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

[Gandalf Parker]

Any game which has allowed gifting provinces/planets/colonies/outPosts has been abused by me big-time. Ive used it to manipulate wars between AIs or to abuse an AI as a buffer zone. I would put the reaction to province gifts as low as magic items, with a much higher reaction to gold and gems.

And adding time to alliances might be good. One thing that developed in the MP games was non-aggression pacts which had something like a 3-turn notice. If you gave the 3-turn notice before breaking the alliance then there were no extra consequences. Breaking an alliance without warning tended to have "global" consequences with the other players. Maybe that could be worked into the AI agreements also.

[ October 18, 2003, 13:59: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[-Storm-]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
And adding time to alliances might be good. One thing that developed in the MP games was non-aggression pacts which had something like a 3-turn notice. If you gave the 3-turn notice before breaking the alliance then there were no extra consequences. Breaking an alliance without warning tended to have "global" consequences with the other players. Maybe that could be worked into the AI agreements also.

Yeah, that is the way to stop abusing.

How can you abuse things, like giving provinces?
You mean you are giving a province to raise the relations, right? Well that is normal.
Never forget, that the AI will do it too, and maybe you will be gang banged by the AI. That is the wonderful part of diplomacy.

[PDF]

Originally posted by Aristoteles:
Ok so my diplo system idea is good than.

I don't know too much about diplo AI, but there must be some way to prevent the abusing.
Those global effects via diplo abusing sounds very cool. When the AI will detect that you are trying to double cross him with a fake alliance, and there will be big penalties for it, no one will abuse the diplo AI than.

I have another idea, maybe there should be a minimum time limit for alliances. Like for 10 turns you cannot cancel the alliance, and for additional 10 you cannot attack your former ally.

The AI must have a long memory, IE it must remember all major things, like alliances, wars, global spells, aggression, etc.

Items. Well the trading items is a very good part of the game, but you can abuse it. If it will be allowed to trade items, that must affect diplomacy.
All items must be categorized. Also only the "usable by everyone" items should be allowed to trade. Than we wont have a situation that the item is good good for "XY" but it is not good for "VZ". If you are giving away a good item, the relations will improve, if you are giving away a bad item, the relation points will decrease.
There is a more simple way, only allow "good, usable by everyone" items to trade.

You're talking about AIs as if they were real beings ... Back to Earth, man, those are only lines of codes, and ALL AIs are and will be abused for at least 20 years more

[MStavros]

Originally posted by PDF:
Back to Earth, man, those are only lines of codes, and ALL AIs are and will be abused for at least 20 years more

I don't think so. Just think. If there will be options, like giving something to the AI, and it will raise the relation points between the 2 nations, that is ok. If you call that 'abuse', than what is your idea about diplomacy?
It is normal to use these ways to improve the relations.
Abusing means, that you are trying to cheat the AI.
We must list all possible abuse situations.

1. Improving the relations with the AI, to use him against others.

I think that this is normal. Everyone did this in the history.
BUT the other AIs must see these moves by the players, they must memorize it.
Example: You are trying to make an alliance with AI 1.
You are improving the relations with AI 1, and finally you are making an alliance with AI 1.
All of the other nations must react somehow: The AIs near your borders should try to make alliances as well, if it is possible. (example)

All little situations can be tweaked like this.
Just list more.

[Taqwus]

The "traditional" abuse in games that allow arbitrary gifting of territory is to give provinces in one AI's sphere of influence to a second AI, in order to start trouble between them. This works especially well if first AI (non-recipient) has some attachment to the province in question. A second form came up in GalCiv where a planet could change sides without war; namely, trading a planet for something while knowing that you'll get the planet back anyway.

Memories are important for diplomacy. Building a rapport over time should matter; e.g. you shouldn't be able to cancel the bad feeling from a recent war with a large gift immediately thereafter. Conversely, they should be readily destroyed given sufficient provocation; the friendlier you seemed beforehand, actually, the greater the perceived magnitude of betrayal. Enemies /expect/ things like hostile magic and assassinations, while doing an "alpha strike" on an ally would demolish that trust completely, provoke vast amounts of resentment, and make it harder to build rapports with anybody else for pretty much... forever, actually. And casus belli should matter as well; a war preceded by well-known provocations on both sides should hit global reputation less.

[Endoperez]

I think game should be keeping track how many times you have cheated AI or broken an alliance. Everybody would see them, and everyone would react to them. Maybe exponential increase in the effect after more bad things are made. Ideally, this would effect most powerful to the AI you acted against, more than normal to his allies, and less than normal to those that are in war against him. This would need much bookkiining, so having same effect to all nations would be enough.
'Cheating' I mentioned before, is assasinations with Gateway/CoWild/Wind attacks/sneaky forces which destroy big armies, MW or FFtS, and global enchantments harmful to all others.
Too much power should maybe lower relationships with all nations, or make them harder to rise, because you can more easily destroy them and they are REALLY nervous. Heck, they want to be like Zeus, over-god of his pantheon, not like Hermes, his postman.

Please, someone, speculate how would things go bad with this thing; how would you abuse this.

Oh, and I think there should be no 'you are a heretic, but you can go through my lands'. And, it shouldn't be possible to give away provinces. Atleast not those in which people don't believe to the pretender you are giving the province. This is simply because even if you had no armies in there, other player would have to conquer the province, because the people would not want to change sides.

I hope this makes sense to someone,

and please forgive me for editing these Posts all the time. It seems I cannot force myself to press that Preview msg button... Lazy me

[ October 18, 2003, 17:58: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

[DominionsFan]

Plz consider to add SP diplomacy, I really missed it.

The guys here had posted very good ideas.

[Mortifer]

All right I think we had nice ideas so far, maybe trading items should be restricted, I agree.

If the AI can be scripted to have long memory, than the abuse problem will be solved.
If it will 'remember' everything, what the player did, than we won't have problems.
It must be tweaked perfectly, and that will be the hardest part of it.
[How will the AI react in various situations, like getting a province as a gift, etc.]

[MStavros]

I wonder...the devs liked these suggestions/ideas? Any comments from IW?

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Mortifer:
All right I think we had nice ideas so far, maybe trading items should be restricted, I agree.

If the AI can be scripted to have long memory, than the abuse problem will be solved.
If it will 'remember' everything, what the player did, than we won't have problems.
It must be tweaked perfectly, and that will be the hardest part of it.
[How will the AI react in various situations, like getting a province as a gift, etc.]

Not necessarly a big problem IMO, thats the kind of parameters which ought to be externalized in a text file. The devs should be confident that in a matter of weeks the fan community will have found what is the best tweaking to be done (just check the awesome mods made for Hearts of Iron - some asked for hundred of hours).