Diplomacy thread v.2

[Mark_Everson]

Originally posted by Mikael
Why has manurein's model been abandoned?

He disappeared for a bit. I had always had concerns that his model was too computationally intensive compared to the extra fun it would give the player. Rodrigo showed up, and was interested in doing a model that was almost as rich from the player's perspective, but required less resources.

[Simon Loverix]

Hi Mikael, I have a few things that might be added..

Treaty components:
- Make it possible to include if..then clauses in treaties, like 'when I acquire uranium somehow, you'll get the first (or only) opportunity to buy it'
- laborers (slaves or others) eg. in the seventies, Italy delivered workforces to work in the mines, in return they gave part of the coal yields.
-treaty with another government (limited)
-join an international treaty/organization (eg. UN, Kyoto protocol)
-respecting human rights

When a treaty is considered to help the common interest of a group or all civs, it should be beneficial for reputation (human rights, non-proliferation)

Overt spying: agitation and propaganda pro/contra any government, ethnicity, religion, war

A congress, (like Vienna 1815 after Napoleon) to make drastic changes.

[Lord God Jinnai]

In cases of civil wars and/or revolutions, the new nations should be alloed to reject or continue with the treaties made by the parent country, in either case (accept or reject) there is no special penalty or advantage, except with those countries you canceled with perhaps (minor relations drop...not serious....or long lasting).

I have some more things i'd like to explain, but i haveto wait for the new social model to be posted for everyone to view.

[Mikael]

Simon and Lord God Jinnai - many thanks for your contributions. Unfortunately I am short on time now, but I'll give them a long, hard look, maybe as soon as tomorrow, maybe as late as Sunday. Expect also a modest update of the model this weekend, concentrating on voluntary disclosure (I gave the model some more detail there) and some other stuff.

[Mikael]

Answers

Simon, the human rights thing is already covered I believe in the "Internal matters" part of treaty clauses (treatment of ethnic minorities, religions...).

Your international congress idea, couldn't it be done by just signing a treaty between different civs? To take your example, in 1815, in game terms, a treaty would be made between Russia, GB, Prussia, Austria, the new French monarchy. The treaty clauses would be: - Poland and Finland to Russia
- Lombardy and Venice to Austria + all territories lost to Napoleon
- Saxony, Westphalia to Prussia
- Return to power of Bourbon monarchy in France (part of Internal Matters).
etc.

Similarly, the international organizations/treaties you talk of could be dealt with the same way. Speaking of Kyoto, ecology could become a new treaty clause, that's true. For example "Do not produce more than x pollution units every turn".

Your "if...then" suggestion can be interpreted many ways. It can be interpreted as expressing time (such as in your example) or a condition (such as "If you don't maintain a democratic government we come and kick your ass" or the ultimaum variation: "Give us Sudeten or we bomb your cities" or a more peaceful alternative: "If you can convince the US to stop polluting so much we give you 1000 gold").

Trading laborers or slaves could be included in the "ceding control of military units" part.

Good overt spying idea. I'll make sure to include it.

Overt spying: agitation and propaganda pro/contra any government, ethnicity, religion, war

Lord God Jinnai: treaty expiration when a new government comes to power is in the model:
(from the model)

1. Treaties always come up for review whenever there's a change in government type.

5. Unilateral cancellations are always an option, but carry their own set of risks such as reputation "hits", risking other treaty relationships, etc.

[Simon Loverix]

Your approach of treaties is ok, I just thought that it should be more logical and easier to balance the power and influence of several parties at once rather than by separate treaties.

Glad you include a conditional part. What's the value of a treaty if nothing stops you from breaking it?

[Lord God Jinnai]

I was talking about something like the american revolution and that it would haveto choose whether to honor englands treaties (except war alliance onces). Anything it wants to drop, they should have the ability to reneogtiate before without getting 'hit' and even if they don't it shouldn't be too large oir remembered very long (10 years at the max).

[Mikael]

Clarifying the model: some thoughts on voluntary disclosure

Hi guys


In a bid to add more flexibility and a brighter light to the model I somewhat modified and extended the "voluntary disclosure" part of the model. Here are my thoughts. Please let me know what you think.


It first became obvious to me that voluntary disclosure and passive spying were two concepts very close to each other, sometimes even stepping on each other's shoes. More clarty was necessary.


Passive spying doesn't necessarily need the Chancellery to function. In fact it occurs as soon as contact is established with another civ. You originally get only very basic info, such as the location of foreign cities close to your borders, the basic type of government, and basic culture info. All of this info is given to you by the emissaries, the armies (in case penetration inside enemy territoy takes place), and the merchants. Consequently, as you develop trade with that civ, you'll gradually get more info. Getting an embassy and consulates will further extend your passive spying possibilities, in fact, the embassy enables you to open the Chancellery itself. The Chancellery enables you to further develop passive spying and orient it: for example you might ask your intel agents to focus on a particular aspect of the opposing civ. Focusing on an aspect gives you more info and allows you to be aware more easily of stuff that was supposed to be secret.

However, passive spying isn't *supposed* to give you info that the other civ doesn't want to divulgate. What is then the difference between secret stuff and public knowledge stuff? I'd like to add here the possibility, for any government, to "hide" an action it performs. Obviously certain actions cannot remain secret, as they are way too obvious to go unnoticed (example: changing the government regime or the tax rates). Here is a proposed list of actions that a government can attempt to keep secret:

- military unit movements.
- tech development.
-discrimination levels (rel. or ethnic).
-use of terror (assassination of characters, goon squads, bribery. All of this within one's civ).
-slavery.
-exact economic production figures (includes military unit "production").
-treaties or relations with other civs.
-chancellery details.
-special commodity extraction, use or trade (oil, wood....).

The chance of success of keeping the action out of passive spying's reach depends on the following factors:

-control of your civ at all levels (good administration, pro or anti-govt feeling amongst the populace).
-action attempted.
-strength of your own conterintel network.
-strength of enemy intel network.

For example, it would take an extremely strong intel network to spot a troop movement in a far-away province where you don't have a consulate, and where the people support their govt and don't like your culture much.
On the other hand, comitting large scale genocide against a minority would be pretty hard to conceal to another civ's intel network.


This is the point where we get to actual voluntary disclosure. Basically, VolDisc works two ways: either you ask info on a particular turn, or it is automatically done and part of a long term treaty (one that lasts more than one turn). Example of immediate VoldDisc "Share your geographical info with us". Example of automatic VolDisc: "Every turn we want to know how many units your army has".
Here in the original model Kull had tried to classify the levels of voluntary disclosure according to state relations. What I propose is to give the model more flexibility here and let the players themselves decide, when they make a treaty, the amount of info that is to be given every turn, by one civ or the other. Obviously they wouldn't ask stuff that they have a good chance of obtaining throught passive spying, or stuff that is useless. The focus would probably be research awareness and military info.
It is possible to lie and feed false info (such as Saddam Hussein keeping much of his biological weapons secret). Lying is dangerous though, because the truth can be revealed. It can e revealed by two things:
- the enemy intel network discovers the truth "by accident".
- the citizens of your own civ discover that you lied and protest. This is especially likely when the population is "politically aware": they are well educated and well informed (mass media).


Was I clear enough? I could write a glossary if you want, explaining all the different terms, as they could often be confused.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Mikael, your new stuff sounds good to me. I'm a little woried about the complexity of the interface necessary to facilitate it all! I also question a few of your "can attempt to keep secret" items like ethnic discrimination, use of goon squads, etc. But overall this addition sounds like a lot of fun!

[Mikael]

Thanks for the immediate feedback Mark!
Example of keeping the level of ethnic discrimination secret: during WW2, few were those that knew mass extermination of the Jews was taking place. Everybody knew that the Nazi regime was discriminating the Jewish people to a certain extent, but no one knew that an actual genocide was happening. Not until the piles of bodies were discovered by the advancing Allied armies.

Regarding the complexity of what I'm adding: bear in mind I have absolutely no experience when it comes to working on game projects like this, so it is very possible I may be imagining stuff that is just too hard or downright impossible to code, or that myself I could be bogging down in all of the model concepts and their interactions. I also realize that the more we extend the models, the more time will be needed to code it all. Just thinking about the complexity of what we're attempting with this game doesn't feel quite right to me, when compared to our resources.
In this frame of mind, Mark, tell me how I can help in the development process of demo6, as I heard that diplomacy was going to be in.

[Mark_Everson]

Mikael:

A Great point! To help out getting diplomacy into demo 6 you should try to work with Sancio to envision a minimalist approach to diplomacy. One that will be meaningful to the players, yet not require a lot of AI, or extensive programming of details.

You can have these discussions in the Coding the Diplomacy Model thread. Or you can use a new Demo 6 Diplomacy Model/Coding thread, depending upon what the two of you think is best.

At least we now have a plan to have a plan -Mark

[Mikael]

Scale in the diplomacy model

I get the feeling it is not quite clear yet in the model at what scale different actions take place, what the player exactly controls, etc.


The Chancellery would be managed at the civ level. The player invests money, be it for the Intel or the CounterIntel network, and then both can grow accordingly to the money put in and time. Growth wouldn't be uniformal for all squares, but the player can only manage it at the civ level.
The first factor for growth in a given square is the development level of that square. By development level I mean several factors: most importantly, a good and fast connection to the capital city, then, a good infrastructure level(working ecomomy). The second factor would be the population. Two things to take into account here: population size and population hostility toward the government. A big population that hates the government would take a very strong counterintel network to spy on and execute internal ops on. False information might even be fed to you, or they might denounce you to other civs if you attempt any secret action. On the other hand, a small population that supports your efforts would be very easily and quickly in control.

Intel network growth would depend on these same factors but is also influenced by embassies and consulates. First, without an embassy, your intel network would develop very slowly and would be restricted to those provinces that are adjacent to your civ(and even that would depend on transport assets between the two civs, and trade levels), and the enemy capital city(because that's where your emissaries go). Once you get an embassy, the same rules apply to network growth as inside your civ(with your embassy here working as your capital city). Consulates then work as "second capitals", or second bases for network spreading if you prefer.

[Mikael]

On second thought, maybe the player should be allowed to direct the efforts of his network on specific squares or provinces? For simplicity and to avoid micromanagment I kept it at the civ level, but for flexibility...
What do you think?

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Mikael:

Optional micromanagement is ok. Since you have a way to do it automatically, an extra layer for fine-tuning is alright. Of course in coding the finer points will probably come late anyway.