Civ asks for help in war then signs treaty?

[marvinkosh]

Just today I was asked by China to help fight India. Not long after, I'm fighting India on my lonesome. However I managed to get the Malinese to help me out for free, which I have to say doesn't happen often.

Eventually China declared war on India again but I think they lacked the necessary firepower to take down even one Indian city; when I got to it there was one Archer with a couple of City Garrison promotions waiting for me.

I think this shows the main difference between human and AI players. While we might sacrifice a unit in order to weaken a city's defence, we recognise that there's no point in doing so if we don't have enough offensive punch behind that first brave unit to wipe out the defenders who got kills. That's giving the defence a free promotion for the next round.

So if the AI is giving up on war at some point, perhaps it is because it lacks the proper tools to make war - catapults, for example, when you're taking on a mature city with +40% to defence. Indeed, if you don't have these to hand when you join a war, your options are quite limited.

I would like to see some kind of option to talk to your ally about tactics, much as you had in SMAC, so that you can say 'Yeah please don't throw your units uselessly at that city until I've had a chance to pound it with catties, okay?'

[Jerh9e1k5]

This thread highlights most of my main gripes with diplomacy in CIV. When I first read about the point system for diplomacy in reviews I thought it would be a great addition and allow us to create lasting bonds with (at least some) of our neighbouring Civs. Now that I see it put into practice I have to say that I don't like the way it was implemented. As others have pointed out the AI will continuously demand tribute and be insulted by it again and again. This is annoying and destroys the delicate relationships you have with them.

I saw a few good reccomendations for improving the "asking help in war" problem. I sincerely hope that Firaxis reads this and implements a variation of one of these fixes, it would greatly enhance my gaming experience. I wonder if it would be too late to implement into the expansion, because I must say, with some of these changes I would definately be willing to put my money down for it!

Have a nice day,
Jerh9e1k5

[Qwertqwert]

I hate playing with Cyrus, he's one of the hardest to beat AIs, atleast for me.