New Diplomacy Options

After thinking about this for a bit, I ended up with the following potential issues, which might be an issue:

• sending diplomatic answers over the network is done by the exe

I don't think it will be a problem since the function to do so is listed in the header file, but since nobody have tried doing it from the DLL we can't know for sure if it works without testing it.

Other than that, the only limitation I can think of would be modder skills. We would likely need to make a new python file to control the window, some new python interface code in the DLL and then open the python window from the DLL. The python file might end up being a bit complex considering it will likely be full of widgets and lists, not to mention the talking head. It's not done overnight, but I think we can do it if we put some effort into it. I don't think it would be realistic to expect a single person to do everything here, but if we work together, it will totally be realistic.

If you or anybody else wants to work on this, start a new topic. This is one of those things which can't be done unless we have a design plan before we even start. Also it would be a good idea if we agree on the goal

Right, it's not as open and shut as it seems. It would take a bunch of work, but from my point of view there are better things to work on at the moment than a redesign of the Diplomacy screen. We actually have the Python for it so we can do tons of adjustments already without having to do a whole rewrite.

Yeah, I personally am not that bothered by the diplomacy screen, it works and has a lot of flexibility and adjustability already.

The only thing I can currently even conceive of is a new trade contract screen, to set up longer term deals with a trade partner for goods exchange. (A bit like DOaNE).
or (if/when we get religions)
Some kind of Religious Council screen, like a Council of Cardinals that allows you to vote for the pope (like fullerene suggested) or make group diplomatic decisions within your religion, a bit like how the apostolic palace and UN works in civ.

I can't really think of any other reason or use for a majorly new screen.. anyone else?

Lib.Spi't said:

I can't really think of any other reason or use for a majorly new screen.. anyone else?

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Not at the moment

I have been thinking on other things though, like becoming an Emperor. Another good reason to befriend the Pope would be in hopes that he will crown you Emperor. Charlemagne was the first in 800, followed by Otto in 962. All these dates and events happened before the turn of the 11th century. So, we could have the players jockeying for this title early in the game. Emperors would gain a huge benefit over their rivals. If you remember there was a Civ4 BTS scenario that was about this very thing, you had to be the one to gain the Pope's favor in order to win the scenario. We could look into how they set that up for ideas. This would setup huge rivalries between the players, it could really get awesome

Along with the New World Victory condition I want to add this Emperor Diplomacy event as well. I am thinking that the Pope will at some point announce he is getting ready to proclaim an Emperor. The one Crowned will be based on how much the Pope likes you as well as your Accumulated Religious Father points. This will really get you motivated to produce Religion. The winner receives the Emperor CivEffect which perhaps cuts your Tithe in half and only increases by half as much. There should be other benefits as well. There would also be a chance for you to lose your crown. If you lost favor with the Pope, or a Rival begins to out due you in Religious points, or perhaps other means as well.

I'm not too sure about the pope's influence. It may sound cool on paper, but it could be a huge game balance issue, particularly because some, but not all players can build religious buildings from the start (which on it's own could be a balance issue). Even if it is done correctly, it is a game changer, which I'm not sure I would like to have in the game, but that might be more of an issue of gameplay issues.

I also considered removing the pope from the game if defeating the pope isn't a victory condition. The game should be able to handle that and if a mod decides not to have a pope on the map. We need to make the DLL flexible to a degree where it adapts to the setup of all mods and all players.

Well, the effects of Emperor CivEffect could be on par or slightly better than any of your other Founding Fathers or Techs. It could be like a combo of a FF and a Tech. In Civ4 and in Col there are those most sought out "game changers" that people strive for with all do diligence. And we could also introduce things that act as counter balances. You are naturally going to be gimping some areas of your Empire if you are pouring vast resources into producing religion so that in itself acts as a balancing effect.

Also, Considering that all it takes is about 10 turns or so to gain Monasticism, Civs that don't start with that effect will not be that far behind. I like this idea for Historical purposes and I think it would be fun to try out, on paper

Yes, the Pope can be removed already if I remember correctly. You can mod Civs to use the TradeScreens for their Markets and not the Pope or King as in vanilla. Currently, as mentioned many times, you can side with the Pope and defend Rome or go against the Pope and attempt to Capture Rome.

How about htis as an adjustment to this idea.

2 Titles that can be gained.

1) Defender Of The Faith
This would be the one dished out by the Pope and secured by various religious actions and currying favour with the Pope, gaining highest diplomatic relations with the Pope, Crusading and religious pointing etc.

2) Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
This was more of an elective title, that was granted by votes from the nobles of the HRE collective states.
This could be gained via vassal control (especially good when we increase the vassalage paths, etc.)
What exactly the system would be can be debated, but it would in essence probably be something like when you control X vassals you become the Founder/Emperor of the HRE representing you bringing many nation states under your influence, and many Noble leaders under your sway.
Just like the HRE was.

This would give two powerful titles that can be up for grabs, and could potentially be gained or lossed time and again, depending on how who controls the highest state of the criteria.

Perhaps one victory condition could be to gain and maintain both titles for X turns.

Titles, which can be moved around

We could add a CivEffect file with titles. In addition to the normal effect groups, it could have trigger conditions for obtaining the title. The trigger conditions should all generate a score and the player with the highest score gets the title (minimum gameturn, minimum score and such could apply).

Trigger conditions could be produced yields, either all or specific, traded yields, trading profits, diplomatic relations, favour vs a certain player for fulfilling requests, granting gifts to other players without being asked. Stuff like that and the tags can be activated in any combo you wish, possibly with a multiplier for each to make one tag more important than another. It should be written as flexible as possible. Ideally it should be able to produce entirely new titles, which are totally different from the current ones without further DLL modifications.

It might have a cooldown counter or a duration. Something like the test for a new title owner runs every 5th turn or something.

We could also have negative titles, which does bad stuff with the CivEffect and you would want to avoid it. Some punishment for misbehaving. Plenty of the tags can (or is currently being rewritten into) being able to have both positive and negative modifiers. Something like negative diplomatic relations with everybody if you are the one with the worst relationship with the pope.

Heretical brandings, or being marked for Jihad could be interesting too.

Lib.Spi't said:

Heretical brandings, or being marked for Jihad could be interesting too.

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That gives me an idea. We have combat bonus vs civics and vs king (both in CivEffect). We could add combat bonus vs trait and diplomatic relation vs trait and possibly other trait related stuff as well.

We can then add traits for muslims, pope followers, vikings and whatever else we need. Those traits may or may not have any effects on their own, but they can be used by trait related triggers. Alternatively we could add a faith/style file, but that will require more DLL coding. Also if we use traits, we can make different civs behave differently towards people with certain traits, such as TRAIT_BACKSTABBER or TRAIT_GREEDY. Depending on other traits, leaders might not care at all, like them or hate them based on traits and since it's set in CivEffect, how they like others based on this could change during the game.

I like where both of you are going with this, multiple titles to gain and more diplomatic related traits and such. Diplomacy is one part we should really concentrate on in the release after this current one. One of my favorite games of all was Sid's Alpha Centauri and it was because of the diplomacy options we had. The Alliances you could make and win the game as partners was one really cool feature and it is what inspired me to add this to M:C.

I agree, having traits that can impact on each other would be great, I don't think an entire file would be necessary, I think having it all in the traits makes it more flexible, and makes a near infinite combo of trait connections.

Ok, one thing with my current game. Since you can gain Peasants and Elite units through Food and also Immigration isn't controlled just by Religion, you really don't need to invest into Religion much at all. I rarely used it, mostly just when I didn't know where to stick someone at the time. So, having these titles to shoot for would be a good reason to produce Religion. But, unless there is titles for all Religions we plan on adding this wouldn't work so well.

Also, perhaps the Popes attitude towards you is also based on your Religion output. If you are not producing enough he will start to pester you in different ways. Maybe keeping religion up will keep Tithes lower

We have several yields counting towards immigration. Perhaps we should be able to control this with CivEffects. This way immigration can be a little bit of everything in the first era, but as you move past different eras, we will assume you are more established and immigration will no longer take as many yields into account. That would make religion more important in late game than early game, particularly if a unit is introduced in one era, but can only be obtained through immigration until some later era.

Alternatively the immigration counter becomes more complex and remembers what kind of yields you use for gaining an immigrant. That can then be used to control which units will show up on the docks. No cross production -> no monks. This way if you only gain immigration as secondary effect from other stuff, you will end up with a bunch of cottars.

Well coming up with titles for other religions shouldn't be that hard, even if we have to make them up a bit. In the muslim world in the crusades there was usually a leader, or nation that would be working to draw together the muslim world to strike back at the crusaders. The various campaigns for jerusalem by men like saladin, or the invasion of southern spain. Something like a High Caliphate, or Crescent Master or some such idea, that more or less mirrors the effect of the christian title, with perhaps some differences that match the different benefits between the different religions. Same for whatever other religions are introduced.

Nightinggale said:

We have several yields counting towards immigration. Perhaps we should be able to control this with CivEffects. This way immigration can be a little bit of everything in the first era, but as you move past different eras, we will assume you are more established and immigration will no longer take as many yields into account. That would make religion more important in late game than early game, particularly if a unit is introduced in one era, but can only be obtained through immigration until some later era.

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Yeah, this is a good idea. And would make sense, at least for certain cultures. Like during the Exploration Age Religion did play a huge part in Immigration, mostly the Freedom of Religion however.

Nightinggale said:

Alternatively the immigration counter becomes more complex and remembers what kind of yields you use for gaining an immigrant. That can then be used to control which units will show up on the docks. No cross production -> no monks. This way if you only gain immigration as secondary effect from other stuff, you will end up with a bunch of cottars.

Click to expand...

This would be a good idea also and I thought about things like Civics and perhaps the Buildings you have could influence Immigration.

Kailric said:

I thought about things like Civics and perhaps the Buildings you have could influence Immigration.

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Civics are CivEffects, which mean they should be able to affect immigration in hopefully many ways. Affecting the chance for which units to show up at the docks would be a good thing to add.

Buildings.... maybe once yields can be added using XML only we can add multiple types of crosses. Buildings can then gain production each turn of certain types and affect that way. To make this ideal, it should be possible to have yields, which will not count towards actually getting immigrants, but producing them will make certain units more likely and others less likely. If we take yield production to the extreme, we could make experts be more likely to show up if your production is large, which would indicate that your land is perfect for growing whatever they are experts in growing.

We need Titles for the Religious Leaders to grant. Some he could grant to multiple Players, some to only a few, some to only one.

Like:
Practitioner of the Faith-> for adopting the correct Civic
Defender of the Faith->for going on a Crusade

Also ones for:
Conquering an Unbeliever
Mass donations to the Faith
Keeping good faith with the Religious Leader(completing several requests, keep title as long as you do not ever resist a request)


We currently have 3 religions represented in Civics: the Catholic, Islamic, and Orthodox Catholic. We could still add Player Representatives for all three of these even without a proper religious system. If the Religious Leader is not on the Map, they can still participate like the Kings do in vanilla.

On a side note, I did some clicking around the game Crusader Kings II, wow that game is extensive. Lots of ideas could be gleamed from that so I may have to take some time to play a bit. Lib did you ever get very far in it?

Yeah, with CK2 I succesfully conquered somewhere around 2 thirds of the pre-india map version. (So Europe, North Africa and the middle east) It was te difficulty of the Casus-Belli and treaty length that slowedme down rather than the man power to conquer.

When you know how flipping long conquests can take, you will get a sense of how far into I got!

There are actually a surprising number of parallels between M:C and CK2, for example you have three types of 'site' within a territory, Religious, Castle and City. (each has different buildings and purposes)

The Pope Plays a special role with cardinals and the ability to gain control of the pope by various means, even establishing your own 'Anti-Pope' if you have enough religious authority.

It has a fun 'What-if' Aztec invasion, where the Old World becomes the invaded New World(With the right DLC).

Lots of other stuff like Vassal management, making and breaking plots and conspiracies. (Disgruntled vassals may try to partner with a foreign king or pretender to have yo deposed or murdered)

A difference between Personal and Vassal armies. A difference between Standing/Levy/Mercernary armies, each with particular strengths and weaknesses or limitations.

Standing army strength is determined by how much land you personally own and your overall leadership skill and status. At one point I had a standard army that was close to four times the size of any nations total force ability.

Levies can only be raised during war, and the longer you use them or the more they get chewed up the more it hurts your relations with the vassal owner, you also cannot declare war if you have a levy force raised anywhere in your kingdom. (Or in my case I think 5 Empires! Kings are just so... meh. I was like a king about 20-30 times over )

Mercenaries are like 'free roaming' armies there is a finite number of mercenary armies around, and only one nation can hire each at a time, they also cost far more to maintain than your own forces, but when your own man power is run dry, they can be a life saver. (or in my case a great help in becoming the Emperor of Byzantium!) They will also abandon you if you don't pay them promptly.

I was working my way towards rebuilding the Roman Empire (hence the idea I presented) when my saves were invalidated by the new india expansion.

I think in terms of the Titles you can gain, I think names are the easy part, the part that will take the real thunking is how you can get them and what each of them do.