{The List} - Diplomacy

[TechWins]

All Diplomacy related ideas will go here:

I don't have much time to discuss this in detail, but I feel that there should be more to diplomacy than in previous Civ games. In Civ3 right now you are basically either at peace or at war. Granted there is 'feelings' towards each Civ, but they simply don't play a big enough role. I believe that there should be levels of engagement, such as cease-fire, allied peace, neutral, etc.. I'll go into detail later on.


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Diplomacy idea content cannot be included due to the message length restraints. Refer to the bottom of the page for obtaining the .doc file.

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[old comments]
Ok, I believe I got most of the ideas listed. I still need to go through and try to summarize and/or make them more clear if at possible. Plus group similar ideas and concepts together. I'm going to credit the idea of allowing unit trading as a general consensus. Sorry for taking so long to even update the list to this point, but I will try in the coming days to make the list more precise. Please feel free to make any comments on ideas you feel should not be in there.

This is the basic summary for all the ideas:

A streamlined diplomacy room and bargaining table that emphasizes showing information and not based on intense graphics. Allow more indepth deals that hold more meaning between not just two civs but two or more civs at one time. Make it possible to trade units between several different civs. The relationship between two or more civs should play a larger impact and be more broad. Territory and borders need to be negotiable between two or more civs. All of this combined to provide a more distinct, strategic, and exciting diplomatic part of the game.

It was thrown together without much organization but for now it shall do
[/old comments]


It’s been 7 months since I last updated this thread, however, I don’t think my absence made much of a difference. Not many more ideas were added to the list since my last update; albeit, I apologize for not taking the time to update the list periodically. I’m only uploading the list to show that I will make an attempt to finish the Diplomacy portion of the list by sometime in September. I’ve added all (thought-to-be) ideas from January 14, 2004, my last update, that are in this particular thread, then thrown in the ideas from two separate ideas which can been through hyperlinks towards the bottom of the list. Since Drachasor made a very well entailed response to the list, I made his comments into subsidiary portions of an idea that it curtails to. I’m going to try to intergrate his comments into the idea itself in due time. Also, I need to organize the list into well definded ideas, which is going to be the most daunting task of all. If anyone would be willing to help in any fashion I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.


**The .doc can be downloaded on the 4th page of this thread.**

[Inverse Icarus]

UNIT TRADING.

i'm going to leave that in it's own post for effect.

[gopher]

How about unit trading for a certain number of turns?
Or establishing claims for various tiles or areas?

[statusperfect]

Give us casus belli and stability to prevent too much backstabbing and making long-term diplomatic planning an option. Also make the game show via the foreign advisor what you can do to increase relations with civs you have bad casus belli with.

[theCzar]

The UN should be expanded, to allow for Alpha Centauri style political world, most powerful races get vetoes, or maybe the first countries to get the requiste tech (ie, founding members), penalise war mongerers, mediate peace settlements (maybe you could apply to the UN for help if you're being pressed)

there's a million ideas based on it, just look at real life.

The ability to use/garrison allied cities would be nice, fix mutual protection exploit, where the aggressor's pact is activated when the defender attacks in the aggressor's territory, i always felt it was a bit dumb

[Lorizael]

You need to be able to ask for anything in diplomacy. You should be able to get a civilization to sign a peace treaty with another civilization or ask that a civilization stop building certain kinds of units.

[Optimizer]

Keep the bargaining table. It was superb.

You should also introduce some kind of vassalage, that could benefit both parts. The vassal civilization would pay maintenance for all units that the master civ stations in its territory, but the master suffers a great loss of reputation if the vassal loses any city to an enemy.

[hexagonian]

I already posted this in another thread, but it will go here too...

Haggling is nice, but stick a limit on it. Make it so you can haggle 3 times per turn to get it right, and if you do not accept on the third turn, there is a 5-10 turn diplomacy blackout on that matter.

[Fosse]

Get rid of the trade "advisor" who allows you to get the best deal possible down to the last gpt.

Multilateral diplomacy is a MUST. Both as a UN in the late game, and as three or more at one table throughout the game.

Surrender needs to be put back in (from SMAC), and durations of things need to be negotiable: Why 20 turns for every deal? What if 15 would be better?

[J-S]

Ok... here goes...

1) Bargaining table format: first of all, like the previous post said: keep the overall negotiation format in Civ3. As in, requested techs/units/items/actions/etc. on one side and offered techs/etc. on the other.

2) Additional items in bargaining table:

• a) unit trade: when buying the unit you must specify the location/city where it should be delivered.
  b) build city improvements: this is for having one civ build an imp "x" in it's city "y" for another civ's city "z". For example, suppose I cannot build a hospital yet but the chinese can. I can offer to pay them 100 gold for one of their cities to build a hospital in one of my cities. When a city is building an imp for another civ's city, in the queue a message will appear indicating this ("Hospital, 15 turns, for city x of the chinese"). When the imp is finished, the imp will appear in the other city and a message will appear. Ofcourse, the production cost of building imps for other cities will increase depending on the distance between the two cities.
  c) production/food trade: shields/food should be tradeable from one city to another. For example, I offer the Spanish to locate 100 shields per turn from Athens to Madrid in exchange for 200 gold.
  d) terrain tiles: this way, the terrain tile chosen will become part of the civ's territory.
  e) military bases: have a civ allow the installation of a millitary base (fortress) in one of their tiles in exchange for x gold.

3) Automatic foreign relations manager: be able to have your foreign advisor manage the general aspects of the relations with other civs automatically, giving him general indications. For example, instruct him to "maintain good relations with the chinese". Then, if the chinese for some reason are beginning to distrust us or just start of as neutral, a message will appear advising the player to give them a gift, etc. Another function could be "negotiate trade of extra resources for best price", always confirming with the player to finish the transaction. As in, I have an extra iron on my hands, and the foreign relations manager would automatically negotiate with every civ the best possible price for that extra resource.
It's really tedious to have to check every turn for relations with each and every civ... and eventually I end up not talking to them unless it's for a get-that-damn-settler-outta-my-territory declarations.

[Cras]

Pretty much any changes to the diplomacy engine would be a welcome upgrade as its current incarnation is unacceptable. If in the new civ game the diplomacy engine resembles the current model not in appearances but ability would be a major disappointment in my humble opinion.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by theCzar
The UN should be expanded, to allow for Alpha Centauri style political world, most powerful races get vetoes, or maybe the first countries to get the requiste tech (ie, founding members), penalise war mongerers, mediate peace settlements (maybe you could apply to the UN for help if you're being pressed)

there's a million ideas based on it, just look at real life.

The ability to use/garrison allied cities would be nice, fix mutual protection exploit, where the aggressor's pact is activated when the defender attacks in the aggressor's territory, i always felt it was a bit dumb

I think the UN is fine - it is quite realistic (except a little too powerful).

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by J-S
b) build city improvements: this is for having one civ build an imp "x" in it's city "y" for another civ's city "z". For example, suppose I cannot build a hospital yet but the chinese can. I can offer to pay them 100 gold for one of their cities to build a hospital in one of my cities. When a city is building an imp for another civ's city, in the queue a message will appear indicating this ("Hospital, 15 turns, for city x of the chinese"). When the imp is finished, the imp will appear in the other city and a message will appear. Ofcourse, the production cost of building imps for other cities will increase depending on the distance between the two cities.

3) Automatic foreign relations manager: be able to have your foreign advisor manage the general aspects of the relations with other civs automatically, giving him general indications. For example, instruct him to "maintain good relations with the chinese". Then, if the chinese for some reason are beginning to distrust us or just start of as neutral, a message will appear advising the player to give them a gift, etc. Another function could be "negotiate trade of extra resources for best price", always confirming with the player to finish the transaction. As in, I have an extra iron on my hands, and the foreign relations manager would automatically negotiate with every civ the best possible price for that extra resource.
It's really tedious to have to check every turn for relations with each and every civ... and eventually I end up not talking to them unless it's for a get-that-damn-settler-outta-my-territory declarations.

I think I really like those two ideas.

[DarkCloud]

Unit Trading is a must, as are border agreements where the nations can trade land for units or land for cities, etc. and can basically carve out borders between each others nations.

Also, if there are going to be minor civs- I would suggest that the major civs can, if 2 or more of them discover the minor civs and the 2 are at peace with each other, carve out the land of the minor civ between them (Like the Europeans colonized and carved out africa) and agree upon the winnings if they conquer "x" amount of territory

[Kuciwalker]

I would suggest that the major civs can, if 2 or more of them discover the minor civs and the 2 are at peace with each other, carve out the land of the minor civ between them (Like the Europeans colonized and carved out africa)

Or Poland

Make it so you can do this with MAJOR civs as well