The revised Diplomacy Model

[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.