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**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:09

Table of Contents

Summary
Table of Contents
Other Discussions:
- Current Discussions
- Previous Model Discussions
Abstract
Hierarchy of government and operations
Detailed overview of diplomatic options:
Methodology of Contact
State Relations
Diplomacy Limitations
Log of Changes
Current Development Goals
Afterword

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:09

Other Discussions
The list of other discussions of the Diplomatic Model. Make sure to check them out if you are interested in Clash.

Current Discussions
These discussions are going on right now and touch on different practical concepts of diplomacy model implementation.

Diplomatic GUI by vovansim
Discuss how the user interface going to look like! Make sure that you and other players get the most out of diplomacy by leaving your opinion in this thread.

Coding Discussion by vovansim
Know how to implement a certain feature from this document in an elegant fashion? Interested in what's going on behind-the-scenes and in the inner workings of the game? Then this thread is for you to read and comment on!

Previous Model Discussions
This is the list of old diplomatic discussions for reference, in case anybody is interested.

Clash Diplomacy System v1.1 by Kull
The original diplomacy model developed by Kull, and the consequent discussion. There are plenty of interesting ideas in the beginning of that thread, some of which made it into this compilation. By the middle of the thread, it evolves into a coding discussion, which might not be of any interest to a casual player.

Short Diplomacy Proposal by Mark_Everson
This is the abbreviated version of the above model. It is much easier to digest, and is recommended for the Apolytoners, who are interested in Clash, but do not want to go through pages of information.

Intelligence / Espionage by Harun ar Rashid
A very short thread with some ideas on spies, intelligence spending, and covert operations.

TOC

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:10

Abstract
Some of the most important basic points about the diplomacy model. This is, somewhat a distilled version of the rest of the model, which only includes the gist of how diplomacy will work.

Diplomacy Options will be affected by several factors. The primary factor will be the status of the State Relations. Another one is era, which is mostly determined by technological progress of the civ. Another factor will be government type. The effectiveness of these organizations will also depend greatly on the budgetary expenditure. The more money the player is willing to give up, the more effective spies will be, for example. Late in the game, when there are a lot cash-sucking options, the balance between the different options could be tricky.
Another important point to understand about the diplomacy model is that there will be no individual spy or embassador units. However, we are considering having an sort of abstract version of spies, so that even though the player wouldn't actually move them around the map, he will be able to determine the number of spies to send into an opponent nation to manage the intelligence-gathering capabilities.
The official relations between nations will feature a wide variety of treaties, demands, protests, threats, etc. That allows the players that want to exert fine diplomatic control to tune their diplomatic relations with frightening precision.
For the covert operations lovers, the system will also feature an enormous number of spy missions: which will allow to obtain virtually any amount of information, according to the desires, and the size of the player's purse.

TOC

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:11

Hierarchy of government and operations
This might be an idea for how to implement the interface for interaction with both the "advisors" and the "spies".

Code:

                    Government
                (The Chancellery)
                  /            \
                 /              \
      Foreign Office         Interior Ministry
      |                      This is, once again, slightly out of scope
      +- Official business   of diplomacy, but it should probably include
      +- Intelligence        some standard set of 'advisors', who provide
      +- Military advisor    the player with the information on the overall
                             prosperity of the civ, as well as with specific
                             details on such issues as:
                                 o Social (riots, and such)
                                 o Science
                                 o Internal Intelligence (this will include
                                   revealing enemy spies, finding out the 
                                   bribed officials, feeding the enemy spies
                                   falsified information, and such.)


            +--   Official Business  -+
           /      /      |         \   \
          /      /       |          \   \
Create Civ      | Trade and tariffs  | Treaties
                |                    |
            Threats              Protests


            Intelligence (covert operations)
                    /       \
                 Active   Passive


            +--  Military Advisor
           /      /     |         \
   Tactical      |  Declaration    Co-Aggression
   information   |    of war       coordination
                 |
            Mutual protection pacts

TOC

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:14

Detailed overview of diplomatic options
What is behind all those names.

Official Business
The actions taken by the player's government that are open for observation by other nations, and official communications between the governments of different nations.

Create Civ:

Civilizations with sufficient power in a controlled area can unilaterally create another civ. The created civ has whatever properties the creating civ desires. However, if the foundation of this state is unrealistic it will quickly change radically from the form in which it was created.
Clarification on the importance of the feature by Mark_Everson: Because of the social model there will be territories that are conquered that practically cannot be held anyway. For instance: In the era of nation-states, a distant ethnically different area cannot be held by a true democracy anyway. They would secede in time, or create such problems with nationalist groups, that they might not be worth retaining. One example is that in a civ version of WWII, where France is lost (ignore the Vichy govt for the moment). The Allies (British and Americans in a simple civ world) re-take France. Should they try to hold it as a colony? No! They should re-create the French state.

Trade and Tariffs:

Two nations are able to trade goods among each other. This is not precisely the barter-style trading as is done in Civ3, but rather there is always a mandatory tariff on trade. In the spirit of the rest of the game, the player can decide just what degree of control he has over the tariffs. He could leave it to the AI to decide, depending on the supply and demand of the good, and its tactical value. For instance, let us say there is an overabundance of horses in the world. Therefore, the tariff set automatically would be rather low. However, if there is some nation, which happens to not have any, and is also aggressive towards the player, the AI might raise the tariff on horses appropriately. Alternatively, the player can set some percentage, that would be used for all goods and all nations, and forget about the whole thing. A more advanced player might want to set the percentage tariff for each good, and then set the modifiers for each nation. For example:

I have instituted tariffs of 20% on steel, and 50% on textiles. So a most-favored nation (a + 0% modifier) would get these same numbers. A country I'm having a trade war with (+ 50% modifier) would suffer tariffs of 70% on steel, and 100% on textiles.

- Kull

Finally, a player who favours micromanagement above else would be able to set every percentage for every nation for every good on his own.

Clarification by Mark_Everson: If the player can only impose tariff levels on a "Civilization-wide" basis, how does one get to "20% on steel and 50% on textiles"? Like so: You can vary the tariffs/subsidies for each commodity vs MFN (most favored nation). That's how you get "20% on steel and 50% on textiles". You can also set overall tariff levels with each civ you trade with. These might be with Civ A +10% tariffs, Civ B +50% tariffs. Then the tariff for each item is just the 'item' tariff + the Civ tariff. So trade with Civ A in the textile area would be taxed at the rate of 60% (= +10% [Civ A] +50% [textiles]).

Treaties:

Treaty Concept: treaties can be formed between two or more nations. Treaties of more than two states will have to handle all members on equal footing. For example, five civs can participate in a mutual-defense pact, or sign a co-aggression pact against one or more other nations. Each treaty can consist of a virtually unlimited number of clauses from the (by no means final) list below.
Treaty Clauses:
- Define diplomatic status - peace, war, cold-war etc. A change in status that makes the diplomatic state between two parties more hostile can be undertaken by either party if they have the internal power within their civ to do so. A change in status that is less hostile requires agreement of all parties. The diplomatic state can be collateralized.
- Monetary transfers - lump-sum or per-turn style. A sub-clause might be issuing a loan, which basically means exchange of a certain lump-sum of money for per-turn payments.
- Trade and tariffs - two nations can agree on what tariffs they will set for the goods they sell to each other.
- Territorial transfers - one nation agrees to give up some of her territory for the control of another civ. Such transfer, once agreed upon, can take place immediately or some time in the future, specified in the treaty, as well. For instance, the player might ask another nation for military assistance against a certain third civ, and promise a certain amount of land in exchange, to be given up, say 30 turns in the future. That way, the player might gain help in crushing a superior opponent, and once the war is over, give up some of the conquered land to the ally.
- Technology - one nation agrees to assist another in technological research. However, as described in the technological model, the civ that receives assistance does not necessarily immediately acquire that technology, since research is conducted gradually.
- Military unit transfers - one nation can cease the control of their military units (possibly temporarily) to assist another nation.
- Trade status - ranging from favourable to embargo.
- Demilitarized zones
- Arms reduction - for instance:
  
  My army will grow to at most 20% more powerful than yours.
  
  - Kull
- Voluntary Disclosure of Information - The same information which intelligence seeks to obtain illegally will have to be provided voluntarily by the partners in every State Relationship beginning with Peace. The level of disclosure should not be subject to negotiation, but rather be treated as an integral part of the treaty. More details are required, but here's an example of military disclosure based on treaty relations.
  - Peace: I know exactly how many units he has and vice versa, but no details.
  - Co-Aggression: Same as above. If we are at war with the same enemy, we share unit info on those which are in the "War Zone" with that enemy. This zone could be defined as "X" number of hexes from the "front".
  - Cooperation: We share numbers and locations and generic types. Also sharing of "War Zone" unit info (as defined above)
  - Defensive Alliance: Same as Cooperation but includes detailed unit specs for those stationed on a mutual border. (i.e. between the allies).
  - Offensive Alliance: I have complete details on his military and he on mine, except injury and preparedness data.
  - Same Ruler: I know everything about his military, he just gets total numbers on mine.
- Dynastic Marriage
- Immigration policies - this is something that wasn't in the previous version of the model. Since population is quite important in this game, it might make sense to implement migration of people between countries that share a border, or are connected by a road. After the invention of flight (I assume there is such a tech... Sorry, I didn't have enough time to read through all of the technology discussions) these limitations would no longer apply. How many people migrate would be determined by the overall development of the nations in question. That way, two nations can establish migration policies among each other. They could say that there shouldn’t be legal migration, which would limit migration greatly, or they could establish a system of visas, which would also reduce the number of people moving. Alternatively, the two nations can establish free travel, which would have no limiting effects on migration. The default setting would be the visa system. This could become a powerful tool in the hands of a good player. For example: a strong nation might first decrease the military strength of an opponent through war, and then limit their diffusional expansion by establishing a free travel system, and sucking in the population of that nation (given it has superior power, of course). The specific factors that determine migration are still to be determined, but I think we need to first discuss this option and see if you, the potential future players, like this idea.
Treaty Duration - Treaties do not last forever in the real world, nor should they in Clash. The following rules will govern treaty duration:
- Government Change - Treaties always come up for review whenever there's a change in government type.
- Artificial Treaty Duration Limit - Non-representative governments experience a "treaty review" every "X" number of turns. The determining factor for "X" should be entertaining game play, not realism. This periodic review represents "Ruler Lifespan", historically the biggest factor behind changes in diplomatic status. A variety of factors will be used to determine the result of the treaty review process. A treaty could be extended, canceled, downgraded, or upgraded. One mechanism would be to "weigh" the interactions between the two states during the life of the treaty. Negative factors would include spying, threats, and protests. Positive factors would be gifts, military aid, similar culture & religion, etc.
- Attitude-Induced Treaty Review - Surpassing a certain level of Negative or Positive "points" will cause a treaty to automatically come up for review.
- Manual Treaty Cancellation - Unilateral cancellations are always an option, but carry their own set of risks such as reputation "hits", risking other treaty relationships, etc.

Threats and Demands:

Threats are very similar to the Treaties, with the exception that the other side of the deal does not get anything positive in return. They are just as elaborate as treaties and can contain the same components as listed for treaties.

Protests:

Protests are triggered by a nation's behavior. A civ can protest treaty violations, military threats, and such. If a counterintelligence action of discovering a spy has been successful, the subject can also protest that.

TOC

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:15

Military Advisor
This will govern all matters military.

Tactical Information

If the appropriate spy mission has been successful or the other nation has disclosed the information voluntarily, the player can review the troop locations, and such.

Declaration of War

The player can declare war on any other nation, having reviewed the treaties that might be violated.

Note by Glak: starting wars with non allies should not at all decrease trustworthiness. It should increase perceivedAgressiveness or something like that for all entities with an treaty level equal to or lower than the country attacked. For example I have no treaty with countryA, so the rating is something like 0. I am trustworthy so I have like 100%. I attack countryA and my trust doesn't go down, after all I never said I wouldn't kill them. CountryB is my ally so they don't get scared of me. CountryC and I don't get along too well, perhaps we have a -2 rating. They see my aggressiveness go up and start thinking about how they are probably on my list of people to destroy. CountryC will now recalculate its stance towards me since one if its values that keeps track of me has changed. CountryB will only react if other values change, perhaps my power level. Then it might come to my aid. Otherwise it won't really think anything about the war, unless perhaps it has positive or negative relations with CountryA.
Elaboration on the Note by Darren_McGuicken:

Code:

A basic value 'Reputation' dependant on 4 variables:

VARIABLE         WHAT DOES IT MEAN?           HOW IS IT DECIDED?
Trustworthiness  Can we sign a treaty with    Have we had pacts with them
                 this Civ and expect them to  before? Have we heard of
                 keep their word?             them breaking alliances/treaties
                                              with other Civs? Why?
Aggression       How quickly are they         Have they attacked any Civs/Us
                 prepared to start a War?     before? How often? Why?
                 Maybe: are they prepared
                 to see it through? Re:
                 offensive alliances etc.
Competence       Have they mismanaged their  What uprisings/revolts/
                 own Civ? Lost any battles    general unhappiness is there
                 they've ever fought? Do      in the Civ? What ratio of
                 we really want these guys    battle wins:losses? Why?
                 in our alliance?
Tyranny          Not completely thought out:  How often military might is
                 how have they dealt with     used to suppress the proles?
                 social crises in their Civ?  Why?

Further Elaboration by Lord God Jinnai:
Agression: Things that should also factor into deciding aggression level is whether or not they've demanded tributes, military build ups, perhaps over expansive land policy (not ness going to war)

Competence: Battle aspect should also include by how much...ie overwhelming victories or just barely victorious and if they won wars despite loosing many battles (ie remember Hanable in Second Carthaginian War with Rome? He won many battles but ultimately lost the war)

Tyranny: Should also keep in mind the time period aspect. When putting down revolts from peasant uprisings or slave uprisings it may be seen as a good thing (ie competence) rather than bad.

More thoughts on the matter by Mark_Everson: First we need a scale to establish how much a diplomatic or military action affects the reputation. For right now I'll just deal with the trustworthiness aspect. The first thing we need is a " trustworthiness scale". For purposes of demonstration I'll assume a scale where a level of 100 represents complete trustworthiness (at least as far as we know so far) and zero represents a pretty much completely untrustworthy civ. Our trustworthiness number should be some sort of weighted average of actions that have happened in the past. I say weighted, because eventually, given a long enough period of peaceful coexistence, past sins will be forgiven. So on any turn that one behaves in a perfectly trustworthy fashion your "instantaneous" trustworthiness is 100 (this will be true for most turns, since there's only so many shafts there are opportunities for). Now, I don't want to lay out the whole scale here so I'll just pick one sort of diplomatic action. How about a complete and utter shaft of a nominal ally? How many points should this be? For the moment I'll use the following logic: another civ, if it's your ally, if it were to shaft you on average once every ten turns, would be a Worthless ally. It should be approximately a zero on the treachery scale (completely treacherous). So in this simple way we can describe the complete shaft of an ally to earn the perpetrator about -900 points (so on average they are near zero). Using this crudely defined scale, now I can introduce how I want to handle the treachery of a civ over time, depending upon their particular diplomatic actions.

I was thinking of using a straightforward technique called the exponentially-weighted moving average (EWMA) to simply handle the way that civilizations and cultures might eventually discount events in the past. The idea is relatively simple. When computing a new value for the EWMA, say due to a significant diplomatic action, you just take a certain percent (X) of the old value, and percentage (100 - X) of the new information, and combine them. Depending on the value you pick for X, this method "forgets" past information either faster or slower. But the Really important bit about EWMA, is that you don't need to keep track of All the past information, all you need is what the value was on the previous turn, and what is new on this turn, to figure the new value. So although we will have all this glorious history, that the player can potentially tap, we only need to do one calculation to update the trustworthiness each turn.

Now for a rigged demo! So let's say I'm a foolish trusting civ that is in alliance with Otto the Treacherous. And let's say the percentage of the old value that we're using is X = 90% (so the current turn's information gets a 10% weight). If Otto starts out with a perfect reputation of 100, what happens on a turn when Otto behaves honorably? The new value for Otto's trustworthiness is 90% of the old value, plus 10% of the value at this instant. In the case were Otto is behaving honorably, the EWMA maintains Otto's trustworthiness at 100. Now what happens on the turn that Otto shafts me? Otto's new trustworthiness = 90% x 100 + 10% x (-900) = 0. So the property of the EWMA that we can use here is that it's easy to calculate changes in the current value that result from new events. You don't have to keep track of all of history, the EWMA does it for you. Depending upon the particular number that you choose for X, the EWMA will forget either faster or slower. Now how does Otto's reputation recovery using EWMA? I'm not going to crank the math, but will just give the answers on each of the turns, starting with the turn of the shaft. I'll assume Otto behaves blamelessly after this particular shaft. Otto rebuilding his reputation looks like: 0, 10, 19,... well okay I'm too lazy . The big point is that it builds back up slowly. And long before it gets back to 100, Otto will shaft someone again, driving in back into the Stone Age. Also, the choice for X I use here forgets things rather quickly. A different value will probably be used in the game if we adopt this methodology.

Co-Aggression Coordination

If the player has signed Co-Aggression pacts with some nations, he can then coordinate the military efforts - strike a certain city, set military campaign goals, and such.

Mutual-Defense Coordination

If the player has signed a mutual-defense pact with one or more nations, he can then coordinate the efforts from here - such as, which province to defend, etc..

Intelligence
Intelligence operations aimed at other civs. There are two types, passive and active. As a general rule, each civ expects the others to conduct passive spying, so there's little downside. Overt acts carry more severe penalties should one be caught. Penalties include reputation loss (of varying severity), change in treaty status, even internal unrest.

Passive - gathering the intelligence that cannot potentially harm the civ that it is aimed against. The information can be quite useful in the hands of a clever player, however.

Society Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Social info
Government Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Governance info
Economic Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Economic info
Military Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Military Unit info
Research Details - Potentially all info contained in another civs Research info

Active - more dangerous activities.

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. (Proposed by Lord God Jinnai; 19 Jan 2003)
Theft of non-Military Research info
Theft of Military Research info - harder and more dangerous.
Bribery of Cities
Bribery of Units/Armies
Bribery of Characters - risky.
Assassination - very risky.
Moles - Intelligence Agency penetration.

Suggestion by TreborPugly:

Maybe a string of successful spy jobs could create a "James Bond" effect. Therefore, for every successful "mission" you would actually modify the random component to make the next mission more likely to succeed. In this way a careful, inexpensive development of exterior intelligence would be much more effective than a quick, expensive development. Maybe this is similar to the Spy Ring concept mentioned in an earlier post, but my guess is that a Spy Ring is mostly money and luck. My suggestion is that luck compounds.

Suggestion by Mark_Everson:

What I'd propose is that generic infiltration into a country work like a bank account. You put resources in, and if you don't demand immediate information (make a withdrawal) the power of your network grows a little (perhaps it requires some minimum support to do this). Then when you want to steal the A-bomb plans you can compare your 'balance' to the difficulty of the project and target how much in the way of saved and new resources you want to put into it. The effectiveness of the new ones could even be modified by the previously saved amt used. As in your experienced local operatives can leverage any new resources to a point. Then the mission succeeds or fails, and may or may not take some of your established network (even beyond what you allocated) with it.

Internal Intelligence
These are the spy operations that are held inside the boundaries of the player's country. They were originally distinguished by those aimed at foreign operatives, and those aimed at gathering intelligence on the people - essentially secret police. However, I thought that such a distinction would be unnecessary, though, like with other concepts, if the majority of other people feels that it is important, I am open to reason. Feel free to discuss.

Determine enemy intelligence activity: Is your civilization an intelligence target, and who is responsible?
If so, What information is being collected: This is a separate option, because such operation (interrogation of the caught spy, essentially) would be more costly.
Reveal a bribed Character
Feed false information to the revealed spy.
Determine Happiness Levels: Clicking a button to determine exact happiness levels is not realistic. Using agents to see what people really think is the usual procedure.
Riot Prediction: Solid information on happiness. Ability to predict where riots will start, allowing you to appease the populace or squelch them with the military.
New Religion Identification: The earlier you learn that one has either sprung up inside your borders or spread from someplace else, the more options you have in dealing with it. Those specifics are contained in the Social Model.
Disseminate Propaganda: Ranges from crude hate mongering to sophisticated "spin doctoring".
Characters: Spy on your characters to determine their true capabilities and allegiance.

TOC

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:15

Methodology of Contact
Civilizations cannot perform any diplomatic activity unless and until they achieve contact. Until such time as permanent embassies are allowed, each government contact will require the dispatch of an official representative.

Emissaries - Permanent embassies are a fairly recent phenomenon (since @1700 AD). Until that time, governments dispatched personal representatives who would visit the court of the foreign ruler and present gifts, demands, treaty options, etc. The clash diplomacy system will rely heavily upon this mechanism until modern times, with an obvious impact on the quality and timeliness of the information it produces. As a ruler, you must make extensive use of emissaries in order to have any idea what is going on around you, and that will cost cash.
Embassies - Physical structures located in the capital city of an opposing civ. Requires money to open and maintain. Existence of an embassy provides automatic low level intelligence on happenings in enemy capital (attitudes, troop movements there, anything you could glean from a newspaper).
Consulates - Physical structures located in the provinces of an opposing civ. Requires cash to open and maintain. Requires approval of civ to open these. Usually a sign of good relations. Improves reliability and quantity of low level intelligence.

TOC

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:16

State Relations
Relations between several states: the concept
Here's a sample list of diplomatic states available between civs. These are not necessarily well thought out. The values associated with each name are modifiers on a -10 to +10 scale that Mark has used in the existing code on the diplomatic system. The numbers generally indicate the "strength" of the relationship between the powers.

Diplomatic State Constants

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

Any diplomatic state that is agreed-upon between two or more parties can be collateralized for any mutually-agreed-upon period of time. For instance, a peace treaty between states might be guaranteed by both to the tune of 1000C over a period of the next 20 turns. Any party that unilaterally breaks the peace gives up the collateral. Whether the collateral becomes the possession of the offended party, or simply disappears is also determined in negotiations. Collateralization is meant to symbolize things like hostage-holding, marriage alliances, and other ways to guarantee treaties where the game does not have sufficient depth to include the particular factor. I think collateral could become standard for treaties, since it ensures that each party will take the treaty seriously. This feature seems to work better in the ancient and medieval world, than in the modern. We'll have to address it as a play balance and realism issue at some point.

Note by vovansim: So, I, as a potential future coder of the diplomatic model, was thinking about the practical implementation of diplomatic states. As I was throwing together a quick code-design document, however, I caught myself making a potentially serious logical mistake. It is so serious, in fact, that I thought it worthy of putting out there for general discussion.

So, here is the deal: As I was looking at the description above, and the nice numbers for each diplomatic relation, my mind somehow automatically connected diplomatic relations with attitude. Therefore, in my preliminary model, the value of attitude of -7, for instance, would always mean war. That is not correct. While diplomatic status is greatly affected by attitude, it is not always the same. Indeed, even though civs that are very sympathetic towards each other will probably not fight, the attitude-diplomatic state relationship is not always solid.

Let me speak in terms of Civ3 for a moment here. If one civ is furious with another one, it is likely to attack, but it does not mean that the two will be in the constant state of war! Therefore, it makes sense that diplomatic state be related to but separate from attitude.

So, to emphasize the proximity of the concepts, and yet keep them separate, I think it would make sense to have the attitudes range from -10 to 10 as well, in which case we would have the values something like this:

Blood enemies = -10; (i.e. the people of the two countries can't stand each other. If they meet on a street, they would kill each other.)
Deep Hatered = -9;
Fury = -7;
Anger = -5;
Irritation= -3;
Annoyance = -2;
Cautiousness = -1;
No feelings= 0;
Goodwill = 1;
Friendship = 2;
Amity = 4;
Philanthropy = 8;
Brotherly love = 10;

(12 January 2003) Suggestion 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.

TOC

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:17

Diplomacy Limitations
Diplomacy is limited by several factors

Technological Research - certain diplomatic and spying actions will become available as time passes. As the player's nation becomes more advanced, it can undertake more daring covert operations, and sign more elaborate treaties. As certain technologies become available, specific actions become "unlocked" for the player to utilize.
Old idea - I left it in thedocument in case somebody would like to discuss this. Maybe we could still use era's for some thing or other. But if it poves totally useless, we will drop it.
Era Limitations - Available diplomacy actions are limited by the current era, which is determined by the overall technological development.
- Ancient Era - Intelligence info comes from emissaries, traders, and armies in the field. Passive info is limited, and active acts are restricted to bribery and assassination. Treaties are based upon marriages and hostages.
- Medieval Era - Intelligence info comes from emissaries, traders, and armies in the field. Passive info is "medium". All active actions are available except moles. Treaties continue to be based upon marriages and hostages.
- Modern Era - Intelligence info comes from embassies, consulates, spies, traders, and armies in the field. Passive info is unlimited. All active actions are available. Treaties are based upon modern factors.
Budgetary Expenditure - the effectiveness of diplomacy is directly affected by the amount of money allocated from the budget.
Government Type Limitations - Political scientists distinguish three basic types of government. So, we decided to implement such distinctions in Clash, and base some of the limitations of diplomatic options on them.
- Authoritarian: This is the types of government, where there are no political parties, or only one, associated with a strongly charismatic leader. There are no elections, media is carefully monitored, and the public opinion is generally ignored. As such, this form of government has access to most spy options available, since the leader does not concern himself with reputation, but for that same reason, high-level treaties are not available. Create Civ option is not available.
- Totalitarian: This is the form of government, where the politics is controlled by one party. The elections are held, but are noon-competitive, the media is controlled by the ruling party, and propaganda is widespread, and often times a secret police is instituted in some way or other. As such, this form of government has access to all of the internal intelligence options, and the majority of other covert operations. The treaties that require much trust are only available to those governments if the reputation of their nation is spotless.
- Representative government: The multipartisan form of government, where the elections are highly competitive and are held on a regular basis, the media and press are considered free to publish any opinion. Therefore, this is a "trusted" form of government, and the AI likes to get into high-level treaties with those. On the other hand, the people are free to protest, and prolonged conflicts, as well as co-aggression pacts can result in high outcry. Certain actions are very dangerous for a representative government to undertake, since failure could cause the government to collapse. "Home" territory transfers are not an option. Vendetta is possible, but is very likely result in bad consequences for the ruler.
  
  Note of Clarification by vovansim: According to the current government model, there will not be a specific set of governments that the player would be limited to. Even though there will be certain "template" government types, the player, if so desired, would be able to tweak any of the social or economic freedoms, control the division of power, etc.. Therefore, the type of government for the classification above will be determined from these factors.
Society Specialization / Ideology preferences - Also the regard in which the civ holds diplomacy vs warfare etc. should matter. Essentially a civ can't be good at everything, even with a lot of money, since the society values some things above others and FE many of the most talented people will gravitate toward the most-respected positions. But that is a distinction for far in the future.
(Proposed by Mark_Everson; 10 Jan 2003)

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**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:17

Log of Changes
As the discussion goes on, and certain points are added, discussed in more detail, and improved upon, I will update the posts above appropriately. This post will keep track of all the changes made to the model

20 January 2003

Summary: section added in front of the document replacing the original foreword, so that it is hopefully easier for the newcomers to digest the information

19 January 2003

Other Discussions: added the list of current Model discussions
Detailed overview of diplomatic options > Official Business: added the treaty clause about trade and tariffs
Detailed overview of diplomatic options > Intelligence: added Lord God Jinnai's suggestion about stealing maps

12 January 2003

State Relations: added suggestion by Lord God Jinnai

11 January 2003

Diplomatic Limitations: removed the concept of era's and replaced it with overall, more gradual technological research. Since the technology tree was not developed to support era's, it might make sense to drop that concept. Additionally, the idea of diplomatic options becoming available gradually, as oppsed to bunches, seems more realistic.

10 January 2003

Previous model discussions: fixed the last link.
Diplomacy Limitations: added suggestion by Mark_Everson.
Current Development Goals: section added.

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**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 18:18

Current Development Goals
This section will keep track of what is going on "behind-the-scenes" in the development process of the diplomacy model. The current coding goals will be listed here, and the list will be updated with time appropriately.

Well, at this point in time it is hard to say where to start. I am beginning virtually from scratch. There was a certain diplomatic model back in Demo4, but it doesn't seem very useful, though I might be able to get some things out of it. The way I see it, I should start from simple stuff, so the immediate goals list would look something like this:

Implement the ability to change diplomatic state between civs.
Since the ability to change diplomatic state will depend on attitude of the civs towards each other, implement the attitude model.
Since attitude will be in large part based on trustworthiness of the player civ, and other such factors, these will also need to be implemented.

That seems a large enough task for the foreseeable future, especially taking into consideration that the diplomatic state will tie in with the existing AI code, which means that there might be some tricky problems to overcome.

TOC

Afterword
Looking back over the model, all I can say is

! Some ambitious bunch we are.

I suppose it is time to get coding soon.

But for now, I am going to busy myself with fixing a couple of bugs, and just doing minor coding jobs here and there. So, please feel free to comment, propose improvements, give constructive criticism, etc. All input is very welcome.

TOC

**Mark_Everson** · January 10, 2003, 21:29

Hi Vovan, thanks for the great job coallating all the previous info!

I think it will greatly accelerate discussion.

Originally posted by vovansim
Espionage by Anonymous
Unfortunately, at the time of compilation of this document, the thread is unavailable. Therefore, I am unable to provide a summary of this thread, or name its author. Yet, for historical accuracy's sake, I still included the link.

We actually have all the forum posts ever to the best of my knowledge. The problem is that one of the forum upgrades ended up changing the link format. Also for a while some of our threads were archived, and then restored. Fortunately when the title of the thread is included in the link its easy to go back and find it by hand. The search would have worked also in principle, but for now it only searches back a few months.

It is (I think) Intelligence / Espionage

I found it by browsing the forum thread titles starting at the beginning.

So, to emphasize the proximity of the concepts, and yet keep them separate, I think it would make sense to have the attitudes range from -10 to 10 as well

I agree that the two need to be separate. FE in some cases the attitude could be severe hate, and yet the civ does not attack because it would be suicidal. Also diplomatic states are generally the same for the two civs, whereas attitudes (what A thinks of B vs what B thinks of A) can easily be different.

Budgetary Expenditure - the effectiveness of diplomacy is directly affected by the amount of money allocated from the budget.

Also the regard in which the civ holds diplomacy vs warfare etc. should matter. Essentially a civ can't be good at everything, even with a lot of money, since the society values some things above others and FE many of the most talented people will gravitate toward the most-respected positions. But that is a distinction for far in the future. I am just stating it now to put the idea up for discussion.

Vovan, a suggestion from you on what you want to do the code design for first might be helpful so people will know where to focus their attentions.

**vovan** · January 10, 2003, 22:31

Thanks for pointing out the correct link to the Intelligence thread, Mark.

I also added your suggestion on a new diplomacy limitation to the rest of the document. In general, I think it would be a good idea to add the suggestions that people make in this thread to the existing document, so that when time comes to finally code, I wouldn't have to search through the whole thread in search of good ideas, but would be able to go through the first ten posts, and have everything I need to know. That way, also, if a person has missed this thread somehow, he would be able to catch up on everything by just reading the first ten posts, and not going through the whole thread, sorting out the posts that might venture off-topic, etc..

Finally, I think it is a good idea to let the people know what the immediate coding goals will be, so that they could concentrate their discussion on the aproppriate issues. I will add another section to the document above, called immediate coding goals, and will keep track of what is going on "behind-the-scenes" in it, editing the post as the model develops.

**LDiCesare** · January 11, 2003, 04:02

I want to add two comments.

One on the model:
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.
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).

Another on the code:
Having attitudes/status ranked between -10 and 10 is OK if we need figures, but objects might be more appropriate. Anyway, we use floats everywhere rather than ints and there are no enums in java (you may have found out already).
Also, percentage figures are usually represented by a float on a 0-1 scale, just shown as percentage. This helps compputations a bit.
Sorry if this is straightforward or sounds annoying.

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