In the Channeler vs. Channeler (FIGHT!) thread, there's some discussion of 'honor' as something like a channeler stat that could connect to both quests and the diplo system. I had trustworthiness in mind when I typed over there, but maybe there should be a sharp distinction between being trustworthy and having a reputation for victory. Either way, I definitely agree about wanting to see the AIs act differently towards a civ that's a known backstabber vs. a civ that has never broken a formal agreement, attacked a weaker power without provocation, etc..

I also like the idea of a more complex, interactive negotiation system for trades. I suspect that coding there might be much harder than doing something to let the AIs remember whether other players break promises regularly, occasionally, or never. But I'd like to have that latter assumption corrected by any dev-type, Stardock or otherwise.

It wouldn't be awesome, what is wrong with you? It would be awesome. In fact I think that such a capable diplomacy system could single-handedly make the game.

I want to see every one of the features you mentioned in your post, plus more. Another feature I'd like to have is the ability to trade intelligence. For example, Player A and Player B are at war with each other, and Player C is neutral; but Player C's empire is situated such that he actually has a very good view of what's happening in Player B's territory. Players A and C make a deal so that Player C provides Player A with all the information it has about Player B in return for something else. The result is kind of like a limited one-sided sharing of LoS; Player A sees everything owned by Player B that Player C can see, including cities, armies, shards, you name it.

Another thing I'd like to see is the ability to trade magic. I don't mean trading essence or mana or anything, but being able to cast spells as part of a diplomatic deal. So I'll be able to offer to cast Fertile Fields for another player in exchange for a constant supply of bears.

And yet another thing I want to see is the ability to lease things. For example if I have an ally who is under constant magical assault from an enemy and can't hold up much longer, I want to be able to lease my ally one or more of my magic crystals. If we're good enough friends I might even want to lease it for free, functioning as a temporary gift; but once the lease expires the crystal reverts to my control.

Cool ideas.

Having the AI keep track of your trustworthiness would help create a "living, breathing" fantasy world, which seems to be a common theme in the idea threads. In a different thread, someone mentioned how the AI could keep track of various wars, even mention them by name (The Great War of the Year 6780). Little flourishes like that would go a loooong way to making your game feel like a unique, self-contained world.

Agreed. In real life, the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand share signals intelligence through ECHELON. I'd like to see similar pacts and agreements in Elemental. While you might not send forces to help Kingdom X during wartime, you could continue sharing intelligence.

I think Civ 4 was a very bad example.   Because in that particular game, they do sometimes start to talk peace the moment they start loosing a war.   Especially certain personalities that try to stay 'peaceful'.  Do you not play on hard? (noble I guess its called)   On that setting or higher the AI will attack you only when it thinks it can win (a few particularly war-like personalities are exceptions) and will start talking peace once they realize they are surely on the loosing side of a battle without any armies to go strike your turf when you arn't looking (they do that alot, or have their ally do it).  If you play on the lower settings then only war-like personalities will ever really declare war on you unless you kick somebody in the balls (and gaundi still won't declare war and will immidiatly talk peace even if those balls are his own)

When they are near extinction is when they start talking vassage and other stranger thing.  Its all based on civic choices and other things just how much you have to push them before they start talking, and the personality they have is a major factor as well.  sometimes if they really hate me a lot because of bad civic choices, they don't do it until I actually get them below me on the army strength chart.  The problem is that usually you have like 1 or 2 huge armies all together, where they have like 5 guys in every town.  With decent micromanagement of troops (ensuring you always have a decent chance of victory) you can quickly start to over power them even though their army is in theory bigger.

~Signature ROAR

All really good ideas guys!

Another I'd like to add, which I saw someone mention in another thread (so the credit goes to you whoever you are!), is the need for symmetry between the AI's diplomatic options and the players. A specific example of this is the ability to threaten people who are doing something you don't like. In a lot of games, say if you've got a non-aggression pact with someone and you need one of your units to take a shortcut over their land, the AI will immediately start crying and threatening you to make you leave... yet a few turns later you're left with no similar facility when they do the same thing, that's just hugely annoying!

This prompts me to mention two aspects I'd like to see with regard to any threatening mechanic, firstly I'd like there to be some back and forth as there woudl be with a real person/power. If I'm taking a shortcut across this guys land and he tells me to get off I should be able to answer back and explain to him that it's only a shortcut and I'll be gone within 10 turns and that I promise not to do anything mean while I'm there. Whether or not he; A] believes me out right, B] monitors the situation extremely closely making sure I stick exactly to my word, C] as B but he sends a unit to escort me across his land, or D] doesn't buy it and reiterates his order to leave his land, would I guess come down to the AI player's personality and any honour/trustworthyness system that's in place. I think this would really make the whole interaction a lot more satisfying and I'd especially be interested to hear the AI's explanations for why they're garrisoning a stack outside my capital!!! Oh, also I just thought, it would obviously also be a great idea if you could ask someone (especially when you have a non-aggression pact, treaty of friendship etc.. but even if you're just neutral) whether you can move across their lands prior to encroaching on their territory.. that way you have less chance of causing a diplomatic incident

My prior request for some substantive back and forth around threats and requests leads to the second thing I'd like to see which is some level of contextual subtlty such that not every military incident leads directly to war and defensive aggression doesn't necessarily cast you in a negative diplomatic light (in terms of any honour/trustworthyness index). What I mean by this is that if someone I have a non-aggression pact with is trespassing on my land, and I tell them to leave or I will remove them (I don't buy their explanation for why they're there, those charlatans!!!) then, assuming they don't leave in the reasonable time limit I set out for them, attacking the encroaching unit should not immediatley mean a declaration of war and should not count as me having sneak attacked someone I had a pact with (which obviously would destroy my reputation for being honourable). Where the relationship between the two parties involved then goes I guess would depend on their personalities, intentions and levels of power etc. It's conceivable the tresspassing channeller might declare war on me as they're so affronted that I won't let them walk all over my lands unhindered, but that decision would be theirs and not an act of aggression by me. It also might be nice that if I myself chose to declare war I would suffer a reduced hit to my reputation as the game would recognise that this incident (which was the fault of the other channeller) provoked my actions and thus it wasn't just mindless aggression on my part.

Actually thinking about the above leads on to another idea, that maybe there should be a diplomatic state which is an option such as a "Stay Off My Land!!!" Treaty where you would agree not to venture into another channeller's territory but you would both recognise that any of your troops that DO will be immediately be attacked with the defender taking no hit in terms of reputation as they're sticking to their word (whereas I guess the tresspasser would lose some reputation as they're not).

Trustworthness is not that easy I think. I should not only be a global value from 0 to 100. SMAC had such value. As soon as you attacked someone, the value was reduced. Therefor, the way to declare war to an AI was to provoke him so long, until the AI attacked. And then the players value was fine.

Another thing with trustworthiness is, that some AI could trust me more than others. If I have a nice AI beside of me, and I love him, then he can always trust me. But if I fool somtimes with the others, why should my nice AI bother? Then I would like to have a option like "Hey, nice AI, I'm going to declare war on you. But don't bother... forget it. Believe me, I will never send troops to you. The only reason I do this, is to get money from the evil overlord. Do you want half of the money? Yes? Here it is. Maybe we can have traderoutes while we are at war?"... okay, the traderoutes are a bit too much, a war should mean some defined things. But I would like to explain someone, that/why he can trust me, because the people I betray are not that nice, they are all ugly rats and kommunists. So, only rats and kommunists should not trust me...

For me it would be enough, if i could create complex agreements and if I could ensure, that my business partner only get paid, if he really fulfill his parts. (i.e. declaration of war in x turns AND destroy city Bullabulla; i.e. Peace and no troops in range of 5 tiles to my borders - paid 5 gold each turn, when really no troops are in this range[which I can see]...)

Don't forget that it needs to be very evident in how the AI acts to you.    MoM was plagued by the AI's sounding mean and upset with you, even when you did friendly things like try to offer a spell exchange and you were so far more advanced then they that had nothing to give you.

I very, very much agree.

I think someone mentioned this earlier but I couldn't find it in a brief skim of this thread (Edit: it was Jonny who brought it up first, the credit goes to him). In certain circumstances it should be possible to attack another player without a declaration of war. If another player's troops enter your territory without an open borders agreement, they should be fair game. Doing so would obviously hurt relations between the two players, though.

Yes! If the AI is capable of complaining to us about something, we need to be able to complain to the AI about those same things. I don't even see why that would be particularly difficult to implement - if the AI can complain about it, it's obvious that it is capable of recognizing that kind of situation.

i love a LOT of these ideas posted, especially the diplomacy counter. The only thing wrong with the "trust" system implied here is that it would need to be extremely complex to seem real.  A lot of traditional rts games have implied similar systems, and you tend to find yourself at war with "AI RED" because you are trading with his enemy "AI YELLOW" too much, and your borders just happen to be way too close to "AI RED" thus he experiences a nervous breakdown in which "AI YELLOW" invades "AI RED" and leaved "AI RED" badly disfigured. "AI RED" becomes desperate and invades "PLAYER UNO" because of said conditions. If you take those factors into consideration they all pile up and then u get an AI who 1. doesnt trust you for nuts 2. is on horrible terms with you and 3. is about to invade ur arse just because you aren't adding to his resolve and said actions are considered "UNTRUSTWORTHY"..........OR it could totally work out awesomely and i could be entirely wrong, but i've seen similar things happen in games such as SPORE and CIV.... GALCIV

What?   I agree with Spoor and Galciv, but CIV (at least CIV IV, Civ 1 was obviously too primitive and I skipped 2 and 3 so I can't comment) the personalities are very different.  Generally there are 3 different sets of what every personality says in responce to anything, based on likes/doesn't like/neutral, and then the different personalities make very obvious different choices based on what *type* of personality they are.   If you don't believe me play a few games with khan, gandhi, that spain woman person (forget her name), and churchhill.   They are so different, I love it.  Khan is pretty much aggressive and demanding most of the time.   The spain woman acts nice sometimes, but she will be quick to stab you in the back randomly.   Churchhill is pretty neutral I find, doing whatever you'd think a normal person would do (attack when angry, not when not angry) and Gandhi you can run up, kick in the balls, take a few cities, and he'll instantly forgive you, declare peace, and be back to 'friendly' or at least 'cautious' in no time.  Even on harder settings.

Churchhill and the spainish woman are very clear through dialogue on just how much they like you.   (though the spanish woman has turned around and stabbed me so many times I never trust that B**CH)

I really like a lot of this stuff!

My biggest problem with 4X games is the diplomacy is always a let down. Civ 4 was a great improvement over something like GalCiv (imo), but I'd really love to see options that make it viable for a human player and maybe an AI or two teaming up to form alliances in game, and actually succeed together as opposed to having to take each other out to win at some point. Haven't played Civ 4 in a while, so don't remember how well that was done, but I seem to remember that much like all the 4Xers I've played, the AI seems too crazy.

Just like in World War II for instance, the Allies won together. After the US defeated Japan, and the USSR defeated Germany, they didn't immediately turn their armies on each other, but had a period of a tense peace of sorts. Neither did we bomb the Brits or the French just because they were sufficiently weakened and thus "an easy kill." All I'm saying is I want more cooperation with the AI, without having to set it up as permanent teams before the game starts. Let it fomr organically, and maybe end up in large "good vs. evil" style wars involvong multiple nations. (I'm hoping the whole marriage element brings a lot of this into it as well.)

Another thing I just can't imagine. The UK declaring war on the US in real life anytime in the current world political scene. We're buddies, and we may argue from time to time, but it never goes too far. In the game world though, that sort of thing seems to happen all the time.

I also like the ideas that not every slight should lead to war. I've been playing a game called King of Dragon Pass lately (after reading about it on someone's post here actually!) and one of my favorite things is that if my tribe raids another tribe, and plunders some of their goods, it doesn't lead to war right away. A lot of variables come into it. How good was our relationship before the raid? Did we go out of our way to kill people, or was it primarily a raid for goods? Did we capture members of the other tribe and enslave them? Did we release the POWs? Kill them? Trade them back for cows?

Everyone raids each other in the game, but HOW you raid makes the difference between an honorable action and a contemptible one.

Also, I think trade relations should play a big part in diplomatic situations. If you have a bunch of profitable trade routs with an AI, that would suggest your two peoples also have developed a relationship with each other to some degree. All the merchants, caravaners, traders what-have-you that rely on the trade for their livelihood, would be pretty upset if you suddenly declared war on each other, and would let you know through various means.

And just in general, trade should lead to improved relations. Even a paranoid Stalin would have to recognize the importance of a trade partner bringing in the big bucks time and time again, thus funding his war against another AI.

A rich diplomatic system would really go so far in making this game shine above and beyond the rest of the games out there. And it's easily one of the most important features for me in this style of game.