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

[Vodalian]

I think there should be an option to pre-assign your forces to not attack enemy forces, and if both sides had this activated, no combat would ensue. However, if only one side had this activated, there would be a battle as usual.
I think diplomacy on larger scale should not be implemented. It is actually very intriguing to not know what your neighbouring nations think of you, allowing you the freedom to discover their schemes through espionage and your clever thinking alone.

[Aristoteles]

A good diplomacy system would raise the quality of the gameplay.

[Nerfix]

One question:
Why?
What do you need diplomacy for?

As for a side note, i am getting increasingly worried the about the direction where Dominions II is being slowly steered.

[Mortifer]

I think that diplomacy can be awesome, BUT ONLY if its really good. A bad system can ruin a game.

[Nerfix]

Yes, but why?
The "diplomacy" i have experienced has been computers whining something from me and then attacking me if i won't agree, or the other way round. And that is, from Civ 3. Diplomacy haven't added much anything to the games i have played. It just lets you to abuse the "poor" AI.

[Mortifer]

Well yes, if the diplomacy AI is bad, you can abuse the AI. The civ3 diplo system is good, the diplo AI is moderate, and can be abused.
If you want to see a decent diplo system, get some old games like RotK 4. or 6.
You cannot abuse the diplo AI there, in fact its adding a lot to the gameplay.

[Nerfix]

Rigth then, what does it add to gameplay?

[ September 28, 2003, 14:07: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

[PDF]

Originally posted by Nerfix:
Rigth then, what does it add to gameplay?

The subject is twofold, IMO it's different in SP and MP :
SP : add variety to the game, as the player woul dhave to manage his relations with the others, say keeping peace with a nation while warring another etc ... But the AI diplomacy has to be good else the player will be able to easily abuse it.
In MP it's simpler : it'll allow players to give passage or join forces in war, without changing much the diplomatic aspects that are anyway handled by Messages and agreements.

I'd be glad to see some simple "diplomatic features" be available in MP, but suppose it'll be too difficult to implement properly in SP until Dominions 3 : Alliance of the Gods !

[st.patrik]

At first when this subject was raised I was thinking that diplomacy just wasn't what Dominions was about, and to add it would mess with something that works just fine…

…but I think I'm beginning to agree that it would be cool if there was diplomacy for single player games at least. Here's why - how many times have you been about to attack one of your neighbours when another suddenly decides to attack your flank with 200 summer lions (for example)? Pretty soon you're fighting a 2 front war against 2 powerful opponents. Now if that were to happen in the real world the first thing I'd be doing would be to try to negotiate some kind of truce with one of my neighbours so that I could fight my battles one at a time. I would gladly pay up magical items (nothing too powerful) and gems for a reprieve. Dominions already has the capability to trade items, gems and money between players.

I guess at the most basic level you could have an indicator of how nations are feeling toward you (through spies, scouts) which could be manipulated up by gifts etc. and down by you attacking them/getting too close. Plus which different AIs could be more or less aggressive. Even as thin a diplomacy as this I think would be a nice feature for single player - and to be honest I think I wouldn't even want much more of a full-blown diplomacy.

What do the developers think? Does this sound reasonable? Desirable? Possible?

[Nerfix]

I already can see how one negotiates with all the AI's and kills them with Dominion...