Nostalgic musings of a CTP2 fan...

OK- before I got Civ3, I had Call To Power 2, which I believe is a kind of Civ spin-off.
It's because of that that(?), when I played Civ 3, and entered the Diplomacy screen, I'd expected an ability to actually, er...negotiate.
You see, in CTP2, you could change your tone of voice. It can't be explained how much this changed the whole experience, as it meant you could actually use your skills as a diplomat. There was even a more advanced threat system, where you could threaten to actually destroy a specific target, ie. give us 46346363637637475Gold or we'll burn New Hicksville to the ground, kind of thing.
This has been completely scrapped, for no reason other than the designers wanted an excuse to change the screen so that they could show off their flashy leader videos (and that's another thing- when I play as Russia and set my gender to male, I do NOT want to see the face of a certain ancient Czarina, as opposed to say... Stalin or Peter the Great).
They could have a little bar at the top with different tones of voice, ie. Gracious, Polite, Meek, Arrogant, Furious kinda thing.

Any thoughts?

The current threat system is just fine. If they don't comply, you can burn any city you feel like to the ground, inlcuding New Hicksville. It all has the same result: you declare war on the impetulent fool. I do think that the ability to change your tone of voice would be nice, though.

I get what Corsair is saying. I belive the negotiations are kind of bland. Its been mentioned before though. Say you invaded a group of citys from an enemy. Beacuse of the dumb AI Philosophy about cities you cant trade them back for say...workers, Trade items, scientific advances or money. You cant threaten a nation with something or force them to get something through sheer fear (Imagine...if you dont give me all your tech advances 3 ICBMS will hit blah blah blah). They should add an intimidation factor also...depending on how powerful you are civs would take you more seriously or something. Come on now how is foriegn policy run theese days....

I agree that neogatation does need improvement.

Setting your tone would be one step towards this.

I also want the ability to warn them that if they don't comply, I'll go nuclear. Explicitly!
That is more severe then just saying you will declare war on them.

The tone of voice- I don't have to hear it, but I would like the ability to set it so they know my attitude. In Civ 3 I have a general idea of what other civs think of me, why can't I tell them what I think of them?

The ability to warn someone that you will use nuclear weapons should be included. Especially seeing the way the weapons have shaped the past 59 years!

Man thats a great idea

I agree with Corsair

Yeah, perhaps also on the lines of 'if you don't agree to this, I'll cut my trade of oil to your cities' or something.

Great ideas, there was deninently something lost in diplomacy from civ2 to 3 but there was also gain. Now it would be nice if we could keep what we gained and regain what we lost such as the things people described with the specific target threats, nuke threats and different tones/faces with the AI, city trading and the ability to pay others to fight your wars without fighting in it yourself.