Sid Meier’s Civilizations 4: Diplomacy

Civilizations 4 brings with it many new diplomatic options. The game does include the old ones seen in earlier versions. However, many of them now have different names.

In Civilizations 3, there was a Mutual Defensive Pact. When two nations signed this pact, it meant that if one went to war and was attacked, the other HAD to come to his defense. A tactic that was used by the A.I. civilizations was to sign this pact with the player and then going to war with another civilization. This forced the player to come in and assist. It was quite annoying, and sometimes ended the player’s civilization. In Civilizations 4, there is the Defensive Pact. It works similar to the one from Civilizations 3 with one alteration. If either nation starts a war, the pact is cancelled automatically.

Another remade diplomatic option is the Right of Passage. For Civilizations 4, it was renamed to Open Borders. One of the new aspects of Civilizations 4 was that a unit cannot enter into the territory of another civilization unless the civilization owning that unit wanted to start a war. You have to have an Open Borders agreement, or you have to go to war. In the old Civilizations 3, you could enter into any territory you wanted. The civilization might yell at you to remove your unit, and maybe even force you to remove it or declare war, but you could still move around their territory.

One diplomatic option was broken up before putting it into Civilizations 4. After being at war for a while, in past versions all you could do was sign a Peace Treaty and then be bound to it for 20 turns at least (you could re-declare war before the 20 turns ended, but you would receive a black mark against your relations with all nations in the world). In Civilizations 4, you can now declare a Cease-Fire which stops the war, but the war can be started immediately if either nation wishes it or is forced to. In Civilizations 4, there is also the Peace Treaty which lasts for a minimum of 10 turns and contains the same restrictions its predecessors in earlier versions of the game.

A brand new diplomatic option for Civilizations 4 is the Permanent Alliance. In older versions of Civilizations, there were alliances, but they could be easily broken and didn’t do much more than a Mutual Defensive Pact did. In Civilizations 4, the Permanent Alliance allows two nations to essentially merge together and become one nation with two leaders. They share research and technologies. They share resources. The only thing they don’t share is what is built in their cities and the control of each other’s units. Both nations are bound to any treaties that the other makes with other nations. If one goes to war, the other must also go to war. If one makes peace, the other also must make peace.

Another new diplomatic option is the ability to ask, threaten, or bribe other nations into changing their religion or civics to match your own. In Civilizations 4, there are 5 different civics categories to make selections in (I’ll talk more about civics in another article). In addition, as I mentioned in another article, there are 7 religions that you can make others change to. Realize though that the nation you are wishing to make change their civic must have the necessary technology in order to make the change. Otherwise, the option won’t even appear. With the change religion option, the other nation must have that religion in several of their cities. Otherwise their leader will tell you that they don’t have enough people following that religion.

One thing that they brought back is the use of a nuclear threat in order to get your way. This option had been removed from the Civilizations 3 game and its expansion packs. One person I know online was thoroughly ecstatic over the fact that nuclear threats had been brought back.

In addition to the remade old diplomatic options and the new ones, the other diplomatic options returned with little or no change. You can still pay money in chunks or over time, as well as trade technologies and resources.