5101

Oh well I burned them down. Maybe next time. I am playing a conquer the world game so I am not sure I want to give the cities to people who will use them against me though I suppose I could dump them on some empire I am going to war with and they will suddenly have a lot of happiness troubles.

5102

This always happens in a mass surrender. You gain a ton of “number of cities” and a ton of population, but do not gain any benefit from the cities’ happiness buildings until they come out of resistance. Massive unhappiness is the result. As long as you aren’t in a serious war with anyone else, though, you can usually just wait it out. You’ll get some “rebels” that pop up from time to time, and there’s the production and combat hit until you get back below 10 unhappiness, but a lot of times you emerge from the whole situation better off than when you started – you’ll burn down a lot of the cities and be left with a few good ones and some wonders.

5103

What is a good strategy to give some of the cities to other players?

5104

Use candygrams for friendly civs. For hostile civs, a firm, polite phone call should suffice.

5105

Also, for the “I never finish once it’s clear I’ve won” crowd, I had the AI snake out a victory when I thought my winning was assured. On King, in the endgame, four people left standing. I’m equal or ahead of everyone in tech and first in production, and was the first to Apollo and had four spaceship parts built and was getting ready to build the last two in cities with spaceship factories (just waiting on the techs). I had a heavy defensive military and it seemed like nothing could go wrong. Then I get the message “Alexander has completed the United Nations,” and 10 turns later I lost a diplo victory. I spent all my thousands in cash and used two great merchants I had sitting around to try to sway city-states to my side, but it wasn’t enough.

5106

Can someone tell me why other civs keep denouncing me? I am not the top Civ by at least 4 places. I have not declared war, but have been declared war upon. I was even denounced by England who was at war with Rome and I was taking cities from Rome. WTF the problem with England?

Update: A few turns later, everyone but 2 people declare war on me. There is something I am missing about international diplomacy because somehow I am pissing off the entire planet.

5107

Are you sure there’s something you’re missing? :) Civ5 diplomacy is half-assed, at best.

I had Elizabeth ask me to declare war on another Civ. I selected the “Give me 10 turns” option. At the end of that time period, she requested I joined the war, which I did. Two turns later, she denounces me. Ooookay.

5108

Hey, that IS neat. It puts a little more spice in the mix.

Of course, it is a lot cooler to hear about than have it happen to me. I too had generally been of the opinion that there’s a point at which ones just “knows” you’ve won and maybe it isn’t worth playing for the couple hours more just to get there, but I’m glad to hear that’s not always true.

5109

The diplomatic action rules are evidently rather independent of one another. I suspect most of the AI is implemented as mostly independent rules; the whole game smells of feeble attempts at “emergent behavior” which is really a code phrase for “couldn’t be arsed to actually implement a strategy” and “can’t actually make action plans, so just do random things when preconditions are satisfied.”

There seem to be an awful lot of reasons for denunciation, hardly any of which makes any sense since denunciation is pretty much imbecilic in itself. Anyhow, none of these rules appear to have any constraint like “I’m not fighting a war with another foe along with civ Z”.

So sometimes it will just happen that one the many denunciation rules goes off a little after you have cooperated on a war or something like that.

5110

I might ask why these guys all decided to hate me, and then declare war at the same time.

Ok first time I am going along minding my own business and friends with everyone but the greeks. Alexander is hostile towards me for no reason. At some point I go to war with him. Nobody seems to mind. I kick his ass then he does some big surrender to me giving me a bunch of cities.

Like 1 turn later france and rome denounce and declare war a few turns later. They were friends. Why?!

Fast forward a long bit. I am ignoring France and kicking ceasar’s ass. France suddenly offers me peace for 10 turns and I accept and then he is friendly to me. Rome offers me insane peace turns (like give me all your stuff ones) and I decline. I capture a few more cities. Then rome offers me a normal peace for 10 turns. I accept.

A few turns later like 10 AIs denounce me, then a few turns later all declare War. WTF is going on? Oh france, is still my buddy. Apparently he liked the greeks for some reason (he is at war with just about everyone) but his buddy the Romans he apparently doesn’t give a flying fuck about. He and Gangas Kahn are the only two who do not denounce and declare war on me.

Can someone explain what might be happening to cause this behavior? My empire score is like 800 and France is like 1500. Most of the people who delcared war are slightly below me, but a few are above too.

This just makes no sense to me.

5111

The “no reason” part is actually spelled out on a mouseover, iirc. Mind you, that doesn’t mean I think it’s a good system, but they do now tell you why you’re hated. I often get generic reasons like:
“We think you’re trying to win the game in the same manner as us”
“You possess lands we covet”
“You expanded too fast”

However, I honestly think that’s actually an adjustment for the AI to make it more aggressive while maintaining the ability to make alliances with those it doesn’t feel at all threatened by. In short, it’s trying to win the game instead of behave rationally.

Again, I don’t think it’s a good system, but I think I understand where that’s coming from.

5112

Most of them have the same reasons, but a few differ and its odd they all arrived at the same conclusion at the same time (ignoring that its a video game). Mostly that they think I am trying to win the game in a similar manner to them (which is true since there is only ONE way to win) and they think I am a war monger. Considering people keep declaring war on ME I am not sure how that fits.

On a slightly related question, do city-states suck up a lot of CPU time during turns? Meaning if I were to remove them or vastly lower their numbers would the turns progress much faster?

Also is there a good Civ V wiki? I have tried to goggle this but am not having much luck. For example exactly how do puppet states work? Such as how much of their population does it count for your citizens happiness? And what is the ratio of happiness to citizens? IE 3 population needs 1 happiness to counter it.

5113

Give the worst and/or hardest to hold cities to weaker civs, and with an eye towards keeping minor players happy so that they’re less likely to join in when another Civ (inevitably) declares war on you. Sometimes I look to donate cities in a way that will bring other AI nations into conflict over close borders.

I frequently just give them back to the guy who surrendered them, who’s generally in last place after getting pasted.

Also, free any Neutral Powers you acquire this way. Then they’ll always vote for you at the UN even if you don’t pay them, which can be a big edge.

5114

As nearly as I can tell, the diplo AI does not make any distinction between wars you started and wars that were foist upon you. I’m not sure if any versions of Civ AI have made that distinction, but I agree that it sucks that someone else can declare war on you, and when you fight back you get labeled a “warmonger” and take a diplo hit. FWIW, I think they only care if you are conquering other cities. If you just fight defensively, I don’t think there’s any diplo penalty. Knocking another civ out of the game entirely (including taking over a city-state) seems to have a large diplo penalty attached to it.

As others have said, the other reasons you’re being denounced should be visible, although they’re sometimes obscure. And overall the whole diplo AI and friendship/denunciation system is really poorly implemented and often results in weird actions like the ones you described. (Although in its defense, real history has similar examples of things like joint-war denunciation. Churchill called Stalin “the devil” in the House of Commons during their WW2 alliance, as just one example.)

Also is there a good Civ V wiki?

It’s not a wiki, but CivFanatics has a lot of Civ V info.

how do puppet states work? Such as how much of their population does it count for your citizens happiness?

When you are given the option to annex/puppet/raze, you can mouse-over the options and it will tell you how much unhappiness each will generate. I believe puppet state populations count 100% towards unhappiness. Annexed populations count more than 100% until you build a courthouse.

And what is the ratio of happiness to citizens? IE 3 population needs 1 happiness to counter it.

I believe it is 1:1 by default (various wonders, policies, and civ abilities can alter this). You can mouse over your happiness number (at the top of the screen) to get a detailed breakdown of happiness and unhappiness factors in your empire.

5115

I’m not going to defend CivV’s diplomacy, since it is pretty weak (So was CivIV’s, but at least the rulers had personality) but what do you mean only one way to win?

5116

Civ 4 did, dishing out extra relationship score penalties if you started a war, or attacked a nation’s (typically co-religious) friend.

FWIW, I think they only care if you are conquering other cities. If you just fight defensively, I don’t think there’s any diplo penalty. Knocking another civ out of the game entirely (including taking over a city-state) seems to have a large diplo penalty attached to it.

It’s this angle that makes this (particular) bit of Civ5 diplomacy seem fine to me. Conquest is going to look badly to neighbors, no matter how “fair” it is that the winning nation didn’t start it. Imagine that the French had wound up conquering and holding Germany after WW1 – this wouldn’t have left anyone in Europe other than France happy.

5117

Didn’t you raze a bunch of cities? That tends to make people think you’re a soulless butcher…

They might accept one or two, but just how many heads did you build your Skull Pyramids out of? ;-)

5118

It set the game up so that the only victory condition was conquest. No space race, diplomacy, etc…

Anyway that game was abandoned because It took like 2 minutes per turn and Civ would occasionally crash. I have switched to a Large map down from huge and cut the City states down to 10 from 20. Hopefully this will work out better later on.

5119

Does this actually matter? The problem is that the AI builds cities everywhere it can. You have a bump of land in the middle of the ocean with no resources on it, the AI will put a city there. I hate this crap. So I burned down all the useless cities and burned some cities with like 25 pop down to something more reasonable like 10 or 15 pop (the ones I annexed).

It also seems that the AI doesn’t build entertainment structures which is total BS. I mean why does capturing a city cause 10 unhappiness if they got these entertainment structures?

When I go from 25 happiness to 75 unhappy in a single stroke, strong measures need to be implemented.

5120

I have to make a judgement call and need input. I’m just into the Classical era on a continent map playing Greece (year 100 i think). I think my difficulty level is the one above normal (forgot the name).

My Capital has spent the last 19 (out of 21) turns building Stonehenge (going for a culture game). On the turn before, someone else completes it. This is the second time in a row it has happened and the first time I stopped the game. But I’m wondering if this is a recoverable situation.

I guess the question is if you spend a good chunk of the early game building a wonder and you lose it, is it worth continuing? (everything else in the game is ‘ok’ nothing groundbreaking).