Idea to improve diplomacy: Alliances

[Tokira]

When I was reading some rant thread about the diplomacy system in Civ5 I came up with an idea. The intention would be making the game's diplomacy system more reliable and interesting and of course stopping the weirdness of your friends betraying you all the time. Basically this would happen by adding a new status for other civs: "allied".

The allied status would appear after about 75-100 turns after DoF between two civilizations (standard game speed). The effects would be the following:

1) The AI would not denounce you or declare war on you if he is allied to you. Maybe some very agressive civs could declare war even if they are allied, but most would not.

2) The AI would offer fairer, even cheap trades.

3) The research agreements could be hurried by paying more for them. Double payment would decrease the time to half and that would be the maximum increase to the time that the research agreement takes.

4) Under some circumstances (for example you having very low happiness) the AI could gift you some resources. They would also provide you military assistance if you are attacked (maybe send units or declare war to the attacker). They could also help you in wars that you declare if there is a good reason to declare the wars.

5)Their city state allies would provide you small bonuses.

6) If you liberate a civ which was occupied by some other civ, they would become your allies.

7) There should always come a warning from the leader that they don't want to be allied to you anymore if you do something that they dislike.

8) The player could end the alliance any time by just saying "We are no longer interested to be allied with you". After that there would be a 10 turn forced peace and then you could declare a war if you'd like. Same 10 turn forced peace would follow if the AI would get rid of the alliance.

Then since the AI couldn't randomly get rid of the Allied status like it seems to do to the friendly status. After getting rid of the Allied status the AI would be either friendly or neutral to you depending on the circumstances. The reasons for abandoning the alliance would be:

1) Warmongering. You would destroy a lot city states (only one or two wouldn't have any effects) or civs who have done nothing to you, which would mean that they aren't even near to your lands. Of course attacking their ally civs would make them turn against you.

2) Influencing/annexing their city state allies or friends (many of them).

3) Settling near them and refusing to stop it or continuing to settle near them after they have asked you not to do it.

4) Becoming allies of their enemies.

5) Refusing to help them when they're at war.

Thats all I could think of now. In my opinion this addition would help the diplomacy a lot since now the AI can basically be your friend first and declare war any time without any warning. With this system you could actually have loyal AI allies if you kept being loyal to them.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The only way for Alliances (or most of Civ Diplomacy) to make sense is if they allowed Shared Victories/Unions under some conditions.

 

[Tokira]

Maybe so. Though in my opinion its pretty reasonable that the weak nations who have no chance to win the game would support the nations that they like. Of course the system would possibly need some tweaks to AI that they would realise when they're just helping somebody to win when they could win themselves aswell. But with this system a friendly competition of space race victory could be possible if the player wanted so.

 

[Camikaze]

This idea seems to me like a suggestion to just add in another level of friendliness, above 'Friendly', or to change the behaviour of the AI once you're there. The complaint seems to be that if a Civ is at 'Friendly', then they should act like it. I'm not sure adding in another diplomatic agreement to formalise that is necessary to solve the problem.

 

[Tokira]

Yeap, well any kind of solution to the problem of the AI backstabbing would be nice. At the moment the problem in my opinion is that having a lasting friendship with the AI is not possible in any ways. Maybe remaining as one city and giving in for every demand would help, but still it wouldn't be sure.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Yeap, well any kind of solution to the problem of the AI backstabbing would be nice. At the moment the problem in my opinion is that having a lasting friendship with the AI is not possible in any ways. Maybe remaining as one city and giving in for every demand would help, but still it wouldn't be sure.

Well they want AI to act like gaming human players and I generally agree with that... what I think they need to do is make gaming Human players act like real nations.

So benefits to working together.
One of which would have to be the possibility of a Shared Victory/Union... otherwise all freindship breaks down in the 20th+21st centuries.

If you had something like "extra stages above Friendly" that
1. Required costly in game actions (like a Research agreement costs gold for both sides and requires staying at peace)
2. Gave some greater benefits+costs compared to conquering them (besides just the diplomatic)
3. Allowed for a shared win

Then you could have France and Germany in game replicating an EU

 

[Tokira]

Well they want AI to act like gaming human players and I generally agree with that... what I think they need to do is make gaming Human players act like real nations.

So benefits to working together.
One of which would have to be the possibility of a Shared Victory/Union... otherwise all freindship breaks down in the 20th+21st centuries.

If you had something like "extra stages above Friendly" that
1. Required costly in game actions (like a Research agreement costs gold for both sides and requires staying at peace)
2. Gave some greater benefits+costs compared to conquering them (besides just the diplomatic)
3. Allowed for a shared win

Then you could have France and Germany in game replicating an EU

In my opinion it is impossible to make the human players act like real nations. Of course I understand why they want the AI to act like human players insteads, it's simply to make them play better and actually compete for victories. But in my opinion it's not really fun that the AI always declares war on you if you are close to a victory.

It is good if some of the AI players do that. It would even make sense. But all of them? Leaders like Gandhi shouldn't really aim for conquest victory or so. But in my games even this man who is a symbol of peace declares war on poor China and conquers it. After that he called me a warmongerer because I annexed one city state. Some of the leaders should be made more friendly and if it requires an allied victory, why not. Then it would also require that one player/AI can only be in one alliance at once. That would be interesting. It would be nice to compete against the alliance of Frange/Germany in a space race victory for example.

Also when it comes to costs of the alliance, I quess one big nation would still be more powerful than two allied small/average nations due to:

1) If they have only one source of some resource, they can't share it.
2) They might gain less gold
3) As I said, if the allies would like to speed up the research agreements, they would need to pay more money to do so. This would make sense because allied nations would trust eachother more and therefore be more willing to pay more to work together.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

In my opinion it is impossible to make the human players act like real nations.

I strongly disagree.
While it is impossible to make them act Exactly like real nations (not worrying about some arbitrary "success" point/knowledge of future technologies/etc.) they can be made to act like it.

What if attacking a long time ally made your people very unhappy for a time period?

In Civ 4 there were happiness penalties for going to war with a civ that had the same religion as your cities... if that was stronger it might make the AI diplomacy make sense. (the AI doesn't 'like' you instead i knows that its people will be unhappy if it goes to war with you)

Of course I understand why they want the AI to act like human players insteads, it's simply to make them play better and actually compete for victories. But in my opinion it's not really fun that the AI always declares war on you if you are close to a victory.

Well that's because the only "competitive" victory is conquest....
All victories need to be made either "competitive" or "shared".. so that you only acheive them by absorbing your enemies willingly or otherwise (except possibly time)

It is good if some of the AI players do that. It would even make sense. But all of them? Leaders like Gandhi shouldn't really aim for conquest victory or so. But in my games even this man who is a symbol of peace declares war on poor China and conquers it. After that he called me a warmongerer because I annexed one city state. Some of the leaders should be made more friendly and if it requires an allied victory, why not. Then it would also require that one player/AI can only be in one alliance at once. That would be interesting. It would be nice to compete against the alliance of Frange/Germany in a space race victory for example.

I strongly disagree with the "only one alliance" rule... a true "Diplomatic Victory" would be getting everyone civ still alive to ally with you (essentially the same as a "Conquest Victory").

As long as it was a complicated enough process, then not all civs would do it.

Also when it comes to costs of the alliance, I quess one big nation would still be more powerful than two allied small/average nations due to:

1) If they have only one source of some resource, they can't share it.
2) They might gain less gold
3) As I said, if the allies would like to speed up the research agreements, they would need to pay more money to do so. This would make sense because allied nations would trust eachother more and therefore be more willing to pay more to work together.

Two nations could share strategic resources. (giving their excess to the other if they needed it)
and 1 Luxury between them wouldn't help but 2 of the same would be better.

And Research Agreements are definitely an incredibly overpowered way of

I personally think it would be better if there was a level of complete allies that acted much more like one single empire.. ie they pooled research for technolgies and culture for policies.

 

[Tokira]

I strongly disagree.
While it is impossible to make them act Exactly like real nations (not worrying about some arbitrary "success" point/knowledge of future technologies/etc.) they can be made to act like it.

What if attacking a long time ally made your people very unhappy for a time period?

In Civ 4 there were happiness penalties for going to war with a civ that had the same religion as your cities... if that was stronger it might make the AI diplomacy make sense. (the AI doesn't 'like' you instead i knows that its people will be unhappy if it goes to war with you)

I don't really get what do you mean by "acting like a real nation". There are/have been huge amount of different kind of nations around. I bet that the current style of playing (which mostly means warmongering) has been used in some nation. Atleast the Roman empire pretty much annexed all the civilizations near it like a player in civ5 would do.

At the moment there are no real reasons why to ally with somebody as there aren't many ways to cooperate. The systems to do so are there, but the AI refuses to use them just because, like you said, warmongering is a better solution. I agree that there should be huge happiness penalties (that would even affect the AI's huge happiness bonuses..) for declaring war to a friendly civ.

Well that's because the only "competitive" victory is conquest....
All victories need to be made either "competitive" or "shared".. so that you only acheive them by absorbing your enemies willingly or otherwise (except possibly time)

I disagree that the only competitice victory is conquest, atleast in theory. It is possible to compete in all the victory types, but sadly the best way to compete is just to annex the worst threat to your empire as annexing a civ wont bother even a cultural victory as long as you puppet the cities. I think that puppeting should get some major nerfing, for example not being able to produce culture for your empire in those cities. The suggestions on the threads on this section are good.

In my opinion your idea about the competitive/shared victories is good.

I strongly disagree with the "only one alliance" rule... a true "Diplomatic Victory" would be getting everyone civ still alive to ally with you (essentially the same as a "Conquest Victory").

As long as it was a complicated enough process, then not all civs would do it.

I think you are right, limiting it to one alliance would probably destroy some elements from the feature. However, pleasing everybody should be made hard. It would be great if diplomatic victory could be made by first gathering up a group of allies (some of them could be rather small empires) then destroying all the enemies and then going for diplomatic victory by being assisted by allies. Of course the winner would be the strongest of the nations in the alliance or the whole alliance together.

Two nations could share strategic resources. (giving their excess to the other if they needed it)
and 1 Luxury between them wouldn't help but 2 of the same would be better.

And Research Agreements are definitely an incredibly overpowered way of

I personally think it would be better if there was a level of complete allies that acted much more like one single empire.. ie they pooled research for technolgies and culture for policies.

I wonder what were you about to say about the research agreements. I think that the allied nations could indeed share their resources.

Complete allies was pretty much what I was looking for here. But I think that its good if the alliance can also be cancelled if one of the allies starts acting in a way the other doesn't want. Shared technology tree could be nice, but in my opinion the shared culture is a bit too much since it's not very realistic.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Complete allies was pretty much what I was looking for here. But I think that its good if the alliance can also be cancelled if one of the allies starts acting in a way the other doesn't want. Shared technology tree could be nice, but in my opinion the shared culture is a bit too much since it's not very realistic.

Well if the costs for cultural policies were based on the number of cities in the Alliance then it would make sense.

 

[cf_nz]

The only way for Alliances (or most of Civ Diplomacy) to make sense is if they allowed Shared Victories/Unions under some conditions.

I really liked permanent alliances in Civ IV so I'd like to see shared victories again.

 

[UWHabs]

I'd say an alliance would be:
-unbreakable for 30 turns (like standard deals)
-for each allied city-state, the other alliance partner obtains the benefits of "friend" status with them if not already friends
-each luxury resource that the ally partner does not have gives +1 happy (so like trading, but only gives 1 happy instead of 5)
-act as a defensive pact
-act as a research agreement
-cost twice that of a research agreement to form
-allow a shared victory (so, for diplomatic victory, votes would be for the "team". If they're the only 2 with capital left, they would get an allied conquest victory. Cultural... not sure)

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I'd say an alliance would be:
-unbreakable for 30 turns (like standard deals)
-for each allied city-state, the other alliance partner obtains the benefits of "friend" status with them if not already friends
-each luxury resource that the ally partner does not have gives +1 happy (so like trading, but only gives 1 happy instead of 5)
-act as a defensive pact
-act as a research agreement
-cost twice that of a research agreement to form
-allow a shared victory (so, for diplomatic victory, votes would be for the "team". If they're the only 2 with capital left, they would get an allied conquest victory. Cultural... not sure)

That sounds like a good "Pre-Union" level
although I'd say
1. The Research Agreement will tend to give you a tech the other side already has
2. Can see the exact Policies and Techs of the Ally.. (so you can pursue Union)
3. Completely shared vision

- Can't form an Alliance if you have opposing Policies (Piety/Rationalism)
- Allies must be at War with the same Civs+City-states (or no Alliance can be formed)
- Allies must have had a Defensive Pact/Common War+Declaration of Friendship for ?30 turns

So...
Declaration of Friendship
Defensive Pact
Alliance
Permanent Union.

The Permanent Union cost would be based on
1. the total culture cost of Policies that one had and the other didn't
2. the total research cost of the techs that one has and the other doesn't
3. some extra base amount

It would require 30 turns of Alliance
It would require the Allies to have the same Wars+Alliances+Declarations of Friendship/Denouncing with the same Civs

The benefits
-Remove the policies only held by 1, give free 'policy points' to the union equal to the greater number of policies lost
-Add all techs shared by only 1 to both
-Culture output to common Policy pot (cost based on total # of cities)
-Research output to common Tech pot
-Common Happiness/Unhappiness, Luxury Resources/ common Golden Age pot (based on total # of cities)
-Common Gold Pot
-"United Front" only affects those not in the Alliance
-Common Diplomacy (Open borders/Wars/Declarations/Denouncements)
-Completely shared vision
-Ability to investigate each other's cities
-Common Wonder benefits
-Shared Victory (including Cultural)

In the Event of a Human-AI alliance, the AI will not buy policies/start research of techs or initiate diplomacy.
They may build Cities+Buildings damaging the common Happiness/Gold
They may buy CS Influence (only if another civ in the union is not an Ally, and only if they have the most influence)

 

[ryantherenegade]

It would definitely make for some interesting multiplayer games - imagine 4 smaller states allying to take on an overpowered Russia.

But - shared victory, I don't know wether human players would go for it.

Would probably have to be an optional condition of the game.

 

[Camikaze]

Making the game features more realistic means that the human player must act more like a real nation if they are going to win. So I reckon it's quite possible to get the human player to move in that direction. The idea of some form of joint victory sounds pretty good, but I'm not sure if a human will value winning with other AIs as much as winning on their own. If players simply want to beat all the other AI, then their behaviour is harder to change.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well a Human player that was unwilling to cooperate with any AIs shouldn't be surprised when their remaining "friendly" but unallied AIs suddenly turn on them as they approach victory (ie AIs that aren't your ally will act the same... mass attack the winning human)

 

[Zyxpsilon]

So...
Declaration of Friendship
Defensive Pact
Alliance
Permanent Union.

The above surely brought me back to the cEvo gameplay concepts!

But in a sense, i'd rather have a complete overhaul of the Diplo-Victory condition (first and foremost by Firaxis) as to account for a number of specific National statistics (Strength, Territory, Happy-Population, Tech-Progress, Industrialized, etc) in a realistic UN where things like Alliances (be they based on anything or whatever), transitional Pacts & Security Council elements *DO* matter.
Voting power should be gained through clever principles & rational interaction concepts.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well Ideally, I'd merge the Diplomatic, Cultural, and Conquest Victories

Culture would be another way of
1. Encouraging diplomatic merger
2. Producing Military (rebels)

Diplomacy+Conquest would then be two alternate ways to eliminate enemies (Destroy them and deny them a win or absorb them share the win)

You'd still have to have Time+probably some Science/Space Victory (leaving the map).

But Culture should be an aid to diplomacy and conquest.
And Diplomacy and Conquest should be ways to acheive Union.

 

[Camikaze]

Well a Human player that was unwilling to cooperate with any AIs shouldn't be surprised when their remaining "friendly" but unallied AIs suddenly turn on them as they approach victory (ie AIs that aren't your ally will act the same... mass attack the winning human)

This does make sense from the point of view of making the AI play to win, but it would make it very difficult to win a culture victory. If an AI is 'friendly' with you, that should outweigh any concerns about your victory it should have. This is reasonably necessary realism.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

This does make sense from the point of view of making the AI play to win, but it would make it very difficult to win a culture victory. If an AI is 'friendly' with you, that should outweigh any concerns about your victory it should have. This is reasonably necessary realism.

If you are beginning to approach a victory, friendly AIs should seek to be allied with you (so as to share the victory) and if you reject them, they would no longer be friendly.

(You rejected our offer to join in your greatness... or something like that)

Essentially as ANY civ approaches victory, ALL civs should seek to either
1. Join them
or
2. Hamper them
or
3. Get their own victory first


Also with an alliance system, things like the current Culture/Diplomatic wins would be the ame as the "Conquest win" be the last "Alliance" Standing. (your allies are the only ones with their original capitals [including CSs])