More options for diplomacy

I would like to see more options for dealing with nations. I think you ought to be able to attack troops within your territory without automatically declaring war. I would like to occupy a city without completely "conquering" it.

I want to have more realism over-all, more detailed options, when dealing with other nations... especially with spying and whatnot. More governments.

I'd like to see non agression pacts and the ability to trade units added in too. A weapons disarment treaty would be cool as well, in my opinion.

Hmm... besides those things, I would like to see three [or four, or more] way negotiations.

[edited to fix errors in spelling]

Multiple party negotiations would be very nice. Being able to attack troops in your territory without declaring war would also rule.

I want the ability to wage proxy war back - to pay civ A to fight civ B without myself being at war with civ B.

When the Allies liberated French cities in WW2, they returned the Cities to france. That doesn't happen in Civ when nations are allied. They should. Any ideas?

It should be possible, I agree. How about autonomy? Or conquer a nation, but let it stay independent except for a lot of cash payments/tributes...or military or somethign...

I'm not quite sure how this would fit in, but I've always wanted to be able to marry off my daughter (in the game, that is) to the son of another ruler, creating alliances by blood relations. Of course, I don't know how they'd get that to work...

There should be much more detailed international relations and trade should not be part of diplomacy.

Originally posted by wlievens
When the Allies liberated French cities in WW2, they returned the Cities to france. That doesn't happen in Civ when nations are allied. They should. Any ideas?

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But this can happen in Civ III -- simply gift the cities back to France. Unfortunately, this involves the French still being alive. Perhaps, as long as at least one French citizen survives in one of the cities, the nation of France still "exists" in the sense that other nations can give them cities. It might work.

All the other ideas are good. I forgot one of my own: Unconditional Surrender.

Multi-party negotiations would be great!

If this can't be done with an easy-to-use interface, here's a less-than-perfect idea using a interface similar to the Civ 3 one-on-one screen: Among the things you could ask for or offer would be "Peace with the Carthaginians" and "Peace with the Romans" and so on. Since the computer keeps track of what all the AI civs are willing to give and receive, it would know right away what Rome would need to offer Carthage to get a Peace Treaty, so if you asked Rome for "Peace with Carthage" Rome could tell you right away what it wanted in exchange from you. That, of course, wouldn't necessarily be exactly equal in value to what it needed to give up to Carthage, it would depend on Rome's attitude towards you, Rome and Carthage's attitudes towards each other, which of them was winning their war, their relative power to each other and to you, and so on, you get the idea. And it wouldn't matter which civ you talked to, either. Say Rome was beating up on Carthage, and would be willing to stop for 50 GPT, but the war dragged on because Carthage wasn't making that much. If you wanted the war to end for your own reasons, you could approach Rome and ask for "Peace With Carthage", they would ask you for 50 GPT, essentially thinking to themselves "If Carthage can't give it to us, maybe you will." If on the other hand, you talked to Carthage, they'd think "we'll need 50 GPT in order to get the Romans to give us peace" so they'd ask you for 50 GPT in exchange for "Peace With Rome." No matter who you negotiated with, the result would be the same, you pay 50 GPT, the Romans get 50 GPT, and they stop beating up Carthage.

It would work a little different if someone wanted you to stop a war you were in, but once again, it would take advantage of the computers ability to conduct instant negotiations between different AI civs while you're still in the diplomacy screen talking to one of them. If Carthage wanted you to end your war against Rome, they would ask you to do so. If the war was going well for you, you'd ask Carthage for something in exchange, which they might agree to if peace between you and Rome would benefit them. Or, they could come to you when Rome is kicking your butt and ask you for "Peace With Rome" and "spices" knowing that the Romans won't stop attacking for spices since they have their own, but will stop for iron, which you lack but Carthage has plenty of. Carthage gives you nothing, you give them "Peace with Rome" and "Spices", and instantly you have a peace treaty with Rome, without ever talking to them. If Carthage wants you and Rome to stop fighting badly enough, they might just go straight to Rome and offer them iron in exchange for "Peace with (you)", but since that would be AI-to-AI, you wouldn't see the negotiations, all you would see was Rome offering you a generous Peace Treaty, perhaps with some text like "Carthage has asked us to spare your puny civilization for now" so you'd know who was offering the Romans something. If you turned down the Treaty, the deal between Carthage and Rome simply wouldn't occur.

Unless of course, Carthage was really desperate for you and Rome to make peace for some reason. It might be strange, but maybe Rome would be seriously kicking your butt and then suddenly want to talk, saying "Carthage has asked us to spare you..." and offering Peace Treaty and 20 GPT. You'd know that Carthage must be offering them quite a bit, probably significantly more than 20 GPT, in order for them to stop kicking your but and give you money. And if you asked Rome for more, the computer would instantly check to see if Carthage was willing to give Rome that much more, and if they weren't, Rome wouldn't make the deal with you.

The point of all this is that, at least for simple Peace Treaties, you could have some semblence of multi-party negotiations without actually having a multi-party screen, just by taking advantage of the computer's instant knowledge of what each AI civ has and is willing to give and receive from each other.

Of course, it'll be cooler to have real multi-party negotiations. I'm just putting out these thoughts as a backup option, so that the designers don't give up entirely if the multi-party interface gets too ugly and confusing.

I agree that we need MUCH more diplomacy options!

Originally posted by Cuivienen
But this can happen in Civ III -- simply gift the cities back to France. Unfortunately, this involves the French still being alive.

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Also, the AI would *never* just give away even the most worthless city because it felt like being nice. They only give them away when they feel majorly threatened.
This reminds me - it sure would be nice if *AIs* actually sometimes gave *any* gifts to you without you demanding it - just like the human player sometimes does!

A weapons disarment treaty would be fine. Like the one of the treaty of Versailles where Germany was forced to reduce its army (and as you all know they didn´t).
Or banishing of different types of troops - like the non-proliferation agreement. You have to add chemical and biological warfare; these could be banned.
And we need a kind of UN like in SMAC, where treaties can be placed for all civs.

Originally posted by Cuivienen
But this can happen in Civ III -- simply gift the cities back to France. Unfortunately, this involves the French still being alive. Perhaps, as long as at least one French citizen survives in one of the cities, the nation of France still "exists" in the sense that other nations can give them cities. It might work.

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Yes, but there's no incentive to do so. There should be!
And the AI should do it, too.

I too would like to have the ability to act as a neutral arbitrator for peace among other warring nations. I'd also like to be able to negotiate environmental responsibility.

And unit-trading is a must!

I definitely agree with the long post above and others that you should be able to hold multiparty negotiations, in which you ask for the others do declare peace. It is very irritating when two civs I am allied with start fighting each other, then won't stay allied with me unless I declare war on the other (speaking as a civ 2 player, but in my small experience with civ 3 I remember a similar problem)

The diplomacy advisor screen (F4) was at first a stroke of genius, since it allowed you to instantly see who was at was with whom and who had alliances and trades and embargoes and so on. Then, when they let there be more than 8 civs per game, the screen went downhill fast, since you could no longer see all civs at once, and the method of switching which you were seeing was cumbersome.

Hopefully, the Civ 4 version of this screen will be well thought out. I'd suggest a similar concept, but with a list of all known civs down one side of the screen, each with a checkbox. Only the civs that are checked are shown in the diagram with lines between them, and the diagram dynamically adjusts the size and placement of the leaderheads as you check and uncheck various civs. That way, you could put all the civs on one screen if you wanted, but if it was to overwhelming, you could uncheck the ones you didn't currentlu care about and see a version of the diagram that only showed what you wanted to see.