Mutual Protection Pacts and the domino effect

[Seneca]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
Papa Oppenheimer and 10 megatons worth of his best friends ought to do the trick.

Ooh, yes, they're all gonna pay dearly when I get ICBMs...

OK, I'll try just holding out and making peace with all of them at once - it was tempting to take peace whenever I could, just to get someone off my back.

And now the bastard Persians have taken the city with the coal - gaaaah!

[Harovan]

MPPs are usable, if you handle them right. Don't MPP with more than one nation. Pick a strong nation for your partner. Use a reliable nation. For instance, MPPs with England aren't worth anything, because Liz is a backstabbing witch. MPPs with France are usually worth pure gold because Joan is reliable and in the case of war she will drag the whole world on your side. Sure, making a MPP is a safe way to get into a war, but if you choose your allies wise and make only one MPP at a time, you are guaranteed to get out of it after 20 turns without reputation penalty.

[Fitz]

Originally posted by Seneca
Trouble is, it's only very rarely any of the civs will acknowledge my envoy, so I can't really pick and choose who I make peace with.

Seneca, if you make peace with a country that you have declared war on due to a MPP with a third party, your reputation suffers with the third party, and they will not acknowledge your envoys. You need to be sure that you do not sign a peace treaty with the Civ you are at war with until you have properly cancelled (after 20 years) the MPP. It may be true, but I am not sure of this, that you can also sue for peace 20 years after the war breaks out without harming your rep.

I've done this before. I thought a civ was likely to attack me next turn, so I got almost everyone else into an MPP, then when the Civ attacked me, I had the world agianst the Greeks for the next 20 years, after which I cancelled my MPPs then sues for peace. Luckily for me, none of the others attacked each other, but even if they had, I would have waited the prerequisite time and cancelled my MPPs, then gone for the peace treaty.

[wrylachlan]

Mutual Protection NOT Mutual Aggression

What would make the most sense to me would be that when civ A declares war on civ B (makes the first strike) then civ B's MPP allies should be drawn in, but not civ A's.

A couple of games ago, I was the dominant civ as the Persians. Greeks next door were tiny. I signed a MPP with the Greeks thinking it would deter any of my other enemies from attacking them and stealing the resources they were trading to me. What happens? The Greeks go on the offensive! WHAT! This little nation that could never win goes on the offensive and drags me into this major war. If another civ attacked Greece I would be happy to honor my MPP and defend them, but when they are the aggressors?


This is sort of a side note, but in the current game there is no real reward for becoming closer allies with someone. In fact, the manor in which you can be dragged into wars makes treaties something to stay away from. I think there should be some sort of bonus for the closer your diplomatic ties are to a country. Maybe a small happiness bonus as your people aren't afraid they're going to go to war? And there should be some trade bonus for trading with your closest allies versus trading with civs you have an uneasy peace with.

Maybe make trades cost "comission" money (on top of the trade itself you have to pay a percentage of the trade to grease the wheels), and that cost goes down the closer allied you are to a civ.

The breakdown might look like this:
1.WAR - No happiness bonus - No trade possible
2. Peace - 1% Happiness bonus - 10% trade "comission"
3. MPP (as detailed above) - 2% Happiness bonus - 5% trade "comission"
4. Allies (as MPP works now) - 3% Happiness bonus - Free Trade

The exact percentages could be worked out with playtesting, but this would make it a choice: better trade vs. risk of being drawn into conflict.

[Arrian]

I avoid MPPs like the plague, except for two specific situations:

I want help in a war I'm fighting, or more likely I simply want to prevent my enemy from bringing in help.

I'm spoiling for a fight, but don't feel like declaring war (me = agreesor + democracy = ugly war weariness). My MPP partner will OFTEN take care of it for me. I normally only do this when there are 2-3 AI's left, so I can target one specific civ as the odd man out.

-Arrian