{The List} - Diplomacy

[TechWins]

All Diplomacy related ideas will go here:

I don't have much time to discuss this in detail, but I feel that there should be more to diplomacy than in previous Civ games. In Civ3 right now you are basically either at peace or at war. Granted there is 'feelings' towards each Civ, but they simply don't play a big enough role. I believe that there should be levels of engagement, such as cease-fire, allied peace, neutral, etc.. I'll go into detail later on.


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Diplomacy idea content cannot be included due to the message length restraints. Refer to the bottom of the page for obtaining the .doc file.

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[old comments]
Ok, I believe I got most of the ideas listed. I still need to go through and try to summarize and/or make them more clear if at possible. Plus group similar ideas and concepts together. I'm going to credit the idea of allowing unit trading as a general consensus. Sorry for taking so long to even update the list to this point, but I will try in the coming days to make the list more precise. Please feel free to make any comments on ideas you feel should not be in there.

This is the basic summary for all the ideas:

A streamlined diplomacy room and bargaining table that emphasizes showing information and not based on intense graphics. Allow more indepth deals that hold more meaning between not just two civs but two or more civs at one time. Make it possible to trade units between several different civs. The relationship between two or more civs should play a larger impact and be more broad. Territory and borders need to be negotiable between two or more civs. All of this combined to provide a more distinct, strategic, and exciting diplomatic part of the game.

It was thrown together without much organization but for now it shall do
[/old comments]


It’s been 7 months since I last updated this thread, however, I don’t think my absence made much of a difference. Not many more ideas were added to the list since my last update; albeit, I apologize for not taking the time to update the list periodically. I’m only uploading the list to show that I will make an attempt to finish the Diplomacy portion of the list by sometime in September. I’ve added all (thought-to-be) ideas from January 14, 2004, my last update, that are in this particular thread, then thrown in the ideas from two separate ideas which can been through hyperlinks towards the bottom of the list. Since Drachasor made a very well entailed response to the list, I made his comments into subsidiary portions of an idea that it curtails to. I’m going to try to intergrate his comments into the idea itself in due time. Also, I need to organize the list into well definded ideas, which is going to be the most daunting task of all. If anyone would be willing to help in any fashion I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.


**The .doc can be downloaded on the 4th page of this thread.**

[Inverse Icarus]

UNIT TRADING.

i'm going to leave that in it's own post for effect.

[gopher]

How about unit trading for a certain number of turns?
Or establishing claims for various tiles or areas?

[statusperfect]

Give us casus belli and stability to prevent too much backstabbing and making long-term diplomatic planning an option. Also make the game show via the foreign advisor what you can do to increase relations with civs you have bad casus belli with.

[theCzar]

The UN should be expanded, to allow for Alpha Centauri style political world, most powerful races get vetoes, or maybe the first countries to get the requiste tech (ie, founding members), penalise war mongerers, mediate peace settlements (maybe you could apply to the UN for help if you're being pressed)

there's a million ideas based on it, just look at real life.

The ability to use/garrison allied cities would be nice, fix mutual protection exploit, where the aggressor's pact is activated when the defender attacks in the aggressor's territory, i always felt it was a bit dumb

[Lorizael]

You need to be able to ask for anything in diplomacy. You should be able to get a civilization to sign a peace treaty with another civilization or ask that a civilization stop building certain kinds of units.

[Optimizer]

Keep the bargaining table. It was superb.

You should also introduce some kind of vassalage, that could benefit both parts. The vassal civilization would pay maintenance for all units that the master civ stations in its territory, but the master suffers a great loss of reputation if the vassal loses any city to an enemy.

[hexagonian]

I already posted this in another thread, but it will go here too...

Haggling is nice, but stick a limit on it. Make it so you can haggle 3 times per turn to get it right, and if you do not accept on the third turn, there is a 5-10 turn diplomacy blackout on that matter.

[Fosse]

Get rid of the trade "advisor" who allows you to get the best deal possible down to the last gpt.

Multilateral diplomacy is a MUST. Both as a UN in the late game, and as three or more at one table throughout the game.

Surrender needs to be put back in (from SMAC), and durations of things need to be negotiable: Why 20 turns for every deal? What if 15 would be better?

[J-S]

Ok... here goes...

1) Bargaining table format: first of all, like the previous post said: keep the overall negotiation format in Civ3. As in, requested techs/units/items/actions/etc. on one side and offered techs/etc. on the other.

2) Additional items in bargaining table:

• a) unit trade: when buying the unit you must specify the location/city where it should be delivered.
  b) build city improvements: this is for having one civ build an imp "x" in it's city "y" for another civ's city "z". For example, suppose I cannot build a hospital yet but the chinese can. I can offer to pay them 100 gold for one of their cities to build a hospital in one of my cities. When a city is building an imp for another civ's city, in the queue a message will appear indicating this ("Hospital, 15 turns, for city x of the chinese"). When the imp is finished, the imp will appear in the other city and a message will appear. Ofcourse, the production cost of building imps for other cities will increase depending on the distance between the two cities.
  c) production/food trade: shields/food should be tradeable from one city to another. For example, I offer the Spanish to locate 100 shields per turn from Athens to Madrid in exchange for 200 gold.
  d) terrain tiles: this way, the terrain tile chosen will become part of the civ's territory.
  e) military bases: have a civ allow the installation of a millitary base (fortress) in one of their tiles in exchange for x gold.

3) Automatic foreign relations manager: be able to have your foreign advisor manage the general aspects of the relations with other civs automatically, giving him general indications. For example, instruct him to "maintain good relations with the chinese". Then, if the chinese for some reason are beginning to distrust us or just start of as neutral, a message will appear advising the player to give them a gift, etc. Another function could be "negotiate trade of extra resources for best price", always confirming with the player to finish the transaction. As in, I have an extra iron on my hands, and the foreign relations manager would automatically negotiate with every civ the best possible price for that extra resource.
It's really tedious to have to check every turn for relations with each and every civ... and eventually I end up not talking to them unless it's for a get-that-damn-settler-outta-my-territory declarations.

[Cras]

Pretty much any changes to the diplomacy engine would be a welcome upgrade as its current incarnation is unacceptable. If in the new civ game the diplomacy engine resembles the current model not in appearances but ability would be a major disappointment in my humble opinion.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by theCzar
The UN should be expanded, to allow for Alpha Centauri style political world, most powerful races get vetoes, or maybe the first countries to get the requiste tech (ie, founding members), penalise war mongerers, mediate peace settlements (maybe you could apply to the UN for help if you're being pressed)

there's a million ideas based on it, just look at real life.

The ability to use/garrison allied cities would be nice, fix mutual protection exploit, where the aggressor's pact is activated when the defender attacks in the aggressor's territory, i always felt it was a bit dumb

I think the UN is fine - it is quite realistic (except a little too powerful).

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by J-S
b) build city improvements: this is for having one civ build an imp "x" in it's city "y" for another civ's city "z". For example, suppose I cannot build a hospital yet but the chinese can. I can offer to pay them 100 gold for one of their cities to build a hospital in one of my cities. When a city is building an imp for another civ's city, in the queue a message will appear indicating this ("Hospital, 15 turns, for city x of the chinese"). When the imp is finished, the imp will appear in the other city and a message will appear. Ofcourse, the production cost of building imps for other cities will increase depending on the distance between the two cities.

3) Automatic foreign relations manager: be able to have your foreign advisor manage the general aspects of the relations with other civs automatically, giving him general indications. For example, instruct him to "maintain good relations with the chinese". Then, if the chinese for some reason are beginning to distrust us or just start of as neutral, a message will appear advising the player to give them a gift, etc. Another function could be "negotiate trade of extra resources for best price", always confirming with the player to finish the transaction. As in, I have an extra iron on my hands, and the foreign relations manager would automatically negotiate with every civ the best possible price for that extra resource.
It's really tedious to have to check every turn for relations with each and every civ... and eventually I end up not talking to them unless it's for a get-that-damn-settler-outta-my-territory declarations.

I think I really like those two ideas.

[DarkCloud]

Unit Trading is a must, as are border agreements where the nations can trade land for units or land for cities, etc. and can basically carve out borders between each others nations.

Also, if there are going to be minor civs- I would suggest that the major civs can, if 2 or more of them discover the minor civs and the 2 are at peace with each other, carve out the land of the minor civ between them (Like the Europeans colonized and carved out africa) and agree upon the winnings if they conquer "x" amount of territory

[Kuciwalker]

I would suggest that the major civs can, if 2 or more of them discover the minor civs and the 2 are at peace with each other, carve out the land of the minor civ between them (Like the Europeans colonized and carved out africa)

Or Poland

Make it so you can do this with MAJOR civs as well

[Jamski]

I put some stuff in the AI thread. Diplomacy and DoW AI.

-Jam

[Lorizael]

To expand upon the whole idea of vassal states and imperialism and suggest, I suggest another diplomatic state to go along with war, peace, alliance, and those things.

You could demand that another civilization become a territory of yours. Once this happens, new diplomatic options are available to you. You would have the ability to gain access to certain parts of your territory's civilization. You could ask to control the construction of improvements, or military units, or their income sliders, their science, and other such things.

This way you could simulate the ways in which civilizations control other civilizations without actually owning their cities.

While writing this I realized that few players (computer or AI) would ever actually agree to a situation like this. Because of that, there must be a way to threaten people during diplomatic negotiations.

You give me control of your industry.
I don't burn your capital and rape your women.

[Mr. President]

You need a wonder (or facility, or something) like the Eiffel Tower or whatever it was that improved your reputation over time. The most annoying thing about Alpha Centauri diplomacy is that there's practically no way to repair your reputation - even for comparatively minor transgressions.

It could improve your reputation very slowly, and it could be contingent on you not committing more atrocities or breaking any more treaties.

Example:

Suppose your reputation is calculated in the programming as a score between 0 and 1,000, where 0 is pariah and 1,000 is beloved. When you have the wonder, your reputation score increases by one point in every two-turn period in which you do not commit an atrocity or break a treaty.

[MxM]

Again and again I ask for EU type of diplomacy. It is much clearer; you can understand why somebody does not like you (religion, or you made a war with its friend). EU type of alliances rocks! Negotiations to make peace and decisions who gets what after the war are great! Ability to look at the map how any country treats other countries is very welcome. There are many other aspects that I want to see in CIV game that are in EU diplomacy model.

[Lorizael]

There should be a diplomatic state between two civilizations when they first meet. It would just be Contact. There would be no formal peace treaty of any sort, and because of that no need for formal declarations of war. Units from these civilizations could attack and destroy the other's units at will without suffering a hit to their reputation, to war weariness, or having to deal with many civilizations ganging up on the attacking civilization.

The caveat would be that diplomatic relations between these two civilizations would be severely limited until a peace treaty was formally written. There would definitely be no trading of strategic resources or of technologies, and none of the other nifty things that come with embassies and such. Yah, and a peace treaty would be required before an embassy could be established.

And one thing would still have meaning in this type of relation. Borders would be respected. Trespassing or taking another civilization's cities would still be considered an act of war.

I think this would allow for early expansion with a bit more flavor to it. You could model the almost continual warfare that occurred then without having to switch to a war footing. Minor conflicts would just be a natural part of ancient civilization and you wouldn't have fullblown wars until your states became more cohesive and organized.

[POTUS]

But what if you took a city???

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by POTUS
But what if you took a city???

Trespassing or taking another civilization's cities would still be considered an act of war.

[TechWins]

Lorizael, I like your idea. It goes along with how I think there needs to be more diplomatic relations, besides peace and war.

Btw, I plan to update the first post with a true list by tomorrow night when I'm off of work.

[Kuciwalker]

@ Lorizael

Isn't that somewhat how it worked in C2?

[mrmitchell]

/me skips the thread to post a brilliant, oft-suggested by many a player, idea

The ability to claim lands as you explore them. Other Civs could then recognize those claims and

a) Let you settle it
b) Take it for themselves (another reason to go to war)
c) Recognize your ownership, and purchase the claim.

This would make exploration slightly more powerful, no?

[DarkCloud]

These ideas are from here:
http://home.att.net/~civgames/ideas.html

I thought about an information screen telling everything about another civ. It would be accessed by right clicking the portrait of a foreign leader in the diplo screen. It could look like the attached picture.
(Here I'm commenting the picture. If my post interest you, you should watch it first). The shown resources are everything the foreign civ has at disposal (local + import), not only what they can trade. This way, you know if they can build knights or not at all. The "may want" resources are what they could buy from you. When your cursor is on a resource, you have a small popup which indicates where it comes from, or where it goes to (like "fine chinese silk" in your trade advisor)
The map is here so that you know where are the cities, like at the culture advisor.
The science tab would show all their knowledge, the most recent discoveries they made being at the top (it is useless to know directly they mastered writing when you have to scroll down all the way to know if they have advanced flight).
The buttons in the bottom would make it more practical to go spying (you are directly spying by the French) or comparing their army (you go directly to the defense advisor screen, the French being in the right column)
-Spiffor

Sadly spiffor's pictures aren't accessible via apolyton's file system anymore.

International Peace Conference
- Since the world wars are difficult, if not impossible, to end, there should be a possibility to call international congresses (by clicking a button in the diplomacy / shift-D screen).
( See this site for how it should look:
The central proposition (such as "peace treaty with any other, right of passage with any other"...) must be accepted by all so that the congress is a success. The proposition would make the leaders react, and you can see with their faces if they agree or not.
If they don't agree, what to do ? Bribe them ! By double clicking on their face, a specialized diplomacy screen should pop up, where you make propositions only to make them accept the treaty (private diplomacy can be held anywhere else during the game).
Naturally, you don't want to pay for the whole world peace. In such a situation, there should be a button when you're speaking to "give to..." an other :
(See this site)
Once you click it, the concessions you ask from your partner don't go to you, they go to another civ. Here's an example :
Let's say the Aztecs have won against the Iroquois, capturing Salamanca, but due to intricated MPPs, this war cannot cease. As the neighbours of the peaceful Iroquois, you don't want the balance to be broken by an unfinishable war. Then, you call a congress between Iroquois, Aztecs, all of their allies. The Aztecs will accept the peace treaty for 20 gold per turn, but you feel the Iroquois must pay : On the congress screen you double click on Hiawatha, choose "give to..." -> "the Aztecs". And then, as you would do in a normal diplomacy screen "gold"-> "per turn" -> "20".
(See this site: )
When you return on the congress screen, you see Moctezuma accepting, because he knows he recieves a compensation.
If you definately cannot have everyone accept, you could kick the "rebels" out the congress.

Well, I admit managing the other's diplomacy is not easy, so I think such a tool should be completely optional. But useful if you want to influence more directly the others. These multilateral bargainings could be used to make solid alliances too, by asking all those who are MPPed with you to MPP between themselves as well. (or to ask everyone to reduce his nuclear weapons, and so on...)
International congresses should be available once nationalism is discovered, or once UN is built. I don't think the AI could manage such a thing, so only the player could call for one. If the negociations succeed, due to your great diplomatic skill, the invited civs would be a bit more likely to vote for you.
-Spiffor

Declare atrocities, sanctions, nuclear arms reductions, pollution reductions
-David Murray

Ask another Civ to end a war against a third civ.
-Kyle

Ability to pressure allies/others into breaking treaties/stopping war
-Raleigh

Players should be able to trade units with other civilizations.
With the same system as for workers (the unit you want to trade must be in your capital, you must have trade roads with your partner).
The AI should value this unit about : the unit's modernity, the unit's experience, the civilization's military needs.
-Spiffor

Players should be able to bribe other civs to declare war to others, without getting directly involved, like in Civ2. With this tool, you really can play a puppet-master kind of game : weakening your ennemies, and direclty helping your friends, without waging a war.
-Spiffor

Your spies should know the vote intentions of infiltrated civs (POSSIBLE SPY OPTION??? INFILTRATE PLANNED COUNCIL VOTE???).
There should be a way to bribe the other civ to vote for you (HIGLY expensive, and impossible if their spies know you're going to win)
-Spiffor

A complete information screen about others civs is needed for the civs with which you have an embassy.
It would list the: Government, capitol, relations with other civs (not only war/peace..., but also politeness), trade agreements, treasury, vote intentions, and most important : the knowledges they have and are researching. This screen should be accessed by a right click.
At the beginning of each turn, your foreign advisor "could" pop up (with an option for turning it off), saying in one screen everything which happened (war declarations, discovered technologies, traded technologies, diplomatic incidents...), big deal such as war and peace declarations would be written in bold.
-Spiffor

Toned down requests for unit removals; or require the enemy to hurry their unit's movement through your lands
Examples: Ask them questions: ""Well, what is that unit doing here? Where is it going? How long will be be within our borders?" "
-Kolyana

I'd like to be able to co-ordinate actions with the AI from time to time, rather than just have him running around doing his own thing.
-Kolyana

There must be some way of demanding that the units NEVER RETURN to your lands
-Kolyana

An expirable, non-revocable non-aggression treaty. This would fix trading between agressive and non-aggressive countries.
Example:
A Civ is agressive but needs some resources. Right now, the other Civs won't trade with them, likely due to security concerns. Why give oil to the enemy war machine?
But - a non-aggression treaty involved with a mutual trade that expires after 20 turns would allow the non-aggressive Civ a sense of security and give the aggressive Civ an opportunity to obtain trades and enjoy the diplomatic aspect of the game.
Allow us to trade security for goods - it makes sense and benefits both parties.
-Venger

In the UN: anyone can ask someone to stop fighting another- useful if you have two potential allies but when you side with one it pisses the other off...
-Cian McGuire

If the UN is built and other nations have agreed to vote in favour of one of your competitors you have the option to say "F**k the UN!" and go on with your bussiness.
This decision would result in all other nations being at war with you for a period of 40 years.
-Mannamagnus

Amassing troops next to A.I. border should be considered hostile and they should prompt you to demilitarize the area or declare war if they are outnumbered more than 5:1.
-YahMon

Is a "Dont watch allies/peace/enemies moves" (except combat) too much to ask for? (wasn't for SMAC)
-Blake

We n eed to have more info on other civilizations in the foreign advisor screen (i.e. are they more or less technologically advanced?, what gov't type?, income per turn?, yada yada yada)
-YahMon

There. That's about it
Enjoy!

[DarkCloud]

LORAIZEL

It would just be Contact. There would be no formal peace treaty of any sort, and because of that no need for formal declarations of war. Units from these civilizations could attack and destroy the other's units at will without suffering a hit to their reputation, to war weariness, or having to deal with many civilizations ganging up on the attacking civilization.

But what about in modern eras- nations can't just do that after they know a certain amount of other nations- it would enrage the third parties!

As more nations know more nations, there rises a need for an ever-incresingly complicated political structure- therefore, the structure you suggest is good, but I would posit that it is only good when a civ knows less than 3-4 other civs and that the civs that the two know in common is less than 3-4...

[Lorizael]

I think this political structure would naturally go away anyways because diplomatic options are limited. Basically, no formal governmental action may be taken against another government. I'm not sure what the specifics of that would be, but there would be an incentive to actually recognize another government so that you can interact with it directly.

[DarkCloud]

An incentive hmm.... increased trade benefits between the two nations?

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by DarkCloud
LORAIZEL

But what about in modern eras- nations can't just do that after they know a certain amount of other nations- it would enrage the third parties!

As more nations know more nations, there rises a need for an ever-incresingly complicated political structure- therefore, the structure you suggest is good, but I would posit that it is only good when a civ knows less than 3-4 other civs and that the civs that the two know in common is less than 3-4...

No... look at the conquest of America.