you refused to help us during wartime...

[Asmodeous]

Originally posted by 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.

With how quickly "This mutual fight brings us together!" ramps up and how long it takes to decay, it does, somewhat.

Me.

[Kuciwalker]

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.

Um, World Wars I and II?

[Jaybe]

You can agree to join a war, even if you can't meaningfully contribute, with its relationship consequences (+ and -);
or you can not agree, with its relationship consequence.

It's all part of the diplomatic tightrope.

It IS too bad, however, that you don't gain a diplo plus with the potential enemy when you don't agree to go to war against them.

[Unimatrix11]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

Um, World Wars I and II?

Off topic: Do You know the Simpsons-episode, in which Bart fights a "war" against Nelson ? In the end of this episode, Bart holds a little morale speech, condemning war. He says, that there are never good wars, with the exception of Star Wars and WWII. The biggest SNAFU (situation normal absolutely ****** up) is that they translated that 1:1 into german... it´s bit wierd, to say the least, to have a cartoon character say WWII was good, here, you know ? IIRC this little speech got cut out last time i saw this episode on TV, but i remember for sure having seen it completely on TV. It´s a huge "WTF ?!?!" (and quite possibly illegal, too)...

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by Jaybe
You can agree to join a war, even if you can't meaningfully contribute, with its relationship consequences (+ and -);
or you can not agree, with its relationship consequence.

It's all part of the diplomatic tightrope.

More like it's all part of a scheme to sabotage humans' diplomatic efforts by giving us lose-lose choices that the AIs don't have to worry about with each other.

The biggest problem with how Civ IV handles demands to declare war is that it seems to have absolutely no concept of what one civ can reasonably expect another to do. The AIs have a clear picture of when they are or are not willing to accept a human's request for assistance in battle, and of how large a bribe it would take if they are willing to consider helping. But Firaxis chose not to apply any kind of similar algorithm to the AIs' concept of when they can reasonably expect us humans to join them in wars. As a result, we get penalized for not joining AIs in wars in situations where an AI would have refused to even consider helping us if the roles were reversed. And AIs routinely expect us to join in wars without receiving anything at all in return, even though they would only have been willing to help in exchange for a large bribe. The result is that instead of providing the feel of a reasonable diplomatic model, the whole thing has a feel of being deliberately rigged to hurt human players.

[Modo44]

Sad but true, the AI in CIV does seem to have back the "let's gang up against the human" urge that was so blisfully absent from Civ3.

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.

You mean like the AI demanding I go to war out of the blue?