You left them alive.
At King difficulty, it starts becoming about gaming the game, because at that level it’s gaming you. You have to be merciless and exploit every advantage to its maximum, and once you have a Civ on the ropes, finish them. If you don’t, they expand, and because of their production/tech advantages, they catch up and gang up on you.
That’s my experience as well. I always plan to wipe out all the other civs now, because no matter how nice you are they’ll always call you “dishonorable” and attack sooner or later. The only safe civs are city states.
On the other hand, the only time I’ve had the entire world go to war with me was after I chose “united front” from the Order tree - the one that degrades other player’s influence on city states. Apparently everyone took that as a hostile act. I can understand that, any time one of the AI players has taken it, I’ve immediately moved them to the top of my kill list.
Janster
4003
Cough, having played Civ 4 tons, in multiplayer and now Civ 5…I can in singleplayer mosey about on emperor level, without much concern… I found for me immortal is where ruthless play comes into concern(you just can’t keep up)
And I got a friend who is even better than me…
I think this is just good…
Hopefully the domination incentive for other civs will get toned down if there’s ever a significant upgrade to diplomacy. After playing Civ 4 a few times, I understand what people were upset about in that aspect of the game.
One thing about diplomacy in Civ V, it’s the first game in the series I can recall where you regularly get JRPG-style “yes or yes” dialogs. I can understand notifying the player that the AI is pissed because you did something, or that it’s attacking one of your city states, but there appears to be no point at all to the supposed “choices” in responses.
There’s some missed opportunities there. For example, the “I’m going to war against this city state” should have the chance that they’ll back down if you threaten them in response.
I usually pick the less aggressive choice. Move my troops into position and the declare war.
Tony_M
4007
At first when I saw the “stop expanding near my borders” aggro, I thought that saying “ok I’ll stop” would make them less angry, as long as you really did stop expanding, but would make them more angry if you lied and kept expanding.
But later conversations have convinced me that its all just meaningless choices that should be replaced with an OK button.
That reminds me. The only dialog like this where the choice matters is the “your armies look like you’re attacking” one. And there seems to be no up side at all to choosing the “war” option in that case, since it results in a first strike by their armies and no visible future diplomatic benefit with other countries.
Miramon
4009
“Oh! You broke your promise! I’ll tell all the other countries that you were bad, and then they’ll, they’ll… They’ll fight you if they think they can win!”
Oh, how is that different from what they do anyway? The tactical AI may be grievously bad, but the diplomacy screens really get in your face with their awfulness, so it’s kind of a toss-up which is worse.
It’s worth remembering, though, that diplomacy was practically non-existent in Civ 1 and 2, and the AI players in Civ Revolution are, if anything, worse diplomatically than Civ 5. In that game they start trying to extort tribute out of you around the time catapults show up, even if they don’t think they can win. We’re just spoiled by the kind of diplomatic wrangling that was possible in Civ 3 and 4. I have fond memories of the first time I arranged a world war against someone who attacked me in Civ 3.
We’re just overly aware of the diplomatic shortcomings because of these stupid waste-of-time dialogs we’ve been discussing.
Tony_M
4011
Also in Civ 4 religion offered a path for builders to pursue more peaceful expansion. By establishing a religion and then actively spreading it, you greatly reduced the total warfare in your game.
Its wasn’t free. Early religion tech research and building priests had an opportunity cost, so it was a well balanced mechanic.
I’m surprised to hear so many people say they don’t miss the religion mechanic. I don’t care if “religion” is the flavour excuse or not, but I like having the option of investing some of my recources into a strategy that encourages peace.
Tony
hong
4012
I don’t miss the religion mechanic because it means I don’t have to invest resources in dealing with a strategy that encourages peace.
Tony_M
4013
But you didn’t have to. In fact if you were a more warmongering player then religion was waste of recources wasn’t it? (I’m not sure because I’ve always been a builder).
hong
4014
Perhaps I was unclear.
I don’t miss the religion mechanic because it means I don’t have to invest resources in dealing with an opponent that wants to encourage peace.
Dejin
4015
IIRC religion was an important element in maintaining happiness within your empire. The non-religion based happiness buildings were further in the tech tree, and typically had higher maintenance costs.
If there’s one thing about civ-relations in Civ5 that I find a let down is that being peaceful usually means isolation, with a bit of resource trading when you can, and being friendly to city-states if you want. Otherwise, the game will force you into conflict at some point. That I feel the need to be isolationist to be peaceful suggests that something is missing, whether it’s the use of religion as in Civ4 or something else. I’d love for future updates to include something more to encourage peace.
That’s pretty much the way it’s been in all iterations of Civ at higher levels. You might have peace for awhile, but war is a fairly integral part of the game. Diplomacy has always been about fending off enemy civs just long enough for you to finish your current war.
Eh, it seems like religions were always a cause of warfare in my games. I’d be getting along peacefully with a couple of different civs, and then they’d get different religions and go to war with each other, and try and drag me in. I often avoided choosing an official religion entirely just to avoid pissing off neighbors, even if I founded the religion.
To my mind, the best aspect of the religion mechanic was that it gave an interesting “get there first” bonus to some tech advances that I might otherwise delay getting.
Speaking of the tech tree, there’s a huge glaring flaw in the Civ 5’s. In the late game, there’s a economic path and a military path, but two powerful late game units are on the economic path: infantry and mech infantry. Further, they’re not even on the same path, so I often find myself bypassing riflemen, infantry, and tanks to get mech infantry. The tree really needs to be re-worked so infantry requires riflemen and mech infantry requires tanks, and neither is on the economic upgrade path.
A lesser weirdness is that I usually get Pikes before Spearmen now, but that oddity rarely affects game balance because Pikes aren’t all that good.
KevinC
4019
They certainly could be, but you’re both right. That’s what I liked so much about Religion in Civ4, depending on how the various religions were spread, where they were founded, and who converts to what religion, it could create a completely different game. It really depended on what AI you were playing against… if Isabella was the big dog in the current game and she was a different religion… well, there’s either going to be bloodshed or someone’s going to convert. But if you’re a different religion than Stalin or something? Not so much.
Religion offered several interesting decisions during the course of a given game that are missing in Civ5, along with basically everything else related to diplomacy. This to me makes it feel more like a shallow wargame where the AI barely understands the mechanics, if at all.
I agree completely. Religion in Civ4 could have significant impact in several areas–diplomacy, economics, pop growth, culture, even production. Its omission in Civ5 has resulted in a much less dynamic game. The diplomatic options of Pact of Cooperation/Secrecy are hopelessly generic. Really, the only interesting part of diplomacy is hearing the leaders speak in their native languages, which is a great touch.
The poor game balance in several areas further reduces the amount of interesting decisions to make. With the scarcity of hammers, why waste them on buildings when I can just build half a dozen units and take over the bumbling AIs? Or I can just hunker down with a small defensive force and keep hitting Next Turn over and over until I win peacefully. Indeed, the lack of production (nerfed mines, no workshop-style improvements) means that no matter which victory route you choose, you will spend plenty of time just hitting Next Turn instead of making interesting decisions, especially in the slow-as-molasses early game.
Civ5 really does feel like they focused on one big evolution (HEXES!) to the detriment of just about everything else. I remain optimistic that more patches (AI, UI, balance, a Civilopedia that is actually complete and usable–no good excuse for that one) and an excellent expansion (to add some more interesting variables into the gameplay) can eventually make this into a good game. Or maybe it will only get there with the help of user mods. Civ5 contains some good new ideas (e.g. city states), but it is disappointing how so many core gameplay elements have regressed.
