Diplomatic GUI

[wormbyte]

Has anyone heard of the International Interaction Game. I believe is was first published in a book called "War & Peace".

Check out the attached GIF of an Extended Tree form of the International Interaction Game.

It works best under uncertainty. Basically you have to reach an end node to complete the game. Each end node yields a utility payoff, some are higher than others. The value of the expected utility is equal to "Benefit value - Cost Value". Naturally a player wants to get to the node that give the best utility. But at the same time the player has to consider what the other player will choose at the next step.

The other crucial factors are "Preferences" and "Perceptions".

Each player has their own preference of the preferred end result of the game. Every player has a perception of what the other player preferences are. But nobody knows for sure and thus uncertainty and risk kicks in.

For example...

Player A chooses to make a demand. He does not expect player B to acquiesce and fully expects player B to make a counter-demand. Player B does indeed make a counter demand. Player A chose this route because he expects player B to then negotiate.

But then he finds his perceptions on this were incorrect. Instead Player B attacks Player A because Player B atcually thinks that his negotiating powers would not yield a high utility return and he would come out alot worse on the negotiating table. Player B also believes that Player A does not want a war and therefore will capitulate to Player B's demands.

Not the case though. Because Player A has a higher utility associated with the "War Started by B" then to the "A Capitulates to B" so Player A retaliates.

End result WAR. A outcome that neither side wanted by ending getting because the misunderstood the preferences of its opponent.

I think its pretty powerful stuff and could be used along with the "bargaining table" concept.

Ian

[LDiCesare]

-- there's no bit for negotiating territory or borders
- no tribute/reparations bit on the tree
- no special trade alliance
- no cultural trade aspect
- no amend treaty buttons
- no view treaty history
- not really much data on the civs
- is there going to be any way of indicating how likely a proposal is to succeed? a couple of adviser's heads with bubbles, or a changing facial expression?
- any quick links to data which might be relevant to any treaties you make - trade page, political page, events box...

Territory/borders indeed is missing in the gif.
Tribute/reparations is just a unilateral gift or ask.
Trade alliance / cultural trade: What would these do exactly?
View of treaties. Note this view is often seen in a screen different from the negotiation screen in other games, often a graph which helps see not one on one treaties but all treaties between all civs (or al you want to see, but more than two).
Amend treaty: This should indeed be added. You could decide to stop paying X/turn at any time for instance.

The likeliness of success should indeed be shown. I like Galciv's way of doing it: the proposal is yellow if not ok, green if okay, and more importantly is updated everytime you move a slider in the money values. Color is easy to understand but not colorblind-riendly. Faces could be okay. Anything that gives an idea of how much more you (think) you can ask would be good.

As for links to other parts of the model, I like the idea that I could just open another window with the data I need and move them around so I can see whatever I need (which means the negotiation window wouldn't be modal).

[yellowdaddy]

Trade alliance / cultural trade: What would these do exactly?

Well, France has a trade alliance with the UK, but not a military one, oui?

you know, you might want to be friendly to your neighbours without having to get in to bed with them (so to speak!)

Cultural trade cuold be like exporting intangibles like "Art Style", "music", and more directly influencing things like "belieif systems".

I'm just thinking out loud really - you might want to buy or sell your religion (missionary work?) or culture (fashion?), as opposed to either imposing it with force or passively hoping it spreads so that your nation has increased influence over your neighbour (or rather it's populace).

export/import style could mean that your units and cities' appearnce changes - eg: japan imports chinese style, and all their cities adopt pointy roofs - that kind of thing (ok, maybe its a frill, but there is a nuts and bolts aspect to it).

perhaps they could be like ways of fostering good relations without actually trading anything majorly important to you national security.

like if nation x wants gunpowder technology and instead palm them off with a cultural trade deal, so you can say no without starting a conflict?
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i'd like to see a ittle scrollable treaty history.
i want nations to remember which nations have been good to them, wnad when, even if it was 200 years ago.
I'm talking about something major like if your military intervention saved your neighbour from extinction, they should remeber it - though perhaps it would depend on how literate and free-thinking they are.

i'm just remembering how in Civ3, i could conciously groom and preen an ally over the centuries, and then they could just turn on me in an instant after literalyl ages of good vibes... really irritating.

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Faces could be okay

I'm thinking of BOP 1990, not Civ 3 btw.
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I like the idea that I could just open another window with the data I need and move them around so I can see whatever I need

this is returning to the interface debate. there's clearly a cultural divide here. I like static, you don't I'm sure it'll be easy enough to acommodate both in preferences?

[LDiCesare]

I was thinking what would be the game effects of trade alliance?
I think cultural alliance could be a diminution of the ethnic/religious discrimination with regards to people of the 'allied' culture, but don't know what trade alliance effects would be. I don't know enough of the econ model to know if things like tariffs on export/import and such are implemented or modelled.

this is returning to the interface debate.

Yes, I know you don't like these. The point is it's currently easier to do than putting hyperlinks everywhere. Anyway what you really need is to store the current negotiation state so you can leave it, go to another screen and come back. Developping submenus to display economy or whatever that would only be shown in the negotiation UI would be a pain, so the main point is to be able to reuse existing screens/windows.

[Fosse]

Being able to check your current diplomatic status during negotiations is a must. I fall on the side of wanting a display that I can resize and move around, but will be happy with anything that lets me do whatever I want during negotiations.

About culture "exporting." Is this something that's really a government function? The US didn't sign some sort of McDonald's exporting treaty anymore than the Japanese bought Chinese stylistic influences. Trade negotionations, IMO, should focus on things like tariffs, preferred nation status, and things like that. Culture should be thought of as coming "bundled" with such deals.

[yellowdaddy]

trade alliance.

well, it could be as simple as like when China gave concessions to certain nations.

or agreement where nation Z which owns most of the world's resource Q which is important for weapon G, which several nations want to buy, agreeing to trade it only with nation M in exchange for protection.

or it could perhaps allow another nation's commercial units free travel inside your nation instead of only to fixed ports of entry. (you might want trade, but control over spying and cultural infuence inside your nation).


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trading culture.

yes, i suppose it's not a function of government - but then are you only controlling the government when you play this game, or more?

in a way i could be semantics - you couldjust have options which say "allow", "encourage" "discourage" "compell" and "ban" "cultural exchange".
it's much the same as tariffs and trade isn't it?

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displays.

i'm not out to oppose moveable boxes, I just want a less busy screen. I don't like popups at all though.

I want to use windows efficiently, so that each box/tab/window shows the same sort of data - my mantra is "Simple but Effective".

Here on the Nego-GUI i'm taking about the Nation Data box on either side of this negotiation screen showing potentially the same data for each foreign nation. The flags (or shields for ancient times) used around the bargaining table both indicate the nation, and act as a simple clickable tab to change the data in the NAtion data box from nation to nation. Current Dipl status could be displayed (in detail) in the bottom middle when you click on a pair of nations (including scrollable history of status and treaties with dates and timeline): one for each databox. (and in the simplistic Civ 3 way with lines across the table).

having a little box for every single nation involved or every categorisable scrap of data, having to trawl though piles of window, having to click ok on an annoying little popup would be utterly tedious.

[Mark_Everson]

As to your trade alliances. There is certainly potential for tarrifs to vary by the civ being traded with. I expect certain commodities will be able to be embargoed as well. These things could be negotiated, or just set by the player (provided they have the power).

The approach to "trading culture" would I expect be an outcome of diffusion of technologies, which will be much stronger with better trade and governmental ties.

[yellowdaddy]

I suppose I'm thinking of a diplomatic ladder.
In Civ 3, the alliances are somewhat empty - there's no relationship between the states, and no apparent impact on policy or society (models) beyond declaring war on the same enemy. I find this frustrating, and boring.


Here's some thoughts on parallel treaty ladders:


Socio-Economic Treaties
i. Cultural Exchange (trade cultural advances)
ii. Trade Agreement (limited trade)
iii. Trade Alliance (limited tarriffs)
iv. Economic Union (no tarriffs, single market)

Industrio-Military Treaties
i. Technology Exchange (non-cultural advancements)
ii. Military Agreement (units can pass thru territory)
iii. Military Alliance (joint military action and training)
iv. Mutual defence pact (bases in each others terr.)


I suppose a trade alliance rather than being the simplistic Civ3 "agree to trade horses for 5 gold per turn for 20 turns plus navigation" could be:

a. an expression of ANY set of agreements and tarriffs where there are more allowances than restrictions, meaning you can still have some sanctions but not many,

b. you would see in each nation databox an icon indicating they are part of a trade alliance, then clicking on the icon would give you the details of that alliance if it is with your nation.

c. Trade Agreement could be different to a Trade Alliance, being when there are more restrictions than Allowances.

d. indefinite, as well as renegotiable, suspendable and cancelleable.

e. affect all future relations with the nations involved: meaning they could be more inclined to sit round the table with you on other treaties, more keen to agree if you're rich and powerful or have something they want, or hostile if you betrayed them. Maybe make other nations more talky rather than fighty if your nation has a Switzerland reputation.

f. moving up the scale from CultEx -> TradAg -> TradAl -> EconUn should have a marked effect on the volumes of trade and wealth generation, I reckon.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy i'd like to see a ittle scrollable treaty history.
i want nations to remember which nations have been good to them, wnad when, even if it was 200 years ago.
I'm talking about something major like if your military intervention saved your neighbour from extinction, they should remeber it - though perhaps it would depend on how literate and free-thinking they are.

i'm just remembering how in Civ3, i could conciously groom and preen an ally over the centuries, and then they could just turn on me in an instant after literalyl ages of good vibes... really irritating.

Well nothing is remembered forever and even things that are remembered for a long time (big/important stuff as well as negative stuff stays fresher longer...just human nature), it becomes less relavant over time...like saving your civ 200 years ago...the french helped the US about that time ago, but it really doesn't influence our relationship with them because of that...in fact it didn't influence much beyond that time period.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Originally posted by yellowdaddy yes, i suppose it's not a function of government - but then are you only controlling the government when you play this game, or more?

Unless we impliment the character model, or other pseudo organizations, the answer is yes.

[alms66]

Ok, this thread is old, but I believe it's still relevant to the new diplomatic GUI...

From what I gathered on the discussion, there was quite a bit of talk about whether or not the player should be able to get automatic and totally accurate knowledge of whether the AI would accept a deal or not. The general consensus was that it would be too annoying to not get that knowledge, so it was going to be done like in Civ3, where your advisor tells you, "He'll accept" or "He'll never accept", right? Well, personally I'd prefer not to know with 100% certainty, and I think there was at least one other person in that discussion who thought so as well, so how about this instead of an automatic breakpoint of accept/don't accept?...

What you see in the attached image is a trading screen from Superpower 2. The bar at the bottom is the key point to this post. It gauges values of what's been put on each side, but just because the value is slightly off, doesn't mean the AI won't accept. Let's do a quick example. Let's say you're on the left and you put up 1000 gold, 200 gpt and two techs (one of which is refining) and you ask for a small region of the AI's land. The AI on the right side really wants refining, because he's in a war and it would give him an edge. The AI also stands to gain much more land in that war, plus he has fairly good relations with you, but the land you're asking for is fairly rich in resources and has a large city on it. The AI's desires and needs don't figure into the calculations for the trade balance though, it's just the raw value of the item, with no conditions applied.

This *combined with* an advisor who says things like:
Making such a proposal will anger them sire!
We're giving up too much sire!
We can do better sire.
I fear we must give more sire.
Etc...
I think would be a good approach. The trade bar gives a rough value of what's on the table, while the advisor let's you fine-tune it or see if the AI just really doesn't want to give you what you're asking for (your advisor would be screaming "YOU'VE GONE MAD SIRE!!" or something like that). The advisor should never say "They will accept this" or "They won't accept this" like it does in civ3. That's just too easy. There should be *some* level of risk involved with diplomacy, even if it's small.

[LDiCesare]

I'll stress again that I like the galciv way of doing the proposal, which let you know exactly what you can get. I don't even like Civ3 where you can ask the other civ "what do you propose" and then spend some time upping the values until you get the right result. It just slows down the game for no fun for me. I think that players will either reload the game after knowing the deal or try making 25 different deals until they get the good one if we don't provide a tool that lets know the result. I would do the latter. Since it's not fun, we'd have to provide an incentive not to retry, like in civ/civ2, but that proved unfun too imo.

[alms66]

I've never played galCiv, could you (or someone) explain how diplomacy works in that game?

Ideally I'd like a real negotiating table where you put down an offer, the AI changes it (or rejects it outright), then you modify it, then the AI, etc., etc., until an agreement is reached or talks are suspended, as it occurs in the real world. The 'table' setup of civ3 is excellent for this. Add the advisor and the trade bar and the player has a fairly good idea of how far he can go before he either pisses the AI off*, or is seen as a weakling by the AI*, and it tries to take advantage of the situation.

I personally like the "What do you propose" from civ3. It adds more interaction between the player and the AI, so that it's not completely one-sided diplomacy - though it could have been much better than it was.

The people that reload games to get a better result are going to do that no matter what game they are playing and quite frankly, I feel no need at all to cater to such people. Let them reload all they want, it doesn't hurt me and they wouldn't do it if they didn't want to - just like I don't do it because I consider it cheating.

Another component that could be added to diplomacy is mood, like in CTP2, though perhaps something a bit more sophisticated. It would show the AI's mood after a proposal, and maybe even give a hint of what his response will be before the proposal, though I'm not sure I like that - it seems a bit cheap.

And for those who want "perfect diplomacy" it should be easy enough to have an option for that.

*These are the incentives to send what you want to send, and not continuously "up" the values to get the best result. You don't know the best result. There is no clear breakpoint as in civ3.

[LDiCesare]

Galciv's system is much like Civ3. You get a different color from the ai depending on whether your offer will be accepted or rejected. When it's green, it's ok, when it's not, it's wrong.
The main difference with Civ3 is you have a slider for the things with values (influence and cash), so you can move the slider, see if that cuts it or not. To me, it's a bit like doing the deal directly with the ai. Apart from that, the diplomatic ai behaved in a way that was far easier to understand, more realistic and challenging than civ3.
The "what do you propose" is nice, but it's too greedy in comparison with what it will give.
Pissing off the ai is not something I want. It was very easy to abuse the civ2 ai into declaring war by just asking it to remove its troops (when it had none on your territory), while keeping good relations with other civilizations.
CtP's tone would indeed be interesting to add, but I never managed to understand the exact effects of these moods.

[alms66]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
The "what do you propose" is nice, but it's too greedy in comparison with what it will give.

I agree. It would be nice if it at least got close.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Pissing off the ai is not something I want. It was very easy to abuse the civ2 ai into declaring war by just asking it to remove its troops (when it had none on your territory), while keeping good relations with other civilizations.

We're on opposite ends here. I definately would want it. I hate 'foolproof' diplomacy. It lacks any sort of interaction, immersion or flavor. It removes the possibility of starting a war you did not intend to occur. It's too easy from my perspective, which is why I say it would be best to have an option to turn on 'foolproof' ('perfect' diplomacy) or to have the full-blown immersive diplomacy. I would simply have to hope that Clash has a better diplomacy AI than civ2, and it won't be as easy to trick.