so is it fair to say that a person's opinion of civ 5 diplomacy will come down to their attitude towards a total war strategy? because you seem to be complaining here that in civ 4 not everyone would attack you, whereas those in this thread who are unhappy with civ 5 diplomacy tend to say that they miss having friends. is that the crux of it then? if you want and expect to be at war with everyone eventually then you'll prefer civ 5, but if you like the idea of having lasting friendships, meaning civs you'll never fight or backstab, then you'll prefer civ 4?
There's a lot of factors and I'm speaking generally, and certainly not your OP in any way as we've answered that already.
I think it's a fair comment it's more difficult to make friends; but the idea of a lasting friendship that goes on for the entire game was never truly realistic.
This was a mechanic that somehow became accepted. Also, you have to keep in mind Civ4 tend to reduce the number of active opponents very quickly with Civs vassaling up, so you're dealing with 3-4 Civs by the end of the game on a start with 10, and those 3-4 all probably don't like you too much because they're all trying to win in the Civ4 way of (hating the next guy in line to the top). Even with elimanations in Civ5, you can easily still have 7-8 active ones hanging around on the end game.
The context is very different. I'd like to point out you can make friends in Civ5 but as the game can only have one winner, they can only be your friends on a set 30 turns, subject to renewal . That last bit is important.
The complaints about wars is always tricky because we never get the full story. Trying to friend an agressive Civ is like trying to take a lion. You'll get bitten eventually, and a substantial amount of AAR about 'poor diplomacy with too many backstabs' invole said agressive Civs doing what they're meant to do. I noted earlier that there's still a preference by a lot of players coming out of Civ4 to treat all AI Civs as essentially generic and interchangeable, with no effort to learn the distinct flavours of each leader, save for the usuall Monty hate. That's pretty common and it causes a lot of mis-cues and wrong expectations.
Granted as i've said also, I support more tools for dilpmacy. There should be an alliance tier agreement, something that separates friends from allies, so people set their expectations of friends accordingly.
Similarly, there should be more diplomatic symmetry. Two big things missing in diplomacy is your ability to ask for freebies form your friends in a nice way (AI can do it, but humans can't without using the demand button); and the ability to taunt the AI, which will have varying effects on the AI depending on the leader flavour and your history. It would be nice to be able to taunt an AI into DoW.
Both those things will give people more tools for control. But ultimately Civ5 diplomacy is about power poltiics and realism, with strong leader personalities. Those things are working and shouldn't be fixed.
