Do you keep your borders 'closed'?

[padillah]

So this tensions will go up (or, the modifier will go negative) as my borders encroach on the others cities?

Ah, so I have no hope of stiflling this tension? Nuts. I wonder what they will do when I put a city in the middle of their continent (as soon as I get home).

Tom P.

[Arrian]

Heh, I tried to block an AI's expansion the old fashioned way (CivIII style) by blocking a chokepoint with 1 warrior.

Next thing I knew, there was an AI city there, and my warrior had been kicked 2 tiles east!

Heh. You can share tiles now w/o war. So they just marched up and settled, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Luckily, cultural borders from my capitol and 2nd city closed off their expansion anyway, sticking them with 4 cities (to my ~10).

-Arrian

[Arrian]

So this tensions will go up (or, the modifier will go negative) as my borders encroach on the others cities?

Yup. It's not that big a negative, though. You can counter it with open borders ( ), trade, religion...

-Arrian

[Common Sensei]

Originally posted by Arrian


Yup. It's not that big a negative, though. You can counter it with open borders ( ), trade, religion...

-Arrian

The diplomatic penalty seems to increase depending on how much of a border you share, how many of the tiles from their cities you are taking with superior culture, and how many cities of theirs flipped to your side. I'm pretty sure I had the "close borders spark tensions" as much as -3 once.

[Arrian]

That's true, you're right. I think I've even seen a -4. Probably when I used that great artist to culture bomb...

-Arrian

[padillah]

The issue I have is that there's no counter for it. So everyone will always have it in for you to some degree.

Oh, wait. Isn't there a "cul;ture slider"? Could you use this to stop your culture border from encroaching on others? But what happens to the culture build-up? When you put the slider back to 100% does all the culture "pop" at once?

Hah! that would be so useful. Stick a city just close enough to be irritating but keep the culture down for five or ten turns, then WHAM! Course you could do the same with GP hordes. Stick two or three in a city and drop 4000 culture a turn for three turns... Now THAT'S a culture bomb.

Tom P.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by padillah
HEY, Vel!

Where have you been hiding? I looked for you to start a new stratagy guide but didn't find hide noir hair.

DITTO!!!

I've been waiting for ya, Vel!! (admittedly I haven't caught up on all the threads yet)

Watch for a PM re some early game testing ideas I have.

T

/me being unashamedly OT

[Martinus]

I normally keep them closed, since I pursue a specialist-heavy strategy with mercantilism, so there is little point in having them open anyway. I usually only get the AI to open them when I want to send them my great merchants or missionaries.

[Velociryx]

Hiyas Theseus! I predict that there's gonna be LOTS to talk about, strategically, with this game!



-=Vel=-

[ixnay]

Another use for closed borders: If you're between two civs at war and want to help one out, close your borders to the other one.

They won't be able to move their troops and will be stuck in a defensive war with the other civ

This managed to be pretty effective in preventing a smaller, friendly civ from being wiped off the map by a larger unfriendly civ.