Diplomacy Expansion

[Aheadatime]

Ive been hearing alot of talk about how diplomacy should be set up, enhanced, or abolished all together. So, i just wanted to share my 2cents, and make this the thread for diplomatic opinions.

Personally, i would like an enhanced version of diplomacy. Heres how it would work. Offering diplomacy automatically forces other players into diplomacy as well, there is no ignoring. This would be a smooth transition of course, with no freezes if youre managing workers at the time, etc. Also, there would be a timer when in diplomacy, lasting one quarter of a turn, and you can only do diplomacy once per turn per civ, so as to not allow players to intentionally slow you down by spamming diplomacy, and then choosing nothing. It could possibly even be set up to where before each turn begins, theres a 30 second window for subturns, which consist purely of diplomatic negotiations, avoiding any mid-turn negotiation.

When you are in diplomacy, there would be multiple sub categories. For example, you could choose the "threaten" option, and specify which tech you would like them to give you for x amount of turns, including an option to throw in x amount of money, which the player gets to dictate. And vice-versa for someone begging for peace. Example - Im playing as spain and an american takes out my outermost cities, and is heading for my capital. I do diplomacy, and offer him any tech i think he would take, with any amount of money i decide, for a negotiable amount of turns of peace, lets say i offer him navigation and 50 gold for 15 turns of peace. This is a more customized version of what you can do with the AI, only it is now enhanced and upgraded to fit the needs of MP. It would look something like this...

"We Offer..." OR "We Demand.."

[<] 5 G [>]
[<] Navigation [>]
[<] 15 Turns [>]

...so as to allow players to quickly scroll between their options and not waste the time. Another thing i would implement is more enhanced peace treaties. For example, after choosing the "peace" option, a list of subcategories would pop up, including "Travel", "Peace Specifications", and "Default". Within travel, you could choose the option to let them travel through your land peacefully, and not block off any resources they're standing on, equivelant to when your own troops stand on your own resources. With the specifications, you could specify whether or not stealing caravans, spies, and settlers is OK within the peace you currently have going, possibly even negotiating exactly how long you want this peace treaty to last, for personal reasons. Default would be the current form of peace, not allowing travel through land and allowing spies to be stolen with no punishment.

Another thing i would have as an option, as most players long for this option, is to deny recognition of civs. Just like most modern day governments fail to "officially recognize" smaller, insignifcant governments. This would take you out of negotiations permenantley. I could simply go to diplomacy first turn, and click "Deny Recognition" on each opponent, and this would override the forced diplomacy i mentioned earlier. Now, its just you at total war with everyone, with no negotiation allowed, unless you personally decide otherwise. If someone is in democracy, they must be unconditional peace with all civs they fail to recognize. Not recognizing civs would be the equivelant to just turning off diplomacy so to speak, so those who see diplomacy as a waste of time and are just going straight to domination dont have to worry about it.

Anyway, theres a couple of my ideas. Please, share your thoughts guys. Lets hear how you'd have diplomacy work, if youd have it at all.

[Elanza]

Ive been hearing alot of talk about how diplomacy should be set up, enhanced, or abolished all together. So, i just wanted to share my 2cents, and make this the thread for diplomatic opinions.

Personally, i would like an enhanced version of diplomacy. Heres how it would work. Offering diplomacy automatically forces other players into diplomacy as well, there is no ignoring. This would be a smooth transition of course, with no freezes if youre managing workers at the time, etc. Also, there would be a timer when in diplomacy, lasting one quarter of a turn, and you can only do diplomacy once per turn per civ, so as to not allow players to intentionally slow you down by spamming diplomacy, and then choosing nothing. It could possibly even be set up to where before each turn begins, theres a 30 second window for subturns, which consist purely of diplomatic negotiations, avoiding any mid-turn negotiation.

When you are in diplomacy, there would be multiple sub categories. For example, you could choose the "threaten" option, and specify which tech you would like them to give you for x amount of turns, including an option to throw in x amount of money, which the player gets to dictate. And vice-versa for someone begging for peace. Example - Im playing as spain and an american takes out my outermost cities, and is heading for my capital. I do diplomacy, and offer him any tech i think he would take, with any amount of money i decide, for a negotiable amount of turns of peace, lets say i offer him navigation and 50 gold for 15 turns of peace. This is a more customized version of what you can do with the AI, only it is now enhanced and upgraded to fit the needs of MP. It would look something like this...

"We Offer..." OR "We Demand.."

[<] 5 G [>]
[<] Navigation [>]
[<] 15 Turns [>]

...so as to allow players to quickly scroll between their options and not waste the time. Another thing i would implement is more enhanced peace treaties. For example, after choosing the "peace" option, a list of subcategories would pop up, including "Travel", "Peace Specifications", and "Default". Within travel, you could choose the option to let them travel through your land peacefully, and not block off any resources they're standing on, equivelant to when your own troops stand on your own resources. With the specifications, you could specify whether or not stealing caravans, spies, and settlers is OK within the peace you currently have going, possibly even negotiating exactly how long you want this peace treaty to last, for personal reasons. Default would be the current form of peace, not allowing travel through land and allowing spies to be stolen with no punishment.

Another thing i would have as an option, as most players long for this option, is to deny recognition of civs. Just like most modern day governments fail to "officially recognize" smaller, insignifcant governments. This would take you out of negotiations permenantley. I could simply go to diplomacy first turn, and click "Deny Recognition" on each opponent, and this would override the forced diplomacy i mentioned earlier. Now, its just you at total war with everyone, with no negotiation allowed, unless you personally decide otherwise. If someone is in democracy, they must be unconditional peace with all civs they fail to recognize. Not recognizing civs would be the equivelant to just turning off diplomacy so to speak, so those who see diplomacy as a waste of time and are just going straight to domination dont have to worry about it.

Anyway, theres a couple of my ideas. Please, share your thoughts guys. Lets hear how you'd have diplomacy work, if youd have it at all.

That's great. Maybe you should play Civilization 4 on the PC. They have that and more.

[Aheadatime]

That's great. Maybe you should play Civilization 4 on the PC. They have that and more.

Nah, im a console guy. I used to play RTS's on the PC, but it became clear to me that there were just much better games available for console. While strategy type games may have been easier to manage/control on PC, PC still lacked variety.

[Elanza]

I understand what you saying. You have great ideas. But to implement what the PC version of civ rev can do on console than we are looking for better hardware consoles. The PC has the ability to grow and expand as necessary while consoles are limitted to its hardware.
For game designers to put much more energy to design a game with so much complexity means a lot of dough to make it console compatible.
I love console games which are great with minimal maintenance. Right out of the box plug-n-play. While the PC games involves a little more brain storming.
I believe for civ rev 2 to achieve some of the complexity you are looking for, then we need PS4 or the next XBOX system.

[Aheadatime]

I understand what you saying. You have great ideas. But to implement what the PC version of civ rev can do on console than we are looking for better hardware consoles. The PC has the ability to grow and expand as necessary while consoles are limitted to its hardware.
For game designers to put much more energy to design a game with so much complexity means a lot of dough to make it console compatible.
I love console games which are great with minimal maintenance. Right out of the box plug-n-play. While the PC games involves a little more brain storming.
I believe for civ rev 2 to achieve some of the complexity you are looking for, then we need PS4 or the next XBOX system.

I personally believe, after seeing the capibility of xbox360 and ps3 alike, that what i mentioned in the original post is not beyond the current console capabilities. True, it would require more time and money on Firaxis's part, but would that stop you from creating an exponentially better game if you were the CEO? Spending more money to create a better game, and then some more money to advertise this art work they created, would have resulted in more overall sales, and continued use of the game. Had the game had more popularity, they could have even created multiple sizable DLC packets that would have cost microsoft points, which Firaxis would have got a cut of. They would have made their money back is what im basically getting at. True, the nextgen console would be able to support these options easier, with much more as well, but i dont believe what i asked for is beyond the limit of current consoles.

[elthrasher]

I'd hate an option to threaten other players in MP. It's bad enough how many noobs give up Code of Laws, Monarchy or Navigation for Pottery as it is. If you could bring up a horse army and say "Navigation or else!"...ugh. The boosting potential here is completely awful.

Anyway, no matter how meritous or otherwise your ideas may be, none will be implemented for the current game ever. If we get a sequel, hopefully the designers will look to this rather robust community for some ideas and feedback to make a better game. There's a thread on the front page that may or may not provide a conduit for that.

[Pedal2Metal]

I think Grayson's simplification idea works best for consoles.

No trading techs between human players.
No peace between human players unless someone gets GW & then you must remain at peace (both you & the other player) until you research Engineering.

I like the GW change as now it could really flavor the game to have a more "passive/expansion" model vs. the usual "attack/peace/glitch" choas that usually ensues.

best regards,
Pedal2Metal