Why it matters to let leaders in on your plans

[ButSam]

I just found out why it matters when a leader pops up and says "Are you preparing to attack me?" or other such things where there are two options -- one truthful and one not-so-honest (if you really mean harm).

I betrayed the Babylonians when they suspected my units were amassing on his border, and said "Don't worry, just passing through"...move along, nothing to see here! LOL Anyway, a few turns later when he went to war with a city-state I liked I declared war on him. Babylon said I have betrayed my word in telling him I wasn't going after him, and he would make sure the world knew it.

My diplo relations appear to be lessened with other civs (but not city-states). So, that is why you may want to tell the truth to your opponent -- if he catches you in a lie, all other civs will distrust you more.

 

[Sync]

I actually hope it does work that way, I always liked the 'reputation' system.

 

[narmox]

Not only that, there's more!

Leader A wants you to sign a pact of secrecy against Leader B.. so far so good, nothing good nothing bad so just sign it.

Leader A wants to sign a pact of cooperation. Sounds good! But.. cooperate on what? No clue is given. Then you do a research pact! Cooperation is awesome!!!

Leader A then wants you to declare war on Leader B... you're busy building wonders and roads, so you decline.

Leader A once again asks you to go to war against B... nah you're busy building marketplaces and colosseums to recover your economy!

Leader A then tells you the pact of cooperation is over.. uh oh. Well it's not like it gave any bonuses, right? Wrong.

LEader A tells you the pact of secrecy is over. Right, that never gave anything either, right? Wrong.

Leader A doesn't want to sign open borders anymore, doesn't want to give you much of anything, in fact, unlike before. That's because, despite all the pacts of cooperation and secrecy, you never did cooperate. In fact you probably even made some research agreements with Leader B, even though you promised you wouldn't! (and research agreements are public agreements, so other leaders know!)

So yeah, there IS diplomacy involved, reputation, and they seem to remember if you were true to your word or not, in the past, when dealing with them.

Good to know.

 

[Shurdus]

Ha, take THAT people complaining that diplomacy is lame!

 

[ButSam]

Pretty cool! I've stayed true to my pacts now, secrecy only against people I want it against, and so forth -- so hopefully that will yield the best results. I think diplo is more involved here. No more just trading a tech to everyone else for a bunch of other techs so you can claim to dominate even though you just gamed the system. Now, you have to sign something mutually beneficial, or make a promise, or something to show you are serious.

Also, the diplo. victory actually requires diplomacy, not just a substitute for when you get tired of conquesting.

 

[ironduck]

Diplomacy does seem more interesting this time, but I still don't understand what pact of secrecy actually does. Is it just a deeper cooperation with another player that helps you develop a good relationship but also means you will need to help out in case of war lest you lose it again?

 

[Lightzy]

If you tell him that you're attacking then he gets the first attack on you.

I don't mind taking penalties to diplo so that I get first bombard round.


Besides, diplomacy is meaningless because they're 'playing to win'. There's no pretending that they're personalities representing nations that I can befriend through making myself more like them in my game. There's no religion I can share or civics I can share anyway.

They're just another min/maxer ass that I might meet on the webs, and are now more than ever just faceless and emotionless "war AI"s.

 

[Gath]

Ha, take THAT people complaining that diplomacy is lame!

Really? Because that sounded precisely obfuscated and lame to me. A bunch of unexplained, unpredictable, undefined interactions that have vague, unidentifiable results.

If you want credit for something, people have to know you did it. As far as I can tell, the diplomacy is stupid and lame because I don't have a clue whats going on. They might as well not do *anything* because I don't know why they do what they do or say what they say, and I can't tell any significant attitude from the visual features of a silly cgi leader either.

 

[Nutteria]

Yeah the diplomacy in ciV is GREAT.It is no longer a statistic dashboard for you to manipulate.You actually have to influence the AI and to make a mutual trust with him.

 

[The Leviathan]

I think everybody who complains about the diplomacy has absolutely no clue how deep the system actually is and how much sense it makes, after starting my second game it was easy to realize how things worked

basically:
1.Keep a strong enough army so the other AI's don't think you're weak.
2. Warmongering will be looked upon, if you declare war and the AI will get wary of you.
3.Be honest and don't backstab them. When they ask you if you're going to attack them, and you lie they take it much more harshly and so do the other AIs around.
4. Treading on a specific AI's foot (taking their city state,
5. Don't settle too close to a neutral civilization, as they will get upset

The AI has a sphere of influence over themselves, their allies, land that is close to them, and land that they want. Walking over their feet gets them upset.

Honestly It's a much more realistic and personable diplomacy system. And it's not completely without warning, because sometimes AI will let you know when they're angry and or when they're feeling scared of you, or even when they respect you. It's more than simple happy faces, their actually diolouge should give the hint of not only how they feel about you (neutral, wary, angry, happy)

The only complaint I can wage against the system, is that the AI gets upset that you declared war on a civ the two of you had a secrecy pact against. I can understand them getting wary if you snatch up too much land from the civ, but they shouldn't hate you for fixing their problem. Also I don't think theyacknowledge when you are allies in war. (from what I've seen).

 

[bjbrains]

The leaders still have personalities. Just because they'll try to win, it doesn't mean that they don't have levels of aggressiveness, various strategies they prefer, and other attributes described by their 'flavors'. You just can't exploit them any more.

A pact of secrecy is pretty straightforward: You and other person in the offer agree to not help the third person. This improves relations between the two parties who signed the pact. The third party does not know about this, but if you start trading/helping the third party, the person you signed the pact with will get angry.

Oh, and the XML reveals a lot of info about the basic AI parameters (although I would need to do a lot more digging/have SDK access to figure out what these parameters do).
All leaders have varying levels of "Victorycompetitiveness" (Which I assume means how hard they will play to win), "Wondercompetitiveness" , Minorcivcompetitiveness (aka city states), Boldness, WarmongerHate, Workagainstwillingness and Worthwithwillingness.

So it looks like AIs really have different levels of how they will treat warmongers, how much they like cooperation, etc.
Some really interesting stuff that seems to tell a lot:
Each leader has several "approaches" to major and minor civs with various 'bias' counts.
For example, Askia has : a 7 "war" bias, a 6 "hostile" bias, 4 deceptive, 6 guarded, 3 Afraid, 6 friendly, and 5 neutral.
Bismark has 7 "war", 4 "Hostile" 7 "Deceptive", 7 "Guarded", 4 "afraid", 7 "Friendly, and 4 "Neutral.

Askia scares me now.

 

[lordrune]

Really? Because that sounded precisely obfuscated and lame to me. A bunch of unexplained, unpredictable, undefined interactions that have vague, unidentifiable results.

If you want credit for something, people have to know you did it. As far as I can tell, the diplomacy is stupid and lame because I don't have a clue whats going on. They might as well not do *anything* because I don't know why they do what they do or say what they say, and I can't tell any significant attitude from the visual features of a silly cgi leader either.

You're thinking about it the wrong way.

The computer can only get an idea about your attitude to them from the way you act. It doesn't have access to a neat little display showing, point by point, exactly what the numerical factors are that define how you regard it, and it doesn't know whether, according to some arbitrary rule on a table, you're going to declare war on it or not.

Now, the scales are evened. Both humans' and AI's real motives are obscured. This makes the game more interesting in my opinion. It's still completely fair - if you conduct your diplomatic affairs in a forthright way, you'll be rewarded, if you're sneaky and deceptive, you'll pay a price.

 

[The Leviathan]

Really? Because that sounded precisely obfuscated and lame to me. A bunch of unexplained, unpredictable, undefined interactions that have vague, unidentifiable results.

If you want credit for something, people have to know you did it. As far as I can tell, the diplomacy is stupid and lame because I don't have a clue whats going on. They might as well not do *anything* because I don't know why they do what they do or say what they say, and I can't tell any significant attitude from the visual features of a silly cgi leader either.

But we do know what is going on... we might not have the exact numbers but the ideas and effects from you actions are obvious . Not to mention the AI's motives and feelings can still be vaguely understood.

the AI isn't a unpredictable mess like every complainer seems to think. The reasons why and what the different pacts and diplomatic situations do are pretty easy to grasp if you're not mentally handicapped. They get upset at you for anything that goes against their interest, when you become dangerous, and when you become too weak.

They actually get upset for political reasons, and are influenced by what you actually do and say in the game... instead of being manipulated by a stupid gimmicky spreadsheet system like religion.

 

[rschissler]

Napoleon asked me to go to war with China. I chose "Give me 10 turns to prepare." Over 10 turns went by and I never heard a word from Napoleon. I asked him if we should go to war with China. He said "We've talked about this before, and the answer is still no." What's up with that, I thought?

So, I declared war on China myself. The next turn Napoleon declares war on China.

 

[Nutteria]

I think that the devs did quite a good job at exploiting our simple human minds in the context of the game.In 99.999% if you can backstab an AI you will since it is better for your agenda.The diplomacy in the game takes advantage over this and punishes you for lieing.It is has some education value for demanding fairplay even if it is with a AI.

 

[Scramble]

Napoleon asked me to go to war with China. I chose "Give me 10 turns to prepare." Over 10 turns went by and I never heard a word from Napoleon. I asked him if we should go to war with China. He said "We've talked about this before, and the answer is still no." What's up with that, I thought?

So, I declared war on China myself. The next turn Napoleon declares war on China.

I know the time seems off... I think it has to be adjusted for game speed. But eventually they actually do come to you and tell you if they are ready or not. You don't need to come to them, they will come to you.

 

[Evalis]

Yeah the ai is a bit borked.. like if a nation is at war with another nation already and you offer to go to war with them they tell you no.. like what? I figured they might offer me some gold or something. Second, the ai doesn't care if you fight an enemy they don't like. They still hate you for going to war.

Good example of this.. america got beaten down to 1 city from englands crazy UU and I rushed over to save him. Completely obliterated england gifting all of americas stolen cities back to him, I even liberated a defeated ai opponent in the process and gifted his cities back too.

For the first 30 turns or so they both loved me.. then they suddenly forgot everything that happened and asked me to saw off my left nut for a trade in sugar. So I demanded it and he REFUSED, Despite having Artillery and Infantry to his muskets. Stupid AI

 

[wingsoverithaca]

just kill them, problem solved.

 

[Quetz]

Not only that, there's more!

Leader A wants you to sign a pact of secrecy against Leader B.. so far so good, nothing good nothing bad so just sign it.

Leader A wants to sign a pact of cooperation. Sounds good! But.. cooperate on what? No clue is given. Then you do a research pact! Cooperation is awesome!!!

Leader A then wants you to declare war on Leader B... you're busy building wonders and roads, so you decline.

Leader A once again asks you to go to war against B... nah you're busy building marketplaces and colosseums to recover your economy!

Leader A then tells you the pact of cooperation is over.. uh oh. Well it's not like it gave any bonuses, right? Wrong.

LEader A tells you the pact of secrecy is over. Right, that never gave anything either, right? Wrong.

Leader A doesn't want to sign open borders anymore, doesn't want to give you much of anything, in fact, unlike before. That's because, despite all the pacts of cooperation and secrecy, you never did cooperate. In fact you probably even made some research agreements with Leader B, even though you promised you wouldn't! (and research agreements are public agreements, so other leaders know!)

So yeah, there IS diplomacy involved, reputation, and they seem to remember if you were true to your word or not, in the past, when dealing with them.

Good to know.

Wow, thanks for that rundown. I never thought about it, but it totally explains why my longtime friend Elizabeth suddenly turned hostile after I finished the war I was having with Alexander and then agreed to a research pact with him - I forgot we had a pact of secrecy against him, and boom, she soon ended it and turned hostile.

So yeah, I guess those things really do matter. Too bad they are so hard to track >.>

 

[Smuggo]

Interesting, I was wondering what these things were for, that makes sense thinking back on my first game.