Diplomacy with Other Players

I've been curious about this for a while.

As you know, in Galactic Civilizations 3, each player has a certain skill in diplomacy that, along with a bunch of other factors, determine how much the AI players think of him (or her, let's assume he's male for now). This skill can be modified by various planetary improvements and the Likable/Unlikable race attribute. What I would like to know, is what effect does this skill/rating have on other human players.

As far as I can tell (through playing the game and through researching this online), this "skill" only effects how AI players think of you. This would be a bit disappointing because it would make races like the Krynn and the Thalians, who are Unlikable, to have an advantage against human players because that Unlikable trait wouldn't be a penalty at all. Conversely, the Terrans would have a disadvantage against human players because their Likable trait would do nothing. I really hope I'm missing something and that one (or more) of you will let me know.

 

Thanks in advance :)

19,466 views 4 replies
Reply #1 Top

You would be incorrect. Diplomacy is a value that exists BETWEEN players, not a value a player has (think gravity - the earth has no gravity, but gravitational force exists between you and the earth). The originator of the proposal makes no difference. If you have great diplomacy advantage over an AI civ, they are going to offer you better terms in proportion - not just accept better terms that you propose.

Reply #2 Top

In many hours of MP play, I have seen no sign of anything that is affected by the relative diplomacy scores between two players.  I can try bringing up my scores during my next session, but I don't expect my opponent to know, really.  ;)  

Using an unlikeable race can be a good strategy in MP unless you are in a crowded map with lots of AI acting as a buffer between the two of you.  In my case, it is obvious I am unlikeable because they very often declare war on me first, multiple factions at a time.  Therefore, it does have an indirect effect but nothing that affects human to human diplomacy. At least, it doesn't affect what you can trade or what values you place on those trades. My diplomacy attitudes are unpredictable enough as it is, I don't need some arbitrary game setting reaching out and making me act erratically. I can do that all by myself.

Reply #3 Top

Human vs Human will have no effect on Diplomacy modifiers that effect Trading they are set in the GalCiv3AIDefs.xml which effects only the AI. As to the rest of Diplomacy its is kinda mute Human vs Human, sicne they actualy have brains and can think for themselves :). And since tradign is uneffected the player can chose what and what not to do regarding other players in Diplomacy. You can have a -50 modifier vs another player but, still trade or not deiced to declare war, due to you using your brains to make the desicion, the Ai need the modifiers to tell it what it "should" do regardigng diplomacy.

Its an AI Stat, its as simple as that.

 

Reply #4 Top

I've read all the replies so far. it seems diplomacy really does only AI players and not other human players. That's unfortunate. It is, however, a bit of a relief to see that it can have an indirect effect in multiplayer when there are also AI players as erischild mentioned. I'm not sure how often AI players exist in multiplayer games because I have admittedly not done any multiplayer yet :)

Hopefully, Stardock does something about this in the Crusade expansion. Maybe they could do something like make the player's civilization get morale boosts or penalties based on how they treat other civilizations versus how the people of the former civilization think about the latter civilizations. After all, the people of a civilization don't always agree with their leader(s).