Gracious friends and angry foes.

[ThePlagueRat]

Hi folks.


I've been a bit worried about the goodwill of my competitors.
If you run for a diplomatic victory, that goodwill is essential.
On any level I play, competitors tend to get angry very quickly.
I don't really know why. Did I do something provocative perhaps?


I think there are several triggers that will better/worsen
their attitudes towards you. I know of very few.
Can someone please list up these triggers?

(perhaps you can describe the actual implementation of diplomatic attitudes?)

[vmxa1]

It is very hard to not get on the wrong side of the AI. Many things can occur that are not completely in your control. You can have trade deals that are broken through no fault of yours, such as a resource being exhausted, lux having its road cut or you lost the harbour that was the genisis of the trade route. IOW you can inadvertently break an agreement. You may be in a form of government that they shun. At some point the zero sum land game kicks in and they can not grow unless they take tiles from someone. If they think you are too big, too strong, too weak, not making fair trades and on and on.
I dislike the UN . I prefer the Moo scheme where you get to vote based on your empire. Why should a 1 city civ get the same vote as a 40 city civ?

[badams52]

Some of the things that I have used to help diplo relations (and get the doplo victory are:

• sign ROPs. sometimes MPPs can help, but they also sometimes cause you to break trades.
• when trading, don't become the IRS and squeeze every last cent you can out of them. Either accept what they propose, or give them more. It helps them like you more.
• become Switzerland. Allow both sides to have an ROP with you so they can fight each other, but decline to join either side of the war.
• wipe out those that despise you for no reason or those who declare war on you. you won't take much of a rep hit if they attack you and they're probably not going to vote for you when the time comes. if they don't exist, they can't vote.

there are probably others, but when I get the diplo victory, it's because I've followed those basic guidelines above. It also helps if the second largest civ is the war mongering Egypt or some other civ that the others hate more.

[ThePlagueRat]

From what both of you just told,
I suspect the implementation of the Civ3 rules
to suck formidably.

Perhaps I need some sort of a MOD...
Any suggestions?

[DaveMcW]

Ways to improve an AI's opinion of you:
-Give them gifts
-Accept deals on their terms
-Sign a diplomatic agreement (temporary)
-Make a resource deal (temporary)

Unfortunately there is a limit to how many times you can improve their attitude by being nice, so if you piss them off too much there is no way to recover.

Ways to lower an AI's opinion of you:
-Have a smaller army
-Fail an espionage mission against them
-Break a per-turn trade deal
-Fight a war against them

Ways to lower ALL AIs' opinion of you:
-Declare war
-Declare war with units in enemy territory
-Break a diplomatic agreement (signing peace with the target of an alliance counts as breaking it)
-Raze a city

Be very careful about MPPs, since they can force you to do most of the negative things.

[vmxa1]

DaveMcW that is about the size of it, you have to kiss their butts to stay on the good side and even that does not always work. That is why I do not bother.

[Meshelic]

I've noticed that military size really does make a difference in how one-sided things are. They are either furious from the get-go (which also is noticeable in militaristic civz and definetely more aggressive civz) or they are lauding you with gifts so you don't crush them.

I also think culture may have something to do with it, not the BUILD-UP of culture within your civ, but the civ culture to begin with. After all, don't they have cultural starts? So why wouldn't there be culture prejudice between civz?

[ThePlagueRat]

I've also been on the lookout for this cultural bonus/pentalty.

It doesn't seem to change anything in practice when I play.
The whole implementation of this seems to have logical breaches in all directions...

[Theseus]

@vxma1: I've noticed you don;t have the patience for keeping on the good side of the AI civs, so you generally advocate saying 'screw it' and proceeding with a warmongerish approach. I don;t feel like I have much of a problem in this regard though, and generally maintain good relations, even with the AI civs I beat the crap out of... it's just a matter of following the "rules of conduct" and additionally being nice every once in a while. Am I missing something?

[vmxa1]

No you are correct. If I want to be nicer I can get along to a degree. That is what I have said, that be willing to kowtoe will help and not do the no no's. In the end though I just don't care. I do little trading and just gear up infrastructure and troops. Let them decalre war and then make them suffer. Since around 121 or so the AI has gone insane with the no peace bit. I just got bored with what was #1 rome. They declare war after I said no. I took 10 of the 12 cities they had on my land mass and they never contacted me for peace???? I finally called them up and let go for just a world map. I did it even though I had Riders and was kicking them like a poor step child. It was sad for them as I got my rider and they trigger my GA and it was bad news for them as you know Riders rule at that stage.

[werdhertz]

I always see people complaining about the AI being Furious at them most of the time.. When i play most Civs are Cautious to Polite, except for the ones that like to pick wars very early in the game and are pissed the whole entire game lol. My last game i won by UN victory, large map, all the Civs possible (i forget the exact number). One abstained, one voted for the bastard Koreans, and all the rest Voted for me. Sweet!!

[werdhertz]

I forgot to mention, i make it a point NOT to break any deals with the AI. If i request a military alliance, then 5 turns later want peace with the Civ im at war with, i fight it out till those 20 turns are up when i can peacefully cancel the alliance.

[vmxa1]

It has been said that you can stay on cautious and polite terms as long as land is still available and you have aquiesed to all overtures. You do not have to do any no no's to get them to be annoyed or worse.

[dac]

One thing I have noticed missing from this discussion is captured workers. If you really want to stay on the good side of an AI, if you capture some workers, give them back. If you just sort of want to stay on their good side, add those captured workers to a city of yours (careful which one, though, this can increase the odds of a cultural flip). If you really don't care about the AIs feeling towards you, put 'em to work building roads, railroads, etc. AIs are pissed at me all the time, and I'm pretty confident it's because I have hordes of slaves. Of course, I get hordes of slaves by razing AI cities, so that doesn't help my rep much either. I also declare war when the AIs refuse my reasonable deals "Give me all your techs and gold, and I'll let you live". They always refuse, and I always smack them around. I've usually been able to stay on Englands good side by bribing them with small deals all game long? Why stay on Englands good side? you ask. Well, they can be big enough to be helpful, but it's the rare game that I've ever seen them threaten to be dominant. They're usually just a nice, useful size. Unless somebody butchers them before I meet them.

[badman]

I'd rather have free workers than a polite AI