Diplomacy

https://forums.elementalgame.com/336278

AI diplomacy in particular

https://forums.elementalgame.com/330806

Bear diplomacy

https://forums.elementalgame.com/350249

Though, you could have just used "ctrl" + "F" and searched for "diplomacy" on each forum page... and you could have covered both elemental general and elemental ideas in a minute (provided you have a decent connection/computer that lets you click a link and see the resulting page in less than 5 seconds)

Goodmorning all,

Summerizeing from the first two posts:

People want a seperate diplomacy modifier for trustworthness, and friendship, 

Trustworthness measures ones historical willingness to play by the rules, follow agreements to term, and not backstab. 
Generally speaking people seam to want there to be 1 modifier for each factions opponion of each other faction, and each factions global trustworthyness.  Each faction would wieght their trust of you, both on your histroy with them, and also your overal score.  Low trust would cause the AI to perfer upfont payments, rather then payment/turn, and be less likely to belive non agression packs / aliances.

Friendship would measure weather or not your alignments / politics agree, weather you've been helping that AI's allies or thier enemies, if you have had long standing agreements in the past. All the typical diplomacy stuff. Friendship would detirming weather or not they would be willing to enter into diplomatic talks with you at all, and how badly they will try to rip you off if they do agree to some form of trade or pact.

In terms of What Diplomacy can do.  People seam to want complex deals be on offer. Above and beyond the standard trading this for that. Trading for Spell's cast on thier domain.  'I'll give you X you put a wall of fire around my western 3 towns -name -name - name'. Shareing Non total intelegence information. 'anything I see going on in Yellows Lands I'll tell you about'.  Also semi inforcable going to war agreements. 'Send 3 warchariots to reds town ___, capture map object ___ while I ____' . Leasing agreements were also mentioned, 'rent you this mine for 15 turns'.  Also that any diplomatic action the AI can do, the user should be able to do to.  Lastly not all fighting actions need be nessisaraly war actions, If an opponent violates a closed boarder, and refuses to remove them, destroying them is juste and valid thus does not by nessesity invoke war.

Some requests were made that diplomatic talks be varied, and able to clearly imply distict levels of friendlyness /hatred, and trust / distrust.  That Diplomacy and espianoge be linked so you can spy on your opponents dealings. Lastly that the AI should be able to be untrustworthy, even going so far as to make false battle plans to lure your troops out of your defences before attacking you.


There was significant talk about the concept and methods for employing convoys which would be map viewable units, who can get captured / interigated,  There was some objection to the idea, on account of magical instant communication, but the general idea were:

Discutions might take multiple turns.
During the disccutions talks are suseptible to spy / abduciton actions by third 'or obsensivly third' parties. capturing plans or revieling talks / agreements.
Discutions mediated by diplomatic teams with assosiated ability modifiers.
the Proccess must be transparent, and be capable of give and take discutions to give clear understandings as to why certain things are or are not being accepted ' without giving away TOO much information about the empires invoved'

Have i missed anything significant??

If not i'll try and work these things together with my vision for the AI(s)
https://forums.elementalgame.com/357530

and hopefully post it tommorow, ish.

Best wishes all,

Take care.

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Goodmorning all, if anybodies been waiting sorry for the delay, Canada day and all.

Following up on my promise, and discussions at:

https://forums.elementalgame.com/357786/page/1/#2287483

and

https://forums.elementalgame.com/357530

ON trustworthiness and friendship.

Both should exist, IMHO, and they should be independent. Trustworthiness measures how likely you are to suddenly change direction against those who where trusting you. If you declare war on somebody who hates and distrusts you, it's probably justified. The best description of the difference for me, is you spend 40 turns ignoring an enemy your right beside, no trade, no contact, no fighting. Your trustworthiness would rise slowly, but your friendship would remain static. Trustworthiness increases slowly, friendship changes punctually and over time with gifts/attacks and trade agreements and such.

On manipulability of talks: I agree that talks should take time: Simple Tit for Tat talks no: trading spells, this much iron for that many bears. Things that involve more then 1 element on each side though would take longer.

Having caravans however . . . seams ill suited for the magical environment. Thus I suggest that negotiations are hosted by a town. Larger proposed agreements would take longer, both sides off the bat would list what they want to receive and based on the number of items on the list (and friendship / trust / situation) a town would be chosen to host (with benefits and disadvantages to hosting in that town) and a time frame would be declared. In that time the proceedings would be susceptible to spy actions, espionage, spells, hostage taking, all sorts of nasty (pronounced 'fun') stuff.
Before anybody complains, of course If one or the other side is Press in a war, and loosing this could be taken into account shortening the process [but making it more lopsided. if the AI/User feels a fast resolution is necessary].

The negotiation would be handled as follows, Both sides Declare what they want, duration and location is decided.
Next turn, Both sides are given a chance to Veto any items of the other sides requests and assign a sort of ranking as to which of the other sides requests are most to least acceptable. {possibly more detailed ranking if needed}. Each turn the players can get a report on how the talks are going, and possibly if desirable adjust things. Each turn a 3rd independent AI would look at a number of factors [Each factions diplomacy score, the negotiators abilities, faction happinesses/trusts of each other, what is being offered/demanded (value of those things), diplomatic/army/industrial/magical strengths of each side. From these and more factors the Third independent AI would propose an appropriately weighted agreement each turn, which factions would be able to see (if need be propose amendments)]. Each turn after the minimal number of turns decided at the beginning the agreement can be ratified by both sides and comes into affect.

It is important that this trade AI understand the concepts of strength, weakness, values of commodities on THIS map [woods not always worth a lot, if there are plenty of forests, Iron can be worth more then it's weight in gold on a map with only 3 iron mines for 5 factions... A Spell that tames bears is worth less if somebody on the map already is trading bear units to other factions. . . and so on]

This AI would also be able to explain it's weighting, to some degree, without overly jeopardizing the privacy of either side.



For Diplomacy involving VERY complex things such as casting spells on the other teams towns/ troops, Coordinating mutual attacks, Leasing of lands and production from mines... Will probably need a different UI then the tit for tat, X this for Y that, over N turns, non aggression pacts, and all the normal things most games have. This Mutual plans UI would need to be able to selectively show both factions lands (not necessarily all), units (again not all, or even accurately; the 35 bear calvary JUST outside of your vision that you don't know about, you still might not, if the AI is lying to you). The UI would also need a internal Turn buttons, so you can make plans like 'by day 10 this', 'by day 14 that'. by clicking through the turns (+/-1, +/- 5). Clicking and dragging Units in the UI would probably Draw nice little arrows, circles for area of control. etc.

This LAST step, making VERY complex agreements is a LOT to ask for, I hope somebody can find a more easy integrated way to do it then I've come up with, but i can't see anybody making real complex deals involving troop movements over spans of 5 - 15 turns, and trading areas of reviled fogs of war, by choosing text options alone. It's just too daunting.

That's all from me,

What do we all think, is it do able, is it what we want, What should i change in this suggestion to make it more appealing to us the game buyers?

Take care all