Diplomacy explained

[johnjacob]

Just got done reading the article Greg suggested. With how much everyone fusses about diplomacy I'm suprised this isn't passed around more.

Diplomacy and so many other issues are talked about in this article, it could shed light onto a lot of 'why'd they change THIS?!'

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...lization_v.php

JS: The main reason is that we wanted to go a different direction with diplomacy. Instead of having specific modifiers and numbers on the screen that affected relations between different players, we wanted a little more mystery and even more rationality behind the AI players. Religion was something that we think didn't really fit with that, because you could just send your missionary somewhere, convert somebody, and then they would be your ally forever.

We wanted you to have tools to affect diplomacy, but not so directly. It was just a completely mechanical system. We wanted something that was a little bit more mysterious. That was the main reason.

We didn't just say, "Okay. We're going to remove religion now." We evaluated ways of keeping it around and seeing if we could make something of it. But it was so tied to the diplomatic model that having that separated just meant that it wasn't going to stand up on its own.

We decided that we can focus on other areas of the game and make it better. It didn't fit within what our goals were for diplomacy, which is a pretty big part of Civ V.

So diplomacy is designed to work differently than Civ4. Now, while I agree there are some variables in the XML that could be tweaked, it won't matter if you're still treating it like a previous Civ.

There are a few exceptions - as in when you liberate a capital and their pissed at you. This is fixed with just a few variables or a different text string.

But all in all the diplomatic confrontations are fairly congruent. If you make deals with them, they'll make deals with you. If you always ignore all their requests and then go make a 'simple reasonable exchange', they're not gonna forget you said 'no' to them so many times.

I settled next to Germany, bought some land. They opened diplomacy and said 'Hey! Quit buyin our land'. I had the option of saying 'Ooops, won't happen again'. A few turns later I buy some more land. They open up diplomacy and say 'Thats it! You said you weren't and you did'. The next turn they canceled our 'pact of cooperation'. Before all that we had a fair trade of luxury resources - after that they wanted 3x of mine.

Again in another game I'm playing Greece. I'm out doing missions for city states when Japan starts picking on one nearby. So I defeat some of Japans military units, finish the mission, and negotiate peace with Japan. Well the city state in question happened to be closer to Rome, so Rome pulls up diplomacy saying "These city states are under my influence blah blah blah". I had no quarrel with Rome at all, but in my war against Japan and making allies with the City-State, Rome became aggressive.

Diplomacy is no longer linear and can't be treated that way.

[Sifer2]

I will agree on one thing an that's that is the system is definitely "mysterious".

[titansfan690]

If "mysterious" means "completely illogical" than yeah, sure, it's super "mysterious."

[knightnorth]

Really? Diplomacy is that great in this game? I thought it was quite trivial. Diplomacy is a great dynamic? That's pretty sad that they hyped their diplomacy.

[Elessar_dan]

Holy crap jon shafer is 25? no wonder this thing sucks so hard. As for diplomacy being mysterious. Yeah, i guess you could refer to completely random as mysterious if you felt the urge to. I still dont understand how any of that was a reason to kill off diplomacy. Religion and diplomacy where interconnected in civ 4 true, but that could easily be changed.

[dizzymonkey]

I can get behind the change to making diplomacy more of a mystery and less about hard numbers. I just feel like there is another piece on top of that that is missing where espionage would naturally play a role.

I would like to have the option to invest in espionage and intelligence (like in RL) in order to try and get a clearer picture of the goings on inside another Civilization to compare against their public stance. I don't think diplomacy is so much broken as I think there is just another component of the game that I think would be a natural fit and enhance the process so much more.

[johnjacob]

I can get behind the change to making diplomacy more of a mystery and less about hard numbers. I just feel like there is another piece on top of that that is missing where espionage would naturally play a role.

I would like to have the option to invest in espionage and intelligence (like in RL) in order to try and get a clearer picture of the goings on inside another Civilization to compare against their public stance. I don't think diplomacy is so much broken as I think there is just another component of the game that I think would be a natural fit and enhance the process so much more.

Espionage does have a very satisfying flavor to it. It's always been apart of distinct play types. Civ already has the 'Warrior' type through war, the 'mage' type through science, yet the 'rogue' type could be fufilled through espionage. And they'd all compliment each other.

I did not like how it worked in Civ4 though. Too many numbers based on too many variables.

I'm not even sure I like the 'spy' unit as a method of execution. It tacks on another build you gotta have in every city just to sit there and be an RNG against other spies.

There has to be a delivery of execution and a defense from execution, but

How could it work in Civ5?

[dizzymonkey]

Espionage does have a very satisfying flavor to it. It's always been apart of distinct play types. Civ already has the 'Warrior' type through war, the 'mage' type through science, yet the 'rogue' type could be fufilled through espionage. And they'd all compliment each other.

I did not like how it worked in Civ4 though. Too many numbers based on too many variables.

I'm not even sure I like the 'spy' unit as a method of execution. It tacks on another build you gotta have in every city just to sit there and be an RNG against other spies.

There has to be a delivery of execution and a defense from execution, but

How could it work in Civ5?

Honestly I haven't spent too much time thinking about the details of how I would implement espionage in Civ 5. I think it's hard to plug something in like that after fact. I think that was possibly part of the problem with espionage in Civ 4 as it was for the most part an after thought IMO rather than initial design choice.

Like a lot of the mechanisms that I wish were in Civ 5, it's not so much about wishing that the Civ 4 espionage mechanism was present but more about wishing some (ideally better) espionage mechanism was present. For starters, I think the lack of transparency in diplomacy could make espionage in Civ 5 MUCH more useful than it was in Civ 4 where you already knew exactly how your enemy or ally felt.

[dannythefool]

I have no problem with AI being different, I have a problem playing against sociopathic monkeys on drugs.

[dizzymonkey]

I have no problem with AI being different, I have a problem playing against sociopathic monkeys on drugs.

The AI needs work and I think everyone knows that. That is one complaint across the board that I think everyone can rest easy on a bit because you can be sure that the devs already have plans to patch and fix that up.

[johnjacob]

Maybe they could tie in espionage with Great Generals.

I think the ideas would be congruent. Espionage is a byproduct of war. And the Great General landmark is currently fairly useless. Perhaps Great Generals could 'cloak' and carry out missions.

Maybe a defensive mechanism would be too complicated. Espionage would be a purely offensive tactic. There would be no need to place a 'spy unit' in every city to sit and do nothing. It's hard to defend against sucker punches in the first place

Since the tool would be a GP, the missions should have an adequate effect.

Certain missions could be

1) Reveal and update X civs territory for the remainder of the game
2) Hurt civs City-State relations by X ammount (hard number or %)
3) "Cause Revolt" could be -10 happiness for X turns
4) "Confuse Military" -1 movment for X turns, or -20% strength for X turns.
5) End current deals with foreign civs. This could mean a loss of incoming gold/luxury resources, as well as the end of outgoing resources making the receiving civs upset.

Trying to keep the mechanic simple enough and focus on the function.

Just some ideas.

[Rocket-Man]

I remember reading an article about Civ 4 and how they were designing religion into the game. The article pointed out how the developers implemented some complex algorithms under the hood to map out how religion flowed in the game, but that the whole process was not visible to the player. Sid Meier suggested adding a unit that would allow the players to have some influence to this process and I still remember his description of why he suggested it.

He said "Give the players interesting choices to make."

But for some reason in Civ 5, they decided to make diplomacy opaque to the player and not give you interesting choices to make, because unless you understand what is going on, it is not very interesting.

[dizzymonkey]

Maybe they could tie in espionage with Great Generals.

I think the ideas would be congruent. Espionage is a byproduct of war. And the Great General landmark is currently fairly useless. Perhaps Great Generals could 'cloak' and carry out missions.

Maybe a defensive mechanism would be too complicated. Espionage would be a purely offensive tactic. There would be no need to place a 'spy unit' in every city to sit and do nothing. It's hard to defend against sucker punches in the first place

Since the tool would be a GP, the missions should have an adequate effect.

Certain missions could be

1) Reveal and update X civs territory for the remainder of the game
2) Hurt civs City-State relations by X ammount (hard number or %)
3) "Cause Revolt" could be -10 happiness for X turns
4) "Confuse Military" -1 movment for X turns, or -20% strength for X turns.
5) End current deals with foreign civs. This could mean a loss of incoming gold/luxury resources, as well as the end of outgoing resources making the receiving civs upset.

Trying to keep the mechanic simple enough and focus on the function.

Just some ideas.

Interesting stuff. I like #4 specifically since I could see that as disrupting the communication network and thus overall command structure. Very cool prelude to war.

I do like the offensive espionage aspect but also think I would also like to see some general "intelligence" kind of stuff like:
1) Collecting reports on enemy military strength (if you don't have open borders and cant find out yourself). Kind of like piercing the iron curtain, etc
2) Collecting reports on the countries real opinion of you. I don't think the AI is smart enough to be intentionally two faced in its dealings with you. I can't how many times I have been nice to a civ while planning to roll across their border in 20 turns. This would be a cool counter measure if the AI was smart enough.
3) Collecting reports on that countries relationship (or perceived relationship) with other nations
4) Collecting reports on resource status such as how many total, how many used, etc.
5) Perhaps recruiting double agents that could warn you of impending attacks (as there is a number of turns between the AI deciding to attack a city and it becoming obvious).

There are more I am sure but that what I can think of right now. For those non aggressive kind of intelligence tasks they could be based on just spending / number of facilities (maybe number of facilities near nation in question).

Maybe create a new unit that would have to infiltrate a city in order to try and have a chance of recruiting double agents (maybe you run the risk of them turning into a double agent themselves even by trying).

Sorry if this isn't clear, just kinda of spewing what comes to mind without much polish.

[BigMistake]

Honestly I would be happy with just (Like/dislikes you, like with the City-states) in the diplomacy overview... all I get is "Hostile" or not.

I found it super annoying when Rome pulled me into a war against China and the world (including Rome) turned on me for being a "Warmonger". If I had known I was on the knife's edge of pissing everyone off, I would have not gone into the war... the entire world soon after declared war on me (Rome just canceled our trade agreements). I won, but still... I would have like to know that everyone was "Neutral"/"Unfriendly" towards me... I feel I need to reiterate, I don't want numbers, just "Allies,Friendly,Neutral,Unfriendly,Hostile" in place of the just "Hostile" or nothing in the diplomacy overview.

[johnjacob]

Interesting stuff. I like #4 specifically since I could see that as disrupting the communication network and thus overall command structure. Very cool prelude to war.

I do like the offensive espionage aspect but also think I would also like to see some general "intelligence" kind of stuff like:
1) Collecting reports on enemy military strength (if you don't have open borders and cant find out yourself). Kind of like piercing the iron curtain, etc
2) Collecting reports on the countries real opinion of you. I don't think the AI is smart enough to be intentionally two faced in its dealings with you. I can't how many times I have been nice to a civ while planning to roll across their border in 20 turns. This would be a cool counter measure if the AI was smart enough.
3) Collecting reports on that countries relationship (or perceived relationship) with other nations
4) Collecting reports on resource status such as how many total, how many used, etc.
5) Perhaps recruiting double agents that could warn you of impending attacks (as there is a number of turns between the AI deciding to attack a city and it becoming obvious).

There are more I am sure but that what I can think of right now. For those non aggressive kind of intelligence tasks they could be based on just spending / number of facilities (maybe number of facilities near nation in question).

Maybe create a new unit that would have to infiltrate a city in order to try and have a chance of recruiting double agents (maybe you run the risk of them turning into a double agent themselves even by trying).

Sorry if this isn't clear, just kinda of spewing what comes to mind without much polish.

Hmm, you're ideas are more complex.

I'm sure a lot of people want espionage, so either there will be a mod or a official release. The mod community usually gets a heads up from the officials as to what to mod (as if if firaxis is going to officially patch something, multiplayer animations, they'll let the mod community know not to worry about it).

I'm more of a slacker IRL So I was thinking about mechanics already in game and giving a different method of execution.

A lot of your ideas would require creating from the ground up (it seems), mainly as far as the graphical representation.

I guess its up to how much do they want to roll up their sleeves when they tackle this lol

[dizzymonkey]

Hmm, you're ideas are more complex.

I'm sure a lot of people want espionage, so either there will be a mod or a official release. The mod community usually gets a heads up from the officials as to what to mod (as if if firaxis is going to officially patch something, multiplayer animations, they'll let the mod community know not to worry about it).

I'm more of a slacker IRL So I was thinking about mechanics already in game and giving a different method of execution.

A lot of your ideas would require creating from the ground up (it seems), mainly as far as the graphical representation.

I guess its up to how much do they want to roll up their sleeves when they tackle this lol

True, the ideas I did post require some more work but they are just rough ideas. Maybe some of them could be watered down or some compromises could be reached between functionality and implementation time.


I do agree that I am interested to see if the modding community gets the nod on this. I would almost be surprised if they hadn't already pegged espionage for an expansion like BTS for whatever reason (maybe didn't have time to integrate / balance it properly before release).

[nipolian]

I dont necessarily want set-in-stone numbers as the foundations of my diplomacy, but can I at least have a CLUE as to what grounds we're standing on? I was just playing a game, and I was contacting Bismarck. He started off with "Hello glorious Ramses of Egypt" or something of the like. Skip a couple of uneventful turns, and his next greeting is along the lines of, "Look, the puny, bloodthirsty fool. What do you want?" I had no idea what made him so sour all of a sudden, and it annoys me. I also hate it when someone pulls a "Let's go to war, but when it's over, I'm canceling our deals 'cause your a warmonger, k?"
So in short, fix the AI hypocrisy, and let us have a relative understanding of the AI's feelings toward us. It doesn't have to be unchangeable numbers, it doesn't have to be completely invisible. It needs to be pretty much like BigMistake said; Give us terms like cautious, annoyed, pleased etc.

Thanks, Nipolian of Fronse