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Some suggestions if you want good diplomatic terms:
- Meet neighbors as late as possible, so they don't accumulate much hate of shared region borders.
- Don't steal pearls on them.
- If they fight you on cold war, just retreat.
- Avoid ending turn with your units in their region as much as possible, that also makes a minor penalty to relationships.
- Try peace as soon as possible, maybe 1-2 techs are enough to open a peace status at that point.
I have not offered them anything so perhaps that is the problem/
There is a meter that shows the likelyhood of them accepting your porposal, you need to give them stuff until the meter shows green on their side.
* * *
All the suggestions Ninakoru made should still be considered, if you want to maintain the aggreement you made with another faction.
* * *
In my experience the benefit of diplomacy points is primarily the social plan benefits, minor tribes, and points to counter AI negatives (things like the Roving Clans locking you out of market).
I've only got 163 hours played, which really isn't much for a 4x game so my perspective may be lacking in nuances that a more experienced player may have discovered; but honestly I don't feel like I've ever directly benefitted from an agreement like Alliance. I've never recieved tech, units, heroes, or gold, from an AI... the only reason I have found for maintaining a non war state are trade routes.
Your encroaching actions make the gap wider, as listed by others above.
I am convinced that AIs lay claim to pearls adjacent to their border, or even at distance 2 from their border. Taking those also makes them leery, and adds "Pearls Stolen" as one of the reasons why they're leery toward you.
Generally, the way to get Peace is:
- early on, offer Peace + sweetener (low tech or bunch of resources)
- in midgame, you and AI are on separate continents, have never met on land, and share no border. Your sailor maps its coastline (and that's how it first sees you). Same as above: a small amount of sweetener suffices.
The way to keep Peace is:
- don't do things that antagonize it
- don't be much weaker
AIs will revoke your Peace and drop back to Cold War if you annoy them.
The way to have the AI offer Peace to you first is:
- you're not annoying it
- you do things it likes
Just about the only thing you can do that an AI loves is to kill units or capture/raze cities of a 3rd AI that is hostile to both of you. That wins huge amounts of +standing in your favor, toward "Trusted" status. Hover over the AI's opinion of you, and you can see "Enemy Units Killed" and "Enemy Cities Taken" in its list. This compensates for stealing a few pearls, so if you just lifted B's siege on A's capital by force majeur, you can help yourself to one bunch of A's pearls on the way out :)
Do that often enough, and an AI can cold-call you with an offer directly to Alliance, and thereafter adore you.
+ One less opponent to fight. One direction on the continent that's safe.
+ Trade, trade route bonuses. Late-game, simply having the opportunity to make spectacularly looooooong (in hexes of shortest-path distance) trade routes can vault your trade route income from ~200sd (science & dust) per turn to >1k/turn. That's a lot of science.
+ Shared maps.
+ You can freely enter their territories, benefit from their road movement and tower healing, and walk through their districts (or stand in them and get the +5% healing bonus). Their adjacent units don't ZOC you with 1-pt movement penalties, and they don't scramble interceptor groups from city garrisons in reaction to your presence. They like you; they enjoy your visits. If you need to get to the other side of their territory fast, they go from a big hostile detour (in Peace) to the shortest path.
+ You can always, at any time, pop into the diplomacy window and bounce a trade offer of resources and/or techs with any ally. If you haven't browsed their techs in 20 turns, go shopping and see if they researched something you want.
Diplomatic trade never exchanges units (including heroes), so your expectation is just out of sync on that. You can get techs and gold; just ask for them yourself. (OTOH, you should probably just leverage the peacefulness to build up your own economy and produce your own dust. Trade for techs to save yourself a dozen+ turns of research.)
If you plan to go for the VIctory Quest, you may need sight + travel across the entire land map to quickly jump on every dust-lit ruin. Having them appear in your ally's region is pleasant; you can rush to those dustlights quickly, without getting dogpiled. (Game-within-a-game: Do this with an AI who's only at Peace with you, and see if you can win the game before they rescind Peace because you keep walking in their hexes :)
Your going to think I am really stupid..BUT what are "Pearls"
I never was able to play ES higher than normal and I might be lucky to get that in EL with a little hard work
Trading techs/resources(/cities) requires that you either:
[x] be at War, as part of a Truce offer; or
[_] be at Peace (?);
[x} be at Alliance.
Not seeing the options is normal; it just means you need to research the tech, and then "buy" a successful Truce/Peace/Alliance deal first.
Hence, one of the most important ways to snarf high techs is to fight a war, hurt that one AI bad enough to make it want to go to Truce, and then offer one (or wait for it to offer you a truce, and then counter-offer). Generally, taking 1-2 cities (and winning enough fights to do that) suffices to make an AI tired of fighting you ... even if the AI started the war, and is still 5x stronger than you are :)
With each truce you offer/counter-offer, go shopping at that AI's tech buffet. The War/Truce path has the advantage that both options are always available from turn 1, so you can always rely on that even if you haven't researched the other diplomacy techs.
I have been lucky because everytime I find a new game I seemto find a patient person who is willing to help an old veteran (Army 6 yrs) figure out how things are done in a particular game such as this one,
My usual method is to play agame and when I get to a point where I am not sure how to proceed I just back up to a older save and try again,,,,and again,,,and ,,well you get the drift. In this game Im am still working on development. Combat is limited to defending from an AI declaring war.
As in ES a scientific victory is easier to get. I am going to try combat by declaring war somewhere down the road in my current game. BTW how do you recognize pearls on the map?
If you ever are willing to play a "coop" game it would help a lot. I know that "coop or team play is not really possible but the reason for playing suchj a game is to help my old brain learnj
So unless some player wants to coop to help an old guy I will just have to try to win on normal without diplomacy (SIGH)
thanks all
Technically when you met that AI you were considered to be in a state of "Cold War". In this game you can attack or be attacked during "Cold War".
As a Vet you probably have a totally different concept of "Cold War". If the U.S had attacked Russia or vice versa during their "Cold War" the presumed outcome was that the "War" would immediately go "Hot", which is logical; as no sovereign nation with the capability to fight back would allow a preemptive attack to go unpunished.
Regardless of the historical context of Cold War in the West, this games diplomacy system redefines the term to mean open aggression in unclaimed territory.
Also, there is a quest that rewards the first player to kill a certain number of hero led armies, which is most likely the programming factor that is motivating the AI.
@Gilmoy:
1.) Having one less opponent to fight might be valuable for the difficulties of impossible and/or endless. I've had no problems with being in constant war on all other difficulties. I'll keep it in mind if I run into trouble on those higher two though. =)
2.) Trade routes. This is the only one I strongly agree with (which is why I listed it myself). However I have found that by mid to end game I am producing such huge sums of dust that trade routes with the AI become overkill. I've had to turn off economic victory a couple of times so I could win a different type of victory that takes longer. I generally play big maps with big territories so not sure if the trade routes would be more necessary on a small map with only 1 or 2 opponents.
3.) Shared maps? Not worth the effort IMO. If I'm at war marauding through the AI's territory, not only am I gaining a map but I am also gaining resources from pillaging and pearls.
4.) Freely entering territory? Also not worth it, see above.
5.) Resources and tech? I gain more resources by pillaging and put the AI at a disadvantage. Tech trading would make sense if the AI had desirable tech, in my experience so far, it hasn't.
I would rather spend the few turns it takes to research something myself rather than trading 5 of my techs for 1 of theirs.
Speaking of AI tech, it is especially strange to me that the AI always opens up the first 3-4 tech ages before I do. I see the notification and think "damn, I'm probably falling behind"; but everytime I have looked at their trade listings they aren't ahead of me. Personally I think there is some sort of fixed "cheat" mechanic that the game simply opens the higher tiers after a certain amount of turns based on game speed and difficulty setting; but because the AI doesn't have the programming to research properly it usually doesn't end up with much.
As a quick example... I won my last game (Science Victory) on the 3rd highest difficulty setting as mages (first time playing them). I was in perpetual war with the bugmen and the cultists and was locked out of the market by the Roving Clan which had an empire twice my size spanning 2 continents. The Clan kept trying to get me to trade a tech for market access, which I did not. Despite their enormous empire I had nearly 30 more techs than they did, so even if I had wanted to trade tech they had nothing.
* * *
I am willing to reconsider my position if I run into problems on Impossible or Endless difficulty, but for all other difficulties the game design clearly rewards being at War over being at Peace.
Being at War provides faster experience gain to units, provides resources from pillaging/reduces AI resource gain, provides fully developed cities (after a successful siege), but most importantly War reduces the AI gaining advantages economically, scientiffically, and territorially for a win.
I'll have to double check next time I play, but I don't think there is even any war weariness that negatively affects the population happiness.
"WAR!, What is it good for?" [in Endless Legend] "Absolutely everything!"
I have a hard time understanding how the various sub systems work.
I had hoped to get my friend who tayght me how to play ES to teach me about EL but alas he doesn't like this game. I will stop playing for awhile I think. I also have a problem with my mouse in this game. My mouse has no problems in ANY OTHER game in my steam library and it gets to the point where it does not work at all.
Any click can cause the game to minimize and most of the time it gets to the point where it will not maximize and I reboot the game and it functions fine for awhile the starts into minimizing again. I don't know why this is the only game that it does this with but it is really frustrating.
Not sure what to suggest for the mouse problem. That would definitely make playing frustrating.
If you take a break, be sure to give it another try in the future, EL is a decent game. It may be complex (most 4x games are); but the sub systems will make more sense the more you play with them; familiarity will become understanding. Good luck to you. =)
Typically, in Endless difficulty, on turn 11 or 12 you enter Era II (because some AI enters it for you). On turn 16-18, the "destroy 10 armies" or "pacify 8 villages" deed gets done; you can pip the AIs to the pacify version, but you'll never kill 10 armies before they do. Around turn 30 they'll be 2-3x your score, and 4-8x your military. You can still punch right into an AI you choose to attack with basically just 2-3 groups (make sure you have heroes with insignia), even if it has 5+ groups in the vicinity and 20 groups total; the AI still throws its units away in tactical combat.
By the time you hit Era III, all surviving AIs will be in Era V. There is no Era unlock cheat; just look at the empire scores screen and you'll see that, indeed, one AI (or more) really does have 9(k-1) + c techs, where k is the current Era. Whomp on 2 AIs and truce-trade for their very high techs, and you can actually outrace everybody to Era VI once in a dozen games, but that's very rare.
I actually prefer the relentless pace of Endless now. It has a way of sharpening your focus and squeezing inefficiencies out. I secretly agree with you that allies are next to useless in any fight; you have to rescue their butts, and they never sortie to help you out. But think of it as wall clock time saved; if you had to kill them off in war, that's at least five major (8+8)-vs-(8+8+garrison) battles, which is at least a couple of hours to do it right. So just cruising through their friendly territory without spending that time is boon enough.