Diplomatic Relations Management

Preface: After playing a game this weekend, with 20+ civs, I started getting annoyed at the number of diplomatic requests I get from the AI. Mostly open borders and embassy requests, usually from some newly spawned rebel faction or tiny player. Sure, I could tell them to cease bothering me, but I miss out on more important diplomacy... So I have started work on a proper diplomatic relations manager...

How it works:

After researching Code of Laws (and Alphabet), you unlock the National Wonder "Diplomatic Mission". Constructing it unlocks 3 things:

• Access to the Diplomatic Management Menu (button is to the right of the BUG settings button)
• Ability to Commend Civilizations
• Ability to Condemn Civilizations

(I also plan on making the wonder generate a few Great Diplomat points...)

Diplomatic Management Menu
I'll get to the last 2 features eventually. Here is an early version of The Diplomatic Management Menu:

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It's very barebones right now, and missing a bunch of features. But it gives an impression of what it is supposed to do. You can set in advance, whether to reject or accept different diplomatic requests per civilization, before those requests happen. I plan on adding settings for default values for all civilizations and settings for default values for members of specific religions (so you can always accept requests from religious allies, reject them from heretics, etc).

I also want to have controls to auto-accept and auto-deny requests from civilizations based on their current attitude, so you can auto-accept requests from friendly civs and deny those from cautious...for example.

As always, you can always leave things on "Always Ask", and the game acts just like before.

Ambassadors, Commend, and Comdenm
The second half of the management is two new diplomatic actions. You can "commend" or "condemn" civilizations publically. You can only condemn or commend 1 civilization at a time, you have to cease your previous proclamation first. You start with 1 free ambassador, which accounts for your limit to 1 proclamation. However, you will be able to use Great Diplomats to attach to your Diplomatic Mission to add more ambassadors. So if you used 2 Great Diplomats and converted them into "Ambassadors", you could commend or condemn 3 civilizations simultaneously.

Ok, so what's the point? Commending civilizations is a way to improve relations with them. Depending on the AI type, it may give you between +1 and +4 attitude to them (Montezuma might not care about your feeble diplomacy, but Gandhi will). In addition, it will cause any civilizations you are friendly or above with to also get 1/2 that attitude bonus to the commended civilization.

Condemnations do the reverse. They damage attitude. Why would you intentionally damage your attitude with another civilization? Because again, it causes all your friends to have 1/2 the attitude damage to the condemned civilization. If you are a diplomatic powerhouse with a lot of friends, this can be very punishing.

In addition, the AI may barter with you to condemn or commend a friend or enemy of theirs, and can also be bartered with to commend or condemn someone of your choosing. Now you can be the true international pariah you always wanted to be. Also, the ability to commend multiple nations, with the use of several great diplomats, may make Diplomatic victory a more strategic victory option.

Oooh more Diplomacy toys! I approve

Condemning in particular already sounds.... Fun
I enjoy finding new ways to stir up trouble between AIs, and it's pretty tough to get a Friendly civ of yours to stop being all nice to an AI you hate that they also like (There was talk of blaming espionage on a third party nation, dont think that ever went through though)

Nice invention! It may create more entropy in diplomacy, which means more instability and more wars Even if it's an early progress, could you make the menu to be a little bit more compact, like in 2 rows ? I don't know if it's possible.

I play on a laptop (1366*768) and some menu are quite long.

How many count do National Wonder make in Technology? @Vokarya

Otherwise, I approve! Because there are actions I don't mind taking automatically but others, I prefer to be flexible about. So this is a great idea!

Very nice project!

One minor thing (that probably you've considered), I don't know if placement of the icon can cause a conflict because right of the BUG icon there's the nuke manager when using MAD civics.

[Little OT]

By the way, I've almost fixed that part about nukes too. Until now AI was never ever aiming its nukes because code was flawed or incomplete, let alone retargeting them. I've been able to fix it and now it correctly aims nukes at other civs, retarget them and keeps some of them on spare in case of unexpected attacks. Since AI is getting better at using nukes, I'd like to consider to remove No Nukes option: I've always thought that that option was there because AI wasn't able to use nukes properly and was causing huge damage to players by firing them randomly. But now it's different and AI knows what it's doing with nukes (and I plan to improve logic a bit more). Having a no-nukes option is the same to me like requesting a no-bomber or no-battleship option. It's a weapon you have to deal with somehow, no real need to remove it.
And speaking of options, I'd also like to remove Early Buildings and Civic Buildings. There's really no need for those options. Finally, I'd like to re-introduce Surround&Destroy: I know that using it against AI is like cheating but it looks like many people are missing this feature and using it in MP games should be fun anyway. Opinions?

[/Little OT]

45°38'N-13°47'E;13688997 said:

I'd also like to remove Early Buildings and Civic Buildings. There's really no need for those options.

Click to expand...

I really like those buildings. Do you want to remove them or remove the option to force use them ? There is no point to keeping these as options, i agree.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13688997 said:

Finally, I'd like to re-introduce Surround&Destroy: I know that using it against AI is like cheating but it looks like many people are missing this feature and using it in MP games should be fun anyway. Opinions?

Click to expand...

We should work on getting the AI be able to use these. By the way, if i managed to fix one-unit-per-tile, even if the ai don't know how to use it, the bonus will be there implicitely.

dbkblk said:

I really like those buildings. Do you want to remove them or remove the option to force use them ? There is no point to keeping these as options, i agree.

Click to expand...

I want to remove the option making them part of the game.

dbkblk said:

We should work on getting the AI be able to use these.

Click to expand...

AFAIK that's not an easy change, I think it's beyond my current ability to make AI understand S&D. I think the logic behind movements/attacks/strategy is fairly complex.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13689006 said:

I want to remove the option making them part of the game.

Click to expand...

I totally agree with that, there's no point in letting some buildings to be optional, it hurts the balance of the game.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13689006 said:

AFAIK that's not an easy change, I think it's beyond my current ability to make AI understand S&D. I think the logic behind movements/attacks/strategy is fairly complex.

Click to expand...

Excluding the C++ skills needed, that is just a logic study. I don't think it's impossible. We will have to try to draw some relevant cases and find a logical answer to unit placement, then to code it (but Afforess and I can take care of that part). However, i vastly agree that it isn't an easy task.

If a player does not like an option he/she can turn it off. If you remove an option the player loses the ability to properly customize their game. I have always thought that the multitude of options were the hallmark of Rise Of Mankind - A New Dawn.
Removing existing options is a bad idea in my view.

You're right oldnoob when it comes to customization, but it's hard to properly balance the tech. tree if there are options to remove parts of the tech. tree.
That is not a big deal to remove that option and, to my point of view, this should have never been an option.

There were also options that were made options in first place so that they could be turned off because they were unbalanced or causing troubles. I feel this is the case for options I've mentioned.

I am more concerned with buildings than nukes. I use early buildings to fill out the ancient age.
As far as nukes go, I stopped using them in civ4 (looong Ago) because of the balance issue and because in my view it is a player exploit. It is to easy to overcome any ai civ with nukes, at least for me. If nukes become a necessary part of this mod than I shall find a way to make them so expensive that they will never be affordable to any civ.

Nukes are already expensive and as they're now, I increased the cost long ago. Also with other restrictions only a few civs can build them in any game.

Anyway we're way off topic here, my fault, let's get back to original subject. I'll open another thread for our current discussion.

os79 said:

How many count do National Wonder make in Technology? @Vokarya

Otherwise, I approve! Because there are actions I don't mind taking automatically but others, I prefer to be flexible about. So this is a great idea!

Click to expand...

I intentionally picked Code of Laws as the primary tech because it seemed a bit empty in terms of content it unlocked.

45°38'N-13°47'E;13688997 said:

Very nice project!

One minor thing (that probably you've considered), I don't know if placement of the icon can cause a conflict because right of the BUG icon there's the nuke manager when using MAD civics.

Click to expand...

I already got that taken care of.

dbkblk said:

Nice invention! It may create more entropy in diplomacy, which means more instability and more wars Even if it's an early progress, could you make the menu to be a little bit more compact, like in 2 rows ? I don't know if it's possible.

I play on a laptop (1366*768) and some menu are quite long.

Click to expand...

Good point. I will make the menu wider and use 2 columns as you suggest.

Progress so far today on the menu:

Nice! Could you try to vertically center the button title with the dropdown ?

dbkblk said:

Nice! Could you try to vertically center the button title with the dropdown ?

Click to expand...

Yeah that is already fixed.

Rev 922 has an early version of the manager enabled. I am working on it still and have not yet gotten to the new Commend/Condemn options yet.

Afforess said:

Preface:
[*]Ability to Commend Civilizations
[*]Ability to Condemn Civilizations

Click to expand...

Sounds like modern politics.
So, next step is to build national wonders like CNN, RT or BBC for additional bonus?