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

[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 ]

[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.