What is the best way to placate hostile civs?

The AIs pounce on any signs of weakness in a nano-second so keep your eyes peeled on the military rating graph to your right. Make sure that your rating is not too far away from the top dogs and you should be fine. Look at the Domestic/Stats(?)/Military tab to see your actual military rating, 100 is good.

As you get bonuses to ship stats by being in orbit, it is good to keep your ships there to boost your rating (which is a combination of your ship attack and defense).

To answer your question: the best way? Define best.

The 'best' way from a total pacifist's point of view would be to give them planets. They LOVE that.

The best way for anyone else would be techs/trade goods, though the odds are that if you are in so much trouble that you are suing for peace, you won't have many techs that your attacker(s) don't have . In that case, the best way to placate them is by hitting escape then going to main menu and starting a new game. I find that this trick never fails to reset their attitudes to 'neutral', for however short a period of time.

Prevention of course, is half the battle. Read Raychua's reply for that.

P.S. Hey ray, wtf does your name mean ;D?

~SDC~

It's actually my real name, Sephlock. Sortof.

My first name is Ray and my last name Chua.

If you have a high diplomatic rating then giving them occasional gifts can work fairly well. If you don't have a high diplomatic rating then you just have to be stronger.

It'll help if you bribe them to go to war against each other, as that can weaken them significantly. Don't forget to preposition constructors in anticipation of starbase destruction.

I do believe there has to be some other issues at
work here.

I will split this into crippling and masochistic
obsevations.

Gigantic crippling.

It seems to take the AI about 15 years to get to
dreadnoughts. In my first crippling games, 1 AI
made 1 extortion demand, which I declined no wars
where declared. In the 2nd several demands were made,
all declined even though I had the economy to pay them
easily, an Ai actually did declare war on me but
agreed to peace 12 or so turns later in exchange for
some tech, I lost nothing(but the tech of course)

By the time dreadnoughts came into being the game was
effectively over in both games with me controlling 70%
of the map and all the remaining AI's extremely inimidated
by my size though I lacked any actual military.
I did build a military as I intended to keep the
remaining AI alive with a substanial portion(30%) of
the galaxy under his control until excalibur tech(
to see how it effected score(minimal if at all))

Anyway, there are two possibities that I can see.
1. Excessively large economies can intimidate the Ai
sorta like dont bite the big toe of the giant.
2. I set up the alignment of the AI's at extreme
opposites which causes them to fight bitterly among
themselves, ignoring me.

The 2nd one is definantly a factor, but wether or
not the 1st is assiting my peace I can not say for
certain.

Gigantic Masochistic(tiny masochistic are pure military
rush by me and not really relavent)

It takes the Ai about 4-5 years to get to dreadnought
and as this is the tech that seems to greatly exaggerate
military inadequicies, the extortion demands become
very frequent and outragous. This will invariably
lead to war as the demands can not be met.

On the other hand, the map is so huge that the distance
between empires can be rather excessive. It can
literally take years for the AI fleet to arrive after
a decleration of war(Ai's should be allowed surprise
attacks, not declaring war until their fleet arrives)
Such a delay tends to allow the human player to
get themselves out of the war.

In my most recent gigantic masochistic the war was over
before the AI's fleet found its way into my space.
A went for a good(briefly anyway) alignment and as 3
of the AI's were good, the evil AI that attacked me
was suffering some major losses and sued for peace on
his own before his fleet even arrived.
I had zero military throughout this war.

In fact, both evil Ai's surrendered within a year or
two of overlord tech(8 years or so into the game)
Neither to me though

It would appear that my secret to surviving is to
set up the AI's at extreme opposite alignments and
equal intelligence, it seems to keep them busy.

I also will trade extensively with the most powerful
nearby AI to keep him happy with me.

I will often build a token dreadnought fleet, but I
rarely ever register on the military graph when I am
doing a cultural conquest and have even won some
masochistic games without ever building a warship, though
this was not 'easier', was more to see if I could.

The point is that something else must be a factor in
placating hostile AI's then just military might. My
biggest strength is early expansion and I tend to grab
a very large chunk of the universe, this massive size
seems to have an intimidating effect.

Also, AI's involved in wars with other AI's are fairly
easy to placate, so if your having trouble, bribe an AI
of an opposite alignment to the one your fighting to
attack on your side.

And of course, the best way to placate a hostile AI
comes from my tiny masochistic games. Kill them



[Message Edited]

"My biggest strength is early expansion and I tend to grab a very large chunk of the universe, this massive size seems to have an intimidating effect."

If you set up your game totally for expansion, what if things get stacked against you and you don't get a large chunk of the planets due to there not being many habitable planets within range?

And how do you stay up militarily, economically, tecnologically and culturally while doing this?
It seems as though the AI is much better at doing all these things at the same time.


P.S. Thanks for the advice everyone

[Message Edited]
[Message Edited]

In the above post I am talking about large and smaller universes.

Never mind about the above two posts. I think it will be more fun to figure this game out on my own.