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

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by Mortifer:
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.

Unless you can think of a way to easily formula that, Im afraid the answer would have to fall to "thats realistic". If another nations starts building up a huge army on my border, even if he says its for another reason SHOULDNT I get nervous anyway? Its not like that hasnt happened in the real world. Maybe, it could be lesser minus IF we are allies. It might be you coming to help me. But even then, to avoid abuse, I wouldnt make the AI totally trusting about large armies.

I like this -256 - 256 system.

Nope it would have to be just 1-256, or technically 0-255. The explanation why isnt worth going into here. It has something to do with computers only having two modes of counting efficient. Fingers or thumbs. One or the other but not both.

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.

Ouch. Now we are back in the memory thing. To track all those over time we would need more variables. Shall we have 8 variables with a 256 range for each of the (16?) races? Can we get along with one of the lesser scales if we do it as multiple variables? can we come up with 8 scales of 16?

For this discussion its going to be really hard to consider the things that the game can "see" in a single turn file vs storing information to make better judgements. Even though storing and thinking are obviously good things to have the AI do, it can move the whole project into the Category of major rewrite. We might need to split this conversation into 2 threads. One for really simple do-it-soon things. And one for the this-would-be-better but major-project-later things.

[Mortifer]

I just posted some examples of course, they are not written in stone.

I agree that simple things must be implented firstly, but the diplo AI is very important. It must be scripted first of all, and later on the diplo options.
We posted some ideas about the diplo AI/prevent AI abusing.
Just post more ideas, the devs are waiting for them.

[ October 17, 2003, 16:12: Message edited by: Mortifer ]

[HJ]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Im not sure how much of that "twirling block" the Dom players would put up with.

Well, when compared to the duration it takes the AI to do the turn in other TBSs, I would say waiting time is way below average in Doms I, so this probably shouldn't be a concern.

[johan osterman]

Unfortunately for all its fans the twirling cube marble no longer livens up the screens during the turn generation. Now you will instead recive helpfull tips and pointers to steer you into the right direction.

[MStavros]

Well, there are many ways to prevent the player to abuse the AI.
The best way is the 'global reactions'. When you sign an alliance, just to abuse the AI, and get his help to weaken an oppoment, and you are cancelling that alliance later on with a hostile move (attack on the AI, attacking another ally of the AI etc. etc.), your global reputation must decrease by a lot. I think it won't be worth to risk this abuse, if all nations will be mad at you for it.

What other abuse you know about? I have no idea about other ways to abuse the AI.

I love Gandalf's idea. If you are moving a huge army to a border province, your relations with the border nations must decrease.

[LordArioch]

No twirling marble cube? Oh no! Maybe I should just cancel my preorder now...turn after turn only the twirling marble cube helped me maintain my sanity. I did rather like it actually...as soon as I started playing dominions I became addicted to twirling marble cubes.
I guess I'll have to trust the turn generate will still be sufficiently interesting anyway.
But that was an awsome cube.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
No twirling marble cube? Oh no! Maybe I should just cancel my preorder now...turn after turn only the twirling marble cube helped me maintain my sanity. I did rather like it actually...as soon as I started playing dominions I became addicted to twirling marble cubes.
I guess I'll have to trust the turn generate will still be sufficiently interesting anyway.
But that was an awsome cube.

I sympathize with your pain, I miss it terribly myself. There is talk here about creating a cube simulator, so that you would not have to go cold turkey. If I were to decide I would combine the twirling cube with the turn tips, printing tips on the six sides of the cube, thus making an exciting game within the game where you could recieve useful nuggets of information during turn generation by trying to decipher the tips written on its sides. I understand that these games within the games are all the rage know, so I think the spinning cube game would be an excellent addition and significantly increase dom 2 market potentional.