TweetyLeaf

Join Date 05/2008

Diplomacy: The great "thinkbox" thread.

Hello everyone and especially StarDock dudes.

This thread is supposed to collect some ideas for StarDock dudes to use if they want.
All the posters, please think before you post if its a valid and actually doable feature before posting.

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So here goes: I have been playing a lot of paradox games lately (especially ck2). That one has a diplomacy system too.
So does GalCiv2 (obviously) and many other games i have enjoyed playing.

The general problem, in my view, with every diplomacy feature on strategy games is that it is extremely difficult to create enviroment where the AI can have a "real conversation" with you.

All diplomacy features have been designed so, that its basically yes/no answers so that the game actually can react to things properly.
The real negotiation part is very much lacking, because it would be so hard to implement. Or would it ?

My hope for galciv3 and every game that has diplomacy is that on top of the classic style, there would be requests and promises.

It's still gonna be yes/no system but with the addition of those two components you get much more depth into it.
As a side effect, it would also make relationships matter more, because in current system's it doesn't matter how much someone likes or dislikes you. They join your war if they like you or declare war if the dislike you.

With those 2 components added, its not so simple anymore.

I give you couple of examples:

You ask your neighboring race to join your war that is not going very good. He likes you but in no means loves you (lets say in -100 to +100 scale somewhere like +60). Hes space is lacking some belts and he is having hard time with minerals (or whatever) So instead of asking some minerals from you he requests that if he joins the war and you win the war he will get that one juicy asteroid belt to his control, for his purposes only.

You promise that he will get the belt and you just earned yourself an ally to the war.

So the more he likes you, the less he is inclined to request, if he loves you like brother, he might even join the war for free, unless he has some very serious difficulties with some aspect of his empire.

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You just started the game and theres this uncolonized planet that interests you whole lot. However, your scout spots another races colony ship nearby heading that way. You immediately contact them and request that they leave the planet be, your going to colonize it as soon as you just get there. They say no, we really want that planet. You respond that if you leave that alone i promise to give you money for the next 50 years as a compensation and on top of that you get my scout ship right now. They say no and your diplomatic relationship detoriates, because now they know you wanted that planet.

This example is important to work another way also, the AI should sometimes in certain situations request the same from you. All diplomacy should be two way street.

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Also, breaking promises should cost you universal credibility. With bad credibility it should be very hard to make deals go trough because no one is gonna trust you to keep your promises, instead they would request something that you would hand over immediately, or even break diplomatic ties, wich then could be repaired given time of course.

Combat diplomacy should also be in every game that has a diplomacy feature.

There the requests and promises would be a bit different thing. I would just rather call it coordinating the war effort than nothing else.
It should be so that the both allies could coordinate and "discuss" their attacks, for example "get your spy's to disrupt their ship building economy in planet X, i will attack their research labs in planet Y".
Or "Lets both make a coordinated attack on their main fleet in position Z".

Of course the AI should have its own priorities and "views" how the war should be fought, different races have different tactics anyhow. So it depends much on that also how the AI will respond and what he will ask of you to do.

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The system i'm speaking here would still be a yes/no system that would be possible to create in computer game like this one, yes its more complicated and yes it ties the diplomacy more direct way to the AI's and different races behavior because the races would have diplomatic relationship with other races too. But also creates something unique and very deep strategical experience.

It should also make things a bit more challenging for the player (a good thing!) because if the AI coordinates its efforts to destroy you better, it will increase the strategical decision making.

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What do you think ?

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Some ambitious ideas here. I like the idea of ship-to-ship diplomacy though. (Hail them Mr. Worf! )

On the topic of universal credibility, it would be cool if the United Planets was a little more important. In GalCiv 2, the resolutions to be voted on seemed pretty random. Sometimes a resolution would be proposed to limit evil races' trade routes, or to force the richest civ to give money to poorer civs. But whether or not these issues came up seemed totally unrelated to what was actually happening in the game. The way it should be, IMO, is that you pay a price at the UP if you backstab your allies, or warmonger without provocation. E.g., it would be like the UN imposing sanctions on rogue nations in the real world.

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I think diplomacy currency is what is needed like Fallen Enchantress. You have X buildings that give so much of this currency each turn. If you deal with another race or faction, you spend DC depending on what kinds of needs are being presented.

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Gaunathor

Join Date 04/2006

+170

As far as your "request" idea is concerned, I would like to see the ability to request military aid from your allies to attack or defend planets, starbases, and whatever other stationary objects Stardock will implement.

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In multiplayer there should be a very strong binding feature for diplomacy.

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One thing I liked in SoSE was the emissary vessels. I like having a diplomatic unit I could deploy to help improve relations and I liked how they came with the ability to basically buff the people I was trying to be friends with. It might be neat to have something like that in GC3.

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One long standing wish of mine is to be able to guide an ally's research. I usually play the Thalan tech tree, so being able to guide someone to research stuff that doesn't appear on their tree is really appealing (wtb farms, please).

Perhaps even suggest research to non-allies, with the cost related to how friendly they are to you. Or even bilateral tech agreements: you research farms, I'll research missile weapons, and after x turns we'll trade the resulting tech to each other.

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I hope that how much the AI likes you will not mean everything when it comes to for instance allying you or joining you in a war. That a nation likes you doesent mean it's in its interest to join your war or ally you. It may rather be the opposite, that the best interest of that AI would be to join those nations it has had worse relations with in a coalition against a long time friend that is becoming too mighty and dangerous.

It should not be to easy manipulating another nation to do your bidding. It also need the self interest of it.

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Quoting NorsemanViking,

reply 7

It should not be to easy manipulating another nation to do your bidding. It also need the self interest of it.

This here gentleman, is a very, very good point.

It is hugely important that the AI will think itself first and the diplomacy does not mean that if he likes you like (-100 to 100 scale) +50 he will automatically join you, or even with bribing and promising would join your wars.

AI must be able to think "what's in it for me, in the long run". (and many many other questions).

There is a questions that should be asked always before AI gives answers to diplomatic request's.
Different races would have slightly different questions off course. But in the end, it always should come down to his "survival instincts".

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Quoting TweetyLeaf,

reply 8

Quoting NorsemanViking, reply 7
It should not be to easy manipulating another nation to do your bidding. It also need the self interest of it.

This here gentleman, is a very, very good point.

It is hugely important that the AI will think itself first and the diplomacy does not mean that if he likes you like (-100 to 100 scale) +50 he will automatically join you, or even with bribing and promising would join your wars.

AI must be able to think "what's in it for me, in the long run". (and many many other questions).

There is a questions that should be asked always before AI gives answers to diplomatic request's.
Different races would have slightly different questions off course. But in the end, it always should come down to his "survival instincts".

This is why I mentioned the DC (Diplomacy Currency).

Say I am neutral to all races. However I get attacked by X super faction. I ask everyone to join in my defense.

The AI should go through a routine:

Are our cultures alike? No 50

Are they militarily superior/inferior to me and the enemy? They are inferior to the enemy, but Superior to me. 0

Are our governments structured a like? No 25.

How much to I like this faction? Neutral 100

So when I ask them to join my cause they say well we need 175 DC. Of course DC can be converted to iron, silk, research, industrial units, etc.

However I making this example simple, there should be more complicated routines than that.

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Chibiabos

Join Date 02/2006

+59

I do hope the GC3 team borrows from FE the notion that while it may not be realistic, reducing guesswork in diplomacy (and the general interface for things such as planetary development, etc.) by providing the player with more information about how their options will affect things (such as exactly how much an AI values trading a tech or resource). I'm guessing they will ... but not knowing for certain, I am hoping they will.

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Should espionage options be included in diplomacy ?

If so, in what ways ?

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Quoting TweetyLeaf,

reply 11

Should espionage options be included in diplomacy ?

If so, in what ways ?

I would think that being noticed (successful) or caught would affect the rating. I think any action that you would do, would affect the rating. Colonizing everything in that area would be one!

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The ability to actively frame another civilization would be awesome.

Would it be too difficult for an after action report (end of game) to show off the reasons, or some such, behind AI civ decisions?

I'm playin' a game and the humans on here (I'm playing a created race) actively hate the bajeezus outta everybody. Was instant war at all corners of the map. Though they haven't slammed me 'cause, well, they're slammin' everyone else.

I'm honestly curious if I'll survive. My start sucked eggs.

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EvilMonk3y

Join Date 03/2008

To be honest...I do not like the idea of a 'manufactured' Diplomacy Currency as has been mentioned by some people here i.e. a universal resource generated through buildings or other means. I think that feels a bit too 'gamey' for my liking but I can understand it working, EU IV used similar sorts of mechanics with monarch points.

I really like some of the ideas in the initial post here, I like how it feels very nuanced but I worry at how incredibly complicated it would be to implement (admittedly I am no AI programmer but I would imagine making that level of subtly would be difficult?).

Some sort of middle point would be perhaps a system whereby you generate a form of race specific Diplomatic Currency, in this case lets call it 'goodwill', with AI's that you are experiencing positive diplomatic relations with (trade agreements, tech exchanges etc). You can then choose to spend that goodwill later on with that particular race when trying to coerce or convince AI's...Not entirely sure if that idea makes much sense to others but thought I would throw something out there.

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In GCII I missed the option to threaten another race. Either just for fun or to get them to do something or give you (or someone else) something.

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Gaunathor

Join Date 04/2006

+170

Quoting NitroX infinity,

reply 15

In GCII I missed the option to threaten another race. Either just for fun or to get them to do something or give you (or someone else) something.

You could do that in a limited form. Just put something on their side of the trade screen (money, techs, planets), and nothing on your side, then send the request.

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That's not really threatening. I'm talking about 'Gimme this or I'll attack you' threats.

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I like the diplomacy system in distant worlds. I haven't played the game in a while, but I believe that the amount of trade between races matters a lot. I hope trade will become important again in GalCiv3 too.

I also hope they abolish trading research. Perhaps they could only allow it between allies.

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Quoting NitroX infinity,

reply 17

That's not really threatening. I'm talking about 'Gimme this or I'll attack you' threats.

Yeah, but then you should also have a system giving consequences of not following up the threaths. Example: You threathen a nation to attack if they don't pay you tribute. They say No. You don't attack them anyways.

In the real world's history such things would give you a serious prestige hit. This should then be modeled one way or the other, and be a part of how other nation views your nation in the future.

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The diplomacy system in Europa Universalis IV, while pretty complex, has some good points to recommend. The idea that the AI can be influenced in their decision making at a pretty granular level depending on how much they like or dislike you (and even their like or dislike of you can be directly affected). It also has the idea of strategic goals for the AI. What is the grand strategy for Race X? Can we align our goals with theirs and work together?

In GCII it was never really clear to me why a race felt the way they did about me, or the other races. Yes we have a 'warm' relationship. Why? Is it because I'm very powerful? Some insight, maybe gleaned via espionage, into what the algorithm is for their sentiment and what options I have to affect it. That'd be nice.

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I very much agree with your point. GC3 should make clear why you have a particular relationship with another race. Is it because of trade, long-lasting peace, gifts etc..

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Gaunathor

Join Date 04/2006

+170

Quoting ctiberius,

reply 20

Go to the Report tab in the Foreign Policy screen. There, you can see what modifies your relations with that race (Trade, Militaristic, Our treaties together, etc.). The reason for some of those modifiers may not always be obvious (e.g., "We know what you're doing..."), but, in general, you can easily enough deduce most of them.

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I've said this before (in various other posts) and I will continue to say it until such time as I see it finally being implemented: I would very much like to see a diplomacy system that utilizes the "Aliza" concept (developed a long time back by Creative Computing and whichever university from which they emerged).

For those of you who have never toyed with one, an Eliza program does it's very best to respond to whatever you type. it searches for various keywords (the primary noun and/or verb) and then formulates a response. it seems far more complicated than it is, although converting Aliza from a bedside shrink to a full fledged diplomat would certainly be quite the undertaking. Even so, it would seem to me to be very doable and would no doubt set GC3's diplomacy apart from all the rest!

Will it happen in my lifetime? I seriously doubt it unless I take it upon myself to actually work on the program myself. Unfortunately, I'm (semi-)retired and "work" is something I have not engaged in for quite some time.

Anyway, that's my two cents on this subject.

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It's "Eliza".

Just found that out as I hunted it down online.

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I was always disappointed that I couldn't just 'talk' to the leaders of other races by writing in the dialog box, that would be pretty interesting, if difficult to implement.

Beyond that, I just want the ability to manipulate my enemies/friends on a more complex level beyond "Alliance" and "Declare War..." and the like. "Requesting" that they give me something with threats of massive retaliation, asking them to remove their ships from my space, getting them to attack specific locations.

There's just so much to add, It's difficult for me to narrow it down to one thing.

EDIT; Our BR'd lol

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