you refused to help us during wartime...

[razbo9999]

Here's one that seems like it would be an easy addition, even in a patch: When a civ is embroiled in a war, they often come around and ask you to go to war against their enemy. If you don't, you suffer a big hit in relations. It would be nice to introduce a gray area here, where you could provide either immediate cash, or gift units, or a promise of gift units on the way, as a way of helping, without actually entering the fray. And, naturally, you could choose to play both sides, by helping their enemy the same way.

You can, of course, give 'em cash, or units, in a separate transaction, but this gets lumped into "Our trade relations have been fair and forthright" (or something like that) instead of being a special "you helped us (a bit, anyway) during wartime."

And, on a semi-related topic, it seems like the willingness to enter into a Defensive Pact should depend less on how much someone likes you than on the imminent danger posed by a much stronger 3rd party lurking on both your borders. There have been times when it was clear to me that an AI civ was gearing up for an attack on either me or one of my neighbors (or both) but I just couldn't get my neighbor to agree to a Defensive Pact, even though our relations were "Cautious" ( > 0). I figured it served 'em right when they were overrun, but it would have been better for them to have done something (like a DP with me) to try to avoid that. Thoughts?

[Lancer]

Both suggestions sound reasonable to me.

However consider Belgium and Holland prior to WWII. The French repeatedly asked then to join an alliance but they refused. Sometimes it just isn't going to happen, sometimes though I agree that it should.

[rah]

One change I'd like to see.
If you're currently at war with someone and they come to ask you to join another war, I think you should only take half the diplo hit.
A reply, "Can't you see that I'm already in damn war? Ask me later after I finish this civ off"

[Tattila the Hun]

Yah, they have the "We have our hands full"-reply, why should not we?

[Bhruic]

Originally posted by rah
One change I'd like to see.
If you're currently at war with someone and they come to ask you to join another war, I think you should only take half the diplo hit.
A reply, "Can't you see that I'm already in damn war? Ask me later after I finish this civ off"

Either that, or a "Sure, I'll go to war against your enemy if you go to war against mine" counter.

Bh

[rah]

just as long as i only get half the diplo hit, i wouldn't care. It's like they wait for you be fighting three civs before they ask for help.
If you had asked me before I declared war on the rest of my neighbors maybe I would have helped.

But I do like "only if you join in my war." They probably wouldn't do anything but pillage the squares around the city you were taking next turn, but it would be nice.

[Lancer]

So if war comes to your gate and you're allied with rah, but he's got a barb wandering in, doomed you are.

[Adagio]

IMHO there shouldn't even be a diplohit for refusing when you're already at war. Also it should be possible to gray out options from the "trade table", it's quite annoying when your worst enemy asks you to join a war against your best friend. When another civ asks for something there should be these options:

"Sure thing" (deal accepted)
"If you accept my terms" (open trade table... gives you the possibility to demand gold/resources per turn until the deal is over. For war deals this is when the war is over for the civ who got asked. You can also request them to join your wars in return)
"In a minute" (Gives you an option to set how many turns until you declare war, to give you some time to prepare. This should also be an option on the trade-table)
"Not right now" (He'll just ask you in two turns again)
"Not in a million years" (that civ is not allowed to propose that deal again for at least 25 turns)

[VonSharma]

I usually go the aesthetics to music path so I can get the great artist and I was attacked by Spain and the Ottomans. I had access to Ivory but did not research construction yet. I bribed Egypt to join me against Spain, and as a Spanish stack of death with a crapload of chariots came knocking on my second city, I realized how money having some war elephants would be. My treasury was depleted and I was begging Egypt to give me construction so I could build some, considering I had also given drama to Ramsses for free so I could trade Music for war. I havent played with Ramses to know if he's really an ******* like that or if the AI just can't put two and two together and realize that it was in Egypt's interest for me to push the Spanish back (unless they had plans to take my city from the Spanish afterwards). I feel the Khmer or Malinese are the only civs that would gift me that tech, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Allies in wars should give a lot more strategic help, like the US did to Britain in WWII for example.
I also agree with the diplo hits from refusing war. There are also should be some repercussion when we expose other civ's spies, such as being able to go to war with that civ without taking diplo hits from their friends.

[nbarclay]

There are several things that I find really, really irritating about the mechanism of AIs demanding that humans join them in wars.

1) The diplomatic penalty for refusing to join another civ in a war applies only against human players, not against AIs. Not only does that feel both unfair and absurdly unrealistic to me, but it also takes a lot of pressure off of Firaxis to keep the nature and timing of the demands fair and reasonable. (If the same mechanism applied to AIs, Firaxis would have to consider the harm that unfair, unreasonable demands cause to AIs' relationships with each other.)

2) It is ridiculous to treat players as if they are "supposed to" go to war any time an AI asks them to for any reason. It would make perfect sense for strong friendships to be weakened when one friend refuses to help another defend itself against an attack. Similarly, a civ with the same state religion might reasonably expect assistance in fighting against infidels - especially in defending itself against infidels. But when there is not some kind of tie between nations that would lead one to expect help from another, it doesn't make sense for a decision to remain neutral to cause a lasting diplomatic penalty. (And if a tie is strong enough to justify a penalty if a human refuses to declare war, the same kind of tie in the opposite direction ought to make it significantly easier than normal for a human to persuade an AI to join in a war.)

3) The demand requires the player to declare war immediately without regard to how unprepared he might be. There is no way of responding, "I'm not ready for war right now, but I'll help if you'll give me a few turns to get ready." One very simple way to modify the code to deal with this problem would to add a rule that if a player declares war on a civ, it results in the removal of "refused to help us during wartime" penalties from other civs fighting the same enemy.

4) As has already been noted, if a player is already fighting a war, it is absurd to demand that the player join another war except as part of an alliance in which both civs declare war against at least some of each others' enemies. A request might be reasonable, but not a demand.

5) There have been numerous times when I have been asked to join in a war on another continent that was too far away for it to be practical - or even possible - for me to have a significant impact. The most ridiculous situations are ones where all I could do if I joined a war would have been to send some caravels to try to cause a bit of trouble. But situations where I'd have to build a large fleet of galleons and send them halfway around the world on a huge map in order to have any meaningful impact aren't much less annoying. There really ought to be some kind of proximity check so AIs don't demand help from players who are so far away that it doesn't make sense for them to take much of an interest.

6) Unless it's been fixed, there is a bug in the code that makes it possible for a civ to demand that a player declare war, and then sign a peace treaty by the time the demand reaches the human player. So if the human agrees to the demand, he ends up fighting the AI all by himself instead of joining in an alliance the way he expected. That can be an especially serious problem if the player wasn't all that well prepared for the war, and was counting on the fighting between the AIs to buy some time to build up.

In my view, the whole demand mechanism in Civ IV is completely screwed up. It feels like its only purpose for existing is to make trouble for players. I really wish Firaxis would provide a way to turn the whole mechanism off if they aren't going to take the time to implement it in a fairer, more reasonable and realistic way.

[gdijedi7]

I frequently run into a similar situation.

I'm preparing to attack someone. Let us call them France. Someone else, let us say Germany, attacks France before I'm ready and asks for help. I say no and now Germany doesn't like me, but a few turns later, I am ready and my troops storm the French beaches.

I say that in that situation, the diplomatic penalty should go away, or at least diminish.

[Cort Haus]

I used to find these diplomatic inequalities annoying, or "unfun" back when I played the game, and they may have contributed to me stopping playing it.

I understand that to subject the AI to the same penalties would cause it problems, collectively, but perhaps with the modern, improved AI, this stealth AI bonus of extra penalties to the human player is less necessary.

[Yaga]

As there are "Peace Pacts" -- Civs A, B, and C agreeing in peace-time to declare war if any of them are attacked, why no t have "War Pacts"?

Once Civ A and Civ B are fighting, both can recruit sort of temporary vassals (or become temporary vassals) for the duration, resulting in War Team A and War Team B. The "masters" of each alliance would determine when the war was over. Once peace was declared, all members would receive a "+n We fought together in a great war", while opponents might receive "-n You opposed us in a great war".

[snoopy369]

I suspect that would be considered too potentially abusive of the AI; diplomatic options like that are one sided (a human can use them to take advantage of the AI, but not the other way around) and so are relatively limited. Particularly, in past games there were significant abuses regarding conning the AI into fighting wars on your behalf, often disadvantageous wars from the AI's point of view. It's a bit too easy to convince the AI to be friendly with you and thus to do whatever you want.

[Yaga]

Originally posted by snoopy369
I suspect that would be considered too potentially abusive of the AI; diplomatic options like that are one sided (a human can use them to take advantage of the AI, but not the other way around) and so are relatively limited.

Perhaps. Then again, the ability to build consensus within the AI would not be too difficult to carry over into AI-to-AI transactions. There is already some mechanism in place to evaluate whether two given AIs should become Permanent Allies, which bit of code should be at least logically equivalent to becoming Temporary Allies.

Say Civ A wants to destroy Civ B (or take their land, or resources, or what have you) however it evaluates its chances of defeating Civ B and finds itself wanting. However it is aware of two other Civs, C and D, who are Annoyed with Civ B and are Pleased or even Friendly with Civ A. Civ A re-evaluates its chances of defeating Civ B with the combined forces of Civ C and Civ D, finds the odds in their favor.

It is more than likely that Civs C and D will come to a similar conclusion (gating issues such as not being a vassal of, or having a conflicting treaty with another Civ, etc, not withstanding) and will agree to declare war *with* Civ A. This the becomes a per-turn trade -- Civ A might even have to supply Civ C with a resource, or Civ D with gold per turn -- whatever it takes to make their agreement to wage war with Civ A worthwhile.

And like a trade, they're bound to declare war w/in X number of turns, and therefore be around in the battle for X -ish number of turns, but they can then drop out, etc -- all the normal trade things.

So while I agree that it is potentially abusive if poorly done, I would counter that if it is done well then it would be a deeply enriching part of the game. Aggressive and Imperialistic Civs might be more willing to fight for the heck of it, to keep their troops XP up. Expansive civs would evaluate based on their possibility of increasing their domain. Pacifist Civs might even be *more* willing to form a coalition against a war-mongering Civ.

The trick would be to put the correct evaluative measures in place, such that while X in return for Y might not be a good trade for any given AI, X + war might be.

Hmmm...and, in addition to helping with the "You refused to give us aid during war-time" it would also be an excellent way for the Humans to *join* wars. Civ A beating down Civ B? Open up the trade box and let Civ B know you'll gladly help them out...for a price.