What did I missed from Dom I.? -> DIPLOMACY!

[Aristoteles]

Ok here is my idea:

We need a relationship bar. That way we will be able to see the relations with the other nations. Also there should be a a huge table with all relations. IE. between AI A and AI F, or between AI B and AI G, etc.

Basic options should be:

Send gold
Send magic gems
Transfer / Give unit(s)
Transfer / Give province(s)

Basic hostile options

Demand gold
Demand magic gems
Demand provinces

Diplomatic options

Right of Passage / Passage Agreement
Trade Embargo
Non Agression Pact
Alliance (against)
Total Alliance

All actions will raise / lower the relationship between the nations. Basic Options will raise the relationship, any hostile actions & basic hostile options will lower it.

Hostile actions what will lower the relationship:

-Sending spies

-Attacking a nation whose relations with the 'target' is good. [No alliance or any diplo relations between them, just good relationship!]IE. You want good relations with AI A. The relations between AI A and AI B is very good. You are attacking AI B.
Your relations with AI A will be decreased, greatly.

-Casting any hostile spells. This should work like the above one, IE. You want good relations with AI A. The relations between AI A and AI B is very good. You are casting some hostile spells against AI B.
Your relations with AI A will be decreased.

-Attacking a nation should lower the relations to -100. Also lets say that you attacked AI A.
There was an alliance between AI A, AI B and AI C.
Your relations should be -100 with AI A, AI B and AI C after the attack.

The relationship bar is quite simple, the max is 100, the min is -100. 100 is the best, -100 is the worst.

Now about the abuse. If you are sending lot of gold/giving away units etc, will increase your relations for sure. If you call that abusing, than we wont have a good diplo AI in any games EVER
Just think what happened in history. The various empires always used this way to improve their relations with other Kingdoms/Empires. This is supposed to work like this.

[ October 17, 2003, 13:21: Message edited by: Aristoteles ]

[Kristoffer O]

I wasn't entirely serious, but if you want to try to think up a diplomatic AI I don't mind.

As I said we need a simple yet brilliant system. You give suggestions on options and diplomatic actions that lower or increases the relations. These can be added later, when there is a system that works.

Instead try to figure out how relationships are measured, how they change, when the AI makes war, how to react to stronger/weaker players, how to measure other players stance against each other (is it better to gang up on one player?), does the AI have a long memory (and what does it remember) or does it only have a current relationship measure (very abusable) etc.


We will never implement giving troops away.

[Gandalf Parker]

Theres alot of programming in that previous suggestion. Before we see anything close to that maybe we could suggest some simpler fixes we might actualy see soon. The best would be simple additions to re-action formulas which might already be in the game. Stuff with no menu.

Im with others that the diplomacy which existed in MP games was plenty. In fact, almost too much. We had to develop ways of doing games to make diplomacy harder to use. And yes I was A-#1 hacker who used the Dom 1 diplomatic options ALOT!

Anyway, one of the places where the solo game falls far short of the MP game is in the area of diplomacy. Maybe the "formula experts" (we had some of those in the newsgroup discussions) could come up with ways to add a simple variable or two to the logic.

Dom 1 seemed to have some logic to its decisions of whether or not to attack you. There is a formula in there somewhere and aparently a variable which kept track of whether or not you were an enemy. Do gifts give pluses the way attacking them gives minuses? Can they?

[Mortifer]

Hey, that is a nice diplo system, Aristoteles!

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
I wasn't entirely serious, but if you want to try to think up a diplomatic AI I don't mind.

As I said we need a simple yet brilliant system. You give suggestions on options and diplomatic actions that lower or increases the relations. These can be added later, when there is a system that works.

Instead try to figure out how relationships are measured, how they change, when the AI makes war, how to react to stronger/weaker players, how to measure other players stance against each other (is it better to gang up on one player?), does the AI have a long memory (and what does it remember) or does it only have a current relationship measure (very abusable) etc.


We will never implement giving troops away.

IMHO, it should work like this:
All nations should start with a "natural relation system."
This means that some nations will dislike eachother from start, some of them won't.

Example: Pangea will dislike Ermor from the start, the relationship between them should start with -20. [0 is normal]
It is up to the devs, to set up these starting relations.

I think Aristoteles already mentioned that how these relations should change, positive actions will raise, negative actions will lower the relations between the nations.
The AI must have a long memory. This will prevent the abusing.
Example: You attacked the AI, but you've made a peace later on. The AI basically won't trust you anymore. You will have to send lot more things/per turn to keep up the good relations with him, than normally from that point. -> You cannot abuse the 'alliance/war' than.

Same goes for provinces.
Example: You are giving away a province to the AI. Your relations will improve. There must be some options like you cannot attack that province for at least 10 turns. Meanwhile you are making an alliance against someone with the AI. If you broke this alliance later on, the relationship should be -80. If you broke the alliance by conquering the province, what you gave to the AI, the relationship should be -100.
Also if you broke an alliance like that, it should have a global effect. -10 relationship with all nations, and -30 with your allies.

In fact all of your actions should have global effects. Like attacking an AI, whos part of an alliance will force you to war with the whole alliance.
If you are attacking an AI nation, whos got good relations with other AIs, your relations with all of them should decrease by a given amount of relation points.
That way you will be forced to make smart moves, also you cannot abuse the AI.

Restrictions / global effects will prevent the diplo AI abusing.

[ October 17, 2003, 15:05: Message edited by: Mortifer ]

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

Dom 1 seemed to have some logic to its decisions of whether or not to attack you. There is a formula in there somewhere and aparently a variable which kept track of whether or not you were an enemy. Do gifts give pluses the way attacking them gives minuses? Can they?

i would like that to be implemented. No need for an interface, you can still hide the current relationship level of each AI against a player. But if we can maintain the AI at peace (or revert to peace if at war) by giving gifts, then at least you would have an embryonic diplo system in SP (and in MP too where a big Ai play the role of the bad guy).

[Gandalf Parker]

One of the biggest problems with creating diplomacy AI is giving the AI time to think, and a memory. Luckily this being mainly a PBEM game, we have some room to do with but Im not sure how much of that "twirling block" the Dom players would put up with. I suppose if diplomacy had a game switch for having it skip that part of the "thinking" process then we would have some more room to play.

Lets see, simple memory would be a variable for each race. Simple storage would be a range of some variable of 8 such as 8, 16, 64, or 256. Lets say 256. OK obviously the extremes would be something like 1is jihad, total concentration toward destruction and sending everything to that border. 255 would be total friendship, we are as one nation what is mine is yours. At 100 a nation is attackable. At 200 a nation is giftable.

For killing my pretender -200
for killing my prophet -100
for killing my commander -10
for taking a province -20
for dominion overlap -20? maybe a formula?

For giving me a magic item (questionable use there) +20
for giving me gold (cant go wrong here) 10+donation/10? max 100? cant make it too easy to buy a 256 rating
for giving me gems 10+donation/10? max 100?

Army size near me -army-size/50?
every province neighboring me with only defence +20

Now comes the tricky part. As one example, to give troop movement memory means remembering things.
for suddenly increasing army size on my border -50
for decreasing the army size on my border +20
but this means they must remember the army sizes from Last turn. The AI can do specific +/- based on what it sees. I dont think it actually "sees" troop movement. The change is only visible if it "remembers" what was there before. That means it must be stored in a file? I dont think that would be good for the game and probably not a fast add either.

[ October 17, 2003, 15:13: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Mortifer]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

Now comes the tricky part. As one example, to give troop movement memory means remembering things.
for suddenly increasing army size on my border -50
for decreasing the army size on my border +20
but this means they must remember the army sizes from Last turn. The AI can do specific +/- based on what it sees. I dont think it actually "sees" troop movement. The change is only visible if it "remembers" what was there before. That means it must be stored in a file? I dont think that would be good for the game and probably not a fast add either.

Ok but what, if you are moving your army to a border province, to attack another AI? You will loose -50 relation points, and you didnt wanted to do anything bad against that AI.

I like this -256 - 256 system.
I think by giving gold, the max relationship what could be reached must be max. 100.
With giving items it should be 150.
With giving provinces, it should be 200.
You can make an alliance after 201.
After 200, only good actions will raise the "relation points". Example: attacking a disliked nation by that AI, casting destructive spells on common oppoments. etc.

I think it must be hard to gain enough points for an alliance. Also there must be a huge penalty, if you break the alliance. Maybe breaking an alliance should set you back to -200 relation points/+ various global effects.

[ October 17, 2003, 15:28: Message edited by: Mortifer ]