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Trying to understand some aspects of Diplomacy in the game...

Uncle_Joe

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Sep 9, 2005
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Ok, so I haven’t played Civ6 since before the Summer patch and I have played it only sporadically before that. Now with the new patch, it appears to be in decent enough shape to try and really get into it.


I started a game over the weekend and I’m trying to make heads or tails out of the diplomacy. And either I’m missing something (quite possible!) or even a year after release, the diplomatic system is deeply flawed/underdeveloped).


Situation:


I’m on playing Continents as Victoria. I have Persia as a very close neighbor (started the game before finding out that the starting positions were potentially broken). Just to the north of us is Kongo, with the rest of the nations on various other landmasses. As expected, the early game is a ‘Friendly’ love-fest with the AIs. But eventually I run into Teddy and he eventually makes a joint DoW on me with Kongo.


I figure I might be in for some trouble because I hadn’t built up much of a military (due to the mentioned love-fest). I immediately contact my still-friendly Persian neighbors. I make some deal and work up Alliance. But I don’t see any way to ask him to join in and intervene in my war? I see the ‘Joint War’ option, but it only give me the option to declare on a 3rd party (Cleo I think) rather than the two I’m already at war with!


Fast forward a bit – I easily beat back Kongo and America (combination of bad terrain and incompetent attacking). Now I’m at peace with both of them. Kongo decides to attack Persia (who I’m still ‘allied’ with). I get no special notification, and no invitation to intervene on behalf of my ally. I barely even knew he was under attack until I saw the Kongo units swarm him capital under.


At that point, I sort of ignored ‘diplomacy’ from then on since it seemed like a pointless waste of time.


Soooo, what am I missing here. What is the point of being ‘allied’ (other than shared vision, I guess). Is there no way to invite an ally (or anyone for that matter) to intervene or join in an EXISTING war?


Next question/observation…How do I tell (from the diplo/trading screen) whether I need a resource I am being offered in a trade? For example, I don’t have Citrus. Trajan offers Citrus for one my luxuries. I accept. A few turns later. Catherine pops up offering to trade me Citrus for another of my luxury resources. The issue is that I don’t have indication (that I could see) that I am already receiving Citrus from Trajan. So how am I supposed to know if I need a trade or not? Remember it? Shouldn’t there be a pop-up that says ‘you already have one’ or something?


Coming back from CivIV (which I went back to after the Summer patch broke so many things), the diplomacy in VI seem like a huge step backwards in terms of options and information presented. As I said above, it’s quite possible that I’m just missing the information and/or options but so far, I have not seen how to effectively utilize diplomacy in VI.


Thanks in advance for any assistance!
 
Yes, Civ 6's diplomacy is notably inferior to 4's, but...

You could sign defensive pacts with allies, but you'd need to do as such before a war starts, and in most cares you are better starting a war then being attacked.
Supposedly if you or an ally loses a city you gain a CB, but obviously you don't want to lose cities.

But yea, I generally don't bother with alliances. Friendships are good to avoid wars and denouncement though, so you can trade with them.

Sometimes renewing a friendship before you know it'll go sour is a good way to put things off. If I'm about to win, I sign a lot of friendships since by the time they realize I'm a jerk and try to do something about it, I'm already gone.

Typically though, there will be games where diplomacy will crumble, especially if circumstances force you to retaliate and suppress others (in particular, your neighbors). In these cases, most people will hate you regardless, so pick a friend and try to proactively attack with a joint war (your joint war partner ignores most warmongering penalties unless you go crazy and wipe out multiple factions off the map)
 
What is the point of being ‘allied’ (other than shared vision, I guess)
Well in the diplo actions xml there is a "request Assistance" option but currently its weighted so it will never happen but does indicate consideration in this area. Consider that IV is finished and VI is beginning diplomacy will improve. You are notified on the main screen bottom left of war declarations, and naturally in a leader screen it shows on the summary who they are at war with but yes, maybe an alliance should give better notification. The dip actions xml does show that being allied gives better chances at science agreements / open borders and a few other things. Being allied also give an additional +18 dip points so they do not mind so much for a minor war infraction, you will even get positives for warring with their enemies. The whole dip system is subtle and largely ignored because most people war and there is just not enough dip discouragement ... but the UN is coming so lets hope that helps.

How do I tell (from the diplo/trading screen)
You cannot, you can see in the reports screen you are getting it in a trade, yes it should be there, hopefully one day they will make it so.

I have not seen how to effectively utilize diplomacy in VI.
I get a bit tired of typing it in threads... but you can play to civs agendas and handle them in a certain order so you can benefit, especially early. have a look at the last and largest paragraph in this post for an example...Loving the new patch .. you can also see why I do not want to keep typing this type of example all the time.
 
OK, thanks for the input, folks.

So to confirm, there is currently no way to ask another nation (allied or otherwise) to join in an existing war?

And yep, I understand that we are comparing a 'finished' Civ4 to a year-old Civ6, but to me this is BASIC stuff. How can you simulate (even abstractly) world politics if you can't even ask another nation to assist you in a war?

Anyways, will likely play out this game and then go back to Civ4 while waiting for the next major patch/expansion/whatever.

I really LIKE the base mechanics and even aesthetics of Civ6, but I think they prioritized a lot of things incorrectly in their implementation.

Thanks again for the info!
 
Nope, the diplomacy is pretty much just devoid of features and options. It's extremely rigid in what it allows you to do. No joint wars if anyone is already at war, no asking for help in war (And if you declare war on the one attacking your ally, your ally will call you a warmonger), and everything is locked behind a relationship sliding scale - you want to declare war on your friend because they're spamming you with religious units, sabotaging you or any other reason? Too bad, you can't until the "friendship pact" runs out. You want to sign a defensive pact with someone who doesn't like you? You're gonna have to spend dozens of turns going from Denounced to Unfriendly to Neutral to Friendly to Declared Friend to Ally and only THEN does the defensive pact option even APPEAR.

We can only hope that diplomacy is the biggest focus of the first expansion, and that it's not just some silly unrealistic "world congress" again. We need REAL international politics, like in Civ III and IV, with plenty of diplomatic options and ways to make deals with a leader in regards to a third party - such as trade embargoes, asking leaders to denounce other leaders, and so on.
 
Given the lack of AI military ability I'm unclear if a Defensive Pact would be helpful anyway! But I love playing nice to start and then finding someone to join me in a joint war. Its quite doable to get a couple lifetime allies and still engage in enough warfare to take out a civ or two. Just takes careful management (all the little diplo modifiers add up, heck I even changed governments my last game to make someone happy and get an Alliance)

Also - gift giving is great! 100 gold lump sum will usually get the +10 (decaying) favorable trade deal modifier. Its a great way to push an AI toward Declared Friend and Alliance.

Kudos to Victoria for the all the Diplomacy hints. (I thought there was a sticky guide out there but can't find it now).
 
But I love playing nice to start and then finding someone to join me in a joint war. Its quite doable to get a couple lifetime allies and still engage in enough warfare to take out a civ or two. .

Personnally, I don't play the alliance game at all in CIV6... I will get a few civs to Friends status, but as far as joint Wars... Yes, I keep on doing them, mostly because of habit, but I've found them soooooo useless...

Am I the only one who has done dozens upon dozen of joint wars, but never ever had my ally help in any ways in the actual war ? I DO try to choose allies who are geographically close enough to help, in theory, but in the end,
the only thing it affects is the warmonger diplo hit on that ally, cause THEY NEVER HELP !!!!

In fact, my Suze CS sometimes help me a LOT more than civ allies...

anyways.... Still love the game :goodjob:
 
the only thing it affects is the warmonger diplo hit on that ally,
Well it allows better chance of science agreements, embassies and envoys. I'd have to check the relevant part of the diplomacy xml to see what else.
I made an easy ally of Harald last game and he is the best early ally because he explores the may so fast. One advantage of being by the sea is you can meet boat faring civs and with some luck be allied in about 10 turns to get HUGE visibility value. Not only is it visibility, you get to send envoys to CS on the other side of the world and do quests much earlier.
To me friends is mostly about getting to allies. Friends go pretty quickly when you war while allies have an extra +18 dip points... if you declare war AND take cities then you'll probably loose them too but not always if they hate the same people.
 
Am I the only one who has done dozens upon dozen of joint wars, but never ever had my ally help in any ways in the actual war ? I DO try to choose allies who are geographically close enough to help, in theory, but in the end,
the only thing it affects is the warmonger diplo hit on that ally, cause THEY NEVER HELP !!!!

They rarely help, but the lack of a warmonger penalty means you can keep good relations on them (while everyone hates them for warmongering) and thus they are even more likely to stay friends with you when you suggest you attack another target. If they're friendly with others, they will not declare war on them, but if everyone has denounced them, it is easy. It's kind of a partner in crime thing and locks people in as such. If you're particularly clever, you can often get a 3rd in and try to balance things out but this will break by late game if you decide to keep warring.

If they're close enough though, they're able to distract the enemy enough to make things easier.

I will warn you the most recent patch made joint warring a bit harder; they tend to ask for stuff. Try being friends with them first.
 
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My first post-patch alliance, and it managed to hold until the end of the game. Actually, would be my first alliance since the summer patch hit. And since I didn't really play before that, it should be some cause for celebration.

nuTdoiz.jpg


We even signed a research agreement, though at this point I really only had a few techs that could use it.

Everyone else hates me though. -(50-100) warmongering personalities will do that. It probably wouldn't be so bad if I didn't wipe Spain out but he kept sending missionaries despite me asking him not to. I also wasted a bit of time playing with religion as well, and as usual it was more trouble than it was worth. (Would have been better to just convert to Phillip's religion and enjoy the benefits as such.) But my people (English) wanted to stay Protestant and didn't want to become Catholic....

Incidentally I noticed she's at war with Roosevelt, but unfortunately there's no real excuse to join in. Are warmongering penalities reduced to that. Granted I think this is the result of our previous joint war against him and I signed a peace treaty with Roosevelt; guess she doesn't want peace.
 
Ok, so I haven’t played Civ6 since before the Summer patch and I have played it only sporadically before that. Now with the new patch, it appears to be in decent enough shape to try and really get into it.


I started a game over the weekend and I’m trying to make heads or tails out of the diplomacy. And either I’m missing something (quite possible!) or even a year after release, the diplomatic system is deeply flawed/underdeveloped).


Situation:


I’m on playing Continents as Victoria. I have Persia as a very close neighbor (started the game before finding out that the starting positions were potentially broken). Just to the north of us is Kongo, with the rest of the nations on various other landmasses. As expected, the early game is a ‘Friendly’ love-fest with the AIs. But eventually I run into Teddy and he eventually makes a joint DoW on me with Kongo.


I figure I might be in for some trouble because I hadn’t built up much of a military (due to the mentioned love-fest). I immediately contact my still-friendly Persian neighbors. I make some deal and work up Alliance. But I don’t see any way to ask him to join in and intervene in my war? I see the ‘Joint War’ option, but it only give me the option to declare on a 3rd party (Cleo I think) rather than the two I’m already at war with!


Fast forward a bit – I easily beat back Kongo and America (combination of bad terrain and incompetent attacking). Now I’m at peace with both of them. Kongo decides to attack Persia (who I’m still ‘allied’ with). I get no special notification, and no invitation to intervene on behalf of my ally. I barely even knew he was under attack until I saw the Kongo units swarm him capital under.


At that point, I sort of ignored ‘diplomacy’ from then on since it seemed like a pointless waste of time.


Soooo, what am I missing here. What is the point of being ‘allied’ (other than shared vision, I guess). Is there no way to invite an ally (or anyone for that matter) to intervene or join in an EXISTING war?


Next question/observation…How do I tell (from the diplo/trading screen) whether I need a resource I am being offered in a trade? For example, I don’t have Citrus. Trajan offers Citrus for one my luxuries. I accept. A few turns later. Catherine pops up offering to trade me Citrus for another of my luxury resources. The issue is that I don’t have indication (that I could see) that I am already receiving Citrus from Trajan. So how am I supposed to know if I need a trade or not? Remember it? Shouldn’t there be a pop-up that says ‘you already have one’ or something?


Coming back from CivIV (which I went back to after the Summer patch broke so many things), the diplomacy in VI seem like a huge step backwards in terms of options and information presented. As I said above, it’s quite possible that I’m just missing the information and/or options but so far, I have not seen how to effectively utilize diplomacy in VI.


Thanks in advance for any assistance!

Erm...what diplomacy?

The situation is as you have stated, probably worse...

Diplomacy was supposed to exist for 3 main purposes which are war prevention, cooperation and trade.

There is no power behind the means of war prevention because of the profitability of war and the negative consequences of declaring friendship; ie it is invariably taken advantage of by the AI to forward settle you and conquer your city state allies. (You can't declare wars on friends)

In terms of cooperation joint wars are quite useless because AI just gets in the way, research agreements are a lot weaker than they were in Civ 5 and the lack of a world congress pretty much rendered it pointless.

As for trade, lump sump gold benefits are only effective in the early stages in the game; hostile relations by no means affect trade routes and internal trade routes are preferred anyway so that pretty much leaves no trade-related reason to be friendly with anyone past the early game.

Thus to conclude, the lack of power vested in diplomacy for the benefit of the player, the downsides of friendly relations and the unbridled profitability of warmongering all spiral down into the diplomatic mess you see in the game.

You may include Espionage as part of Diplomacy but even that too is quite useless now when the intel gathered usually doesn't affect what you do anyway.
 
In my last game (King, Standard Fractal, Standard Speed), I had Alexander and Gorgo as my friends the entire game often becoming allies. They were my most immediate neighbours. The warmongering I did didn't bother them as they both like war. Liberated Gorgo's Corinth from England. Was a religious victory helped along by wiping out a few civs and taking large cities.

Spoiler :
Civ6Screen0446.jpg
gorgo_diplo.jpg
alex_diplo.jpg


And in a new game, diplomacy saved my quick death as Gandhi. Alex brought up 7 warriors to my capital and was likely to attack. I had no army as had just fended off barbarian horsemen. But I was able to convince Alex to do a joint war against England who was located right next to him by giving up all my GPT. So then he marched his army back.
 
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In terms of cooperation joint wars are quite useless because AI just gets in the way, research agreements are a lot weaker than they were in Civ 5 and the lack of a world congress pretty much rendered it pointless.
A research agreement and an alliance are eurekas so not entirely useless.

As for trade, lump sump gold benefits are only effective in the early stages in the game; hostile relations by no means affect trade routes and internal trade routes are preferred anyway so that pretty much leaves no trade-related reason to be friendly with anyone past the early game
if you read GOTM 25 results you will find this is not so. Great players are stating how they got their war over with and then met people and tried to keep good relations to get better gold deals in the late game. Gold is so important for science victories.

You may include Espionage as part of Diplomacy but even that too is quite useless now when the intel gathered usually doesn't affect what you do anyway.
Well if you play Pangea and blindly charge from one civ to the next that is true. That intel I have found incredibly useful in many ways. Especially when it comes to needing to stop a culture civ runaway and steal their best cities.
 
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A research agreement and an alliance are eurekas so not entirely useless.

if youbread GOTM 25 results you will find this is not so. Great players are stating how they got their wars over with and then met people and tried to keep good relations to get better gold deals in the late game. Gold is so important for science victories.

Well if you play Pangea and blindly charge from one civ to the next that is true. That intel I have found incredibly useful in many ways. Especially when it comes to needing to stop a culture civ runaway and steal their best cities.

Great players in what sense? Super Fast Victories with weak cities devoid of wonders, culture, commerce, faith and all else that makes a Civilization great? Strategies that only work by exploiting the stupidity of AI and imbalanced aspects of the game? Play Styles that for speed forgo what Civilization is all about and play it in the most unintended and exploitative way possible? I'm sorry I'm not convinced that's considered great. Greatness is always measured in context of what the game is about and against human intelligence, not AI exploitation. The Speed of Victory is irrelevant to me, the Quality of the victory is more important. Show me the glory of your Civilization, I care not how fast you ascend the moon while your people descend into a Darwinistic apocalypse.

I'll give it to you that all those diplomatic things I called weak can help to shave off turns for a faster victory, but that doesn't disprove their lack of influence in the game or the mess they are in right now.

As for espionage I don't play islands so I cede that point to you~
 
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As for espionage I don't play islands so I cede that point to you~
Neither do I... I only play continents but as I said it really helps when you have not even explored the other continent and really need to and someone shows you a mighty fine map of it which includes everything their units can currently see.

Greatness is always measured in context of what the game is about
Civ seems to be measured by a lot of people as in how fast you can get a victory because no other yardstick is accurate enough. I personally agree with you that is about playing the game as intended which is why I play continents because it forces you to use more of the game. You know I play peaceful and immersive games as well as fast because I am more about pleasure and understanding than what anyone thinks of me. Is what you are saying that? That you are doing things right if measured against all aspects of the game, how great your civ is... then surely having a civ with alliances is part of that?

I do cede that things could be a lot better but I disagree that they are useless. The fact I can manipulate situations based on agendas does seem to be a foundation that indicates it can get better. The fact that I am even defending it indicates I feel it is of use as do others.
 
Neither do I... I only play continents but as I said it really helps when you have not even explored the other continent and really need to and someone shows you a mighty fine map of it which includes everything their units can currently see.


Civ seems to be measured by a lot of people as in how fast you can get a victory because no other yardstick is accurate enough. I personally agree with you that is about playing the game as intended which is why I play continents because it forces you to use more of the game. You know I play peaceful and immersive games as well as fast because I am more about pleasure and understanding than what anyone thinks of me. Is what you are saying that? That you are doing things right if measured against all aspects of the game, how great your civ is... then surely having a civ with alliances is part of that?

I do cede that things could be a lot better but I disagree that they are useless. The fact I can manipulate situations based on agendas does seem to be a foundation that indicates it can get better. The fact that I am even defending it indicates I feel it is of use as do others.

Is that yardstick truly accurate? Does it evaluate the strategical soundness of player actions? Can strategy be truly evaluated without true adversary? This is what I am precisely against. That yardstick measures how well you can exploit a false intelligence that is inflexible and unable to counter your strategies in a manner a human can. It measures how well you are able to exploit overpowered elements in the game while disregarding everything else.

It equates Mastery of the Game with Mastery over AI when true Mastery cannot possibly be evaluated that way.

A simple test that everybody shys away from because it steals their glory in speed is this: Can a player who performs well under that yardstick perform equally well using the same level of strategy against another human player? Why not if the yardstick is as accurate as they claim it to be?

Why am I against this yardstick? Have you seen the arrogance of players posting in the forums because they claim mastery that way? Have you seen how the way they play is propagating because of the false idea that winning faster is everything?

This is a plague that destroys what the game is about. If people truly want to measure their capabilities they should play against each other and not be large frogs in small wells.

With regards to my claims about the futility of game aspects. I cite the situation for what it is, it doesn't mean I choose to play that way. I simply hate having to play weakly just to have fun. With regards to alliances, I always ally with City States and for the sake of their protection i cannot ally myself with another major Civilization because it then becomes an excuse for them to conquer my City State allies with impunity.

Useless, not useless, Those are relative terms. Every choice comes with an opportunity cost and when the opportunity cost outweighs the benefits the benefits are relatively useless and that's usually how I derive at my conclusions. Can Allegiances be beneficial? Yes. At what cost? Nothing is ever taken at face value but the "usefulness" of something is always measured by how much you have to give up for the corresponding benefit and also its relative influence in the game compared with other game aspects.
 
Is that yardstick truly accurate?
Its a yardstick, not a laser measurement. Its a ballpark measurement

Have you seen the arrogance of players posting in the forums because they claim mastery that way?
Yes but certainly not many most are humble and helpful.The way they play is just designed to win a scenario and most do not hide that. Their strategies do help in winning on higher levels and do have a best approach also used in MP in quite a few key areas but they are SP strategies overall.

MP mastery is also based on speed and SP is not. its all swings and roundabouts. Yardsticks? I am the best player in Korea because I have won this X number of against Y opponents and uses the GP holdup exploit to give me the edge. These guys live off shift+enter. There is no single yardstick.

I like diplomacy, it can be better but I use it not because its good or bad but because its part of the game and I see its uses. I have pointed them out and Diplomacy is something only for single player and diplomacy is what this thread is about.

for the sake of their protection i cannot ally myself with another major Civilization because it then becomes an excuse for them to conquer my City State allies with impunity.
I'm always allying myself with other Civs. It comes at a part of the game where they rarely conquer CS, that has already happened. And that CB is pretty useless anyway, you have to denounce and wait 5 turns if they have not denounced you ... by which time they have normally conquered the CS and you cannot CB for a dead ally. If you want to play that way that's fine, I respect your choice but in your choice of words I would call that a useless strategy you have there which is stopping you playing with all aspects of the game as designed in a way that may benefit you better. You know that if a civ is close enough and conquer your allied state and you are strong, it is not with impunity they do it.
 
Early'ish friendships can be nice with neighbours, having that guaranteed peace allows you to build more useful stuff than military. Also, trading resources for gold is useful in my games until I build my income up. That's about it for diplomacy benefits, imo.

The fact that you indeed don't see your existing deals - and therefore have to rely on your memory whether an offered resource is of use to you - reflects how half-baked diplomacy is at the moment.

Slightly off-topic, but who else finds AI's joint wars awful? They seem eager to declare a joint war against you, but more often than not it's two civs who aren't even your neighbours and never send any troops to attack you. It's nearly useless a function for the AI.

By the way, I think there should be a delayed joint war option; Declare joint war on X in 15 turns or whatever number you choose. Would give you time to build a few units and send them towards the enemy. Although I'm sure the AI would struggle with this concept massively, lulz.
 
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