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**Locutus** · March 17, 2002, 17:36

Re: NewDiplomod.slc comments....

Originally posted by Dale
I'll start the thread.

Good

2. I conquored the Civ next to me (the capital was within 10 squares) on turn 20. It had no defenders, it was the only city the civ had, so I'd killed the lot of them, and I get told they surrendered.

Just seemed funny they can surrender when none of them are alive.

Ow, forgot that one last time. I get this message every single time I conquer a city, but the civ never actually surrenders (but so far it shouldn't have so that's a good thing)...

I'm with David here in saying, they're too powerful. It killed a game for me last night.

Agreed.

**Dale** · March 18, 2002, 00:38

BTW, for those who want the greeting and declare war messages, open NewDiplomod.slc and put these at the very top before anything else:

Code:

///////////////////////////////////
// Greeting message
///////////////////////////////////

MessageBox 'DIPLOMACY_POPUP_GREETING' {
	Text(ID_ACTION_STRING);
	Show();
}

///////////////////////////////////
// Declare war message
///////////////////////////////////

MessageBox 'DIPLOMACY_POPUP_DECLARE_WAR' {
	Text(ID_POPUP_DECLARE_WAR_ANNC);
	Show();
}

Peter:
You need to include these two messageboxes from diplomacy.slc or you don't get the messages.

Hope this helps mate.

**The Big Mc** · March 18, 2002, 09:09

RESEARCH PACT:
I'm with David here in saying, they're too powerful. It killed a game for me last night. I was in a tri-nation research pact where all three of us had the pacts with each other. We literally FLEW through the tech tree. Hate to be insulting, but it felt like I'd loaded up Civ3 with it's AI-Tech-trading V1.17 patch issue.

Well it may be bad for some people but it seams to open a door for me in my scenario.

Where can I get the code from without having to search all threads in the last few weeks because there has been one hell of a population explosion around here.

**Immortal Wombat** · March 18, 2002, 09:35

Cradle v1.3 page 2

**Peter Triggs** · March 18, 2002, 18:45

This was going to go into the Cradle thread, But since Dale's started a new one I'll put it here.

First of all, I didn't *really* mean for Hex to pack all those files up as a mod. Some of them were for him to have a look at and maybe try out on his own. That's in part why people have been noticing such strange things happening. So at the bottom of this I'll attach a version that should basically affect nothing but the diplomacy set-up.

Locutus:

I got a message 'no tresspass treaty expires in three turns/has expired', when it was really peace treaty that was expiring.

I've had a look for this and can't find the bug. I'll keep looking.

- AIs are very eager to get embassies with me but there's not a chance in hell I'll ever get an embassy from them via diplomacy (ended up sending diplomats across the globe).

Did you try offering gold?

BTW, it's always best to make a request first and an offer second. The AI can only counter the second proposal and I've tried to greatly increase the number of counters it makes. More details below.

You should probably disable the EndTurn event when sending out messageboxes in diplomatic negotiations.

That's what I've been looking for for the last two months! I never thought that "CantEndTurn" function would be good for anything. It's not just the messageboxes, it's the way the game will go on to the next AIciv's turn before you've had a chance to respond to the current proposal. Thanks Wouter, it should be just a question of making sure that I put "CantEndTurn(0)" in the right event so the game can continue.

At the very least you ought to give a different message if the tresspass treaty is not a mutual one.

I've put in some different messages for when their pledge not to trespass on your lands will/does expire. Haven't yet verified that they're working properly though.

At one point I noticed that I was all of a sudden at war with 2 new enemies (next to the 2 with whom I was already at war earlier) but I had never gotten any sort of warning about this. When I asked for Cease-Fire, the AIs gladly accepted; it looks like they weren't particularly happy with being at war with me... Bug?

Probably they had military pacts with the civs you were at war with and were responding to the request honor military pact. I increased the priorities for that. I'll see if I can put some messages in for when this happens. As for them accepting the ceasefire, that's more difficult. Have to think about how to handle that.

Science treaties which are supposed to last forever in reality don't do so.

When the AI agrees to a treaty you should get a message telling you how long a term they've accepted and they should never accept an unlimited science treaty. Looks like it didn't send the message.

Actually I should take the "forever" option out. I left it in in case someone wants to do something with it but it really defeats the whole point of having fixed term treaties. BTW, what do you think of the treaty lengths? Does 30 and 60 turns seem reasonable?

Hexagonian:

Embassies How they work:

Once both you and the AIciv have discovered Dynasty, on any given turn there's a 10% chance the AIciv will request an embassy in your land and a 5% chance that, if it likes you (Effective Regard > 300) it will offer you an embassy in it's land. If you counter it's request with a request that you be allowed to establish an embassy in his land, there's a 25% chance that it will accept.

If you request an embassy from them but at the same time offer them one on your land, it will accept provided that it likes you. (You can increase your chances by choosing the appropriate 'tone' you use, as on p.57 of the manual. This applies to EVERY proposal you make. I've been meaning to put some messages in to tell the Human when he's been successful at this: "Nice one, Sire! Your smooth negotiating technique made the difference between success and failure." Or something. ) If it doesn't really like you (but still doesn't want war) and you're relatively rich it will counter with a request for gold, otherwise it will reject.

If you just request an embassy and it doesn't *really* like you (Effective Regard > 400) then, if you're poor it will reject otherwise it will counter with a request for gold. If it does really like you it will accept.

If you request an embassy from them but at the same time offer them gold or something, things get more complicated.

a. There should always be some sort of cost to establish an embassy, and actually the cost can be high (500-1500 gold). I like the fact that there were actually some counterproposals when setting up the embassy, but at the same time, there were instances where it was automatically accepted, no questions asked.

Increasing the effective regard setting for when the AIciv offers you an embassy should force the Human to negotiate more and put him in a situation where the AIciv can counter with a request for gold. Likewise increasing the effective regard level for when it really likes you will make it counter more. BTW, the ammount of gold the AIciv asks for depends on how much gold you have relative to them. If you're trying to sit on a gold mountain later in the game, things can get pretty expensive.

I've increased both of the effective regard settings to see if this works.

b. In combo with the above, I would suggest making the enable advance to be either Bureaucracy or Republic (in Cradle). This will make diplomats of some value, and will not hand the human player the store right off the back, and actually makes for a nicely-defined goal for the player in the game.

I was thinking this myself. It always adds to the fun when you achieve a goal. I'll change the enabling advance to Bureaucracy.

c. After a war with a civ, I attempted to establish an embassy again, which was quickly accepted. However, in checking with the diplomacy box, I did not have the embassy. Several attempts to re-establish the embassy resulted in the same thing – in fact on the second attempt, I got back the message that I already had an embassy up and running. Also, it probably is not a good thing to be able to so quickly establish an embassy after a war – (I know historically that is not the case though – but from a gameplay standpoint, might be more challenging). This is also where having a few diplomats around can be of some value too, because they wouldn’t be under that part of the code (or would they???)

This shouldn't have happened. Whenever a ceasefire is accepted, diplomatic relations (mutual embassies) should be established automatically. You hadn't just reloaded SLIC by any chance had you?

This was one of the first things I did actually. Last Summer I had some very simple code that would establish mutual embassies after a war. It was really a follow on from CTP1 because there I noticed a correlation between AIcivs that were diplomatically isolated and those that were scientifically underdeveloped. It's not so important in CTP2 since we can now control the conditions under which they offer and accept embassies. I've never been a fan of lugging diplomats across the map but it would be another plus for the Bureaucracy goal: once you have Bureaucracy and you sign a ceasefire you automatically have mutual embassies. Or maybe it should be a different advance. What do other people think?

Treaties/Tech Trade

Straight up Tech trading should always have a counterproposal of a request for Tech from the AI (This seemed to be the case). At the same time I would like to see that any Human/AI tech trading also come with a request from the AI for gold or maps at the same time (if possible) – in essence making the AI the one who always benefits more from the dealings.

I haven't touched the 'exchange advances' case; that's the default code. I think that it's set up so the AI almost always gets the better deal.

OTOH, if you just request an advance and you're ahead of them in science you'll get a message saying that they want something back. If you're behind them in science but richer than they are, they'll ask for gold. Otherwise, they reject. There are lots of other possibilities when you accompany your request with an offer.

For example, have you tried buying an advance? If you request an advance and offer gold (you want to buy it) then: If they really like you (Effective Regard > 500 in this case), you can get it for 'what it costs' ("sender_science_result"). If they just like you, you have to pay a 20% premium, and otherwise they reject. These "sender_science_result"s are produced by some of the game's hard coded functions and can get to be pretty big numbers, you're not going to see people buying a lot of advances. But at least now it's a possibility. One thought here, though, is to tie this possibility to a goal: perhaps you can't do it until you have both Banking and Classical Education (Universities).

How Research Pacts Work The conditions under which an AIciv will offer you a research pact are largely determined by the Difficulty Level of the game, except that scientists are very slightly more disposed to make this deal. (Likewise, economists go for trade pacts and militarists like military pacts; but only very slightly more than anybody else.)

So, they're all done with basically the same linear function 90-10*NDM_DIFF_LEVEL and the basic trigger condition here is

Code:

     if (  KnowledgeRank(player[0])< (90+PersBonus-10*NDM_DIFF_LEVEL)
     && KnowledgeRank(player[1])< (90-10*NDM_DIFF_LEVEL)

where PersBonus is either 5 or 0 depending on whether or not the AI player[0] is a scientist. Suppose he's not. On Easy, NDM_DIFF_LEVEL is 2 so providing that both players have a knowledge rank thats lower than 80, the AIciv will propose a research treaty. On Impossible, NDM_DIFF_LEVEL is 5 so that both players would have to have a knowledge rank below 40 before the AIciv will make the offer.

The conditions under which the AIciv will accept the offer are basically the same. And, actually, so are the conditions under which one AIciv will offer the pact to another.

I was flying through the tech tree. As a player, I feel that tech is probably the most important aspect of the game, and I do not want it to come so cheaply to me. In fact, I would like to see the science pact disabled, because it becomes a feature that a player can exploit. (I had a multiple AI Science pact going at the same time too). From playing PBEM, Science Pacting was a necessity, but this was against other human players who all would do it. The only way to give the AI a chance in this setup is to make sure that it is doing it with the other AI players too. This ends up accelerating tech progression too fast and IMO, ruins the flow of the game. (You have no time to build what an advance gives you because you are already at the next level)

Basically I agree but I wouldn't go so far as to say that research pacts should be disabled. They are simply a great way of letting AIcivs that are behind, catch up. They can function as what Brian Reynolds called a 'rubber band' in the game so that the poor get richer.

One problem, though, is with those functions I just defined, maybe changing player[1]'s trigger condition to 35-5*NDM_DIFF_LEVEL would work better. This should make research pacts much less common: for example, in order for an AIciv to accept a Human's proposed research pact on Medium difficulty, the Human's KnowledgeRank would have to be 25/100. Likewise when there's two AIcivs involved: one of them would have to be way behind.

Another possibility is to stick in an 'age' or advance condition so that AIcivs won't really offer/accept Research treaties very much until you've accomplished something like Classical Education or Renaissance.

Yet another possibility is to put in a condition where the AIcivs will only start offering each other research pacts when the Human is the Knowledge leader.

I think I better do a bit of experimenting with this and see what I can come up with, but in the meantime I'll change both of the functions on the trigger conditions so that hopefully this shouldn't be a problem.

Other

One thing that became clear to me is that a peaceful AI is a militarily weak AI, and can easily be exploited. Dale’s Diplomod (3.5) that is in Cradle inadvertently does a good thing in locking the AI in a warmongor state, because all the AI players have a huge military. ... This may be the reason why you did not see the stacks roaming around in your games either – because there weren’t a lot of units. I went into the other AI queue list and they were all building city improvements, and all had small militaries. Granted, this was only for approximately 150 turns, (before the crash). A possible fix may be to go into the BuildingBuild list and rearrange the priorities, bumping up unit production near the top of the lists. (BTW, I ran the test with my old BuildingBuild list, which doesn’t have the added layer of BUILDINGS_START)

I can see how Locutus, who was using the experimental CRAT_BuildListSequences.txt would have gotten fewer units, but if you were using CRA_BuildListSequences.txt you should have got exactly the same building behaviour you'd get in a normal Cradle game. This is the file that puts the various buildlists together and I can't see that it's affected by anything in the diplomacy system.

Dale:

About the surrender messages (see also the Readme): I changed the trigger conditions for the surrender handler according to a suggestion of Dave's. But I left the conditions that trigger the surrender message unchanged. This way you can see the difference between the two conditions. If you're at war with another proper civ (not just a one city job) and you get the surrender message but they don't surrender, that means it's the point at which they would have surrendered had the handler been triggered by a difference in MilitaryRank of 25.

Thanks for reminding me about those other messages. I haven't had them in the file for so long, I almost forgot they existed.

Sorry this has been so long, but here's the Zip:

Attached Files

newdip_3_18.zip (79.8 KB, 129 views)

**The Big Mc** · March 19, 2002, 06:02

thanks for the help

**hexagonian** · March 19, 2002, 13:52

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
First of all, I didn't *really* mean for Hex to pack all those files up as a mod. Some of them were for him to have a look at and maybe try out on his own. That's in part why people have been noticing such strange things happening. So at the bottom of this I'll attach a version that should basically affect nothing but the diplomacy set-up.

I packaged this as a Beta test, mainly to get some feedback from players as a means to help you also close up the loopholes - I guess I should have more strongly worded the post to say that this is very much a work in process. I apologize if this was not your wishes Peter.

Still, there is a benefit in having people take a look at it, from the standpoint that this file can be analyzed by the players, and more importantly, the SLICers. More feedback can only make this Diplomacy Mod better - this coding is incredibly complex and can only benefit from different perspectives.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Embassies How they work:

Once both you and the AIciv have discovered Dynasty, on any given turn there's a 10% chance the AIciv will request an embassy in your land and a 5% chance that, if it likes you (Effective Regard > 300) it will offer you an embassy in it's land. If you counter it's request with a request that you be allowed to establish an embassy in his land, there's a 25% chance that it will accept.

If you request an embassy from them but at the same time offer them one on your land, it will accept provided that it likes you. (You can increase your chances by choosing the appropriate 'tone' you use, as on p.57 of the manual. This applies to EVERY proposal you make. I've been meaning to put some messages in to tell the Human when he's been successful at this: "Nice one, Sire! Your smooth negotiating technique made the difference between success and failure." Or something. ) If it doesn't really like you (but still doesn't want war) and you're relatively rich it will counter with a request for gold, otherwise it will reject.

If you just request an embassy and it doesn't *really* like you (Effective Regard > 400) then, if you're poor it will reject otherwise it will counter with a request for gold. If it does really like you it will accept.

One thing I noted was that the AI was sending me requests every turn until I accepted the proposal to allow the embassy. And I did get a requst for some gold when I requested an embassy in another civ. (this was good). But if the AI is reluctant to accept your proposal, does repeating the request every turn eventually give you what you want - in essence, playing the numbers?

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
I was thinking this myself. It always adds to the fun when you achieve a goal. I'll change the enabling advance to Bureaucracy.

Actually, for playtest purposes, you can keep it at Dynasty, so that will give more gametime to see how the model is working. When this gets to the point of being fully integrated into Cradle,you can make the switch then. At this point in time, the greater concern is to see how the AI is handling the SLIC coding.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
This shouldn't have happened. Whenever a ceasefire is accepted, diplomatic relations (mutual embassies) should be established automatically. You hadn't just reloaded SLIC by any chance had you?

No, I just ran the game - hitting endturn...

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
I've never been a fan of lugging diplomats across the map but it would be another plus for the Bureaucracy goal: once you have Bureaucracy and you sign a ceasefire you automatically have mutual embassies. Or maybe it should be a different advance. What do other people think?

After playing SMAC, I appreciated the model that was set up in that game over the CTP model (contact established FULL diplomatic discussion). In fact, in CTP2, I ended up neglecting diplomacy because it was such a hassle to establish embassies. I do think that players having to start out with a very primative diplomacy model (use of Diplomats) and then moving into the more complex model (your code) is a great way to increase the playability of CTP2, because it adds another goal to shoot for.

And this can be open to opinions as to what should be the enable advance. I do feel that it should not be an early game one though.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
I haven't touched the 'exchange advances' case; that's the default code. I think that it's set up so the AI almost always gets the better deal.

OTOH, if you just request an advance and you're ahead of them in science you'll get a message saying that they want something back. If you're behind them in science but richer than they are, they'll ask for gold. Otherwise, they reject. There are lots of other possibilities when you accompany your request with an offer.

It should cost A LOT of gold to buy advances, because, IMO, gold in the Rush Buy fund was one of the least important elements of the (unmodded) game.

One of the really nice features of your Updater code is that it puts the Rush Buy fund to use - something that was sorely needed, because it was too easy for the human to build up a mountain of gold. In the same way, paying gold for advances should force the player to have to make a choice - save for unit update costs or for advances. I guess I do not want the player to be able to do both easily.

In earlier versions of Cradle, players were reporting back that it was still too easy to get a mountain of gold - I have since modified some elements of the game to reduce the gold intake, and have yet to hear back if the cuts were severe enough.

One thing that may be done is to put a higher gold purchase cost on the very early advances (3-5x), because they are really cheap, and then gradually move the modifier down to (1.2-2x) to later advances to adjust for their increased cost. It should always be more than the cost of the advance though.

On the other hand, the thing to remember is that the in the current Cradle setup, the AI does not really need the gold from the RB fund because it is not paying for upgrade costs. So the Human is somewhat at a disadvantage already.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
For example, have you tried buying an advance? If you request an advance and offer gold (you want to buy it) then: If they really like you (Effective Regard > 500 in this case), you can get it for 'what it costs' ("sender_science_result"). If they just like you, you have to pay a 20% premium, and otherwise they reject. These "sender_science_result"s are produced by some of the game's hard coded functions and can get to be pretty big numbers, you're not going to see people buying a lot of advances. But at least noit's a possibility. One thought here, though, is to tie this possibility to a goal: perhaps you can't do it until you have both Banking and Classical Education (Universities).

I hadn't tried buying an advance because I was benefitting so much from the Science Pacts.

A good suggestion about an enable advance to start buying advances by using gold, and I would tend to push it back from the early game too - I want to continue to maintain a very difficult early/mid game. Your enable advance suggestion (Class Ed/Banking) is a good starting point.

Still, I would like to have the ability to get an advance from time to time in the early game via trading advances for advances. What I wouldn't like to see is the human player being able to easily exploit a trading system (a la civ3's tech whoring) to be able to easily catch up/overtake a targeted AI civ in tech via trading. Some kind of cap may need to be in place limiting how often this trading can occur.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Basically I agree but I wouldn't go so far as to say that research pacts should be disabled. They are simply a great way of letting AIcivs that are behind, catch up. They can function as what Brian Reynolds called a 'rubber band' in the game so that the poor get richer.

The main difference in Tech Pacting and Tech Trading seems to be that Tech Pacting accelerates the advance rate so much faster than Trading does. That and Trading does not allow for a strong civ to trade with a weak civ, because the weak civ has no tech to offer in a trade.

It's not so bad when the weak AIs can pact to close the gap, and I am generally in favor of AI/AI pacting. But what I do not want to happen is if Human Player/civ x are both scaping the bottom of the power graph - both also are not in the same map locale either. Through a tech pact, they are able to cut the tech gap very quickly - then Human player uses his newfound advantage to wipe out a couple of neighbor civs. The AI cannot take a long-term strategic approach the same way a human can.

Even if this forces the suddenly weaker AI civs to start tech pacting, then the flow of the game becomes too fast, and players are researching nukes after 300 turns. (BTW, this is the result of effective tech pacting/trading in the PBEM games)

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Yet another possibility is to put in a condition where the AIcivs will only start offering each other research pacts when the Human is the Knowledge leader.

I think Wes did something like this in CTP1 MedMod.

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Other
I can see how Locutus, who was using the experimental CRAT_BuildListSequences.txt would have gotten fewer units, but if you were using CRA_BuildListSequences.txt you should have got exactly the same building behaviour you'd get in a normal Cradle game. This is the file that puts the various buildlists together and I can't see that it's affected by anything in the diplomacy system.

The more I think of this, the more this may be a side benefit of the Warmongor status that is in Diplo3.5, because the AI is programmed to build more military when in a War state.

Thanks for all the work on this Peter

**Pedrunn** · March 25, 2002, 18:47

Are you guys planning any adjustment or add to this NewDiplomod? Anybody saw any huge problem?
It is safe to fully implement to my mod?

**Locutus** · March 25, 2002, 19:30

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
I've had a look for this and can't find the bug. I'll keep looking.

I'll have a look at the code as well, one of these days. Not just to track down this particular bug but for general advise and debugging as well.

Did you try offering gold?

BTW, it's always best to make a request first and an offer second. The AI can only counter the second proposal and I've tried to greatly increase the number of counters it makes. More details below.

I tried offering just about everything except cities. And yes, I know how to conduct diplomacy, thank you very much. It was me, after all, who wrote the 'Diplomacy for dummies' guide for the MedMod, remember?

(Don't worry, no offense taken)

That's what I've been looking for for the last two months!

Glad I could help

Probably they had military pacts with the civs you were at war with and were responding to the request honor military pact. I increased the priorities for that. I'll see if I can put some messages in for when this happens.

That would be very useful, yes.

When the AI agrees to a treaty you should get a message telling you how long a term they've accepted and they should never accept an unlimited science treaty. Looks like it didn't send the message.

Okay, that explains a lot.

Actually I should take the "forever" option out. I left it in in case someone wants to do something with it but it really defeats the whole point of having fixed term treaties. BTW, what do you think of the treaty lengths? Does 30 and 60 turns seem reasonable?

30 and 60 sounds reasonable but I like the unlimited option as well, saves a lot of hassle, not having to refresh treaties every few turns (with lots of opponents this could end up being a lot of work).

**Immortal Khan** · April 2, 2002, 10:21

Originally posted by Pedrunn
"Kill a man and you are a murder.
Kill thousands and you are a conquer.
Kill all and you are a God!"

"Kill a man and you are a murderer.
Kill thousands and you are a terrorist.
Kill all and you are a God of nothing."
Immortal Khan

**child of Thor** · April 2, 2002, 10:46

hmm...you are probablly right, still you can't blame pedrunn, he was just qouting someone.....OT section maybe

**Pedrunn** · April 2, 2002, 11:22

Actually i got this signature from the phrases section of a Scientific Magazine.
The only thing i know is that Jean Rostand is a french biologist.
I had this signature even before the terrosts attacks and i always thought it had a historic true if you think about the imperialists leaders of the past.
After all someone is a conquer after killing thousands only if he keeps the ones left under his control but if someone kill thousands to intimadate or to threat he is a terrorist. And to kill all he must be a god to accomplish this act.
The truth is that everything is relative depending on where you are aiming at. This sentence may be right or wrong depending on the situation.

Yet you must confess that this sentence is great when applied to strategy games

.

**Immortal Khan** · April 2, 2002, 22:25

I'm not blaming Perdunn. His quote (like he said) is relative to who is saying and what it relates too. But, I do have to add, a God does not only destroy/kill but also has to create.

**Pedrunn** · April 3, 2002, 07:57

Unless it is the god of death and destruction

Note: god with small letter like the ancient ones.

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