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

[Archon_Wing]

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)

Would only apply to your immediate neighbors. Civs further away or on a diffrent landmass wouldn't usually have this issue so it sounds like a map problem. I suppose the weakness of city states as well as poor diplomatic mechanics with city states is a problem, but I think that's a separate issue.

Pangea or maps with a single dominant land mass is overwhelmingly skewed towards war, and that has been true way before Civ 6. And it is not Civ 6 that started the trend of diplomacy with your immediate neighbors generally being untenable, and this isn't exactly unreasonable regardless of perspective.

Nevertheless, I would argue that diplomacy indeed doesn't yield that many benefits and it's a simple fact that it's almost never worth it to go out of your way for it because alternatives atives are superior, but making friends with further away civs generally costs close to nothing and does yield some degree of benefit.

 

[Starwars]

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.

This was very much the case in my latest game. A few of the AI's (Arabia was pretty much always involved) kept declaring joint wars on me throughout pretty much the entire game but they *never* actually did anything. Never showed up with any armies or anything, barely even a single unit. Completely useless.

 

[Victoria]

who else finds AI's joint wars awful?

AI joint wars on me not so much, certainly its rare they both attack and never they co-ordinate
AI joint wars on someone else, well I believe denouncing an enemy stacks so you can denounce them both to give a great dip bonus.
I'm pretty sure the idea behind them is bonding rather than attacking which is a shame.
I like to be devils advocate but I agree they are overall pretty awful.

 

[Archon_Wing]

When I do a joint war, I don't really care if they attack. It brings them closer to me and further away from others. It obviously kills their relationship with the war target so even if nobody does anything, it can be useful. Makes it easier for later when their position does matter.

Basically this makes them so many enemies that they are forced to become your friend.

And a lot of times, why not? Since it counts for a formal war anyways, this at least negates warmongering penalties with one person. And later on, a reduction doesn't do crap regardless. And you don't have to wait 5 turns.

 

[steveg700]

Haven't seen anyone post anything about this yet, but I'm sure they have.

Where are the "Dicuss" options now? How do we, for instance, request a civ not settle near us?

 

[Victoria]

How do we, for instance, request a civ not settle near us?

These are the promises.
To get someone to make a promise, they have to break the promises rules first and ask them to promise not to do it again. The option to discuss does not come up until then.
There is no guarantee they will keep a promise
The worst penalty is for promising and failing.
The best is for promising and keeping.
Weirdly there is less punishment for ignoring than refusing, or at least that was the case when I checked this last about 2 months ago for a post.
There are a few promises, too much to type here quickly with different values.
I have a half written guide, I guess I should try and finish it sometime.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Refrain from settling near, convert or spy.

Only available when it actually happens.

 

[Victoria]

Refrain from settling near, convert or spy.

Artifacts? army close to borders?
They all have values as well is what I meant, its a slippery slope and I'm wanting to play tonight

 

[Archon_Wing]

I wasn't aware you could complain to them about having their army near.

 

[Rosty K]

I wasn't aware you could complain to them about having their army near.

I'm still not aware

 

[Victoria]

I wasn't aware you could complain to them about having their army near.

Move 3 units up to someone's border and see what happens
They will complain... I guess you cannot which I think is wrong. It's a promise you have to make or not but they never do to you.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Oh, I'm aware of the troops complaint from them; but I was talking about stuff you could discuss towards them.... you can never tell them to get off your lawn which is annoying.

What is the worst is if you're both fighting a joint war and you pass by them... they think you are attacking.

 

[PhilBowles]

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.

Played a session where I declared a joint war against Scythia with Kongo, partly in the hopes it would give me an avenue to take Stockholm (it had fallen immediately after I'd sent my third envoy...) but mostly because - despite being at friendly status - Kongo had parked an army outside my city Tokyo with obvious intent. Kongo never moved their troops away for the duration of the war, and eventually did go to war with me - the AI was obviously obsessed with taking Tokyo as I'd beaten a Kongo settler to that city spot. That was in spite of putative positives from joint war, meeting Kongo's agenda etc. (actually they declared war a turn before I would have had a missionary ready to meet their primary agenda).

The AI being the AI, Kongo then moved its victorious units towards actually defended cities, lost them all, and promptly settled for a peace deal that gave me back Tokyo two turns after the 'Make Peace' option was enabled.

I actually had better success with a CS ally. I hadn't realised it at the time, but I was one envoy away from suzerainty with Antananarivo, which was between me and Spain. As soon as Philip declared war, I met the quest condition for triggering the Defensive Tactics eureka and Tana wiped out half the Spanish army before my turn began. Even more impressively, the CS actively moved on and started damaging Barcelona (though they had a carpet of archers that stopped my units getting through and the archers themselves never did anything).

 

[Archon_Wing]

CS's are pretty amazing for keeping enemies off your lawn. I've actually lost more cities to enemy CS's than actual rivals. (Granted, it's only 1 but still....)

 

[Victoria]

Also CS do not seem to make peace after 10 turns anymore... certainly CS allies are now holding the fort wher civ allies are letting us down... this makes attacking Pericles more perilous.

 

[Rosty K]

CS's are pretty amazing for keeping enemies off your lawn. I've actually lost more cities to enemy CS's than actual rivals. (Granted, it's only 1 but still....)

Same here. Also 1. Though I didn't know they'd auto-raze it at the time, so didn't actively resist planning to re-take it later.