{The List} - Diplomacy

[wes777]

I didn't see anyone else mention this (maybe I missed it ?) So I'm going to bring up this point:

One thing that bothers me about Civ 3 that could be done better is the ability (or lack of) to see the TRUE attitude of nations towards each other. You can see if they are at war or not. But I want to know if the Romans are angry with the Koreans or if they are life long allies.

Which brings up another point:
Diplomatic relations should change over time and sway back and forth or have the occasional flare one direction or another due to some sort of international incident but I tire of having nations pair up declare war fight for a while then literally attack the nation they had allied with just a bit before or pair up with the country they were just fighting with to attack the player. It seems to happen more times than warrants the odd out situation that might happen.

I know this point has been made before but I feel it cant be stessed enough that we should be able to ask nations to cease aggression against OTHER nations. OR ask them to increase aggressions towards other nations.

I think that if you should be able to form brotherly bonds in the game. Real world example: America and Britain. It would take a heck of a lot for us not to be allies now days. I can't see in the forseeable future us not giving each other 100% if the other was threatened. Relationships like that should be possible in the game. Right now it seems like no matter how much you "give" to another nation thru out the ages it can turn on you in an instant. For example, a game I'm playing right now France was getting stomped by the Romans and asked me to join in a war against them so I did. I went to war with the Romans and captured back all the french cities that france has lost. I GAVE the french cities back to france (ALL OF THEM) (Imagine liberating French cities eh Anyway, a mere 20 turns later and France is just as grumpy with me as anyone else. (What gives ? ?)

Also when A nation turns grumpy with you, there needs to be better explanation as to WHY the nations attitude towards you has begun to sour. What have I done wrong ? And then give me the opportunity to fix it before the nation "hates" me . ..

(Honest you can send in your weapons inspectors!) haha

Thats part of my 2cents

[JimiD]

Trading Wonder abilities.

ie i let you have the benfit of my Pyramids if you let me have the benefit of The Great Wall (not a good example).

On the principle you should be able to trade anything.

Also allows smaller nations to merge in the late game to remain competitive, in a slightly different manner.

Of course you could bully this out of smaller states, but in that case, you could just take it of them. Maybe a late game only diplomatic option.

[Vlad Antlerkov]

Originally posted by Fosse
I don't like the idea of limiting the number of people you are talking to at all. Simply making communications last more than one turn (like MP does with another player in Civ III) would solve both issues you brought up, Vlad.

True. I did say that delaying communication round-trip time was perhaps the only thing MOO3 got right. Maybe it is the only thing. (OK, the aliens themselves in diplo were cool. But that doesn't count. )

(Sorry for not responding. Maybe I should have waited until after taking a week-long vacation to post that. )

[TechWins]

7th months in the making, and I have a small update to put up. Download the .doc to view the changes.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by The pirate
Trading Wonder abilities.

ie i let you have the benfit of my Pyramids if you let me have the benefit of The Great Wall (not a good example).

On the principle you should be able to trade anything.

Also allows smaller nations to merge in the late game to remain competitive, in a slightly different manner.

Of course you could bully this out of smaller states, but in that case, you could just take it of them. Maybe a late game only diplomatic option.

What would be the IRL justification for this?

[DarkCloud]

thank you for updating, TechWins- I'll look at it over the next several days!

[Heffalump]

I wanted to throw a few ideas into the mix..

Summary Of Points

*Introduce possibility of peaceful expansion through unions. i.e. a Civ of similar culture or religion may choose to join yours provided you're wealthy, have lots of culture, a good reputation, etc.

*Vassal States (see below)

*Surrender (a civ may elect to surrender in war and serve as a vassal state for a fixed period)

*Trading Territory allowed as part of peace negotiations

*Wars Of Liberation (citizens retain their nationality even after their civ ceases to exist. If you were to later capture a city with a majority of such citizens you could 'gift' it back to the original civ, thus raising it from the dead.)

Details

Union -
new alliance type in treaties. In affect a merging of civs. Mostly likely to occur between civs of similar culture and geographic location. Also most likely to occur between smaller and weaker civs. A poorer civ is more likly to accept an offer from richer one than vice-versa.

Trading Territory
you could ask a neighbouring civ to give you a few squares if they own in exchange for units, money, tech etc. This should be allowed as part of peace negotiations.

Vassal States
An option in peace negotiations. You can demand that a civ 'surrender' be your vassal (for 20 turns) in return for a peace treaty.

You would have a full ROP over vassals and control it's diplomacy, who it fights and who it doesn't fight. You also automatically get any strategic resources that the vassal has as surplus that you don't have.

At the end of the vassalage the possible options for the civ are A) becoming fully independent (but perhaps sweetening the deal by agreeing to an alliance, or ROP with your civ), B) continuing as a vassal for another 20 turns, C) merging with your civ to form a union, D) war (assuming none of the above could be agreed)

Wars Of Liberation
you should be able to 'liberate' civs that were previously conquered. Such civs would in affect be raised from the dead. The civ must still have a majority population of the old destroyed civ. Such a state would automatically be your vassal for 20 turns and thereafter have the usual choices that face a vassal state on the expiration of it's vassalage.

[lorifromsf]

For trading . . .

I like the idea of using a slider to change the amount of money. I also like knowing where the civilization is getting its commodities from.

One way to fix the advisor’s “They’ll love it/They’ll hate it” issue is to make the AI’s response random within a certain range, say 15% of their optimum price.

Currently the trading is kind of irrational. The AI distinguishes between lump sum and recurring items and sometimes it will never take a recurring item in payment for a lump sum. For example, I’m trying to buy Steel from the Zulu. I have almost enough money and coal, but the Zulu “would be insulted” by the coal. Maybe have the AI give a deep discount, but it shouldn’t make it impossible.

Sometimes I want to sell a tech this year, but my current luxury deal expires in two or three years. I should be able to offer an extension during my negotiations (“I’ll give you Steel for 500 gp and you extend my wine delivery another 20 years).

There should be an option of having a pop up appear when 1) when you are first able to trade with a civilization and 2) when a commodity appears that you currently don’t have (The Persians have extra silk. Why don’t we trade for it?).

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by Inverse Icarus
UNIT TRADING.

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

[Trifna]

I thought of a simple system for disarmament and armament limit (so you can limit "Cold War" style and so on).

An anglo-japanese treaty was done where it was agreed that each country would have a navy corresponding to a given ratio between countries.

For example,
English 5 : USA 5 : Japan 4

This means that if English has navy which strength is equal 25, then USA has 25 and Japan 21.


The English initiated such a treaty when they saw they could not stay the major navy power with their economy going down. So they asked for restraining the weapon race.

To which extent would an AI be able to judge of its advantages and disardvantages with such ratios?
What do you think of such an idea, and which problems do you see with this?

[wotan321]

Instead of the pop-ups informing me of who is just started a war and who has ended a trade embargo against me, how about a "green folder" at the beginning of every turn to show me what the other civs were up to during their turns. Sure would save a lot of point and clicking, and allow me to wander off and feed my kids (or some other trivial, distracting "need" ) between turns without having to check back at the PC to click on another pop-up.

[Oncle Boris]

Originally posted by The pirate
Trading Wonder abilities.

NO!!! it breaks the spirit of wonders.

[Trifna]

Puppet regimes are of tremendous importance, espescially when it comes to conquer, colonize, or having an imperialist policy.

I believe in a basic "puppet regime" system. For example, if you instaure a puppet regime in a conquered city, it will:
- Have a lower unrest than a blatantly conquered city
- A part of its production will you to your metropolis (other cities)
- A part of its production will go to its formal owner (in form of money, etc.)

The potentiality of unrest will slowly diminish if you maintain a calm situation and give what the inhabitants want.


I read that one of Paradox' games (Victoria: http://www.paradoxplaza.com/victoria.asp) has puppet regimes, but I never played it.

[Trifna]

[this is a copy/paste of what can be found in
this thread so that it can be in the List's diplomacy section]


I made some work about the USA-UK-Japan-China situation before WW2 and it strenghtened my belief that the diplomacy model does not represent what happens in diplomacy. Here are some good basic aspects I saw:
- Pressures
- Influence traffic (including promising to bring the population/officials more on some side!)
- Slowly building up and strenghtening relations
- Pragmatism vs idealism (from public as officials)
- The importance of public opinion (depending on its knowledge), while dealing simultaneously with foreign opinion (anyone can read about Roosevelt preparing for WW2, with reticent public, peace movement on one side while on the other side are distinct British/Chinese/Japanese demands, etc.)
- Exchanging of anything (and NEVER all or nothing exchanges. NEVER except cases so extreme it's all is left.)
- Possibility to pressure on the limits of treaties/agreements/else
- others


Do you believe that I'll bring an incredibly complex model? Completely unfiraxian? Not so. Now let's try to organize this data in a model. Four points:




The four points forming a model
1- Everything can be done in different degrees (international/national influence? embargo? break/make treaty? enforce/go against agreed rules? diplomatic pressures? ressource trading? Even attacks? Each can be done "just a little"-"quite a bit"-"considerably"-"quite alot"-"go for it")
2- Each thing has a price in degrees or money (ressources, influence... including bringing an embargo from "quite alot" to "considerably". Though influence could work as GalCiv, with quantifyable influence rather than degrees)
3- Distinction between official and unofficial (heck... a tiny percentage is really done officially. Even major things in extreme cases: the Japanese invasion of China was done without any side officially at war! Both preferred that, diplomatically or otherwise). Of course, there are popular/diplomatical consequences on doing something officially. Declare war AFTER attacking, and it's like Pearl Harbor!
4- Public/rulers (rulers= US Senate, nobles, ruling elite...) opinion and capacity to influence this factor on a side or another (while foreign scene/intelligence can also influence it). Don't expect public opinion to have the same impact if it is uninformed (TV, Internet...), or if it does not consider as granted to see its ruler obey (democracy...). Even in the time of Crusades, public opinion was there and could bring unrest (based on the image of a pious and courageous leader, etc.).




Implementing this as simply straight-forward
Point one is not hard to manage for a player, since each act that can be done partly has the same options for degrees found for each other pertinent situation (such as my exemple: "just a little"-"quite a bit"-"considerably"-"quite alot"-"go for it, full throttle").

Point two is not hard to manage for a player, as long as it goes on the major points that DO have some serious impact. For example, "making diplomatic pressures" includes lots of stuff (speeches, symbolic acts...) so there's no need to put every single detail that can be included into this. The point is, as usual, to judge what's relevant/interesting enough to be traded, which should include what was important enough to already be in the game, from others' relations to ressources (GalCiv did some great things for this).

Point three is not hard to implement neither, but only if you put it simply. What I'd see as simple: you can do anything mentioned in other points, and you need to click "Do it officially" if you wish to do so. You could even make an official move while not puting it in acts by only ticking the box (which would be to threaten to do it, bluff, or wait to do it to see reactions or else). Easy enough?

Point four is just as other countries, except that instead of affecting foreign affairs, it affects interior affairs.



What it permits
It permits many many things:
A- Easy to use, HARD to master.
B- Depth with only a few levers, and real diplomacy, real trade, real foreign policy.
C- You can push others (public/nations) on one side, on another... etc. It's not at all like when all the options you have are radical and thus usable only in extreme cases.
D- You can push more... more... more... until THEY actually declare war. You? "No oh my good public/friends, THEY are the evil ones"
Also, you can push more... more... to bring them closer to where you want.
Use your power to force others to accept things and still shut up. Let them chose between letting their population/policy makers go wild and create a force, or not. Classic case: push stuff popular with your population and yourself on weaker ones, to the price of ONLY bad foreign reputation (and foreign population hatred) since the rulers wont move against you.
E- And most importantly: You actually DO have a game with real diplomacy/politics included! You DO interact with other countries on a more than war/economic basis. This brings soooo much more idealistic/pragmatic endeavours (influencing population...), machiavellism possibilities, realpolitik and plain evil possibilities
F- So much more I don't have the time to think about. If you wish, you invent your grand strategies, you create.

[DarkCloud]

from another thread
---

Terrorism

Terrorist actions could be something to sponsor, much like sabotage in some past games like MOO2. You can also have such actions in cities under occupation- asd for what could be done:

maybe make a building non-functioning for a while, damage units and so forth. The effects should be an annoyance but in general aren't life threatening. Such actions should also have political consequences, usually negative.

-GePap

***Terrorism and War-Weariness
Well, if 'terrorism' is to be implemented it would somehow have to be connected to the concept of war-weariness.
-Tripledoc

***Terrorism and Eliminating Food
I think that you should be able to sponser foreign terrorism and do your own-through the espionage screen, and also possibly as a terrorist unit-though I am now less certain about the latter!
If used to kill people, a terrorist act/unit should not eliminate a population point, but should instead destroy units of 'food'-to represent lost population (given that a single pop point can account for as many as a few hundred thousand people!
-The_Aussie_Lurker

***Terrorism Increases Unhappiness
I think the primary effect of terrorism would be to increase unhappiness, war weariness and reduce tourism revenue. It could also be used to destroy key commercial and industrial buildings and terrain improvements!
-The_Aussie_Lurker

***Getting Caught With Terrorism
Commiting terrorist acts should bring with it a HUGE reputation hit if you get caught-especially with civs outside of your culture group!
-The_Aussie_Lurker

[patcon]

Originally posted by lorifromsf
For trading . . .

Sometimes I want to sell a tech this year, but my current luxury deal expires in two or three years. I should be able to offer an extension during my negotiations (“I’ll give you Steel for 500 gp and you extend my wine delivery another 20 years).

There should be an option of having a pop up appear when 1) when you are first able to trade with a civilization and 2) when a commodity appears that you currently don’t have (The Persians have extra silk. Why don’t we trade for it?).

Excellent ideas! Especially the idea of offering extensions on trade agreements that haven't expired yet.

Some other ideas on trade.

1. The "20 turns for everything" model is a one that doesn't always fit. Allow deals for shorter periods, but probably need to restrict things to 5 turn increments.
a. Maybe I want iron from France so I can build my Immortals right now, but I know I can get my own supply of iron in 5 turns. Why can't I negotiate a deal shorter than 20 turns?
b. Maybe my trading reputation is less than great because of broken trade agreements in the past (not my fault, of course). Why can't I rehabilitate my reputation by making, and scrupulously keeping, short-term deals? Of course these deals would have to be really sweet for the AI to take a chance, but that could be part of the cost of doing business.
c. Maybe I wouldn't mind the AI sending units across my territory to get to a battle for 5 turns, but I don't want to let them traipse all over my land for the next 20 turns. Why can't I offer them a 5 turn RoP?

2. Rather than only being able to enter into negotiations for resources with one civ at a time, why not allow an open market once a certain tech (call it 'International Trade') is achieved. This would allow the civ with IntTrade to have open negotiations with all of its potential trading partners by declaring "I have furs to trade. What am I bid?" or "I'm in the market for coal. Let's hear some offers." Of course you can do this now, sort of, by going to each civ individually and seeing their deals and then going back to the best offer. What IntTrade would allow is to do this more easily, and secure better deals because the other civs know they are in competition. Only civs with IntTrade would have knowledge of the other offers. Private negotiations would still be possible. IntTrade combined with Espionage would also allow a small wonder called 'Trade Mission' which allows the civ to possibly 'listen in' on trade negotiations involving civs where you have an embassy and an option to step into the negotiation to interfere by offering a better deal ("France is offering 10 gpt for your coal? I'll give you 250 gold up front.") or possibly making one of the parties an 'offer they can't refuse' ("That's a really nice city you have there on my border. It would be terrible if buying Espionage made something bad happen to it."). Maybe make the chance of listening in fairly high but the chance of interfering somewhat less. Having a Trade Mission would also lower the probability of other civs listening in on or interfering with your negotiations.

[Harfang]

The Civ3 system was much more flexible than the SMAC one. Good. But its interface annoyed me to no end: I'm a keyboard person. The less I touch the mouse, the better. Please, make it so I can use the keyboard.

Peace brokerage. As in SMAC. Already mentioned several times.

Mercenaries. An idea I just had. More or less like unit trade, except that they could be "leased".

More realistic right of passage. Unless two nations are strongly allied, the mere passage of a military unit in their territory, including their territorial waters, could be construed as a declaration of war. It could less stringent in the early game, when relatively nonthreatening units would simply be out exploring. I'd suggest a scout-like unit with a defence rating, but no offence.

If the Civ3 model is to be kept, at least make the civilizations have the good grace to ask for a RoP agreement before they enter your territory, something they currently never do.

Multilateral pacts. If you have a mutual protection pact with a civilization, you should have a veto right on any other pact it wants to make with a third civilization.

Accrued trade à la SMAC. More gold in your coffers for being nice.

Bring back the old truce state. Units moving out of foreign territory would be seen as a sign of good will. Bringing more in would break the truce. You might even specify the path enemy units must take to leave your land and go back home.

Veto on tech trade. If you trade or give a tech to a civilization, you may demand that it does not trade it to other civilizations. If it does anyway, it will chill relations.

City trading. Have the civilizations more open to city trades, as did the European rulers until very recently. It could become hindered by the discovery of nationalism. If you liberate an ally's city from a common foe, it should rightfully expect it back at the end of the conflict, especially after the discovery of nationalism. Not returning it might cause was and damage your reputation.

Tech tree. I'd like to see where a given civilization stands in the tech tree, just as I can for my own.

[alms66]

Originally posted by Fosse
I think that a declaration of war should only be made as an intentional move in diplomacy.

Meaning: If the other person does something (tresspasses, uses nukes, violates a treaty, attacks a unit of yours) that could be an act of war you get the message: "The Romans have kidnapped one of our Settlers. Shall we... Declare war; Ignore the transgression; Condem the act and warn against future actions"


What this actually does in terms of game play is give players and AI leeway to break and bend the rules of civility without causing war every time. You can choose to risk war, certainly.

This would let you attack that small military force that has been camping on your palace steps without necessarily starting war. An international incident, to be sure, but not war.

This would allow for skirmishes that don't interupt world trade (or even trade between the nations).

There would be a diplomatic penalty for engaging in acts of war while diplomatically at peace.

Also, bring back the old cease fire! So you can stop fighting and try to hash out a deal while the spectre of breaking down relations leads directly to war.

This would be an excellent addition.

[patcon]

This is really a Trade/Diplomacy question/idea.

Is a trade route between two potential trading partners blocked by passing through another civ's territory? (I'm pretty sure it currently is.)

If it is, I'm miffed. Shouldn't I be able to negotiate a trade route through that territory?

If it isn't, I'm miffed. Shouldn't these civ's have to ask permission to use my roads or sea lanes?

My solution
Allow (early on, possibly with Map Making) the negotiation of "Trade routes" between civs. If two civs agree to TR then trade to/from one of these civs can pass through the other's territory.
A city on the "other side" is then resource-connected to its home civ if a viable sea or land trade route exists.
A civ on the "other side" could trade with you if a viable sea or land trade route exists.

TRs could be purchased in the usual ways. There should be some sort of "tax" for actually sing a TR's benefit, say 1 gold per turn (paid by the selling civ) for each resource passing through. Perhaps a higher "tax" rate could be offered in negotiations to lower the initial price of the TR. The cost of a TR through a civ should be less if you are currently trading with that civ. The cost of a TR should be much less than a RoP.

The terms of a trade between civs requiring a TR through an intervening civ should be slightly more favorable to the civ having the TR if only one has the necessary TR.

The agreeing civs also allow workers to enter their territory for the sole purpose of building roads.

Question
I've always advocated one-way RoPs (I send my troops through your territory, but you don't go through mine). Should TRs automatically be two-way, even if RoPs get the one-way option?