Diplomacy and Trading

[Sorlakind]

Diplomacy is a *misfeature* for a game like dom's.

In MP it is useless, since diplomacy is completely taken care of by players sending messages/items to each other.

In SP it suffers two very big problems: first it is unthematical. This is a "there can only be one" game. How can there be diplomacy between warring gods? Second, as people have observed already, coding the AI to tackle diplomacy is very difficult and easily abusable. Even more so with the strategic depth of dom's.

Oh, and for the record, I have only played SP until now.

Best regards

[Gandalf Parker]

There is some programming territory also. Dom is not suited well for storing information and checking it over many turns. Setting up tracking for such would allow many things. Diplomacy, waypoints, repeat action for X turns, forge X of certain equipment, etc etc. But I tihnk it would take a level of change that speaks more of Dominions 4 than anything that we might get soon.

We could see some things though. In solo games Ive been known to create anti-undead items and send them to nations who are living near Ermor to hold them back. I know that the weapons wont help that nation much against me when I finally get to them. It might already be in the game that the AI thinkis abit better of you if you send gifts. If it isnt the it seems like that could be put in rather easily.

Also since the game already allows the AIs to ally with each other I wouldnt mind if it also allowed ally with human players. Even if it was something that had to be setup at the beginning of the game. It would allow for some interesting scenarios.

[Fal]

As for thematic problem, the aim of a warfare is usually achieved through combined political and military means, a cunning diplomat can be more deadly than ten thousand swords. The Romance of Three Kingdoms (classic Chinese literature), Hannibal's conquest of Rome, Medieval European Warfare, or even Lord of Rings are all excellent examples why diplomacy is crucial to warfare - even when the scenario is 'there can only be one' (Romance of three kingdoms for exaple). The fact is, in war, short-term alliances are often forged to achieve a common goal before two nations turn against each other, that's what is making war such a thrilling topic. I fear as a war game, Dom is only a battle simulator if diplomacy has been left out.

I would like to point out that I appreciate the coding difficulty, however this is not a valid excuse not to add new features to the game. True the AI diplomacy will be easily abusable, however this can be easily tackled by adding a 'Disable Diplomacy/Trading' option in the option menu. The MP game provides a diplomacy that is quite flexible, but nonetheless there are thing players can't do/ too freely to do and is therefore improvable. Hence, an extremely simple diplomatic system should work wonders in a complex game like Dom.

D3 is an excellent game, it is massively improved compared to D2, but it often stike me as a giant patch for the previouse game. It's a shame a good game like this is often regarded 'indie' title. Many players would love to see a new game with new features, I believe diplomacy will not a 'misfeature' of this game, on the contrary, I believe adding such basic features would win a broader audience for the game.

[Taqwus]

It's already fairly easy to bamboozle the AI with bad gifts -- for instance, Bane Venom Charms or Lycanthropos Amulets, as the AI has a tendency to put these items on its pretender or HoFers. BVC in particular diseases both troops and population, making it a cheap double-whammy, and since it's not cursed the risk of blowback from picking it up is greatly reduced.

It might also take some doing to have it realize who's the likely suspect nailing it with anonymous magical attacks, thus breaking any "treaty".

[Agrajag]

While the AI will always be exploitable, I think that dipomacy-wise it should'nt be hard to make it difficult the abuse the AI, by making it "make sense", and when you get things wrong, err on the side of making the AI more strict with his deals.
Should the AI ally with you?
If your army strength is greater than his, yes (but if you are LA Ermor, then no. If you are Jotnheim or Vanheim, make him consider your troops as worth more than just military score)
If your army strength is much greater than his, no, and he should seek other allies to defend against you.
Should the AI trade you X of Y gems for W of Z gems?
If he has many Y gems and a high Y gem income, and only few mages to make use of them, but has few of Z gems and low Z gems income, and many mages that can make us of them, then yes.
In the opposite case, no.
Should the AI trade item X for item Y?
If Y is harder to forge than X, then yes.
Otherwise, no.

etc.

The only place where there's some real trouble is with gold, since its harder to assess its value, especially in relation to other things. Forbidding the AI from trading gold would probably fix that, I guess.

[NTJedi]

Taqwus said:
It's already fairly easy to bamboozle the AI with bad gifts -- for instance, Bane Venom Charms or Lycanthropos Amulets, as the AI has a tendency to put these items on its pretender or HoFers. BVC in particular diseases both troops and population, making it a cheap double-whammy, and since it's not cursed the risk of blowback from picking it up is greatly reduced.

For new players having a tough time with AI opponents these are good strategies. As the new player becomes more experienced I would recommend keeping the sneaky attacks more balanced by not using any types of attacks the AI does not use on you.
For example since I have yet to see an AI opponent cast "flames from the sky" on me... I won't be casting the spell on them. I do wish the AI opponents would use more gems for global spells based on the number of turns which passed during the game. Thus an AI opponent should use more gems casting a global spell on turn_85 compared with casting the global spell on turn_35. Perhaps we'll see this improved within a patch.