As much as I dislike that, by trading Diplomatic Favors, it seems you can now buy a Diplomatic Victory like you could in Civ 5, I can see how it makes some real world sense.
"Hey, if you let me borrow some iron for a bit, I'll owe you one."
"Now that our war has ended, if you give me back that city you captured, I'll owe you big-time."
"It looks like you could use some money. I'll let you borrow some and you can return the favor."
BUT, that being said, game-play trumps realism and all.
I agree that it's fine as long as the AI can handle it. Presumably they will not trade it to you under any circumstances if they dislike you so it will still be necessary to cultivate relationships with other civs if you want to win a diplomatic victory.
Watching the liveplay, I am convinced the grievance+diplomatic favor systems will greatly enhance how diplomacy works and replicate the intricate nuisances and complexities of real-life international relations. As for the diplomatic favors, I see it as a way to replicate the political influence and goodwill seen in real life (i.e. America provided foreign aid to country X, so country Y may be convinced to support American position in UN because of US’s previous support of X and the expectation that Y might receive similar US treatment in the future). In reality, isn’t that how diplomatic realpolitick works?
I just see the fungible nature of diplomatic favor as another method of Ed & co making the game less linear and more compatible with how the real world works.
Also please keep in mind we have NO IDEA how much Favour is needed to buy votes, they can very easily make the value of Favour in Trade Table be much lower than reqwuired to buy votes making the latter fairly insignificant.
Im mildly concerned about Gold and Favour being tradeable as well. However, the fact that the AI is very reluctant to make reasonable deals if the relationship is bad makes this functionality significantly different from Civ V, where the City State Allies are always purchaseable.
Then again, Diplomatic Victory being related to the strength of the Economy, thus making it a kind of Economic Victory, is fine by me.
What Im more concerned about is whether you can sell Favour in the early game. Perhaps you must first acquire Favour from, e.g., Suzeraining a CS, before you can sell any.
Part of me agrees that it should be banned. Or, maybe it should only be exchangeable for other diplomatic options - like 1 favour for open borders, or you pay some favour to bribe another civ to join you in a war. Those 100% should be exchangeable for favours, and in many ways, maybe should ONLY be exchangeable for favours.
As for whether to make it a general currency, hard to say. As much as people complain about it turning things into a diplomatic victory, I worry the other way - say you don't care about diplo victory. Can you just sell all your favours equally around the table and get other bonuses? And I guess, is that a problem?
I think favourable deals should *generate* favour for the person the deal isn't beneficial to. That would incentivise people to give away gifts, since it gives you more leeway w/r/t the World Congress. Not as currency however, just generated out of thin air.
Trading favors is realistic. As others have said, it is basically represents lobbying. We know that there is a lot of that going on in the UN. So it makes sense. But the implementation could be problematic if the player can abuse the system. It would be bad if the AI was too willing to sell their favor to the human player because then it would be too easy for the player to win a diplomatic victory. Hopefully, the AI will know not to sell their favor to the human player who is about to win a diplomatic victory. The whole point of diplomatic favor is that it should be a reward that the player gets from engaging in diplomatic behavior as an alternative to warmongering. So that incentive to play diplomatically would be pointless if players can just buy all the diplomatic favor they want any time they want. If the devs put the price of a favor high enough and teach the AI not to give away their favors to the human player and to accumulate favors themselves to use against the human player, then I think it could work well.
As someone that is actively involved in politics in the real world, I promise you from the bottom of my soul that you absolutely CAN trade diplomatic/political favor for other things.
This is the most realistic system if diplomacy I have ever seen in a Civilization game. I'm in the middle of a statewide campaign right now and I'm about to set fire to the world because of the behind the scenes trading that has gone on to make a perfectly terrible mediocre candidate the coronated winner (because the national team wants to make damn sure the state team will do exactly what they're told and not screw up the election cycle in 2 years like they did for this cycle).
On the one hand, I understand national party "spending and trading their diplomatic favor points" to guarantee the election of their candidate at the next election and I like their ultimate goal. But since I'm one of the point people on the losing team that doesn't have enough diplomatic favor points and enough military threats to influence the local districts to back my candidate, I hate losing.
And there you have a Civ6 comparison of real world politics.
As for whether to make it a general currency, hard to say. As much as people complain about it turning things into a diplomatic victory, I worry the other way - say you don't care about diplo victory. Can you just sell all your favours equally around the table and get other bonuses? And I guess, is that a problem?
That would be a calculated risk. Diplomatic victory aside, selling all your diplomatic favor would mean 0 influence on the world congress, so you'd be leaving yourself open to all the other civs in the world ganging up on you. Making strategic decisions like that is why I think it enhances gameplay to have diplomatic favor be a tradable resource.
I feel that diplomatic favor should be tradeable, but it should also be used for other things. Like buying a casus belli for example, or perhaps buying a bonus for X turns from city-states. The idea of a "diplomatic currency" has a lot of potential and I hope it wouldn't just be used for the World Congress.
I feel that diplomatic favor should be tradeable, but it should also be used for other things. Like buying a casus belli for example, or perhaps buying a bonus for X turns from city-states. The idea of a "diplomatic currency" has a lot of potential and I hope it wouldn't just be used for the World Congress.
Also, it would be great if you could spend diplomatic favor to force a friend to declare war on your current enemy for X turns. It should cost a lot of diplomatic favor but it should be doable.
EDIT: that is probably already implemented in the game since you can put diplomatic favor in your trade column and a joint war in the other trade column.
Favors should ONLY be used to compensate for grievances (and for the dealings in the WC), if they want to preserve the new system's consistency.
If they are trade-able, like now, they effectively lose all diplomatic significance, and we are back to the pseudo-diplomatic, really economic victory of civ 5, which they say wanted to avoid in the first place...
As many have comented, it being tradeable makes certain sense from a RW perspective, so imho an outright NO cannot be given.
Certain concerns about it being a cheesy way to win the diplomatic victory can be considered, but we need to know the system more - we do not know how favor value is handled or perceived by other leaders. What if you can only favor with leaders you are at least "happy" with. This involves already some diplomacy.
It may be as well that the cost of getting favor from other leader (or the value of your own favor) depends on your diplomatic relationship) - This is, your allies may be more inclined to trade high values of favor with you (and may expect the same). While pepole hating you may overvalue its own favor, while undervaluing yours, so its more difficult both to buy favor with things or things with favor.
To me, this is a wait and see topic for the moment.
Civ5 was the same way. I played Sweden and Greece as a good will diplomatic nation, filling out the Patronage tree and completing quests for and gifting units and great people to city-states. Conversely, I played Arabia as an economic powerhouse, focusing on the Commerce tree and using my deep coffers to buy city-state influence. I'm a fan of asymmetrical game play in 4x games, so the ability to approach a Diplomatic Victory from different angles in Civ6 would make me happy.
Do we know if we gain favor by playing along an agenda and lose it by violating an agenda? It would make agendas slightly more meaningful.
Considering the fact that you seem to be able to buy an economic victory: I do hope that civ that dislike you will under no circumstances (not even a peace deal) trade diplomatic favors at least, so that you can only trade for them with a limited number of civs in more aggressive games.
Im mildly concerned about Gold and Favour being tradeable as well. However, the fact that the AI is very reluctant to make reasonable deals if the relationship is bad makes this functionality significantly different from Civ V, where the City State Allies are always purchaseable.
It's even beyond just relationship is bad - I think there's still some 'hidden' warmongering or 'you are winning' (at least militarily) calculation, as I've had allies - who I have no warmonger penalty with in theory as I've been joint warring with them the whole time - offer me a pittance for luxuries. When usually they would offer me a lot if I were in a peaceful game.
Or maybe they'll implement them more like great works - they'll value them highly in the beginning and ask you for them every 5 turns, but later game (especially if they've decided they aren't going for a cultural victory), they'll sell them for relatively less (though usually still a high enough asking price that I'd say it would be difficult to buy your way to a cultural victory so to speak).
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