The revised Diplomacy Model

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The Clash of Civilizations
Diplomacy model v1.2.5

Summary
This is the summary of the diplomacy model. If the rest of the model is too long to read, feel free to just go over this stuff and comment.

• There will be no diplomatic units in the game. In other words, the spies and ambassadors will not be trained the same way as military units are.


• The diplomatic options will include:
  
  • Creating new civilizations
  • Trading with other nations
  • Signing treaties
  • Making demands from other nations
  • Protesting treaty violations
  • Declaring wars
• There will be a variety of treaty types. Each treaty will be composed of one or more clause from the following list:
  
  • Cash transfers
  • Trade
  • Territorial transfers
  • Technological exchange
  • Immigration policies
• Treaties will not be restricted to two nations


• In addition to official business, the game will feature a rich variety of intelligence and counterintelligence options:
  
  • Gathering demographic information on other countries
  • Stealing maps
  • Stealing research information
  • Bribing units, and inciting revolts in cities and provinces
  • Assassinating characters
  • Planting moles in enemy intelligence agencies
  • And more...
• The relations between nations will feature an elaborate system of attitudes, and reputations, where almost every action by the player will result in an adjustment of the view of his or her country on the international arena


• Not each and every option will be available to the player all the time, however. For further realism, the following limitations will apply to the choice of diplomatic options:
  
  • Technology - one cannot form sophisticated mutual protection pacts in 2000BC
  • Budget - the less you pay your spies, the less they can sniff out!
  • Government type – it is very hard to pull off genocide if you are a democracy
  • Ideology - goes somewhat along the lines of government type - you cannot do nasty things if you rule a society of pacifists.

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Table of Contents

1. Summary
   
2. Table of Contents
   
3. Other Discussions:
   • Current Discussions
     
   • Previous Model Discussions
     
4. Abstract
   
5. Hierarchy of government and operations
   
6. Detailed overview of diplomatic options:
   • Official Business
     
   • Military Advisor
     
   • Intelligence
     
   • Internal Intelligence
     
7. Methodology of Contact
   
8. State Relations
   
9. Diplomacy Limitations
   
10. Log of Changes
    
11. Current Development Goals
    
12. Afterword
    

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Other Discussions
The list of other discussions of the Diplomatic Model. Make sure to check them out if you are interested in Clash.

Current Discussions
These discussions are going on right now and touch on different practical concepts of diplomacy model implementation.

Diplomatic GUI by vovansim
Discuss how the user interface going to look like! Make sure that you and other players get the most out of diplomacy by leaving your opinion in this thread.

Coding Discussion by vovansim
Know how to implement a certain feature from this document in an elegant fashion? Interested in what's going on behind-the-scenes and in the inner workings of the game? Then this thread is for you to read and comment on!


Previous Model Discussions
This is the list of old diplomatic discussions for reference, in case anybody is interested.

Clash Diplomacy System v1.1 by Kull
The original diplomacy model developed by Kull, and the consequent discussion. There are plenty of interesting ideas in the beginning of that thread, some of which made it into this compilation. By the middle of the thread, it evolves into a coding discussion, which might not be of any interest to a casual player.

Short Diplomacy Proposal by Mark_Everson
This is the abbreviated version of the above model. It is much easier to digest, and is recommended for the Apolytoners, who are interested in Clash, but do not want to go through pages of information.

Intelligence / Espionage by Harun ar Rashid
A very short thread with some ideas on spies, intelligence spending, and covert operations.

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Abstract
Some of the most important basic points about the diplomacy model. This is, somewhat a distilled version of the rest of the model, which only includes the gist of how diplomacy will work.

1. Diplomacy Options will be affected by several factors. The primary factor will be the status of the State Relations. Another one is era, which is mostly determined by technological progress of the civ. Another factor will be government type. The effectiveness of these organizations will also depend greatly on the budgetary expenditure. The more money the player is willing to give up, the more effective spies will be, for example. Late in the game, when there are a lot cash-sucking options, the balance between the different options could be tricky.
   
2. Another important point to understand about the diplomacy model is that there will be no individual spy or embassador units. However, we are considering having an sort of abstract version of spies, so that even though the player wouldn't actually move them around the map, he will be able to determine the number of spies to send into an opponent nation to manage the intelligence-gathering capabilities.
   
3. The official relations between nations will feature a wide variety of treaties, demands, protests, threats, etc. That allows the players that want to exert fine diplomatic control to tune their diplomatic relations with frightening precision.
   
4. For the covert operations lovers, the system will also feature an enormous number of spy missions: which will allow to obtain virtually any amount of information, according to the desires, and the size of the player's purse.
   

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Hierarchy of government and operations
This might be an idea for how to implement the interface for interaction with both the "advisors" and the "spies".

                    Government
                (The Chancellery)
                  /            \
                 /              \
      Foreign Office         Interior Ministry
      |                      This is, once again, slightly out of scope
      +- Official business   of diplomacy, but it should probably include
      +- Intelligence        some standard set of 'advisors', who provide
      +- Military advisor    the player with the information on the overall
                             prosperity of the civ, as well as with specific
                             details on such issues as:
                                 o Social (riots, and such)
                                 o Science
                                 o Internal Intelligence (this will include
                                   revealing enemy spies, finding out the 
                                   bribed officials, feeding the enemy spies
                                   falsified information, and such.)


            +--   Official Business  -+
           /      /      |         \   \
          /      /       |          \   \
Create Civ      | Trade and tariffs  | Treaties
                |                    |
            Threats              Protests


            Intelligence (covert operations)
                    /       \
                 Active   Passive


            +--  Military Advisor
           /      /     |         \
   Tactical      |  Declaration    Co-Aggression
   information   |    of war       coordination
                 |
            Mutual protection pacts

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Detailed overview of diplomatic options
What is behind all those names.

Official Business
The actions taken by the player's government that are open for observation by other nations, and official communications between the governments of different nations.

Create Civ:

Civilizations with sufficient power in a controlled area can unilaterally create another civ. The created civ has whatever properties the creating civ desires. However, if the foundation of this state is unrealistic it will quickly change radically from the form in which it was created.
Clarification on the importance of the feature by Mark_Everson: Because of the social model there will be territories that are conquered that practically cannot be held anyway. For instance: In the era of nation-states, a distant ethnically different area cannot be held by a true democracy anyway. They would secede in time, or create such problems with nationalist groups, that they might not be worth retaining. One example is that in a civ version of WWII, where France is lost (ignore the Vichy govt for the moment). The Allies (British and Americans in a simple civ world) re-take France. Should they try to hold it as a colony? No! They should re-create the French state.

Trade and Tariffs:

Two nations are able to trade goods among each other. This is not precisely the barter-style trading as is done in Civ3, but rather there is always a mandatory tariff on trade. In the spirit of the rest of the game, the player can decide just what degree of control he has over the tariffs. He could leave it to the AI to decide, depending on the supply and demand of the good, and its tactical value. For instance, let us say there is an overabundance of horses in the world. Therefore, the tariff set automatically would be rather low. However, if there is some nation, which happens to not have any, and is also aggressive towards the player, the AI might raise the tariff on horses appropriately. Alternatively, the player can set some percentage, that would be used for all goods and all nations, and forget about the whole thing. A more advanced player might want to set the percentage tariff for each good, and then set the modifiers for each nation. For example:

I have instituted tariffs of 20% on steel, and 50% on textiles. So a most-favored nation (a + 0% modifier) would get these same numbers. A country I'm having a trade war with (+ 50% modifier) would suffer tariffs of 70% on steel, and 100% on textiles.

- Kull

Finally, a player who favours micromanagement above else would be able to set every percentage for every nation for every good on his own.

Clarification by Mark_Everson: If the player can only impose tariff levels on a "Civilization-wide" basis, how does one get to "20% on steel and 50% on textiles"? Like so: You can vary the tariffs/subsidies for each commodity vs MFN (most favored nation). That's how you get "20% on steel and 50% on textiles". You can also set overall tariff levels with each civ you trade with. These might be with Civ A +10% tariffs, Civ B +50% tariffs. Then the tariff for each item is just the 'item' tariff + the Civ tariff. So trade with Civ A in the textile area would be taxed at the rate of 60% (= +10% [Civ A] +50% [textiles]).

Treaties:

1. Treaty Concept: treaties can be formed between two or more nations. Treaties of more than two states will have to handle all members on equal footing. For example, five civs can participate in a mutual-defense pact, or sign a co-aggression pact against one or more other nations. Each treaty can consist of a virtually unlimited number of clauses from the (by no means final) list below.
   
2. Treaty Clauses:
   
   
   
   • Define diplomatic status - peace, war, cold-war etc. A change in status that makes the diplomatic state between two parties more hostile can be undertaken by either party if they have the internal power within their civ to do so. A change in status that is less hostile requires agreement of all parties. The diplomatic state can be collateralized.
     
   • Monetary transfers - lump-sum or per-turn style. A sub-clause might be issuing a loan, which basically means exchange of a certain lump-sum of money for per-turn payments.
     
   • Trade and tariffs - two nations can agree on what tariffs they will set for the goods they sell to each other.
     
   • Territorial transfers - one nation agrees to give up some of her territory for the control of another civ. Such transfer, once agreed upon, can take place immediately or some time in the future, specified in the treaty, as well. For instance, the player might ask another nation for military assistance against a certain third civ, and promise a certain amount of land in exchange, to be given up, say 30 turns in the future. That way, the player might gain help in crushing a superior opponent, and once the war is over, give up some of the conquered land to the ally.
     
   • Technology - one nation agrees to assist another in technological research. However, as described in the technological model, the civ that receives assistance does not necessarily immediately acquire that technology, since research is conducted gradually.
     
   • Military unit transfers - one nation can cease the control of their military units (possibly temporarily) to assist another nation.
     
   • Trade status - ranging from favourable to embargo.
     
   • Demilitarized zones
     
   • Arms reduction - for instance:
     

     My army will grow to at most 20% more powerful than yours.
     
     - Kull

     
     
   • Voluntary Disclosure of Information - The same information which intelligence seeks to obtain illegally will have to be provided voluntarily by the partners in every State Relationship beginning with Peace. The level of disclosure should not be subject to negotiation, but rather be treated as an integral part of the treaty. More details are required, but here's an example of military disclosure based on treaty relations.
     
     
     
     • Peace: I know exactly how many units he has and vice versa, but no details.
       
     • Co-Aggression: Same as above. If we are at war with the same enemy, we share unit info on those which are in the "War Zone" with that enemy. This zone could be defined as "X" number of hexes from the "front".
       
     • Cooperation: We share numbers and locations and generic types. Also sharing of "War Zone" unit info (as defined above)
       
     • Defensive Alliance: Same as Cooperation but includes detailed unit specs for those stationed on a mutual border. (i.e. between the allies).
       
     • Offensive Alliance: I have complete details on his military and he on mine, except injury and preparedness data.
       
     • Same Ruler: I know everything about his military, he just gets total numbers on mine.
       
     
     
   • Dynastic Marriage
     
   • Immigration policies - this is something that wasn't in the previous version of the model. Since population is quite important in this game, it might make sense to implement migration of people between countries that share a border, or are connected by a road. After the invention of flight (I assume there is such a tech... Sorry, I didn't have enough time to read through all of the technology discussions) these limitations would no longer apply. How many people migrate would be determined by the overall development of the nations in question. That way, two nations can establish migration policies among each other. They could say that there shouldn’t be legal migration, which would limit migration greatly, or they could establish a system of visas, which would also reduce the number of people moving. Alternatively, the two nations can establish free travel, which would have no limiting effects on migration. The default setting would be the visa system. This could become a powerful tool in the hands of a good player. For example: a strong nation might first decrease the military strength of an opponent through war, and then limit their diffusional expansion by establishing a free travel system, and sucking in the population of that nation (given it has superior power, of course). The specific factors that determine migration are still to be determined, but I think we need to first discuss this option and see if you, the potential future players, like this idea.
     
   
   
3. Treaty Duration - Treaties do not last forever in the real world, nor should they in Clash. The following rules will govern treaty duration:
   
   
   
   • Government Change - Treaties always come up for review whenever there's a change in government type.
     
   • Artificial Treaty Duration Limit - Non-representative governments experience a "treaty review" every "X" number of turns. The determining factor for "X" should be entertaining game play, not realism. This periodic review represents "Ruler Lifespan", historically the biggest factor behind changes in diplomatic status. A variety of factors will be used to determine the result of the treaty review process. A treaty could be extended, canceled, downgraded, or upgraded. One mechanism would be to "weigh" the interactions between the two states during the life of the treaty. Negative factors would include spying, threats, and protests. Positive factors would be gifts, military aid, similar culture & religion, etc.
     
   • Attitude-Induced Treaty Review - Surpassing a certain level of Negative or Positive "points" will cause a treaty to automatically come up for review.
     
   • Manual Treaty Cancellation - Unilateral cancellations are always an option, but carry their own set of risks such as reputation "hits", risking other treaty relationships, etc.
     
   
   

Threats and Demands:

Threats are very similar to the Treaties, with the exception that the other side of the deal does not get anything positive in return. They are just as elaborate as treaties and can contain the same components as listed for treaties.

Protests:

Protests are triggered by a nation's behavior. A civ can protest treaty violations, military threats, and such. If a counterintelligence action of discovering a spy has been successful, the subject can also protest that.

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Military Advisor
This will govern all matters military.

Tactical Information

If the appropriate spy mission has been successful or the other nation has disclosed the information voluntarily, the player can review the troop locations, and such.

Declaration of War

The player can declare war on any other nation, having reviewed the treaties that might be violated.

Note by Glak: starting wars with non allies should not at all decrease trustworthiness. It should increase perceivedAgressiveness or something like that for all entities with an treaty level equal to or lower than the country attacked. For example I have no treaty with countryA, so the rating is something like 0. I am trustworthy so I have like 100%. I attack countryA and my trust doesn't go down, after all I never said I wouldn't kill them. CountryB is my ally so they don't get scared of me. CountryC and I don't get along too well, perhaps we have a -2 rating. They see my aggressiveness go up and start thinking about how they are probably on my list of people to destroy. CountryC will now recalculate its stance towards me since one if its values that keeps track of me has changed. CountryB will only react if other values change, perhaps my power level. Then it might come to my aid. Otherwise it won't really think anything about the war, unless perhaps it has positive or negative relations with CountryA.
Elaboration on the Note by Darren_McGuicken:

A basic value 'Reputation' dependant on 4 variables:

VARIABLE         WHAT DOES IT MEAN?           HOW IS IT DECIDED?
Trustworthiness  Can we sign a treaty with    Have we had pacts with them
                 this Civ and expect them to  before? Have we heard of
                 keep their word?             them breaking alliances/treaties
                                              with other Civs? Why?
Aggression       How quickly are they         Have they attacked any Civs/Us
                 prepared to start a War?     before? How often? Why?
                 Maybe: are they prepared
                 to see it through? Re:
                 offensive alliances etc.
Competence       Have they mismanaged their  What uprisings/revolts/
                 own Civ? Lost any battles    general unhappiness is there
                 they've ever fought? Do      in the Civ? What ratio of
                 we really want these guys    battle wins:losses? Why?
                 in our alliance?
Tyranny          Not completely thought out:  How often military might is
                 how have they dealt with     used to suppress the proles?
                 social crises in their Civ?  Why?   

Further Elaboration by Lord God Jinnai:
Agression: Things that should also factor into deciding aggression level is whether or not they've demanded tributes, military build ups, perhaps over expansive land policy (not ness going to war)

Competence: Battle aspect should also include by how much...ie overwhelming victories or just barely victorious and if they won wars despite loosing many battles (ie remember Hanable in Second Carthaginian War with Rome? He won many battles but ultimately lost the war)

Tyranny: Should also keep in mind the time period aspect. When putting down revolts from peasant uprisings or slave uprisings it may be seen as a good thing (ie competence) rather than bad.

More thoughts on the matter by Mark_Everson: First we need a scale to establish how much a diplomatic or military action affects the reputation. For right now I'll just deal with the trustworthiness aspect. The first thing we need is a " trustworthiness scale". For purposes of demonstration I'll assume a scale where a level of 100 represents complete trustworthiness (at least as far as we know so far) and zero represents a pretty much completely untrustworthy civ. Our trustworthiness number should be some sort of weighted average of actions that have happened in the past. I say weighted, because eventually, given a long enough period of peaceful coexistence, past sins will be forgiven. So on any turn that one behaves in a perfectly trustworthy fashion your "instantaneous" trustworthiness is 100 (this will be true for most turns, since there's only so many shafts there are opportunities for). Now, I don't want to lay out the whole scale here so I'll just pick one sort of diplomatic action. How about a complete and utter shaft of a nominal ally? How many points should this be? For the moment I'll use the following logic: another civ, if it's your ally, if it were to shaft you on average once every ten turns, would be a Worthless ally. It should be approximately a zero on the treachery scale (completely treacherous). So in this simple way we can describe the complete shaft of an ally to earn the perpetrator about -900 points (so on average they are near zero). Using this crudely defined scale, now I can introduce how I want to handle the treachery of a civ over time, depending upon their particular diplomatic actions.

I was thinking of using a straightforward technique called the exponentially-weighted moving average (EWMA) to simply handle the way that civilizations and cultures might eventually discount events in the past. The idea is relatively simple. When computing a new value for the EWMA, say due to a significant diplomatic action, you just take a certain percent (X) of the old value, and percentage (100 - X) of the new information, and combine them. Depending on the value you pick for X, this method "forgets" past information either faster or slower. But the Really important bit about EWMA, is that you don't need to keep track of All the past information, all you need is what the value was on the previous turn, and what is new on this turn, to figure the new value. So although we will have all this glorious history, that the player can potentially tap, we only need to do one calculation to update the trustworthiness each turn.

Now for a rigged demo! So let's say I'm a foolish trusting civ that is in alliance with Otto the Treacherous. And let's say the percentage of the old value that we're using is X = 90% (so the current turn's information gets a 10% weight). If Otto starts out with a perfect reputation of 100, what happens on a turn when Otto behaves honorably? The new value for Otto's trustworthiness is 90% of the old value, plus 10% of the value at this instant. In the case were Otto is behaving honorably, the EWMA maintains Otto's trustworthiness at 100. Now what happens on the turn that Otto shafts me? Otto's new trustworthiness = 90% x 100 + 10% x (-900) = 0. So the property of the EWMA that we can use here is that it's easy to calculate changes in the current value that result from new events. You don't have to keep track of all of history, the EWMA does it for you. Depending upon the particular number that you choose for X, the EWMA will forget either faster or slower. Now how does Otto's reputation recovery using EWMA? I'm not going to crank the math, but will just give the answers on each of the turns, starting with the turn of the shaft. I'll assume Otto behaves blamelessly after this particular shaft. Otto rebuilding his reputation looks like: 0, 10, 19,... well okay I'm too lazy . The big point is that it builds back up slowly. And long before it gets back to 100, Otto will shaft someone again, driving in back into the Stone Age. Also, the choice for X I use here forgets things rather quickly. A different value will probably be used in the game if we adopt this methodology.

Co-Aggression Coordination

If the player has signed Co-Aggression pacts with some nations, he can then coordinate the military efforts - strike a certain city, set military campaign goals, and such.

Mutual-Defense Coordination

If the player has signed a mutual-defense pact with one or more nations, he can then coordinate the efforts from here - such as, which province to defend, etc..

Intelligence
Intelligence operations aimed at other civs. There are two types, passive and active. As a general rule, each civ expects the others to conduct passive spying, so there's little downside. Overt acts carry more severe penalties should one be caught. Penalties include reputation loss (of varying severity), change in treaty status, even internal unrest.

Passive - gathering the intelligence that cannot potentially harm the civ that it is aimed against. The information can be quite useful in the hands of a clever player, however.

• Society Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Social info
  
• Government Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Governance info
  
• Economic Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Economic info
  
• Military Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Military Unit info
  
• Research Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Research info
  

Active - more dangerous activities.

• Stealing maps - This would grant you all the other civs know land as well as all there units for that turn. This may not include any vassals or whatnot though. (Proposed by Lord God Jinnai; 19 Jan 2003)
  
• Theft of non-Military Research info
  
• Theft of Military Research info - harder and more dangerous.
  
• Bribery of Cities
  
• Bribery of Units/Armies
  
• Bribery of Characters - risky.
  
• Assassination - very risky.
  
• Moles - Intelligence Agency penetration.
  

Suggestion by TreborPugly:

Maybe a string of successful spy jobs could create a "James Bond" effect. Therefore, for every successful "mission" you would actually modify the random component to make the next mission more likely to succeed. In this way a careful, inexpensive development of exterior intelligence would be much more effective than a quick, expensive development. Maybe this is similar to the Spy Ring concept mentioned in an earlier post, but my guess is that a Spy Ring is mostly money and luck. My suggestion is that luck compounds.

Suggestion by Mark_Everson:

What I'd propose is that generic infiltration into a country work like a bank account. You put resources in, and if you don't demand immediate information (make a withdrawal) the power of your network grows a little (perhaps it requires some minimum support to do this). Then when you want to steal the A-bomb plans you can compare your 'balance' to the difficulty of the project and target how much in the way of saved and new resources you want to put into it. The effectiveness of the new ones could even be modified by the previously saved amt used. As in your experienced local operatives can leverage any new resources to a point. Then the mission succeeds or fails, and may or may not take some of your established network (even beyond what you allocated) with it.

Internal Intelligence
These are the spy operations that are held inside the boundaries of the player's country. They were originally distinguished by those aimed at foreign operatives, and those aimed at gathering intelligence on the people - essentially secret police. However, I thought that such a distinction would be unnecessary, though, like with other concepts, if the majority of other people feels that it is important, I am open to reason. Feel free to discuss.

Determine enemy intelligence activity

Is your civilization an intelligence target, and who is responsible?

If so, What information is being collected

This is a separate option, because such operation (interrogation of the caught spy, essentially) would be more costly.

Reveal a bribed Character

Feed false information to the revealed spy.

Determine Happiness Levels

Clicking a button to determine exact happiness levels is not realistic. Using agents to see what people really think is the usual procedure.

Riot Prediction

Solid information on happiness. Ability to predict where riots will start, allowing you to appease the populace or squelch them with the military.

New Religion Identification

The earlier you learn that one has either sprung up inside your borders or spread from someplace else, the more options you have in dealing with it. Those specifics are contained in the Social Model.

Disseminate Propaganda

Ranges from crude hate mongering to sophisticated "spin doctoring".

Characters

Spy on your characters to determine their true capabilities and allegiance.

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Methodology of Contact
Civilizations cannot perform any diplomatic activity unless and until they achieve contact. Until such time as permanent embassies are allowed, each government contact will require the dispatch of an official representative.

1. Emissaries - Permanent embassies are a fairly recent phenomenon (since @1700 AD). Until that time, governments dispatched personal representatives who would visit the court of the foreign ruler and present gifts, demands, treaty options, etc. The clash diplomacy system will rely heavily upon this mechanism until modern times, with an obvious impact on the quality and timeliness of the information it produces. As a ruler, you must make extensive use of emissaries in order to have any idea what is going on around you, and that will cost cash.
   
2. Embassies - Physical structures located in the capital city of an opposing civ. Requires money to open and maintain. Existence of an embassy provides automatic low level intelligence on happenings in enemy capital (attitudes, troop movements there, anything you could glean from a newspaper).
   
3. Consulates - Physical structures located in the provinces of an opposing civ. Requires cash to open and maintain. Requires approval of civ to open these. Usually a sign of good relations. Improves reliability and quantity of low level intelligence.
   

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State Relations
Relations between several states: the concept
Here's a sample list of diplomatic states available between civs. These are not necessarily well thought out. The values associated with each name are modifiers on a -10 to +10 scale that Mark has used in the existing code on the diplomatic system. The numbers generally indicate the "strength" of the relationship between the powers.

Diplomatic State Constants

Vendetta = -10; State Seeks To Annihilate Opponent, And Its People
Total War = -9; Seeks To Destroy Opposing State, But Not People
War = -7;
Limited War = -5; War Whose Aims Are Restricted In Some Way
Cease Fire = -3;
Cold War = -2;
Contact = -1;
Peace = 0;
Co-Aggression = 1; States Cooperate To Attack A Third, But With No Other Alliance
Cooperation = 2; A Deep, Peaceful Relationship, With A Long History
Defensive Alliance = 4; Defensive Alliance
Offensive Alliance = 8; Very Strong Offensive/Defensive Alliance
Same Ruler = 10; Case Where One Civ Is Completely Ruled By Another

Any diplomatic state that is agreed-upon between two or more parties can be collateralized for any mutually-agreed-upon period of time. For instance, a peace treaty between states might be guaranteed by both to the tune of 1000C over a period of the next 20 turns. Any party that unilaterally breaks the peace gives up the collateral. Whether the collateral becomes the possession of the offended party, or simply disappears is also determined in negotiations. Collateralization is meant to symbolize things like hostage-holding, marriage alliances, and other ways to guarantee treaties where the game does not have sufficient depth to include the particular factor. I think collateral could become standard for treaties, since it ensures that each party will take the treaty seriously. This feature seems to work better in the ancient and medieval world, than in the modern. We'll have to address it as a play balance and realism issue at some point.

Note by vovansim: So, I, as a potential future coder of the diplomatic model, was thinking about the practical implementation of diplomatic states. As I was throwing together a quick code-design document, however, I caught myself making a potentially serious logical mistake. It is so serious, in fact, that I thought it worthy of putting out there for general discussion.

So, here is the deal: As I was looking at the description above, and the nice numbers for each diplomatic relation, my mind somehow automatically connected diplomatic relations with attitude. Therefore, in my preliminary model, the value of attitude of -7, for instance, would always mean war. That is not correct. While diplomatic status is greatly affected by attitude, it is not always the same. Indeed, even though civs that are very sympathetic towards each other will probably not fight, the attitude-diplomatic state relationship is not always solid.

Let me speak in terms of Civ3 for a moment here. If one civ is furious with another one, it is likely to attack, but it does not mean that the two will be in the constant state of war! Therefore, it makes sense that diplomatic state be related to but separate from attitude.

So, to emphasize the proximity of the concepts, and yet keep them separate, I think it would make sense to have the attitudes range from -10 to 10 as well, in which case we would have the values something like this:

Blood enemies = -10; (i.e. the people of the two countries can't stand each other. If they meet on a street, they would kill each other.)
Deep Hatered = -9;
Fury = -7;
Anger = -5;
Irritation= -3;
Annoyance = -2;
Cautiousness = -1;
No feelings= 0;
Goodwill = 1;
Friendship = 2;
Amity = 4;
Philanthropy = 8;
Brotherly love = 10;

(12 January 2003) Suggestion by Lord God Jinnai: All forms of relations should over time gravitate toward 0 from overall to things like trustworthyness, with negative reactions taking longer to cool.

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Diplomacy Limitations
Diplomacy is limited by several factors

1. Technological Research - certain diplomatic and spying actions will become available as time passes. As the player's nation becomes more advanced, it can undertake more daring covert operations, and sign more elaborate treaties. As certain technologies become available, specific actions become "unlocked" for the player to utilize.
   
   Old idea - I left it in thedocument in case somebody would like to discuss this. Maybe we could still use era's for some thing or other. But if it poves totally useless, we will drop it.
   Era Limitations - Available diplomacy actions are limited by the current era, which is determined by the overall technological development.
   
   
   
   • Ancient Era - Intelligence info comes from emissaries, traders, and armies in the field. Passive info is limited, and active acts are restricted to bribery and assassination. Treaties are based upon marriages and hostages.
     
   • Medieval Era - Intelligence info comes from emissaries, traders, and armies in the field. Passive info is "medium". All active actions are available except moles. Treaties continue to be based upon marriages and hostages.
     
   • Modern Era - Intelligence info comes from embassies, consulates, spies, traders, and armies in the field. Passive info is unlimited. All active actions are available. Treaties are based upon modern factors.
     
   
   
2. Budgetary Expenditure - the effectiveness of diplomacy is directly affected by the amount of money allocated from the budget.
   
3. Government Type Limitations - Political scientists distinguish three basic types of government. So, we decided to implement such distinctions in Clash, and base some of the limitations of diplomatic options on them.
   
   
   
   • Authoritarian: This is the types of government, where there are no political parties, or only one, associated with a strongly charismatic leader. There are no elections, media is carefully monitored, and the public opinion is generally ignored. As such, this form of government has access to most spy options available, since the leader does not concern himself with reputation, but for that same reason, high-level treaties are not available. Create Civ option is not available.
     
   • Totalitarian: This is the form of government, where the politics is controlled by one party. The elections are held, but are noon-competitive, the media is controlled by the ruling party, and propaganda is widespread, and often times a secret police is instituted in some way or other. As such, this form of government has access to all of the internal intelligence options, and the majority of other covert operations. The treaties that require much trust are only available to those governments if the reputation of their nation is spotless.
     
   • Representative government: The multipartisan form of government, where the elections are highly competitive and are held on a regular basis, the media and press are considered free to publish any opinion. Therefore, this is a "trusted" form of government, and the AI likes to get into high-level treaties with those. On the other hand, the people are free to protest, and prolonged conflicts, as well as co-aggression pacts can result in high outcry. Certain actions are very dangerous for a representative government to undertake, since failure could cause the government to collapse. "Home" territory transfers are not an option. Vendetta is possible, but is very likely result in bad consequences for the ruler.
     
     Note of Clarification by vovansim: According to the current government model, there will not be a specific set of governments that the player would be limited to. Even though there will be certain "template" government types, the player, if so desired, would be able to tweak any of the social or economic freedoms, control the division of power, etc.. Therefore, the type of government for the classification above will be determined from these factors.
     
   
   
4. Society Specialization / Ideology preferences - Also the regard in which the civ holds diplomacy vs warfare etc. should matter. Essentially a civ can't be good at everything, even with a lot of money, since the society values some things above others and FE many of the most talented people will gravitate toward the most-respected positions. But that is a distinction for far in the future.
   (Proposed by Mark_Everson; 10 Jan 2003)
   

TOC

[vovan]

Log of Changes
As the discussion goes on, and certain points are added, discussed in more detail, and improved upon, I will update the posts above appropriately. This post will keep track of all the changes made to the model

20 January 2003

• Summary: section added in front of the document replacing the original foreword, so that it is hopefully easier for the newcomers to digest the information

19 January 2003

• Other Discussions: added the list of current Model discussions
• Detailed overview of diplomatic options > Official Business: added the treaty clause about trade and tariffs
• Detailed overview of diplomatic options > Intelligence: added Lord God Jinnai's suggestion about stealing maps

12 January 2003

• State Relations: added suggestion by Lord God Jinnai

11 January 2003

• Diplomatic Limitations: removed the concept of era's and replaced it with overall, more gradual technological research. Since the technology tree was not developed to support era's, it might make sense to drop that concept. Additionally, the idea of diplomatic options becoming available gradually, as oppsed to bunches, seems more realistic.

10 January 2003

• Previous model discussions: fixed the last link.
• Diplomacy Limitations: added suggestion by Mark_Everson.
• Current Development Goals: section added.

TOC

[vovan]

Current Development Goals
This section will keep track of what is going on "behind-the-scenes" in the development process of the diplomacy model. The current coding goals will be listed here, and the list will be updated with time appropriately.

Well, at this point in time it is hard to say where to start. I am beginning virtually from scratch. There was a certain diplomatic model back in Demo4, but it doesn't seem very useful, though I might be able to get some things out of it. The way I see it, I should start from simple stuff, so the immediate goals list would look something like this:

• Implement the ability to change diplomatic state between civs.
  
• Since the ability to change diplomatic state will depend on attitude of the civs towards each other, implement the attitude model.
  
• Since attitude will be in large part based on trustworthiness of the player civ, and other such factors, these will also need to be implemented.
  

That seems a large enough task for the foreseeable future, especially taking into consideration that the diplomatic state will tie in with the existing AI code, which means that there might be some tricky problems to overcome.

TOC


Afterword
Looking back over the model, all I can say is ! Some ambitious bunch we are. I suppose it is time to get coding soon.

But for now, I am going to busy myself with fixing a couple of bugs, and just doing minor coding jobs here and there. So, please feel free to comment, propose improvements, give constructive criticism, etc. All input is very welcome.

TOC

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Vovan, thanks for the great job coallating all the previous info! I think it will greatly accelerate discussion.

Originally posted by vovansim
Espionage by Anonymous
Unfortunately, at the time of compilation of this document, the thread is unavailable. Therefore, I am unable to provide a summary of this thread, or name its author. Yet, for historical accuracy's sake, I still included the link.

We actually have all the forum posts ever to the best of my knowledge. The problem is that one of the forum upgrades ended up changing the link format. Also for a while some of our threads were archived, and then restored. Fortunately when the title of the thread is included in the link its easy to go back and find it by hand. The search would have worked also in principle, but for now it only searches back a few months.

It is (I think) Intelligence / Espionage

I found it by browsing the forum thread titles starting at the beginning.

So, to emphasize the proximity of the concepts, and yet keep them separate, I think it would make sense to have the attitudes range from -10 to 10 as well

I agree that the two need to be separate. FE in some cases the attitude could be severe hate, and yet the civ does not attack because it would be suicidal. Also diplomatic states are generally the same for the two civs, whereas attitudes (what A thinks of B vs what B thinks of A) can easily be different.

Budgetary Expenditure - the effectiveness of diplomacy is directly affected by the amount of money allocated from the budget.

Also the regard in which the civ holds diplomacy vs warfare etc. should matter. Essentially a civ can't be good at everything, even with a lot of money, since the society values some things above others and FE many of the most talented people will gravitate toward the most-respected positions. But that is a distinction for far in the future. I am just stating it now to put the idea up for discussion.

Vovan, a suggestion from you on what you want to do the code design for first might be helpful so people will know where to focus their attentions.

[vovan]

Thanks for pointing out the correct link to the Intelligence thread, Mark.

I also added your suggestion on a new diplomacy limitation to the rest of the document. In general, I think it would be a good idea to add the suggestions that people make in this thread to the existing document, so that when time comes to finally code, I wouldn't have to search through the whole thread in search of good ideas, but would be able to go through the first ten posts, and have everything I need to know. That way, also, if a person has missed this thread somehow, he would be able to catch up on everything by just reading the first ten posts, and not going through the whole thread, sorting out the posts that might venture off-topic, etc..

Finally, I think it is a good idea to let the people know what the immediate coding goals will be, so that they could concentrate their discussion on the aproppriate issues. I will add another section to the document above, called immediate coding goals, and will keep track of what is going on "behind-the-scenes" in it, editing the post as the model develops.

[LDiCesare]

I want to add two comments.

One on the model:
I am not sure about trade agreements, like the EU. That just doesn't seem to appear in the writeup. All diplomatic states seem to be concerned only with military activity. There should also be trade activities status, like embargo/trade agreement.
Alliances like NATO, Corinhtian League and such shouold also be considered: although multi-party treaties exist, there should be options to enter such treaties if they exist (like joining the EU is simpler than passing trade agreements with several nations).

Another on the code:
Having attitudes/status ranked between -10 and 10 is OK if we need figures, but objects might be more appropriate. Anyway, we use floats everywhere rather than ints and there are no enums in java (you may have found out already).
Also, percentage figures are usually represented by a float on a 0-1 scale, just shown as percentage. This helps compputations a bit.
Sorry if this is straightforward or sounds annoying.

[Richard Bruns]

Wow, that looks impressive. I especially think that the "Create Civ" option looks impressive, since it allows you to devolve power to colonies and do other fun stuff.

Several comments on technology:

There are two ways we need diplomacy to affect tech. The first is to generate RP´s for an existing technology, which should be fairly straightforward, generating RP based on the success of diplomacy or spying.

The second is to activate a new technology. Normally a tech is activated when required technologies reach a certain level, but it is possible to activate the tech before that, and then continue to apply RP normally. For now, I say that the diplomacy model should allow any tech to be activated by trade or theft, and then let the tech model numbers handle whether the civ can do anything with it.

Then there is the issue of how tech will impact diplomacy. I am worried about this model´s use of "eras", since such things are not defined in the rest of the game, as far as I know. What the tech model does provide for is Applications, which are any action that the civ wants to undertake. These are turned on individually, rather than being activated all at once by a big era change. So rather than basing the ability to plant moles on some big vague thing, the ability to plant moles is directly determined by the knowledge of a certain technology. I think that this is more flexible and easy to manage. A civ that really wants to plant moles can direct research to this and discover how to do it, even if they still have only a medieval knowledge of most other things.

Check out the Application section of the tech model for more information. If you give a list of Applications the diplomacy model uses and a quick description of when they should turn on, I can easily add them to the tech tree.

[vovan]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I am not sure about trade agreements, like the EU. That just doesn't seem to appear in the writeup. All diplomatic states seem to be concerned only with military activity. There should also be trade activities status, like embargo/trade agreement.

Well, there is a short paragraph about trade under Detailed overview -> Official Business -> Trade and Tarriffs. IMO, that should be enough micromanagement, and since these might be a part of of treaty, they can also be used in the bargaining porcess, which essentially means trade agreements. For example, a treaty might look like this: You lower the tariff on oil, and I will help you militarily against nation E. Or like this: you lower the tarriff on horses, and I will lower the tariff on iron. I think such a system should be satisfactory enough.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Alliances like NATO, Corinhtian League and such shouold also be considered: although multi-party treaties exist, there should be options to enter such treaties if they exist (like joining the EU is simpler than passing trade agreements with several nations).

OK, this might be a little tricky to implement, and for sure, that is not one of the immediate goals (do you agree with that?). There are a lot of different situations in the real world, and we might like to implement them all. But we need to realize that we are building a simplified model of the world, not the exact copy. Therefore, some of the situations might not be reproducible. Therefore, when considering whether to include certain features or not (the ability to enter an existing treaty, for instance), we need to consider costs vs. benefits. Will it improve the gameplay enough to spend a week on it? (Let us be pessimistic in our guesses on how long it will take to code this, thus essentially taking into consideration the unexpected circumstances that are sure to arise.) While designing a class model, I will take this idea into consideration, but I think we should discuss it a little further, and probably not right away, since I think this is a concern for the future.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Having attitudes/status ranked between -10 and 10 is OK if we need figures, but objects might be more appropriate. <snip> Sorry if this is straightforward or sounds annoying.

OK, this is going to be quite tricky, using objects instead of constants might limit our options for future expansion of code, and will surely harm maintainability. Let me think a little more about how to implement these things, and I will get back to you on that. And no, this doesn't sound annoying at all - I never mind coding suggestions.

[vovan]

Thank you for pointing out some of the things about technology, Richard.

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
The second is to activate a new technology. Normally a tech is activated when required technologies reach a certain level, but it is possible to activate the tech before that, and then continue to apply RP normally. For now, I say that the diplomacy model should allow any tech to be activated by trade or theft, and then let the tech model numbers handle whether the civ can do anything with it.

Yes, official exchange of knowledge and technological theft will both result in the player's civ learning more about a certain tech. Though this is not an immediate goal, I think this ability should be implemented sooner rather than later - at least on the official bargaining level.

Originally posted by Richard Bruns
Then there is the issue of how tech will impact diplomacy. I am worried about this model´s use of "eras", since such things are not defined in the rest of the game, as far as I know. What the tech model does provide for is Applications, which are any action that the civ wants to undertake. These are turned on individually, rather than being activated all at once by a big era change. So rather than basing the ability to plant moles on some big vague thing, the ability to plant moles is directly determined by the knowledge of a certain technology. I think that this is more flexible and easy to manage. A civ that really wants to plant moles can direct research to this and discover how to do it, even if they still have only a medieval knowledge of most other things.

Thanks for pointing this out. The whole deal of era's is a "leftover" from the old model - one that is three years old. At that time the person compiling it probably did not know about how the tech tree is going to work. Now, having certain diplomatic and spying options become available one-by-one, with new tech's becoming available, rather than in bunches, certainly makes more sense to me, and seems more realistic. It might be also easier to code, as it eliminates the need for a whole new conept of era's. I will change the part of the doc concerning the era's to reflect this idea.

[LDiCesare]

I think the Create Civ allows to choose which civ you will go on playing with?

that is not one of the immediate goals (do you agree with that?).

Of course. I was just discussing the model.

[vovan]

Well, I have been staring at the State Relations thing for a while now, and I am wondering. Why do we need this whole thing in the first place:

Vendetta = -10; State Seeks To Annihilate Opponent, And Its People
Total War = -9; Seeks To Destroy Opposing State, But Not People
War = -7;
Limited War = -5; War Whose Aims Are Restricted In Some Way
Cease Fire = -3;
Cold War = -2;
Contact = -1;
Peace = 0;
Co-Aggression = 1; States Cooperate To Attack A Third, But With No Other Alliance
Cooperation = 2; A Deep, Peaceful Relationship, With A Long History
Defensive Alliance = 4; Defensive Alliance
Offensive Alliance = 8; Very Strong Offensive/Defensive Alliance
Same Ruler = 10; Case Where One Civ Is Completely Ruled By Another

I mean, look at the little descriptions. Aren't they like attitude any way? I have trouble imagining why we would have such a range, if we also have attitudes. Having thought about this for while, here is what I think the system should look like:

There is a range of attitudes. They range from -6 to 6 (This is another important point, BTW. I am not sure there are enough words with sufficiently different grades of attitude to make for an attitude set from -10 to 10, and besides, I am not sure why such a big range is needed. Just from the point of view of gameplay, wouldn't a set of 12 attitudes + neutral + no contact be enough?). So, the attitudes range from -6 to 6. There is also a fourteenth attitude - no contact - used to signify that a civ does not know anything about the other civ. Now, the range of diplomatic states includes only three steps: war, peace, alliance.

If the model is built that way, the whole functionality of the one currently in the document is preserved, but there is less code to worry about, and IMHO, the structure makes more sense. For example:

A nation g goes to war with nation h. The diplomatic state changes to war. The nation g then looks at its attitude towards h. If it is -6, it goes for genocide. If it is -5, it goes for almost complete elimination. If it is -4, it seeks to destroy a larger part of it, so that it would never pose a threat again. (As you can see, we don't really need to distinguish whether the war is a vendetta, or a total war, or whatever - it is determined by attitude.)

To continue the previous example. Let us say there is also some nation i. The question is: will it go to war with g, to counter its aggressiveness, or with h, to gain some territory opportunistically, or will it stay neutral. Well, first of all, if looks at the diplomatic status. Let us say it alliance for h, and peace for g. Then, the nation looks at the treaty clause with the alliance, to see what kind of alliance it is. Let us say it is a defensive alliance. So, technically, nation i should go to war with g. But wait, h has been violating that trade agreement, and has generally been a pain in the behind. Their trustworthyness is negative, also. Nation g, on the other hand, even though there is no alliance, and it has spotted its reputation by being the aggressor, is much stronger militarily, and i's attitude towards it is, say 5. Well, considering that, it might be a good idea to then turn against the former ally, and gain some land.

As you can see, there is no need to have such a large variety of diplomatic states, when you have (a) attitudes, and (b) treaties. With those, the range of diplomatic states pretty much boils down to two-three.

(Now, I would like to know what you all think about it. Should we indeed, get rid of the long list of diplomatic states, or not? If not, why?)

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Vovan, I think your proposed revisions sound good. There were never meant to be 21 diplomatic states anyway. The numbers were weightings for the diplomatic AI to use. (You can see how the numeric values are used in the D4 code I sent you.)

I do like your simplification quite a bit. Cold War FE is just Peace with something like a -5 attitude, so it seems to work quite well. Good Streamlining!

[Lord God Jinnai]

All forms of relations should over time gravitate toward 0 from overall to things like trustworthyness, with negative reactions taking longer to cool.

Also, one type of treaty i did not see was a non-interferance pact.

There's some other stuff I wanted to say, but I'll wait a bit first.

[vovan]

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
All forms of relations should over time gravitate toward 0 from overall to things like trustworthyness, with negative reactions taking longer to cool.

Excellent suggestion. It makes sense that the reputation variables, and the attitude should over time tend to neutral. I'll add that as a suggestion for now, so that people could comment furhter on that idea.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Also, one type of treaty i did not see was a non-interferance pact.

I am not quite sure what kind of pact that would be. Like "Don't bother me, while I'm beating the crap out of your neighbor." Or like "Don't eneter my territory. EVER!" If you clarify the specific effects of that treaty, I am sure we could consider it.

And with that other stuff you wanted to add, fire away.

[Lord God Jinnai]

The non-interferance pact is saying 'i'm not gonna bother you if you don't bother me, reguardless of whatever other treaties each of us has made.' There would be two levels, one would be for direct intevention (ie i won't attack you, put sanctions on you, etc) and indirect which says in addition, i won't (atleast publicly) pressure my allies to do so toward you either.

Create Civ
This should be expanded to creating semi-automous regions with varying degrees of state control. From ideas like vassals/principalities to dominions to puppet monarchies.

On treaties, seems you missed something obvious from the section before it. Treaties regulating tarriffs and goods.

for land transfers, they could be made as loans such as was done with Panama and Hong Kong.

I would also add tributes to a possibility, just as you did threats and demands. Tributes should always raise you standing with the respective civ(s), but varying amounts. This might also be things like emergancy aid and such.

for potests, i'd add (in modern times, or however we'll be doing social advancement) human rights violations.

Active Intelligence: Stealing maps. This would grant you all the other civs know land as well as all there units for that turn. This may not include any vassals or whatnot though.

Also for planning specific missions, the effectiveness of the operation should of course be lowered by the opposing civs counterillenge angency. The player should however only get there end, so for example CivA wants to steal an item from CivB. He sees he has an 85% chance based on his overall resources, which he can raise a wee bit by prioritizing this mission, but at the cost of probably exposing much more of his network. Im either case, he does not know the extent of the counterintelligence's power. He may have some idea, but he won't know exactly how it will hinder him.

Also, even with success, the system may crumble. This might be because of some mistake of not covering their trail, a leak, etc.

[b]Feed false information to the revealed spy.[b]
You could also bribe the bribed character or kill him or release him.

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
The non-interferance pact is saying 'i'm not gonna bother you if you don't bother me, reguardless of whatever other treaties each of us has made.' There would be two levels, one would be for direct intevention (ie i won't attack you, put sanctions on you, etc) and indirect which says in addition, i won't (atleast publicly) pressure my allies to do so toward you either.

I'm thinking here of mutual non-aggression pacts, such as the ones that the Axis powers signed with each other right before the second world war. These could be of great importance when a civ feels it is powerful enough for one war, but not two.

There would have to be a major reputation hit if an attack occured while countries are bound by this treaty.

Unilateral termination of this type of treaty should be followed by a grace period, during which the two nations cannot fight. If they do, the aggressor takes a reputation hit only slightly less than an outright violation of the treaty.

I agree with LGJ that this type of diplomacy is needed.

[LDiCesare]

for potests, i'd add (in modern times, or however we'll be doing social advancement) human rights violations.

Reminds me of a board game called Junta, where you played the ruling party of a banana republic. There was a card calles "Petition estudiantine" (student petition), which is about the same idea. The explanatory text was: "No effect". It was still great fun to throw it at an opponent when you were mad at him. Does that really have any effect IRL? Or am I pessimistic?

Feeding false information would be fun, but some would be hard, particularly maps. On stealing maps, stealing the whole world map at once seems a bit much to me. Stealing the map of a province and/or of a group of armies would make more sense.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Feeding false information would be fun, but some would be hard, particularly maps. On stealing maps, stealing the whole world map at once seems a bit much to me. Stealing the map of a province and/or of a group of armies would make more sense.

Feeding false information would be imo like safeguard, but with only a certain chance of success and it would haveto be done before a specific operation was carried out. So, FE, You would say Feed False information and you'd have a list of choices. The more false info you feed, the more likely the enemy will find out about the compromise when they carry out an operation.

So lets say CivA wants to get map info on civB and civC, specifically military operations. Lets say both have compromised a spy from CivA.

CivB decides simply (before this has happened so simply give the spy false map info while CivC gives him false info on everything it can.

First off CivB spends less money than CivC, however, overall, CivC is more protected from active espionage.

When an action from CivA to steal maps happens, in both cases it fails with a message saying the information they've been recieving over time isn't accurate. In CivB case there would likely be 5% chance of detection while in CivC there would be much more because the spy has feeding much more false info and this more likely, once things get scruitinized, to be noticed.

Now, by the same token, if CivA decided to learn about there social conditions, CivB would simply haveto rely on its normal counter-intellegence ability while CivC would definatly succeed in giving false info. CivA would still be compromised by CivB, but not nessarily the case for CivC.

BTW the three maps should be Military Ops (current placement of military units), Landscape Maps (this option should disappear once the entire world is known), Infrastructure Maps.

[vovan]

First of all, concerning the non-aggression / non-interferance pacts:

I think we will not distinguish between the two. In other words, we will combine them into a single pact. (Or, more accurately: treaty clause.)

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
There would be two levels, one would be for direct intevention (ie i won't attack you, put sanctions on you, etc) and indirect which says in addition, i won't (atleast publicly) pressure my allies to do so toward you either.

Well, I am really not sure we want to go into such level of detail. (If we want to ever finish the game, that is. ) However, I think that if we discuss the things further, we can decide exactly how the non-agreesion pact will affect diplomatic relations.

[vovan]

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Create Civ
This should be expanded to creating semi-automous regions with varying degrees of state control. From ideas like vassals/principalities to dominions to puppet monarchies.

Once again, I think we need to draw the line somewhere. And that place, IMO should be around here. Believe me, I am not trying to kill your ideas, LGJ. It's just that I want to emphasize the point that some of these things can be very tricky to implement. And the more of them we have, the longer it takes to finish the game. On the other hand, I realize that since we are not coding a stricktly commercial game, we might want to keep this suggestion somewhere for one of the late releases.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
On treaties, seems you missed something obvious from the section before it. Treaties regulating tarriffs and goods.

I will include it. I thought that since I mentioned it under the trade and tarriffs, it would follow that such option exists under treaties, also. But since it is not obvious, I will add that. Thanks for pointing it out.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
for land transfers, they could be made as loans such as was done with Panama and Hong Kong.

This could be an interesting idea, though I don't quite see the utility of it in terms of strategy. Like when would you potentially loan your land to another nation? Or when would you take some land from a nation for a limited period of time?

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
I would also add tributes to a possibility, just as you did threats and demands. Tributes should always raise you standing with the respective civ(s), but varying amounts. This might also be things like emergancy aid and such.

Well, tributes are an interesting concept, actually. I think we don't need to define it as a separate concept, though. For example, if you are making a treaty, where one side offers something, and the other doesn't give anything in return, that is a tribute. Or a gift. The distinction would be made by who initiated the treaty discussion: if it wa the nation on the "receiving side of the deal" then it would be called a tribute. If it is the other civ, then that would be a gift. Is that structure satisfactory?

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
for p[r]otests, i'd add (in modern times, or however we'll be doing social advancement) human rights violations.

Unfortunately I have to agree with LDiCesare here. What effect does that have any way?

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Active Intelligence: Stealing maps. This would grant you all the other civs know land as well as all there units for that turn. This may not include any vassals or whatnot though.

That's right. That's the idea. I will include this clarification to the model.

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Also for planning specific missions, the effectiveness of the operation should of course be lowered by the opposing civs counterillenge angency. <snip>
Also, even with success, the system may crumble. This might be because of some mistake of not covering their trail, a leak, etc.

Exactly

Originally posted by Lord God Jinnai
Feed false information to the revealed spy.
You could also bribe the bribed character or kill him or release him.

I suppose then you suggest that the options for revealed bribed characters should be the same as for the revealed spies?

[Simon Loverix]

When you create a state, you also get to decide on what treaties will exist between that state and you. That way you can impose favorable tariffs and so on.

Diplomatic state war/peace/etc. might be part of a treaty, since there are several kinds of warfare (military, trade, espionage, ideological). So a peace treaty would include the clause: "no military attacks".
The absence of any treaty would then mean that the countries are not bound by any regulation in their behaviour towards each other.

Third and last: Coalition treaties should exist, since they are very useful to simplify diplomatic relations when the number of independent entities starts to grow. (Attic-Delian Sea Coalition, Kyoto Protocol, the WW2-Allies, the Celtic resistance against the Roman invasion,...) They are the same as normal treaties, except that anyone that fulfills the conditions in the treaty can join it.