The AI Hates Me!

[Kevin Rohrer]

I don't grok the Diplomacy system. The AI players get angry easily and are constantly going to war with me. I can't seem to be able to improve my relations with them no matter how many Diplomacy points I have. What am I doing wrong, and what can I do to improve my standing with them so they aren't always attacking me?

 

[Idleray]

By showing them who's boss.

I'm serious. The AI will hate for you just existing, especially on higher difficulties.

The most you can do is not expand near them and set up trade routes with them, but both of these things are sub-optimal ways to play.

Trying to impress them via their traits is mostly a random process not worth paying any attention to.

The most reliable way is to defeat them in a war and they will fear you.

The other way is to be winning. The AI respects you if you have a much bigger empire than they do.

 

[Olodune]

The other way is to be winning. The AI respects you if you have a much bigger empire than they do.

Yeah. This actually works. Play greedily and the AI will love you in no time - even on Apollo. As I mentioned before, this diplomacy system focuses AI hate on weak sponsors and rewards the game leader.

If you do end up in a position with low respect and low fear - prepare for a fight, I guess

 

[Aldor]

After beating them once (and pretty well), the AI will still declare war, even when back to neutral status (not sure if they'll do when you get back to cooperating or better). Just last game, three city ARC attacked me. I took and destroyed two of their cities. Then let them sulk for a bit, after a while they offered and accepted white peace. A relatively short while later, they were back to neutral, they declared again. I didn't check respect/fear before that. Anyway they were in war with Polystralia at that point too, and so this DOW was completely nonsensical IMO They died a few turns later (Hutama beat me to it by one turn).

 

[Roxlimn]

Um. Read the messages. The AI itself will tell you how to impress it - it depends on the Trait it's using at the moment. Some AI will be impressed just because you're producing incredible amounts of food. Yes, that happens. In one of my recent Soyuz games, multiple people loved me because I had a massive, advanced military (Respect, not Fear). Daoming, Hughes, and Elodie were sniffing the gunpowder big time.

Bigger doesn't always mean more respect. In my current game, I have a massive empire, but Fielding won't give me the time of day because my spy network is crap. Good thing her Fear is way up. That won't always work, though. Kolzov attacked me at 9 Fear, 0 Respect. Something about having enough of cowering under the big bully. Yes, the diplo message actually said that.