Locked alliances

[Vlado]

Will it be possible to have locked temporary alliances? Eg If I threaten somebody will they be able to ask for 20 turns of non-agression, and that this will be locked, hence impossible to break?

[Kuciwalker]

No, that would stink. There should just be a rep-hit.

"Locked alliances" refer to sides set at the beginning of a scenario.

[PLATO]

So there will be no ability to lock an alliance during a regular game?

[Vlado]

The reason I ask is for multiplayer situations. If you're playing something other then elimination there could be times when this was useful. If somebody offers a peacetreaty in exchange for tech, cities etc I know that it's useless to take since he'll slaughter me anyway. But if I got 10 turns when he couldn't attack then I might consider it.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by PLATO
So there will be no ability to lock an alliance during a regular game?

Not that I can think of. "Locked alliance" means "alliance that cannot be renegociated". I can't imagine a Civ proposing a locked alliance to someone else. Mutual Protection Pacts is the nearer we get.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Not that I can think of. "Locked alliance" means "alliance that cannot be renegociated". I can't imagine a Civ proposing a locked alliance to someone else. Mutual Protection Pacts is the nearer we get.

Well after thinking about it, it does make more sense that way. With a MPP you certainly have to work to keep allied nations happy if you want to extend the pact. I guess a locked alliance in a regular game would make military victory pretty difficult as well!

Maybe a middle step like regional alliance locked for 40-50 turns? Just seems like you should be able to achieve something more durable than an MPP.

[Kuciwalker]

Outside of startup conditions in a scenario, there shouldn't be treaties you CAN'T break. Just ones that will give some penalty if you do.

[Fosse]

And here I've always wanted the MPP to be LESS durable. I've always wanted the allied civ to get a pop up when his pactmate is attacked giving him the option to honor the pact or not.

Violating the pact would be a rep hit (except from the civ you chose not to attack!), and make people less likely to sign MPPs in the future, but it would give you the option of not declaring war on a major superpower who decided to take someone out on the 19th turn of an MPP you only signed to get a tech!

[Vlado]

As I said I only think that it could be viable in multiplayer when there's other humans involved. With the computer I see no such need.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Vlado
As I said I only think that it could be viable in multiplayer when there's other humans involved. With the computer I see no such need.

That could be "team games", where teams are made from the start. There is indeed something very relieving when you know your human partner cannot betray you

[statusperfect]

I think the words we are looking for are "maximum customizability"

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Fosse
And here I've always wanted the MPP to be LESS durable. I've always wanted the allied civ to get a pop up when his pactmate is attacked giving him the option to honor the pact or not.

Violating the pact would be a rep hit (except from the civ you chose not to attack!), and make people less likely to sign MPPs in the future, but it would give you the option of not declaring war on a major superpower who decided to take someone out on the 19th turn of an MPP you only signed to get a tech!

Yes, didn't you have the option in Civ2? I HATE the little popup "we're at war now because of some stupid buggers on another continent, yay!"

[dexters]

When the locked alliance thing first came up, I was thinking along the lines of a large scale MPP type agreement among several Civs which can be negotiated in-game. This would lead to those cold war type scenarios where civs line up on both sides, with some flexibility of someone leaving. The key here is, you don't know who is on which side until you play the game and you actually have to work at getting an alliance. Being a world power naturally attracts an orbit of weaker allies around you which you can then move forward and form a formal alliance with.


As it turns out, it's something you set for a scenario. I'm just not too keen on it and about half my interest for Conquests has gone with it. What I want is a more involving diplomacy system as well as more intricate trading system.

Atari and Firaxis should take a hint from Maxis and EA's Sim City 4 Expansion Pack. It's basically an XP with a lot of things fans have been looking for... not what is easy for them to add in. They even threw in four lane avenue roads, something that has been a fan request for years now and has never been done before because it is actually very difficult to program. They are also selling the game for $20 USD and giving all North Americans a $10 rebate if they have bought SC4 and SCRushHour

[Kuciwalker]

What should be added in are Alliances of multiple members. Every member in an alliance has an RoP and MPP with every other member. Members can't negotiate peace from a war declared by the alliance without leaving it. When the alliance makes peace with a nation, all of the members make peace.

[dexters]

Yea. I think the CivIII bilateral (two Civ) alliance and trading system is terribly outdated.

I don't expect intricate multi-party diplomacy options that would require a super computer to process, but some imagination and boundery pushing seems to be in order, for Firaxis to introduce a limited multi-party agreement system that will be easy to enforce, easy for the CPU to processes and won't be too exploitable.