"Take your empty threats elsewhere"

[Khshayarsha]

When some bully tries to extort stuff out of me, if I don't want to comply I have two choices: defy him ("Take your empty threats elsewhere") or simply ignore him ("Goodbye, Bozo").

Does it make much of a difference in foreign relations if I choose to ignore rather than defy?

Recently Montezuma had been making several extortion attempts throughout the game. I kept ignoring him; he was no great shakes in this game anyway. After the fourth time, he suddenly declared war. I immediately signed an alliance with the Iroquois. Neither Monty nor I could make much of a dent in each other, so we called it off after a few turns. But I watched the Iroquois keep beating up on the Aztecs for almost the entire remainder of the game, nearly 100 turns!

If I had told him where to stick his threats, would he have gotten PO'd and declared war that much sooner? Or does it not make a difference if you just say goodbye and ignore him?

Way down at the end of the game, the Iroquois had reduced him to only 2 cities on an island. I had a destroyer, ironclad, and other ships surrounding him, and kept calling him up and demanding he surrender all his gold and his one remaining city to me. Until he said "Don't toy with me!" and I felt a little guilty because after all he was near death. And then guess what he did? Declared war on me! Poor guy, the stress had made him take leave of his senses.

 

[RX2000]

If you sign an alliance with a civ against a third civ, and you make peace with the third civ before the 20 turns is up, that makes a major black mark on your reputation.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by RX2000
If you sign an alliance with a civ against a third civ, and you make peace with the third civ before the 20 turns is up, that makes a major black mark on your reputation.

But the REAL question is when your AI ally makes peace before the alliance is up do THEY suffer a black mark. Apparently not.

 

[Evincar]

Originally posted by Zouave


But the REAL question is when your AI ally makes peace before the alliance is up do THEY suffer a black mark. Apparently not.

I think that AI reputation hits only count towards UN vote. In the last GOTM i won by ruining anyone else rep via war . Anyway, they would still happily trade among them rather than with me (the most honest civ).

 

[MuddyOne]

They are more likely to declare war if you defy. Though at higher levels it doesn't make a difference.

 

[smallstepforman]

Who cares about reputation when I'm preparing to drive my tanks into their kindergardens.

 

[Hawkster]

Personally I think defy / ignore wouldn't make much difference - the AI will get annoyed either way maybe defy would trigger it sooner but I wouldn't swear to it.

When someone tries to bully something out of me I will always make a counter proposal - and ask them what they are prepared to offer for said item. Often (but not always) you can get a decent offer in return especailly if you are as strong as they are. This seems (based on my impression - not tested to prove the point) to delay the AI going into annoyed.

 

[kring]

If they have a stronger military, then they will usually attack if you reject. A higher aggressive level civ will more likely attack if your militaries are similar in size. If you have left cities near their units undefended or weakly defended, this will increase the chance as well. This is based on my experiences, as well as others that I have talked to.

 

[Zeromus]

As far as reputation hits to the ai, I'm sure they take some. Rome attacked me under a RoP and an MPP between us. Not only did the rest of the world side with me, but Rome for the rest of the game was alone. No trading, no allies, no peace. Nothing. The ai civs on my team would have wiped the Romans off the face of the planet had I not won the game before that could happen.

So I believe the ai doesn't get a break there. It's just that we the human players can't really tell how bad it is for them since it isn't happening to us. For example, we can see whether or not the ai is "polite" or "annoyed" with us, but we can't tell if, say, Babylon is "polite" or "annoyed",etc with Egypt.