World Affairs: International Relations

Upon meeting a competing nation's unit or locate one of their cities, you'll be able to conduct relations with them. Base on your civilization's current stands and proximity to their own borders, the other empires may greet you with open arms or mocking threats.

There are four basic options you can have with another world leader: Discuss, trade, demand, and declare war.

Discuss

There are several pacts or proclamation you can make with a nation. If you happen to have good relations with them, the Pact of Cooperation is a good means to keep on their good side. However, if you happen to do something far beyond their polices, the friendly nation may break off their agreement. The Pact of Secrecy is similar, but is aimed to undermine a third party nation, typically a mutual enemy. If they happen to have a very bad relationship with a third nation, you can typically succeed in convincing them to go to war. They aren't necessarily your ally during the ensuing combat, but can help distract your target. Finally, telling them to not settle cities is a hostile warning that may sour relations, or send fear into them if your nation is strong enough.

Trade and Demand

Trade is a great means of gaining more resources, gold or setting up feuds. You can make several different offers, such as gold, resources, open borders or even whole cities. There are also a few unique trade options that can give interesting results. The Research agreement will expand both parties' gold in order to award both of them a random tech. This can be helpful if you have large amounts of excess gold lying around. The most common use however, is to gain extra strategic resources by lending out spare gold or luxuries.

You can also bribe others into making peace or declare war on other nations. This strategy will allow you indirectly damage your foes while keeping your own forces intact. Additionally, any bad relations will be directed towards the other parties and won't be traced back to you. This is an excellent means of gaining subvert Domination wins.

Demand is similar to trade, but you give them nothing in return. This will typically only work if you recently beat the pants off of them during a war.

Declare War and Negotiate Peace

Outright declaring war will allow you to start a war without actually having invading their land yet. This can give you time to prepare and asses the climate of war better before putting your frontline at risk. It will also seem less blood thirsty in the eyes of third party nations.

If you are currently at war, you can also negotiate peace. The victor will always have leverage in the peace negotiations, often requiring the loser to give up cities and major resources to keep from being crushed. Note, that any wars started will last a minimum of ten turns, and peace cannot arrive until at least that deadline. Alternatively, some nations may not want to negotiate, resulting in one of the two fighters eventually being eliminated.

Special Requests

Other nations can also come to you with requests you may not be able to make to them. Often they will ask you to stop your campaigns towards either their lands or those of city-states. You can either keep relations by agree to their request, or can harm your standing by either rebuffing them, or outright lying. Also, if they ever ask to go to war with a third party, you can opt to delay for 10 turns. Typically agreeing or politely declining will keep your relations in good standing, while being rude or dishonest will break down communication.