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Diplomacy

foxfire1234

Join Date 05/2007

Diplomacy

Didn't really see a thread dealing with this directly so I thought I'd make one! This is dealing mostly with the AI as players given some basic tools and the ability to chat with each other (private chat of course, can't let those bear riding bearbarians know about your new war elephants!) can do the diplomacy thing naturally.

I did find a good thread on options they'd like to see for dealing inside an alliance. https://forums.elementalgame.com/335521

Most games have a simplified diplomacy, options to make treaties, sometimes trade things ect. I've always found these lacking as they don't really give much in the name of options. And the AI has always been very illogical to me.

What I'd like to see is a way that AI players can keep track of how trustworthy a player/AI is. If a player NEVER backstabs a friend, or engages in shady tactics I want the AI to be more likely to trust that player. They may still want to KILL them but they are an Honorable enemy or a great and trustworthy friend.

Example: I have a friend or even an ally, we're gearing up for a war on a 3rd party, If I have a low trustworthyness score my ally may keep an eye out and worry when I have a HUGE army on thier border. While if I was very trustworthy in my dealings and actions the AI wouldn't worry as much because obviously i'm gearing up for the war... and wouldn't suddely go from being an ally to "You traitor! I see you building up your army!" and declaring war on me!

Obviously to keep players from abusing this you'd have to make it so the player had to EARN the trust of the AI, lots of battles and helping them out. Like if AI yellow is being attacked by AI red! You could open a diplomacy window and ask yellow if you could come and smash some of AI red's troops on yellows territory, you promise to be good! If you then betray yellow and start raiding his supply lines then all the AI's (or maybe just the ones around as one you havn't met yet probably won't "find out") will trust you less. And if you help yellow by destroying some (or lots) of red troops then yellow will both like and trust you more. The other AI's (even red) will probably also trust you more though of course Red is probably going to be kinda angry that his troops were destroyed/attacked by you. But that's another issue

Also I'd like options in diplomacy, Besides the normal "I'll give you X if you give me Y and Z." While that can deffinatly be useful, I'd like to see other things like if the AI doesn't like the trade instead of going "That sucks!" it will give a counter offer! "Well you want to give me X and C for my Y and Z, but Z is really nice so you'd also have to give me 40k gold or 20 of your +1 swords of Awsomeness that my spy...er reports say you have!"

Of course they may not trade anything especialy if you want war tech/items and you are not trustworthy or are just not well liked by that AI.

To steal an idea of the ally thread I'd like some of those options available outside of an alliance. Say if you have at least a nonagression pack or even peace treaty.

Example: Yellow has helped me out some, We're not ready to be allies but red is a big threat, so we can try to coordinate between each other. AI telling me some of his plans, Like he's going to attack Red's troops around coords X/Y in about 15 turns, and if I could help out or be ready it would be really nice. Or I could ask for help because Red snuck some troops past my blockade of the mountain pass and i'm having trouble keeping them out. Or you need help defending the pass to keep him from getting into your near defenceless flank.

This kind of give/take is normaly the realm of players. Seeing the AI being able to effectivly do things like this would be awsome. I also have an idea how hard it would be to program but why not push the envolope? Also all this give/take could make your two sides trust each other enough that an Alliance may be formed. In RL alliances can be formed through working together for common goals. Not "you look nice, you gave me stuff, wanna be an ally?"

Wow, didn't realize my thread was going to be so long. But that's a few idea's I'd like to see in some form, It's the part that always frustrated me when playing against AI, I have wierd playing times and sometimes can only play for 10 minute's here, 30 there so multiplayer with live people is rarely an option.

Please feel free to comment! Also any other idea's people would like to see in diplomacy with the AI or behaviors you think AI's should learn?

Rawr!

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Quoting Jonny5446,

reply 9

This prompts me to mention two aspects I'd like to see with regard to any threatening mechanic, firstly I'd like there to be some back and forth as there woudl be with a real person/power. If I'm taking a shortcut across this guys land and he tells me to get off I should be able to answer back and explain to him that it's only a shortcut and I'll be gone within 10 turns and that I promise not to do anything mean while I'm there.

This is something that's always frustrated me in other 4x games; in many cases the AI would go berserk whenever I sent a dinky unit across its territory -- even when I already knew where all his/her cities were and the unit itself clearly wasn't going to do any damage by itself. In a couple extreme cases, allies would get pissed at me when I was sending units into their territory in order to help defend it from an invader!

Perhaps an option in alliances could be to allow designation of certain parts of each ally's territory where allied troops could pass or stay without diplomatic penalty; or tribute could be paid to a certain wizard to allow friendly units to pass through a certain part (the idea in one of the other threads about being able to name parts of the world would complement this nicely; you could designate areas of your territory open to allied units and then be able to name that part of the map yourself). Such an option would allow allies to get to other areas of the map without exposing cities to being scouted or having units garrisoned directly outside.

Another option (one I believe is already done in some games) is to assign a relative "strength" value to each unit/stack and use that to determine the diplomatic response. That way, you could send engineers/scouts through opponents' territory without triggering a cataclysm, while military uberunits would still trigger paranoia. This concept could also be extended to the military might within one's own nation; if an opponent learns of a large number of high-strength units concentrated in the areas near his/her border it would result in negative diplomacy.

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I want to bump this thread back into the front of the testers because I consider Diplomacy to be the weakest aspect of any type of World/Galaxy strategy game when it should be one of the strengths. This is likely to be a long post, so I apoligize in advance for the length.

While many have pointed out the inconsistances of AI players during diplomactic discussions based upon player history, unit placement, past agreements we still haven't really got to the heart of what diplomacy really means in a game. At least not in my opinion.

First, I'll state up front, that building up trust and honor among potential AI intelligences IS a very important factor. I definately want to build relationships with my neighbors and when I trade with them, give them gifts of money/technology/units that should take things in a positive direction, while if I do things like demand tribute/extort/declare war those actions take things in a negitive direction. Many here have already addressed those issues and I don't have anything to add in that direction other than to say that your actions as a player should play a strong part in whether your AI opponents trust you or not.

However, diplomancy should be a lot more.

A good AI should notice milatary unit build up on it's borders and not only call the player (or opponent AI) on it, but also send emmissaries to it's friends and say 'Blue is building up armies on my borders, we have significant history and trade agreements in effect, would you consider either signing a support agreement in case of war to possibly make Blue re-consider making war on my country or perhaps would you send a emmissary to Blue and indicate your disapproval?'.

Which brings up another point, there should be a method in the game to send a message to a computer AI and indicate that it's recent actions have been met with 'approval' or 'disapproval' (maybe a a choice of Strong/Mild Disapproval/Approval) that the AI should consider and NOT automatically have it reduce or increase it's atittude toward the player. For example, if Blue wars on Red and you send a message of Strong Disappoval to Blue, Blue would consider it's current relationship with you (neutral perhaps) and decide it doesn't really care what you think, however, Red might look positively on the message.

Friends share information. Every government has a spy network and every kingdom in Elemental should have one as well. It can start out primative, but it should exist and be something that we can improve. Information should be shared (or not) based upon if a kingdom wants you to know something or not. So if Green and Blue sign a trade agreement, maybe Red finds out about it and lets you know. Or if Blue has a technological breakthrough and learns how to build a particular type of seige engine, that imformation can be passed along as well. In having relations with the computer AI, we should not really know what technologies or spells they have unless we have either a good spy network or have relations with another kingdom that has passed along that information.

Agreements between kingdoms should be more that simple non-agression pacts, alliances, trade or research agreements or closed/open borders. As been mentioned here, I would like to be able to tell the Blue kingdom, that I would like them to defend or move troops to a certain area (assuming we have a agreement in place) or have the AI suggest something like that to me. I think kingdoms should be able to set trade tariffs on goods entering their kingdom, much like tax revenues are used to tax your population. If you increase your tariffs too high, other kingdoms will trade elsewhere. Any agreement should be allowed to be demanded as a tribute/extortion of another kingdom. It would be great to be able to have different tariff percentages to every fraction.

Perhaps Research Agreements could allow for technology to be instantly be shared between kingdoms based upon which type is negotiated. For example, Blue and myself could agree to share Adventuring technology, but none of the other technologies are shared.

Also, when making a agreement/tribute/extortion request, other conditions should be allowed to be added to the offer, such as 'I will trade you 1 horses for 1 iron, or I will cancel the open borders agreement.' It also would be great if we could send something along the lines of a 'tone' of the message. For example, if the message is sent with a Strong tone, it means that if you refuse this offer, I will also take other steps you might not like but if it is sent with a Weak tone, it means I would very much like to to do this for me, but if you choose not to do it, I will not take your refusal in a bad way. Again, if you send every message in a Strong tone, eventually other kingdoms will not likely want to deal with you and will make deals with others.

It would be great if agreements (at least alliances and that type) could be made between more than one kingdom. For example, you could offer an alliance to Blue and Red that indicates that you all want to ally together or perhaps between the three of you, you would set the trade tariff to 10%.

Just some additional ideas to what has already been posted. With the game getting closer to the 1st possible release date, I thought this would be a good time to talk up a portion of the game that has yet to be explosed.

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