Diplomatic Victory Frustrations

[Cort Haus]

Sharing a religion with a large block of voters can help, but avoiding a state religion for the whole game can help set up a DV too. I got a DV in the first first AU game this way.

In that game we started next to Isabella and Ghengis - notoriously difficult neighbours, with Egypt, Germany (Bismark) & Persia beyond, and Elizabeth away on her own continent. By avoiding a state religion I was able to hold off Spain & Mongolia diplomatically until I was strong enough to deal with them, with the help of alliances formed with the civs on the other side. If you can't get missionaries through closed borders to the other side, you can't get them to convert, so avoiding a state religion can be the best bet.

Good long term relationships can be built up with an ally if you trade (and gift) resources for the whole game, avoid trading with their enemies, avoid religious & border tensions, agree to the first friendly request for help (if possible), and ally in a war or two.

[NormB]

I've been looking around the XML files to find any information relevant to this topic. It looks like most of the info about the "personality characteristics" of the various leaders is located in CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml. With the help of an xml editor, I took this file apart and summarized it in an excel spreadsheet that I have attached to this post.

It lists the various variables and their associated value for each player. You can guess at the meaning of most of the variables by their name. For example, RazeCityProb most likely refers to the probability that the leader will raze one of your cities if s/he captures it. Other names are less obvious. Many of the variables have the same value across the board but many other vary significantly among the leaders. For example, the FavoriteCivicAttidudeChangeLimit variable suggests thatyou will get more diplomacy benefits if you change to Gandhi's, or Mao Zdeong's favorite civic than you will if you change to Alexander's, Asoka's or a host of others. Genghis Kahn, Isabella, Montezuma, Napoleon and Tokugawa all start off with negative BaseAttitudes which is consistent with their being a pain to be close to as mentioned by Cort Haus above.

I hope some of you technophiles can use this to guide your game. Have fun.

[Cort Haus]

Good stuff, NormB.

No surprises about that -1 BaseAttitude bunch.

iWarmongerRespect is seemingly how much they like a warmonger, so Alex, Cathy, Ghengis, Boney, Loius, Monty, Huayna, Peter and the Kahns score highly.

Boney is the highest unit-builder, them Monty & Alex. So don't over-expand when these guys are around. I've just done that in a game and both Napoleon & Montezuma jumped me.

Highest iDemandRebukedWarProb is Ghengis but equal with Roosevelt on 50. Next are Alex, Bismark, Isabella, Qin, Saladin & Toku - all on 25.

iDemandRebukedSneakProb has Washington tops with 100, then Cathy with 80, followed by Lizzie, Izzie, Monty & Boney on 60.

I'd like to know the difference here between 'War' and 'Sneak'.

Trade, Open Borders, and Shared Wars and Defensive pact values are the same across the board, so it doesn't look like anyone has an emphasis on these.

Izzie only has the second highest iSameReligionAttitudeChangeLimit - equal with Mansa at 6, but Asoka tops this one at 7, and the lowest are Monty and Mao with 2.

Mao and Ghandi score highest in iFavoriteCivicAttitudeChangeLimit with 6, followed by Roosevelt, Saladin & Tokugawa with 5. Alex, Asoka, Bismark, Cyrus, Hattie, Monty & Peter are the lowest with 2.

This all suggests that Monty is the hardest to get positives with except on the WarmongerRespect count.

[Yosh]

It's also very interesting that Gandhi will trade techs with you no matter how angry he is! In addition, he will ALWAYS be open to signing an Open Borders agreement!

TechRefuseAttitudeThreshold - NONE
OpenBordersRefuseAttitudeThreshold - NONE

Another interesting tidbit about Bismark is that his (unusually enough) ONLY "flavor" is military = 10. In comparison, Genghis, a bigger warmonger (IMHO), only has a military of 5.