I love you THIS much! (The diplomatic +/- system)

[gakkun]

I've found that for a particular 'liking' different leaders have different limits.

For example I've shared a religion with my first neighbour Isabella ever since I found her but she only has +4 with me on the 'we care for brothers of the same faith' and didn't go any higher for the rest of the game. However then I find Mansa about 30 turns later, also the same religion and in no time he had a +8 with me on that same criteria.

[Hamdinger]

Originally posted by TheArsenal

Amusingly fair, since I play this way. I can’t count the number of games where I’ve shaken my first and cursed an AI Civ who attacked me early when I was weak “You’ll pay, oh you just wait, how dearly you will pay!”

I’ve built entire games around revenge. And I’m certain I’m not alone.

I remember once when my son and I were trying to decide what computer game to play together, he told me he wanted to play something with Aztecs in it so he could get back at them for what they did in his last Civ game. So for some people, the revenge even carries over to other games.

[Cabbagemeister]

I'm pretty sure that civs have more than one "worst enemy". I remember one time when Japan asked me to stop trading with their worst enemy, the Russians. Well, I was going to declare war on the Russians soon anyway, so I did it. Three turns later, Japans asks me to stop trading with their worst enemy, the Chinese. And yes, I still had the "trading with worst enemy" diplomatic penalty, even though I had given in to their request!

[Kuciwalker]

Re: I love you THIS much! (The diplomatic +/- system)

Originally posted by Arkay
Also, I have seen where a civ was upset at my having fallen under the sway of a heathen religion (-1) but when they converted to my religion, they cared for their brothers and sisters of the faith (+5!!)

This is one of my main ways of getting a civ to like me, gifting to +4, then doing whatever is necessary to convert them, at which point I have a loyal ally.

I use obsolete resources or things like Hit Movies to get the resources bonus.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by padillah
Here's something I THINK I've noticed: The size of the gift is irrelevant.

If you gift them 10 gold each turn for 10 turns they feel the same as if you gifted them 1000 gold each turn for 10 turns.

I also think this extends to their demands: so long as you gift them something they will not hold it against you.

I know I have had Isabelle demand 1000 gold or Theology and I asked to renegotiate and gifted her 10 gold and she said OK and went on her merry way. I don't think I ever noticed a "-1 you refuse to give us tribute"

I'd like to test this concretely but my machine (and spare time) have been up and down lately. It's currently settled down so I might get some time to test this tonight, at least before the weekend.

Tom P.

That sounds like a bug.

[Blake]

Isabella is very fanatical about religion. If you share her religion she'll be +8 (from faith alone!) in no time.

In some cases it can be worth adopting the religion of your neighbourly religious fruitcake (like Isabella) and let your less religious neighbours "deal with it", as while Isabella WILL attack (or shun) you for being a heathen, the others probably wont and will continue to trade with you in spite of religious differences.

And religious fruitcakes make GREAT allys, they'll back you up in wars and stuff. The more neutral civs are somewhat harder to motivate.

[silver1441]

Whats the deal with the shoe on the other foot?

There were times I wanted to demand certain things from other CIV's but those things were in 'red' as if I were going to offer something back.

For instance demanding a civ to change religion, give a resource, give their world map, give their gold or a tech. Its redded out because 'they don't like me' - well its not like I need/am going to demand from civs I have good relations with (heck have good enough relations and it doesn't even read like a demand where you say 'can you spare xyz for an old friend)

So what I want to know is why I can't demand the same type of things from weaker civs that are sometimes demanded from me. I don't have a good relation with civ xyz but they can demand that I give them a tech, or gold, or my map, or change religion.

Am I missing something here, a different screen for making demands? Or is it just guaranteed failure despite the fact I can beat them militarily anyway?

I feel like I can't push around other civ's in the same mannor that they can make demands of me. It just seems that it isn't possible for the player to demand things from civs that they don't have good relations with no matter how pathetic they might be.

Another thing is it seems impossible to make another Civ stick to YOUR religion if they all ready have one. Even if you spread your religion to every one of their cities and get them to change religion it seems like they only keep it for a turn or two (not even 10 turns from what I've seen) before they just switch back to their religion.

If they have no religion at all thats another story if you can spread yours enough in their cities - although a few times they seemed to switch religion when a couple of their cities adopt someone elses religion anyay.

So it just seems like YOUR the one that has to convert to their religion as it just doesn't seem to stick the other way if you want to be faith buddies. This is even on a lower Warlord setting - I can only imagine the higher prince/monarch tha the AI would shun your chosen religion even more and not want to switch to it.

[Fosse]

The red items is just a sort of visual shortcut.

What it's saying is, "If we let you put this on the table and DEMAND it from the AI, they wouldn't give it to you. They either value this so much or are too proud to give it up for anything you have, which includes any force that they believe you can bring to bear should they not cave in."

You still have the option to demand things they WILL trade, and they may or may not give in.

it would be like the human getting Alphabet first and simply refusing to trade it, no matter what.

In my opinion this feature is a simple time and energy saver that allows me the luxury of not trying to do something that will fail no matter what, and not so much a restriction on trade options per se. I'd rather know that I can't do something by looking at it than spend five minutes learning that I can't by exhausting all the possible options.

[cal_01]

Hmm. Concerning religion, I was playing a cultural game and my neighbours were just hammering me. In their modifiers, I noticed that they hated me because I was a heathen, so I decided to switch out of a state religion. Almost immediately, they loved me! So.. don't choose a religion unless you share religions with your neighbour?

[padillah]

Originally posted by silver1441
So what I want to know is why I can't demand the same type of things from weaker civs that are sometimes demanded from me. I don't have a good relation with civ xyz but they can demand that I give them a tech, or gold, or my map, or change religion.

I think it's a time saving thing. Like the "XXX won't even talk to you" line you get when at war with someone. Don't ask for an audience, don't try and make contact, you'll just be wasting your time. Same thing with trade. If you have Iron Working and some low-life civ DEMANDS it from you for nothing, you'd never give in to that deal, right? Well, these guys are just telling you ahead of time that no matter what you do I'll never give you that red thing. Saves a bit of time from you asking 5 or 10 different ways before you finally get the hint.

Another thing is it seems impossible to make another Civ stick to YOUR religion if they all ready have one. Even if you spread your religion to every one of their cities and get them to change religion it seems like they only keep it for a turn or two (not even 10 turns from what I've seen) before they just switch back to their religion.

You have to be big enough to make it count. What do you care if you are Judaism and India is Hindu if they only have three warriors and an archer? Now, if they had 20 - 30 swordsman and 30 - 40 spearman you might think it's a good idea to be on their good side.

Tom P.

[Fidel]

i asked tokugawa for some tech 3000 yrs ago. he gave it and kept -2 'you made an arrogant demand' for three millenia. bastard.

[Drachasor]

Originally posted by padillah
Here's something I THINK I've noticed: The size of the gift is irrelevant.

If you gift them 10 gold each turn for 10 turns they feel the same as if you gifted them 1000 gold each turn for 10 turns.

I also think this extends to their demands: so long as you gift them something they will not hold it against you.

I know I have had Isabelle demand 1000 gold or Theology and I asked to renegotiate and gifted her 10 gold and she said OK and went on her merry way. I don't think I ever noticed a "-1 you refuse to give us tribute"

There are two kinds of demands. Lighter ones you can renegotiate. With those you can just hit "renegotiate" and then "nevermind" and you won't take a hit.

Real demands/requests don't give you a renegotiation option. You either have to agree to give them exactly what they want or take the hit for not helping them.

-Drachasor

[Blake]

One that annoys me is "You declared war on our friend", especially when they end up helping to kill "their friend".

By the way, the "What do you think of..." thing can be very helpful for forming stable power blocks. Some leaders like each other (like in my last game Ghengis and Cathy got along swimingly) and allying with both of them resulted in a very stable situation, whenever one of them asked me to join in a war I agreed and for the most part we'd all be fighting the same Civ.

it's not good to have allys snapping at each other because they you start wracking up "-4 you traded with our worst enemies!"

I'm increasingly inclined to make friends and enemies from the start, rather than trying to remain neutral. Forming power blocks is a pretty powerful meta-strategy.

[DrSpike]

+2: Your thread has interested us.

[Arkay]

The XML clue from swat spaz2 got me to poking around, and I found the xml stuff he mentioned.. My computer wants to default- open it in my web browser which doesnt help, but you can 'open with' notepad and read it just fine.

the files can be found in
C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\Civilizations

but there is over a half-meg of text to sift thru. I can sort of make out the rudiments of the system with references to samereligionattiutde type variable-looking thingys and mentions made of 'memory' for some variables (presumably how long they hate you for stuff). It may be a little beyond the scope of my understanding because I can't make out a +8 for mansa or issabella's religion variables (or any other of the specific + or - numbers mentioned in these threads); the numbers seem to be different.

Maybe the mention of said xml files will; tweek the "I gotta research this until every last nuance is understood and published" centers of some of the brains around here (glances at solver, vel, and DeepO)