The Means of Diplomacy

Stibi-shimi

Chieftain
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Sep 28, 2020
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Question for you guys - and this is after searching through the War Academy Articles and the forum history (searching 'diplomacy' in title). It looks like none of those went into the specific means of diplomacy.

How do you *do* diplomacy? Sure, you can open borders, trade techs, and exchange goods. But these means seem like they strengthen bonds between friends while keeping enemies atrophied, since opportunities to trade techs and goods may be closed to a rival that doesn't want to trade with you! As such, a more narrow question is: how can you warm up a rival who doesn't like you, either for trades, war, or to maintain peace, and do these strategies have negative consequences?

For instance,
- Gifting units
- Gifting cities
- Gifting techs
- Gifting money
- Changing civics to match a rival's.
- Disavowing an unpopular friend
 
* Open borders give +2 after 50 turns total
* Resource trades also +2 after 100 combined turns (i.e. 4 resis traded = 25 turns)
* Tech gifts instantly +4 fair trade if valuable enuf. City gift is always considered big.
* Reli but can be more complicated, or the easiest if you have only Izzy on your continent ;)

Gifting units does nothing for diplo.
Gold is valued like techs, but ofc hurts more to give away.

You can get +4 fair trade vs. -4 you traded with our worst enemy, so eventually those balance each other out (and shouldn't stop you from getting what you want in trades).
Similar with open borders..better to have them open with 2 AIs who each ask you to stop trading with the other. Will even out.

I recommend ignoring AI requests like that, and trading with everybody.
They will not start plotting war if you refuse to stop trading with others, or refuse accepting their religion / fav. Civic.
Can only happen if you refuse a direct demand of gold, techs, resources or maps.
Demand means some kind of threat like "think wisely Stibi and give us what we want"..there are also polite requests which will not result in war checks if denied.
 
The easiest, most consistent way to stop an AI from plotting on you is to bribe someone else on them. Only Monty is insane enough to plot war while he's already in a war, so getting an AI involved in a war means you're off the hook...for the moment.

You can also try begging/demanding something from an AI to get a ten turn peace treaty, sometimes that will cause the AI to stop plotting war on you. I've no idea why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but it's something you can try if you don't think you'll need that beg later.
 
My covered it all well above. The strat article below is a great reference tool and how each leader is coded. I recommend bookmarking it.

Know Your Enemy

Don't be afraid to trade away resources early if it is not to penalizing. For example, if you are Expansive you may have some leeway on even gifting away health resources early to start the ball rolling on some diplo.

From that article, some AIs are more demand-y than others...like Joao, Sitting Bull, Cathy, etc. They will only demand a resource if you have an extra copy of one, so you might hold that open for a bit so they will demand it. Someone like Joao should be instantly Pleased by your acceptance, and he does not plot at Pleased.

Of course, note the AIs who don't plot at Pleased. That is helpful. You'd be surprised at some that don't like Boudica - and some that do like Mansa. But keep in mind that if they start plotting on you before they reached Pleased attitude that may not go away. As AcaMetis mentioned, you might try a beg of gold and they may stop plotting, but as he noted I've never seen a pattern to that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

A city gift can early on can work out well in some cases, especially for more difficult AIs. It's expensive investment, ofc, but can be worth it in the right situation. If I do it, I usually plop a useless city near the leader's border..you can sometimes get the "liberate" bonus as well. Really good option to use with Toku if he is nearby so you can open borders with him.
 
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There is to my knowledge no reliable way to reverse plotting.
Getting an AI to like you more decreases the chance of them to even start.
Getting a 10 turn peace treaty prevents them from starting to plot.

A lesser known trick of reducing the chance stems from that they are more likely to plot if they feel constrained.
You reduce the chance if you give them room to expand, but also by gifting resources.
If they can grow their cities, they plot less.
 
The easiest, most consistent way to stop an AI from plotting on you is to bribe someone else on them. Only Monty is insane enough to plot war while he's already in a war, so getting an AI involved in a war means you're off the hook...for the moment.

You can also try begging/demanding something from an AI to get a ten turn peace treaty, sometimes that will cause the AI to stop plotting war on you. I've no idea why it sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, but it's something you can try if you don't think you'll need that beg later.

I'm not sure about the Monty thing - is that a "unique trait that's hard-coded"? IIRC any AI can start plotting when already in war over a refused demand, which may have been what happened.
 
I'm not sure, but across all the games I've played, watched, read, etc., I can't recall ever witnessing an AI plotting and declaring war while already at war...except Monty. Maybe I missed or forgot, of course, but that's what I can remember off-hand.
 
I recall Lain saying in one of his vids that an early beg stops the plot. Like within the absolute first turns of the plotting. This has worked for me at least a dozen times, never saw it fail. Would love to find out if it’s coded that way.
 
When you accept those demands, you also get a +1 "You paid us tribute".
 
Could someone direct me to a write-up on war plotting?

The issue I'm having is that sometimes even friends will plot against me but never actually declare. This causes me to dismiss the plotting indicator and before I know it, a rival who I thought we were tight has swept over an undefended portion of my empire and effectively ruined my game.

I know that fist = plotting. Does the number next to the fist indicate something? Using BUG/BULL here obviously.
 
Does the number next to the fist indicate something? Using BUG/BULL here obviously.

Spoiler :


upload_2021-9-17_9-52-48.png

 
I'm sure there's guides out there, unfortunately I'm not sure where you'd find them. For your other question, keep in mind that when people say "an AI cannot plot at Pleased", what they mean is that an AI cannot start plotting war when they're Pleased. If an AI starts plotting war when they're Cautious they can still declare war even if you bring them up to Friendly in the meantime. Another thing to do is to keep an eye on your borders. If your neighbour is stacking units and they're plotting, that means either you're the target or the target is past your borders. If they're plotting and the cities on your borders only have a few military police in them, chances are that you're not the target.

The number next to the fist is the amount of cities that you know an AI has. I say "that you know", because BUG takes this information from either the trade screen (which you can directly open with a shortcut if nothing else), or if you can't open that because an AI refuses to talk to you, from how many cities you have revealed on your map. The same is true for the red fist icon, by the way - BUG takes that information from the trade screen, if it's available, and if it isn't you won't get a red fist icon even if the AI is plotting war.
 
Thank you very much for your knowledge, guys. It seems that the solution is just to keep an eye out for troop build-ups once I see the red fist.
 
It's also about knowing when you are safe and when you are not.
Knowing which AIs that do plot at pleased, and keeping peace treaties up saves you a whole lot of worry.
 
[...] keeping peace treaties up saves you a whole lot of worry.

Primarily via begging, correct? Are there any other ways to trigger a peace treaty? I can only think of closing a war, beg/demand, and defensive pact.
 
It's primarlily by begging, but that only carries you that far.
After those 10 turns are over, if you try to beg again it has a high risk of failure.

An example here... You start next to Monty, and Monty is even closer to Mansa. They found buddhism and hinduism so Monty will hate Mansa.
You try to keep Monty happy by gifting him a city early on. Mansa will dislike this but better safe from Monty than keeping mansa glad.
Now Monty is pleased and you are much much safer but not 100%.
Once you see Monty has jaguars (or if he connects copper) you know there is a risk that he starts plotting, so you beg him for his pigs and he obliges.

Now you know you are 100% safe for 10 turns and during those 10 turns Monty starts plotting. Now you KNOW he is going for Mansa and you can relax even if the peace treaty wears off.
15 turns later still he declares on Mansa.
Now, if you have managed to get Mansa to pleased too, now you beg 1g from Mansa and now Monty can't ask you to join his war against him.

20 turns later they make peace... and now it's red alert!!! They have a peace treaty and you don't! -> BEG, phew... you get that 1g and you are safe for 10 more turns.


It's a sort of funny dance that resembles bullfighting alot.
 
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