Diplomatic GUI

[Max Sinister]

I think it would be too complicated if it was possible to stretch a negotiation over many turns. If there are n Civs in a game, you have n² possible negotiations. They all must be saved in RAM. And what makes things worse: Treaties might depend from each other. Ex.: Germany negotiates with both France and Russia for a peace. They both demand the city of Hamburg. What happens now?

I really don't mind if you have to accept / decline offers within one turn.

[alms66]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I don't see the difference between how many counter proposals you make and how many times you contact. Nothing prevents me from making a treaty with 2 counter proposals, then stopping and proposing another treaty of the same kind, essentially nullufying the limit of 3 counter proposals.

You're right. I hadn't thought about that, however it's the equivilant of saving and reloading if you don't get the deal you want in my book, which means it's cheating in my book, and I wouldn't do it personally - therefore just as with those who save and reload when they don't like a result, I wouldn't worry about those that do choose to do it. If they want to, let them.

Originally posted by LDiCesare
Reading your exampe, I still prefer predictible diplomatic bargains in the turn we do the bargaining. Lowering relations through a faux-pas and bullying would still happen the way you describe, and stating things like "so it or else" could very well cause an immediate declaration of war.

I didn't mean to imply that lowering relations by mistake or bullying wouldn't happen, in fact, I want it to (that's a difference between you and I). The example was meant as an example of non-perfect diplomacy (the way I want it), whereas the note about only applying the relations indicator's modifier when a deal is signed was meant for perfect diplomacy (the way you want it). I should have also noted, though I felt it was implied, that under perfect diplomacy, the advisor would say things like, "That is an acceptable deal," "That is unaceptable, sire," and such, so that the player knows for certain whether a deal is going to be taken or not (basically your MoO system, using words instead of colors), though the deal itself still has an effect on relations.

The ultimatum was meant to cause an immediate declaration of war if the treaty isn't accepted - or at least an immediate end to the talks and a large drop in relations by the other party if they don't want a war with you.

Originally posted by Max Sinister
I think it would be too complicated if it was possible to stretch a negotiation over many turns. If there are n Civs in a game, you have n² possible negotiations. They all must be saved in RAM. And what makes things worse: Treaties might depend from each other. Ex.: Germany negotiates with both France and Russia for a peace. They both demand the city of Hamburg. What happens now?

Actually, you could have many more than n² treaties being discussed at any given turn. One civ could have 3 treaties under negotiation with another civ in a single turn. However, unless I'm mistaken, it's always been a part of Clash design to have multi-turn negotiations. The memory used will be very limited and not worth worrying over.

Regarding your example, it depends. If Germany, France and Russia are sitting at the same table, obviously that deal won't work. If Germany has seperate discussions with France and Russia, then whichever deal gets done first wins out, and that clause is no longer valid (has a value of 0 for the AI pretty much), therefore it won't work in the second deal, when those talks resume. This is really more of an issue of multi-party diplomacy than anything to do with what's been discussed here lately though.

Originally posted by Max Sinister
I really don't mind if you have to accept / decline offers within one turn.

I don't mind having it done in a single turn either, but I do like the possibility of having a treaty in negotiation for several turns. It could even be the goal of a scenario, in the future, to sign a specific treaty with a specific nation. If all negotiations took place in a single turn, that wouldn't be possible.

[LDiCesare]

I didn't mean to imply that lowering relations by mistake or bullying wouldn't happen, in fact, I want it to (that's a difference between you and I).

No, I don't mind having blunders. It's ok for me that bullying should lower relations.
I just want to have an advisor who tells me "The result of this offer is likely to be XXX" and go for it. If the likely result is "They'll feel insulted" and they declare war, then so be it, but it's on purpose.
If you keep asking for tribute, relations should lower, even if the results are predictible.

[alms66]

Originally posted by LDiCesare
No, I don't mind having blunders. It's ok for me that bullying should lower relations.
I just want to have an advisor who tells me "The result of this offer is likely to be XXX" and go for it. If the likely result is "They'll feel insulted" and they declare war, then so be it, but it's on purpose.
If you keep asking for tribute, relations should lower, even if the results are predictible.

It sounds to me then, that you actually like what I want to see in diplomacy, you just don't like the information being divided over 3 areas (trade bar, relations indicator & advisor). You want the advisor alone to say, "Yes" or "No" to the treaty's acceptance, whereas I'd prefer to leave that decision up to the player, based on the information provided - correct? If that is correct, I'd suggest at least giving it a try as-is first, then if you don't like it, putting in an option at startup for an additional indicator to show (a green/yellow/red light or just additional text from the advisor saying whether or not the treaty will be accepted). You can use this additional indicator as a trainer for people to get used to the diplomacy system as well as for those who don't like the chance of failure in diplomacy.

I think your fear is that it will be too difficult to decide if the deal is acceptable or not. Personally, I don't think anyone will have that problem. The relations indicator doesn't have anything to do with acceptance - it just shows what the state of relations will be after the proposal, either going up fast, going up, holding steady, going down or going down fast (I think 5 icons should be enough here). You'll have to watch that if you are worried about your relations with the civ, otherwise you'll tend to ignore it. The trade bar should generally be kept fairly equal, if you want deals to succed quickly and without incidents of lowered relations (though incidents are relatively rare, unless you make plainly one-sided deals). The advisor basically tells you his thoughts on the treaty (again 5 options), very good for us, good for us, good for both, bad for us, very bad for us. That's basically what you want out of the advisor, it's just not a certain "yes it's going to be accepted exactly as is" in the way that civ3 did it, it's a "yes that will be accepted or slightly altered by a counter-proposal".

The thing I really like about the system (other than it feels like you're negotiating with someone - that whole interaction thing), is there is no concrete break-point where it passes or doesn't. At least, not visually, like in civ 3. There is certainly a breakpoint in any negotiation system, it's just that finding it in this one would drive someone mad, which is enough of a discouragement to keep people from trying it too much, IMO.

[LDiCesare]

You want the advisor alone to say, "Yes" or "No" to the treaty's acceptance, whereas I'd prefer to leave that decision up to the player, based on the information provided - correct?

Yes.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I dunno...except in extreme cases, such as you're demanding something for nothing or giving something for nothing i don't think you should have any fool-proof displomacy where you'll know they won't get upset or won't be happy.

Even in the latter though, ie giving something, its not guaranteed to do anything period, though you can usually bet if you demand something for nothing they aren't going to like that idea.

I do like the idea of multi-turn diplomacy though. Its really how it works IRL, though it would be nice to have partial agreements reached, such as trading Hamburg for Moscow, but leaving out the trade of weapons which still might be considered a major deal. Of course they could make it an all-or-nothing deal, but they might not.

But really i don't like the straight up or down answer. I don't think anything you advisor said should be taken as a guarantee, just a well-educated guess.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Also it would be nice if there was a way to measure overall politcal capital and ways to gain and spend it to help with negotiations.

[yellowdaddy]

mood

I'm wondering about how the mood of the people as opposed to the mood of the leadership would come into play in negotiations.

do these emoticons express the mood of one of the two or both?

i.e.: the leadership might want to agree to something offered which might be against the will of the people.

particularly when were talking about putting territory on the negotiating table - a leader might want to be rid of a territory it views as not worth keeping for one reason or another, but the inhabitants might have a very different sentiment - regarding themselves as part of the state and the leader as the thing not worth keeping - would there be an emoticon to display the sentiment of the inhabitants (or stakeholders) as well as the leadership in such a case (or in every case for that matter)?

[LDiCesare]

yellowdaddy, you're raising a very interesting point. People may agree/disagree with their leader's decisions. I am not sure how this should be modelled (we can show the mood if it has some effect). A popularity figure maybe?

[yellowdaddy]

It must be connected with the riot model...

[alms66]

Re: mood

Originally posted by yellowdaddy
I'm wondering about how the mood of the people as opposed to the mood of the leadership would come into play in negotiations.

do these emoticons express the mood of one of the two or both?

Once again, and for the last time...
When I said mood before, I merely referenced a familiar image (that of CTP's mood indicators), while the actual function of them (for Clash) has nothing to do with mood or feelings - they would reflect the change in relations should the deal go through. With that said, however, I would like to see the population's thoughts on diplomacy in some form - perhaps reusing the same thing as above (or the population's "mood" indicator would display the change in the population's attitude towards the ruler if the deal were to go through).

BTW, I think we should get away from using the term 'mood' and go with 'relations change indicator' and 'population change indicator' or something less difficult (hopefully). When I see the word mood, it indicates some sort of emotional involvement in the process (which in a computer game means randomness or some overly complex simulation of emotion), and the system really doesn't need that to function.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Again though, i'd like to see some indication of political clout that you could spend to help push an unpopular measure, or perhaps speed some diplomacy up.

[yellowdaddy]

imagining a scenario where you are playing the UK and want to give up/get rid of Northern Ireland... or partition Ireland...

when you say "population" do you mean the whole population of the whole state before the partition or...
I mean I want to see a feature where such a partition would trigger a civil war/revolt in the partitioned territory, in this example, Ulster, rather than simply the leader's popularity taking a mathematically manageable dip.

E.g. if you were playing a Japan-China scenario where you as Japan want to take Manchuria from China as part of a peace treaty negotiation, the mood of the Chinese leadership might be very acquiescent, but the mood of the populace being exchanged might be quite different - you would not just get a dip in leadership popularity, but it would be a sudden civil strife triggerer; and domestic leadership popularity in Japan might rise.

So what I'm saying is that each "unit" of population - state, territory, province, county whatever should have a population smiley. Or is that going too far?

[Lord God Jinnai]

That's going a bit far, especially for the average negoatiations for pre-modern times.

[LDiCesare]

I've started coding the diplomacy. I changed Vovan's button to add an image of the ruler. There are mostly placeholders now but that should be prettier than just a button with the civ name.
Otherwise, this post is mostly a bump so I can more easily recover info from this thread.