the (AI) message "Nation X has declared war on your unholy nation"

[Coffeedragon]

Does it still make sense, after such a message, to send them Gold to convince them to attack someone else?

[PvK]

Well, consider the classic boardgame Diplomacy, which can be likened to Dominions with near-zero complexity. The goal is to conquer a certain portion of the valuable parts of the map, and there can only be one winner. Without cooperation, it can be very difficult to make progress. So, players must cooperate to gain advantage, via trading agreements to act cooperatively, and backstabbing only at the right moment. It's a great game, and a fine demonstration of the place of diplomacy even in a Last-man-standing competition.

Which is not to say that it'd be easy to add AI diplomacy without making it easy to abuse the AI after human players figure out how the diplo AI works - it would be difficult (see Space Empires IV).

PvK

P.S. As for the original question, the AI declarations of war have seemed meaningful to me in my games. AI's seem to usually not attack my own provinces, until I attack them, or they declare war, and once war is declared, they do seem to attack, if they have a land route. I have seen them sometimes make a surprise attack without a declaration or previous hostility. Sometimes they don't seem to have a land route, though, which is peculiar when that happens.

[ January 31, 2004, 01:17: Message edited by: PvK ]

[Targa]

In response to the original post...I just had a funny thing happen that made me think of this thread. I made a new game where it was just me (as Arco) vs. Pangea. Easy AI. First turn, I click "Host" and get "We hereby declare war on your unholy nation!"

[onomastikon]

Originally posted by Targa:
In response to the original post...I just had a funny thing happen that made me think of this thread. I made a new game where it was just me (as Arco) vs. Pangea. Easy AI. First turn, I click "Host" and get "We hereby declare war on your unholy nation!"

Heh

[Saxon]

I always used to grumble when they called me Unholy. However, when playing a undead lizard lich instead of my usually goodie two shoes, I took it as a compliment!

Galactic Civilizations had pretty good diplomacy, though the trade system associated with it was a bit of a cash cow. Most other games have been pretty weak, until you got to multiplayer. Then it all depended upon your opponents.

[PDF]

Originally posted by Targa:
[QB] Umm...you are rival Gods trying to take over a planet, where does diplomacy fit into that theme? As a matter of RP, the rival pretenders are all going to hate each other and want nothing more than to see the others permanently eradicated, so I fail to see where this fits in (except in MP games where you want to gang up on someone).
/QB]

Well, to take RL comparisons, aren't the USA allied with Saudi Arabia ?
Kind of same than a Pythium/Mictlan alliance ...

[Master Shake]

An easy way to get lots of AIs to attack you is to have low province defences. Boosting those up has proven to be a great way to keep most of the AI neutral.

It seems the AI likes to pick on weaker nations, and perhaps includes your province defence values in calculating your "strength."