MPP with x, repeatedly, and not got out of war early. And suppose I had always been faithful in my extended repeated dealings with x. So x does have reason to think, sometimes I break trade agreements. On the other hand, if x looks at the conditions under which you break trade agreements, then the vast preponderance of evidence is: I will not break a trade deal with x. I think that's the rational conclusion for x.

As I said, I think the reasoning I outlined could be hard to code into an AI. And in light of that supposed difficulty, I don't particularly fault the game or Firaxis. But I still think it's annoying. :lol:
The diplo workings are downright stupid.
They certainly constrain you and can have negative consequences. But, it seems like they can be useful. If you have scary neighbors, then an MPP with a powerful civ could deter the scary neighbors. And if it doesn't deter the neighbor, the neighbor might be able to inflict much less damage on you. The latter is what happened in this particular game: the neighbor was crippled, and I got some territory. Of course, my current allies and likely future enemies also benefited.

Are alliances post-attack-by-scary-neighbor a better way to deal with situation?

Or just accept that you are going to lose some territory and/or be engaged in a costly , unprofitable war?
If the enemy doesn't have an alliance against you, offering them an MPP for a peace treaty can replace any techs/gold they ask for. I'm not sure if them having ROPs with other people currently at war with you but not allied to them can influence the viability of this alliance offer.
Thanks. Now pumping out lots of CO2 from coal that I don't have any more. :)
Yep, the game's incongruent like that. Not needing any further timber to keep a windmill operating is more or less realistic (except repairs) but not having fuel for somethign and it running anyway is silly.
 
I appreciate your concise, informed, on-point replies.

If x's choice was "Trust or Not", and x could only look at my trade record, and not the conditions under which the trade record was formed, then I agree that it's not unreasonable.

Your rep is known to all as long as they have contact with the parties that broke a deal. IOW if I break a deal with you, regardless why, and others have contact with you then they know my rep.

If how ever I broke my deal with you and then kill you and you had no contacts at that point, then no one ever learns of my perfidy. That we called Arrian's deception years ago on Apolyton.
 
Diplomacy in Civ is overrated. It's not really a viable part of the game. I just ignore it most of the time. Strangely, Civ4 was supposed to correct that, and make the game more multifaceted, but instead, it just got more silly.

Edit:

and much more tedious.
 
Well, brah, it's Civ IV.
 
I’ve been reading that some people avoid building the great library, is that so? I usually build it since I gun it for Philosophy but should I build other wonders like the pyramids instead?
 
Depends on your playstyle. What do you go for? The Great Library allows for a bit of laid-back spending but, if you don't use that money to support Libraries, when it becomes obsolete you find that you can't do withotu the crutches. It's still a good thing to deny the AI who will trade anything. Well, they trade anything usually anyway.
 
As I said I usually try to go for Philosophy and while I’m at it try and build the Great Library but I’m wondering if it not such a good choice to build, considering I’m playing on higher difficulty modes should I try to go for other wonders first or should I focus more on a good govnt? I tend to be a peaceful player in the beginning but tend to end up in wars during the late Middle ages/early industrial age.
 
I meant what type of game are you playing. Cultural victory? Conquest? Spaceship? Elimination? Wonders?

Wonders can end up being a terrible crutch ya know.
 
My bad :D well Im playing a combination of a space race, cultural and domination victory, although I usually seem more geared towards conquering my enemies. I start off with a peaceful start and then end up in wars late in the middle ages and into the early industrial age
 
GL gives you all tech that 2 others have. So the GL is really just a way not to get behind in techs.
If you're planning to spend more on happiness or military early on, you can build the GL to stay on pace with the AI in techs.
But you say you're peaceful at the start - so you don't need a large army, and can focus on developing the land and the cities. Then there's a good chance you get some techs yourself (if you go left to right on the F6 menu) that you can trade with the AI.
Notice that sometimes it's cheaper to build a small army to capture the damned thing than to build it yourself. ;)
 
I was playing as the Russians and I was ahead in techs because I was popping goody huts with two scouts playing on Emperor, I decided to go for the Cossacks first when I entered the middle ages and I had the Great Library built, when I got to Chemistry I had learned Monotheism and theology from 2 other civs before they got to education, was that a good idea? or should I have tried to go for the Smiths trading company first?
 
I was playing as the Russians and I was ahead in techs because I was popping goody huts with two scouts playing on Emperor, I decided to go for the Cossacks first when I entered the middle ages and I had the Great Library built, when I got to Chemistry I had learned Monotheism and theology from 2 other civs before they got to education, was that a good idea? or should I have tried to go for the Smiths trading company first?

I think you could've gotten the techs through trading. Not sure - but if your rep was ok and knew enough AIs you could.
I dunno if you still got Smith's but that one is one of my favorites as it saves you A LOT of money - if you're planning to build markets, banks, harbors and airports.
So yeah, there's other ways to get the techs and Smiths doesn't go obsolete.
 
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