[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Taqwus:
Quite a few uses of diplomacy come to mind.

- Allowing free passage through an area. Perhaps only along a path, 'tho, or in specified provinces?

- Requests for assistance. GalCiv's one of the only PC games that I know of in which an AI ally will ask for help when it's in trouble (in contrast to demanding tribute).

- Demands for tribute. Has to be handled carefully; nations which give tribute should not provoke war, and should be entitled to live without further provocation in turn.

- Sharing of map. Partial or whole, hm? The ability to lie here could be amusing, too.

- Sharing of scouting reports, e.g. current estimates of enemy army sizes. "Our scouts report that... Caelum scouts report that..." et al in the province information. Perhaps should have a "we're lying; exaggerate/minimize by this much" slider.

- Gem trading/item trading. An item/gem exchange might be pushing it, 'tho. ("Fire gems up 0.05 to 1.85 Astral, Caulrons of Broth down to 30 Astral, et al"). Heh.

An ongoing gem-trading treaty could help, e.g. every turn A sends a certain set of gems to B in exchange for a similar allotment.

- Perhaps agreements on future targets? e.g. if two nations could both soon conquer a number of independent provinces between them, deciding who takes who to eliminate the chance of accidentally starting a war. This could be supplemented or enforced by a non-aggression pact which would cause mutual withdrawal rather than a battle if they do both attack the same.

Could also be stated as "sphere of influence".

A lot of this might be fairly hard to do, without resorting to the usual "AIs gang up on Humans/main threat" deal. Some of the mechanics would still be helpful for MP, e.g. not having to manually type out army estimates on a shared foe.

I'm really in favour of diplomacy, but I think most of these things would add too much . I think it might make the game into a diplomacy game, from being a tactical strategy game.

I do think that being able to allow passage through an area would be ok - but I'd be ok without it too.

The problem behind any game in which you have full-blown diplomacy between human players and the AI is that the AI is always formulaic in it's approach. It's just a matter of figuring out what will satisfy it in order to get it off your back. It goes back to the old standard for any true AI - have a computer dialogue with a human, and another human dialogue with a human, and you have a true AI when the human can't tell which is which. We're just not there. Therefore any full-blown diplomatic system will be shallow and facile.

I voted for diplo being added in the other thread, but what I had in mind was much more simple - having a way of figuring out how much an AI nation likes/loathes you and being able to alter this by giving money/gems etc. I believe that if you want more diplo than this there's a very simple solution: play multiplayer!

p.s. no offense intended to you Taqwus. I am replying to your post just because I think what you wrote is what people have in mind/are agreeing with.