Except if you're Italy...

Really, I'm not comfortable with such control over the diplomacy system. Ever-shifting alliances were what made games like Risk fun. I used to play with two brothers, and I'd always win because they'd start screwing each other over and I'd eventually come out on top. It was fun

Aha so fame would act like a diplo bonus or something. The higher, the better.

Many aspects if not all from the original poster deserve a close look by the developers.This seems to be an area most games fall short (in single player mode) because the AI just can't "calculate" all the different permutations the cunning and at times devious human mind can. In most games this aspect of the game I have always ignored (single Player) because I knew that if I ever needed it I could always get my way (lots of gold never fails). Now in multiplayer lets just say I have met some players so cleaver that I am glad it was a game I was playing and not real life it is such players who's ideas and suggestions would be invaluable to make Elemental even better.

The concept of trust is more how much loyal you are to diplomatic relation. If you only use relations, you could have a situation where player A backstab everybody except player B and that player B consider that player A is very thrustwothy which is not the case since he has been betraying eevrybody else since the beginning.

The idea of trust is more for long term diplomatic decisions.

I'm basically opposed to anything that forces me to run my nation a particular way.  If I want to trust Baron Von Backstab, that should be my mistake mistake to make.  I'm the Sovereign, after all, not the president.

You might trust him, but all the people who work for you might not. And that could create you problems that will prevent treaties to be concluded or to last very long. Of course, like I said, you would be able to fight together for a common cause, but you will not be able to make trade treaties, exchange technologies, etc. because your people fear and hate the other player.

Of course, with time, if you keep this partnership for a long time even after the treath is eliminated, your relations with that player will increase and eventually, you would evolve toward a true alliance. That could be a way to eliminate the grudge there way between both players.

Side idea: Special events could bring players to make decisions that will make diplomatic relations favorable or not toward another player. Some event could force you to insult another player which could be the reason why a war get started afterward.

The concept of trust is more how much loyal you are to diplomatic relation. If you only use relations, you could have a situation where player A backstab everybody except player B and that player B consider that player A is very thrustwothy which is not the case since he has been betraying eevrybody else since the beginning.

Okay I'm beginning to see how Trust could be independent from Relations as a game mechanic, such as AI-A and AI-B have lousy relations not because they have minimial dealings but because they constantly screw each other.   BUT how am I gonna know AI Player-A (Mr. Backstabber) has been backstabbing everyone else except me across the Realm thus influencing his overall Trust score and our ultimate ability to negotiate together (e.g. few diplomatic choices)?  I'm pretty comfortable with understanding my Relationship with Mr. Backstabber who has never dissed me, but how do I know he's knifing everyone else, thus impacting his Trust levels?  Did a little birdie tell me? (which, in a fantasy setting, could actually happen ).  Did I get it on PsychicBall TV? All the spies I have throughout the lands telefax in? All other sovereigns plop on my doorstep and tell me don't trust buttholio A?  What?  Bottom line, I can see some of the influences an independent Trust variable might have, but boy it sure sounds far more complicated to implement properly than just your Relationship/Fame variables.  

I'm basically opposed to anything that forces me to run my nation a particular way. 

I'm not sure I'd categorize it that way-- your choices are limited by the Relationship you've helped developed.  However, if the Trust Variable were to be implemented that could potentially be further limiting to you and you might just not care about the factions trustworthiness if they're your "best buddy."  In that case, I'm with ya.  So I suppose overall although I'm better understanding this trust concept, I'm just not a fan--- too many downsides from my POV.

hmm i like the idea.if you make a map and want so that 2 nations always war each other and one is neutral and has to choose who to be allies with it would be good to have such a system but if they change fast the 2 big ones would ally to kill the small nation and would ruin the fun

My problem here is almost all 4x games have this already. I can't think of
one that doesn't already have a diplomatic slider or rating between you and
every other empire. The problem is one, it is a generic rating that the AI's
already use. Two, it isn't the rating that is the problem but the AI's
intelligence and ability to be just as sneaky and underhanded as the player. And
Three, lets face it most of us ignore those silly sliders or rating bars
anyways.

Go Back to MoO2 and you see the diplo rating you have with eveyone you are in
contact with. Playing the game you can see it factors in. The bigger problem
isn't with the rating but how that rating gets affected. I have seen High
ratings plummet as soon as I hit a certain power level. And I have seen low
levels skyrocket with just a few key trades and treaties. and sometime I have
seen them rise or fall for no apparent reason at all.

Until you can set goals for the completions of diplomatic activities. Such as
When you ask Nation A to declare war on nation B. And actually get them to
attack nation B not just declare war and do nothing. Or telling an empire to
remove all spies and they say yes then don't. Or when you make an atreaty with a
player and then their units are running all around inside your borders (which is
a big problem of mine), Come on guys it was only a treaty and not an alliance.
So you break it to get them out of your land and now you are untrustworthy
player even though the computer actually broke the trust first, you just broke
the treaty. 4X diplomacy is just going to be a hollow shell.

The problem isn't with the Diplomacy per se, it is that the diplomacy has no
teeth. So what if my diplomatic rating is in the toilet because I am an
untrustworty shit. What is the computer going to do to me since the end game is
the annihilation of them all anyways. How is it going to make it more painful to
not live up to my obligations then to do so. How is it going to be able to
actually see and understand if I have lived up to my obligations. For that
matter how am I going to be able to see/understand and if need be sanction it if
it doesn't. In a fuedal wagame like this diplomacy is just a stalling tactic
till the suprise attack.

While diplomacy is nice and all, in a war game like this it is kinda
pointless. Diplomacy now a days is the foremost weapons because wars are
unpopular and expensive. The economies of the world are global. And Fear that if
one nation oversteps itself with Brute force it faces not only the nation it
tread upon but the combined might of the rest of the world for what could only
be considered at best a Gentleman's Agreement.  It's why small nations make sure
their interests are tied into the interests of Nations like the USSR, United
States or China. And it is Why nations like the United States cannot just wipe a
small country off the face of the map. Citing this Iraq Debacle we find
ourselves in. Yes we can wage a war on terror, but if we go to far we have to
deal with the fact we are now working against China's and the USSR's
interest.

And only a fool would think that no matter how big, bad, and scary they are,
that they have enough muscle to bring the rest of the world to heel

I would suggest that your view of diplomacy is very evil compared to what a Kingdom might have. Diplomacy is the key to peaceful interaction. Maybe it would be better to have seperate kinds of diplomacy for different factions. Evil ones such as yourself would have manipulative tactics that rely of leveraging one's might against weaker opponents. Good diplomacy would rely on mutually beneficial exchange and securing peaceful expansion towards a common cause, to recivilize the world.

Well, we are different. Personally I don't like game mechanisms like that. I don't like the "cast 1 spell to rule the world" stuff. Example: When I played with Civ4 FFH2, I only played with the "conquer" and/or "domination" settings. I only play AoW2-SM with allied victory/conquest settings as well. It's much more fun to win via destroying your enemies, than focusing on researching the "ownage spell" & playing defensively. This is my opinion of course, like I said, we are different.

To me the idea of victory is somewhat old altogether. For instance in the real world nothing happens in which we simply declare ourselves the winner and that is the end. Why do their have to be "Victory Conditions" at all? To me if your sacrificing countless good soldiers to take over an "enemy" city because he called you a stinky-bottom or some such nonsense you've already lost. That however, would take a strong sense of humanism in a game in order to convey. Is sacrificing the lives of your people really worth it?

Maybe I only see it that way because I like to play as a benevolent ruler whose primary goal, rather then conquest is to simply keep his people happy and advance their way of life. I enjoy using diplomacy and getting along with other nations and it always irritates me when a nation betrays our alliance and attacks me for no reason beyond him being a big pompous ass. Who would really do that? I can understand certain evil empires wanting to achieve total dominance but having kingdoms smackin the hell out of each other just because hey... That's how you win, seems ridiculous to me. That being said I think that a higher level of diplomacy would be a nice thing to have. I want alliances to be binding and meaningful not just "stall-tactics". I want nations who are known for being treacherous to be looked down upon and nations with honorable reputations being smiled upon.

I could play for countless days like that, just building up infrastructure, tending to my people, making sure everyone is happy and having a blast doing it. Of course should war break out I do have fun smiting the nasty sonuvabitch who is trying to ruin my peoples way of life, I just want him to have a reason behind it rather then attacking for no reason at all.

You decide what winning is and what victory means to you. Its the same in real life. Every advancement is like its own victory but its a personal victory, one meaningful only to yourself.

I guess what I'm getting at is who wants to win? What do you really consider winning? To me if my people are happy and I have a decent power-base I've already won. If you smite everyone and there is no one left to kill then hurray, your all powerful and your awesome sovereign and your deadly army can now just sit on their butts for the rest of eternity, to me victory of that sort is akin to losing. The game is over all my work goes down the toilet and the only thing I get in return for it is some supposed "self-satisfaction"? Boooring.

I actually hope there is a way to disable winning conditions all together. That way there is no incentive to wipe out everyone completely. Nor to achieve absolute dominance, because sometimes just being a small cog in the larger clock, is the funnest role of all.

I don't really see the distinction there... Sorry Larienna. Nor do I see the need for victory conditions at all. I'd like to play a game that is persistent. A game where whichever path I choose it's the correct one because its the one I chose not because its the one that nets me the most points or will lead me to "winning". I suppose my Idea is to difficult for my meager intellect to explain. Suffice to say I see victory conditions as a whole in a game designed around a living breathing fantasy world to be archaic at best. Granted some people like them, I'm not saying take them out, I'm saying have an option to have no winning conditions. If I want to play in the same game world with the same sovereign until the turn of the 30th century, why not let me?

I want options for no "Game Overs" through victory because there is no such thing as a permanent victory, all victories are simply transient and I'd like a game to reflect that for once.

For instance, lets say you wipe out all the other major powers and rule supreme. Cool, but whose to say you'll always rule supreme, there are always challenges to be met and I hate the idea of a game ending just because I met a certain condition. Whose to say a rebel faction doesn't rise up among my people who want to overthrow the tyrannical Sovereign. Or the long lost heir of one of the factions I wiped out begins building a large power-base among the dissenting people in my kingdom and starts an army to take me down a peg. Just because I take everyone out doesn't mean the world ends. Now if the world really ends, well I guess I could accept that as a game over screen, anything else just seems sad.

Games like that exist. For example, SimCity. Although there are scenarios where you can achieve victory, you can play in sandbox mode and you can develop your city to eternity if you'd like.

But games like Elemental are not conducive to that sort of gameplay. Eventually, there will be nothing left to research, nowhere left to settle, nothing left to build, etc. What would you do every turn? There'd be nothing to do besides press "end turn." Eventually everything would settle down until someone randomly decides to piss off someone else, and then things would heat up a little bit, before eventually cooling back down and you'd be reduced to pushing end turn a hundred times in a row again. World/city/whatever simulation games are typically designed to be indefinite (although not always); and even in SimCity eventually you run out of things to do. A game that literally never ends and also never stops throwing interesting/fun/challenging situations at you requires either an infinite amount of planning, development and foresight, or it requires a genuinely intelligent and creative AI to constantly change the game.

You want what Brad would call SimFantasy (which is understandable, it would be fun indeed) - but that is a completely different game. Asking for them to turn Elemental into that would be asking them to throw away pretty much everything they've done including the creative planning stage, and design a completely different game. It isn't what they set out to do, and they aren't going to change their minds now...

Now, back on topic. I love this discussion! It actually reminds me of several discussions we had way back months ago The whole idea of "trust" also came up then, and I think it's as good an idea now as it was then.

The plan, as far as I can gather, is for the Dynasty system to carve out meaningful alliances and relationships. Kingdoms whose royal families are heavily intermarried will be bound by those relationships. Historically marriage was often used as an alliance-building tool, and Stardock wants to attempt to mimic that.

But ultimately, what is really important is a mechanism to enforce diplomatic obligations or suffer the consequences. XeronX is entirely correct about it mostly being a stalling tactic, even in games that allow alliance victories. I generally don't really care about my alliances in these games because they don't really offer me anything - I basically use them as non-aggression pacts. There are several underlying issues:

• alliances are typically only good for removing one more potential enemy
• even if an ally actually helps me, if I am better at the game than the AI, I might be better off by... absorbing my ally (or potential ally) via conquest.

The first issue is resolved by making AIs act on their diplomatic treaties. If they are allies with a player, then they should act like allies. If asked, they should either join my (defensive) war, or help me with resources and funding, or even magic - assuming they can afford to of course (they should still prioritize their own well-being above mine obviously). There needs to be intelligence in this, though, which is the challenge. If I am winning easily, they should see no need to help me out with resources or anything; maybe it'd be beneficial for them to go to war - perhaps they could get some easy loot. If I am struggling but not in imminent danger of being destroyed, they should respond with whatever help they can afford at the time. If I am beyond saving, it might be smarter for them to cut their losses. And if an AI goes to war for an ally, it needs to determine how committed to be to that war. Would distracting the enemy on another border be sufficient, or perhaps a full-scale invasion? The strength of their relationship with me (or an AI ally, obviously), their trust in me, and other measures of my worth to them such as trade and geographic location should all be major factors in these decisions. 

But then there's the other side: what about why my ally needs my help? It needs to be able to judge how much help I can actually provide to it at a given time. Am I embroiled in other wars? Is my economy doing well? What is the state of my military? And even if I have a strong military, how much of that could actually be spared on offense? If my response to its request of aid falls too short of what it thinks I can spare, our relationship should take a hit. In extreme cases, my ally should be able to terminate our alliance without penalty, and I should lose some trust from every other player. If I don't come through for one ally, who's to say I will for another?

The other issue is in some ways even harder (and that is saying something), and some ways easier. This can't be directly fixed by better AI (it will be a long time before an AI is as good as I am). The only way I can see to solve this issue is via major game mechanics. In Civ IV, GC II, etc, I can manage a massive empire. Even with things like increased upkeep cost for cities farther from my capitol. The way I think this issue should be resolved is to make running gigantic empires really, really difficult. Not fraught with micromanagement - that won't prevent it from happening, it will simply chase people away from the game because they'll get tired of it. In the games I mentioned previously, bigger is better. It sort of makes sense - as your empire grows, the ratio of land to border grows exponentially, meaning an exponentially smaller fraction of your economy needs to be spent on defense. If Stardock can make it so that, at some point depending on your current strategy, location, resources, military needs, etc, growing your empire starts to result in diminishing returns, this problem will be solved.

If I absorb a potential ally and it only boosts my economy, military, magic, etc by a small fraction of what it was as an independent nation, then I am better off with that kingdom as an ally than absorbing it into mine. Although now that I think about it, conquering a potential ally instead of building an alliance would also lose me an allied sovereign and thus lots of magical power, as well as any heroes and champions he would've had; maybe that would be enough.

Either way, diplomacy will be a sidenote, just like in every other game in the genre, unless those two problems are resolved. The first problem seems like by far the hardest to fix. The second just requires clever game mechanics (it can be done with clumsy game mechanics, like corruption in Civ 3, but that just tends to frustrate people). The first requires greatly superior diplomacy AI than anyone has ever been able to pull off - better, probably, than anyone has seriously aimed for. So I wont hold my breath, but I will hold out reserved hope If Stardock succeeds, watching regional wars break out between alliances of kingdoms that are actually cooperating and helping each other... That would be glorious.

This post ended up about 23 times longer than I intended and it is mostly long-winded... Sorry.