Diplomacy gripe

[MightyTiny]

It happens every now and then that in a game where you've got good relations with a neigbour, that neigbour has open borders agreement with a third party that you don't share a border with. Then that third party declares war on you, and uses your "friend's" territory to march his attacking troops through.

Then when you contact that neighbour of yours, you see that the option to request him to cancel deals with your aggressor is not available. Not available!?

I mean come on, in a real-life situation like that, the attacked country would have every reason to declare an ultimatum to that neighbour that "If you allow my enemy to pass through your territory to attack me, I will have to, in the name of self defense, consider your cities, that serve as bases for enemy troups, as legitimate military targets."

In other words, shut your borders to my enemy, or become my enemy yourself!

And since that neigbour is friendly, I'd also like the opportunity to, in addition to delivering that ultimatum, deliver assurances that if as a result of shutting the border my neigbour himself gets drawn into war, I'll aid in the defence of his cities. Or perhaps, as a reply to such an ultimatum, my neighbour state could ask for such assurances before agreeing.

It just seems immensely silly that, for example, in my current game, Montezuma is attacking through chinese territory, and I can't get the chinese, who are supposed to be my friends, to simply cancel their open borders agreement with Montezuma.

Please Firaxis, include in the next patch, or in the expansion, an option to deliver ultimatums in such obvious cases - I mean a country letting my enemy use their cities as bases during a war against me CANNOT by definition be pleased or friendly towards me; they are participating in the agression!

In other words, there are situations in which it shouldn't be possible for me to be unable to request, or rather demand something.

And in a case where I did deliver such ultimatum, since it is clearly justified, my neigbour should agree apologetically, and without a negative penalty to our relations. That is, of course, unless they want to join my enemy in the war against me OFFICIALLY too, not just indirectly.

Of course I'll have to anihilate the Azteks now, and probably raze a few Chinese too afterwards, just for being such good "friends".

Not to say I'm vindictive or anything.

[TheHateMale]

I *think* you could do this with the 'Stop trading with...' option.

Edit: Whoops, misread your post. Disregard this.

[Feyd]

Think of it this way...

When the AI asks you to cancel deals with a civ and you refuse it is the same as them simply not allowing the option. They're going to refuse it even if you propose it.

This isn't like Civ III where you didn't know where you stood on city trading for example. You know what they COULD say yes to and what they will automatically refuse by looking at the redded out bits.

Either way, it seems to be working perfectly because as you would get a negative with the AI for not agreeing to cancel deals, he is receiving one from you for doing the same.

Simplicity of form

EDIT: As for your desire to destroy the AI for "helping" perhaps the Chinese are in the same situation I've been in with a game where I was told to cancel all deals and dared not because I knew I would get steamrolled by the civ with whom I cancelled deals if war broke out.

Finally, think of the plus side. You can have a war on their land and not have to worry about the constant pillaging (just increased movment of Monty's units)

[MightyTiny]

Yes, I do see how the option being red is kind of a quick way of the civ refusing - but my gripe is a bit different:

I'm saying that I should be able to issue an ultimatum even on requests that are "redded out", in situations where an ultimatum is clearly justified and called for, such as a "friendly" neighbour civ allowing your enemies to use their territory as base for their attacks. In other words, I should be able to say: "Either close your borders, or I'll make them MY borders, and it ain't gonna be pretty!", with an option to immediately declare war upon refusal.

The point would be then, that if that ultimatum was refused, and a war started, then the start of the war would be viewed by everyone as justified (as in a real life situation it clearly would be). The aggressor would be the civilization that allowed their territory to be used in a war against me, and refused to stop co-operating with my enemy, and thus I wouldn't receive any negative "You declared war on our friend!" minuses in diplomatic relations.

In my ongoing game, at this point the Atzteks have been wiped out; now I've got a civilization in two parts; captured four cities from Montezuma, because I didn't want to help others at that location gain space on my expense; the distance to my capital is half a continent I'm afraid. Cyrus joined in the fun when he saw Montezuma's armies falling, and captured one of his cities, which I was glad for, because my maintenance costs were going through the roof already!

Now I'll have to balance my budjet before even considering further conflict. Beelining to communism because I'm afraid state property is the only reasonable way to go for me now.

[Willem]

There should be at least an option to ask a civ to close their borders to another civ. Cancelling all deals might be a bit drastic, but that certainly isn't unreasonable in the event of war.

[Hauptman]

I too like the idea of another diplomatic option.


just underneath "would you like to trade" we could add "agree to this demand or we war." in wich everything is not redded out and the ai has to choose right then and there, give in or go to war. Would definatly resolve some situations like this.

If the ai knows that not agreeing will cause a war declaration I'm sure sometimes it might be more inclined to give in.

When that weak civ on the bottom of the list has an extra silk and refuses to trade even though i have 4 stacks of modern armor to drive his grenadiers into dust, i think he would change his mind... and i'd really like that option added to the game.

civ3 often had these demand declarations and the ai has done it a few times to me in C4.

[Blake]

Yes, an enforced war declaration would be interesting... and the AI could use it on the player too.

Something else would be if the 3rd party AI's would habitually close their borders to both warring parties, which would also act as trade sanctions of sorts. There are too many open borders anyway.

The SMAC AI would make interesting "Pact with me or I'll declare vendetta on you" ultimations. Very black and white "You're either with us or against us".

[Feyd]

So... what you're asking for is for the AI to understand the concept of fear.

Basically, I think we just see this differently. A refusal by the AI is a - modifier. Just like the AI if there are enough - modifiers then war is inevitable. Just declare war and be done with it. He'll agree to your demands when you leave him with one city.

[MightyTiny]

Originally posted by Feyd
So... what you're asking for is for the AI to understand the concept of fear.

Basically, I think we just see this differently. A refusal by the AI is a - modifier. Just like the AI if there are enough - modifiers then war is inevitable. Just declare war and be done with it. He'll agree to your demands when you leave him with one city.

You kind of put it right - I don't expect the AI to understand fear of course, but to at least pretend to understand!

Basically, I'd like to see a little more realism in the diplomacy; this my current game is actually turning out to be an exposee on what is wrong with diplomacy in civ4.

There needs to be some sort of hidden variables OTHER than the plusses and minuses we can see that control a single, one-dimensional Furious-Friendly axis.

For example, while letting my enemy march trhough their territory to attack me, the Chinese leader (Qin Shi Huang), asked me for a tech to help out! I mean come on!

The AI is clearly completely disregarding the CIRCUMSTANCES and thus the illusion of playing against intelligent opponents is crudely broken. The AI clearly doesn't take into account that his co-operation with my enemy is causing MAJOR minuses from MY SIDE in our relations. I would never be able to ask something "for a friend" from him, if the roles were reversed, so why can he do so?

A game should allow the suspension of disbelief, by giving the appearance that your opponents are understanding what's going on, instead of being the brainless droids that they are.

The game itself is getting really interesting, and VERY complex, relations-wise - by far the most complex game I've played so far. For those not bored to death by a description, I'll try to relay the situation (skip the next three paragraphs if you're not interested):

I'm playing Saladin of Arabia on a large pangea map, marathon mode - I have a sizeable lead, and my main allies are high up on the score table (Gandhi directly to the west, Washington to the far east, with my empire split in two; one part in the north, one part in the south west part of the continent, with the Chinese in between). In the 14th century we had a real world war, very, very complicated, with the Chinese attacking my ally Gandhi, and me having no time to deal with that, since I was under attack by Tokunawa... who attacked me despite me having made defense pacts with Gandhi and Washington, with whom Togunawa shared a long border... So now I was in a situation where there wasn't fighting in my land after defeating Togunawas intital attack force (that came through Chinese lands, of course ), but my allies were in trouble; especially Washington who was taking the brunt of the much stronger japanese military. Gandhi was at least mostly keeping it together against the Chinese. I didn't like the prospect of allowing Washinton to fall, because that would have strenghtened my enemies; and I was kinda eying the possiblility of a diplo victory eventually in this very warlike game .

So I gifted Washington Military Tradition so that he could build cavalry, but had a problem getting troops to his aid, because to attack the Japanese, I would either have to take a sea route to slowly ferry troups over a sea gap, or take a long land route first through Chinese, and then through French territory. (Another long-distance war!). But Louis XIV didn't like me, and I didn't have, nor could I get open borders with him. To top it off, Louis XIV declared war on Washington. I declared war on Louis XIV, and started fighting my way through his territory to keep Washington from collapsing; he'd already lost two cities; I captured two French cities by the chinese border, to give Louis a little headache, and to have well placed outposts on the path from the french/japanese territories to my territories in the north and the south.

I managed to gift Washington a Frigate, and leveled the Japanese navy. I finally got a small troup through to US land, and gifted him a stack of five cavalry to help him in his defense, which gave me a little breathing room; I was pumping out forces in every city, and by now I'm THE military might in the world. Now I've taken back the two cities that were captured from the US, and handed them back to Washington.

Now some diplomatic relations problems here:

First of all, Washington should be practically worshiping me as a GOD! That's how much I've done for him. Yet when I asked him to switch to Vassalage (For his own good!), he wouldn't do it, not even when I added some gold to sweaten the deal. Why? Isn't it obvious that a real leader in such a situation would be unlikely to refuse almost ANYTHING from their saving angel? And why not accept Vassalage, in a war that threatens their whole nation?

This is another gripe: why don't the AI's EVER give gifts, or agree to do anything when asked to do it "for a friend"? Why does the "Won't you do this for a good friend?" option even exist, when AI's NEVER agree to it? Even in an extreme situation such as the one I have with Washington in my game!

The utter automatum-like ultra-simplistic way in which AI's deal with diplomacy really detracts from the immersion factor, it breaks the illusion that is needed for the suspension of disbelief. It's like watching a great movie, and then seeing a REALLY crudely done, cheap special effect with the wires showing in the middle of it. Suddenly the spell is broken, and it's difficult to get immersed in it again.

Don't get me wrong - I love Civ4, and think it's a brilliant game; and I am thoroughly enjoying the game I'm currently playing. But I still think it could be so much better if diplomacy wasn't such an impovrished, one-dimensional aspect of the game.

[MightyTiny]

More diplo-griping:

There should be more diplomatic relations bonuses (and perhaps minuses) in the game for extreme situations; for example, if you take an enemy city that the enemy took from another player earlier on, you have the option of returning control of the city to it's original owner.

I think that's kind of going out on a limb to help an ally to do so; spending your own military resources in a major way to help an ally.

For this, I think there should be a separate + value in relations, for example "+3 You gave us back a city that our enemy had taken from us earlier".

And why not have a plus in relations also for gifting cities in general?

Then I think there should be one level beyond "Friendly" in relations, something like "Friendly and indebted" or "Friendly and grateful" for situations such as this:

In my ongoin game, I saved the US from total destruction at the hands of a very strong Japanese army; to do that, during the war I gifted a total of 9 cavalry, 3 canons, 1 frigate to Washington to help in his inept efforts to ward of the Japanese samurais; I also gave him Military Tradition, and destroyed all japanese ships I could find, plus bombarded Japanese costal cities with Frigates. Towards the end of the war, I re-captured two cities that the Japanese had taken from the US, and gave them back to Washington, AND captured Tokio, gifting it to the US. (Because I wanted to leave Japan weak, and didn't want a city so far away from my territories).

Am I not justified in feeling that, at this point, Washington should be feeling just a little bit greatful? Sure he's friendly, but I still got him asking for me to give him techs, and when I refused, got -1 for "refusing to help him"

Again, the sort of small set of "If-then" rules that seems to govern all diplomacy shines right through, and there's no illusion of the AI players actually understanding what's happening at all. There really should be such an illusion; it would add so much to the playing experience.

[Aro]

I can use more levels in diplomacy...

[TheHateMale]

Perhaps a 'friendly and indentured' level, for when you outclass them economically and militarily, and the only reason oyu don't conquer them is the cost of administering their cities too.

[Cort Haus]

I thought there was an option in 1.52 to return a city to its original owner.

Gifting cities (where they are accepted) goes on the 'Fair trades' ledger, I believe. Gifting units doesn't go anywhere - there is a case for a new ledger there.

I have some diplo gripes myself, but I think the OP is being unintentionally funny when he describes the AI as "utter automatum-like ultra-simplistic" because the AI is precisely that - an automaton. However, it's a huge improvement on the Civ 3 diplo-AI and I appreciate that.

My gripe is that "gimme" demands and "stop trading" demands are only made against the human. As a result, only the human suffers the -1 penalties for refusing. The other side of the coin is that the human can gain diplomatically by agreeing to help demands and threats, getting a permanent +1, and I often do this as part of my diplomatic strategy, but I think I'd prefer a level playing field here.

[TheHateMale]

Before now I've had Civs declare me 'their worst enemy' and refuse to trade for no reason I can understand - this is early game when there's still lots of land, no wars have been fought and no requests have even been made for technology/resources yet.

Do the AI always have a worst enemy regardless of a lack of actual negatives?

Note that this was in 1.09, so it may not still be true.

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by TheHateMale
Before now I've had Civs declare me 'their worst enemy' and refuse to trade for no reason I can understand - this is early game when there's still lots of land, no wars have been fought and no requests have even been made for technology/resources yet.

Do the AI always have a worst enemy regardless of a lack of actual negatives?

Note that this was in 1.09, so it may not still be true.

I've noticed that the AI's have opinions about each other before anything has happened. Aggressive civs like Alex & Boney seem to like each other, and dislike the more passive civs like Egypt and India.

I also find the aggressive civs are more likely to dislike the humam at the slightest whiff of a close border or religious difference, while the passives more likely to go Pleased with the human with a favour.