CALL TO FIRAXIS: please add diplomacy option "end war with..."

[Selous]

Originally posted by monkspider
lol, I realize that I was oversimplifying things just a tad bit there, but i still think that adding this option is still relatively minor, in the grand scheme of things they could conceivably add. Especially considering they had this feature in SMAC/X and CIV 3 is essentially running on a heavily -modified smac engine.
I appologize if this simply my lack of programming experience speaking.

actually ... i thought civ3 was a heavily modified version of civ2 rather than Alpha Centuri ... this is just another example of superiour features left out of civ3 that was done before by the same company

AC has awesome diplomacy and i dont think there could be one person to say otherwise ... why did they decide to take it out?

and to Sir Yelof ... u feel good for slamming someone because he isnt some self proffessed software guru? .. when a company leaves out features that were in (and worked brillantly i might add) the last game the company made ... wouldnt u call that pathetic? ... it was possable to have those features a few years ago but now with todays advancement in computers it would seem that computers have lost that ability so get off your high horse ... it impresses no one

 

[Gottesfreunde]

I wish that the diplomacy screen was more robust. I have read several statements made by the game creators that have argued that the Civilization games were not primarily about war… diplomacy was supposed to be one of the games biggest highlights. In SMAC, if you are allied with one nation, then you create an alliance with another nation, and those two nations go to war, thus threatening your alliance with one of them, then you can negotiate peace between them.

Further, if you engage in a war, and your allies are with you in that war, and you decide that you want to engage in a peace treaty because the other nation surrenders (another cool thing about SMAC), then you can call the other nations off before that nation is completely wiped out.

The whole diplomacy thing in Civilization gets incredibly convoluted, quickly, because if you engage in an alliance then you automatically go to war with another nation because that alliance HAS to be against another nation. If you engage in a mutual protection pact, then you are automatically drawn into wars without the ability to negotiate a peace when a war breaks out that you don’t really want to be in, and which can cause you to go to war with nations you have other sorts of trade agreements with, etc. This became very frustrating when I had a mutual protection pact with the Russians and had a right of passage agreement with the Greeks. I automatically was drawn into a war with the Greeks who refused to even speak to me for many turns in the game, and then when all was done, would not engage in other agreements with me because I had been forced to break the right of passage agreement and "attack them"—which I didn’t even do. I find the diplomacy screen to be far less than it could be, one that limits the player in crucial ways that lead to ultimately NOT knowing who one’s allies are, and limiting the ability to engage in options that are more economic rather than militaristic. How difficult would it have been to have included such options in the diplomacy screens?

Further, why is it that the player does not have more control over trade embargo’s? I mean, the player should be able to engage in an embargo and then cease that embargo when it wishes to do so. If I can give money to another nation even while I have a trade embargo against them, or even turn over a city, then why can’t I end a trade embargo when I wish? In addition, why can’t we give units to other nations like in Civ II? I engaged in a trade embargo in 1800 that I could not seem to turn off until 1916. There were no lines in the screen with all the pictures of the other civ leaders that indicated that I had a trade embargo still in effect, other nations kept asking me to engage in a trade embargo against the nation even though in the Trade screen I was told for 116 years of the game that I had a trade embargo against the nation and the resources I wanted to trade with the nation were grayed out. I will not engage in another embargo, that’s for sure, as it totally ruined the game that it went on for so long and I had absolutely NO control over canceling it and the game just forgot about it. This is the same for alliances or mutual protection pacts. Why am I forced to go to war with a nation just to cancel a pact? For example, I was engaged in a mutual protection pact with the Russians who then turned around and practically declared war on all the other civ’s. This completely screwed up my whole diplomatic plan, but there was no way to cancel my mutual protection pact that was resulting in my being drawn into war with the rest of the planet without also going to war with Russia. Ridiculous.

 

[Sir Yelof]

Originally posted by Selous
and to Sir Yelof ... u feel good for slamming someone because he isnt some self proffessed software guru? .. when a company leaves out features that were in (and worked brillantly i might add) the last game the company made ... wouldnt u call that pathetic? ... it was possable to have those features a few years ago but now with todays advancement in computers it would seem that computers have lost that ability so get off your high horse ... it impresses no one

*getting off of high horse, rubbing saddle-sore butt*
Whoa, whoa, whoa, no one trying to impress anyone here! I'd say it didn't feel good to slam someone, but as a matter of fact it did... but nothing personal to monkspider at all! I guess it struck a raw nerve with me.

You see, Alc0p0pz hit it right... you'd be amazed at the stuff that sales & marketing folks come up with. As for "it was in there before, where did it go?" -- no, it's not pathetic at all. I'd bet that they chose to completely overhaul the AI/diplomacy engine such that it wasn't just a matter of porting some code over to get it back. You should see how hard it can be just to get people to agree on an icon, let alone decide which diplomacy options are in and which are out.

Bottom line... when you're armchair project-managing, just remember that...
a) you don't know all the details, and
b) it ain't that simple.

I for one will be first in line for other game software Firaxis produces, because they understand some oft-forgotten maxims of software development. Define the scope and design of the project BEFORE you build it. After you've finished the design, be prepared to cut out features because you were too ambitious. Fight off feature creep and defer non-critical enhancements until after the release. And voila! You've got a successful software product, without slipping the ship date too much, and happy customers. Hats off.

Yelof

 

[Scientia]

Originally posted by Sir Yelof


you'd be amazed at the stuff that sales & marketing folks come up with. As for "it was in there before, where did it go?" -- no, it's not pathetic at all. I'd bet that they chose to completely overhaul the AI/diplomacy engine such that it wasn't just a matter of porting some code over to get it back. You should see how hard it can be just to get people to agree on an icon, let alone decide which diplomacy options are in and which are out.

I agree.

Requirements documents, design documents, implementation time tables . . . there's a lot more involved than what appears visible in the UI.

Usually, a redesign will require that you start from scratch . . code-reusability is not always an option, especially when you change the interface or engine.

Portable code . . . I may still have some sprites from the old C64 days. They might look interesting in a graphics mod pack

 

[Frodawg]

One thing that would be a good change for complex diplomacy would be to enable a way to call the U.N. to session, although I dont thimk it would be realistic unless it was in a Civ4

 

[korusus]

I definitely think that trade embargos should be according to resources and not trade in general. Like you could sign an oil embargo against a nation while still trading luxuries if it suited both countries. But at what point would the oil embargo hinder the normal trade relations and possible lead to war??? And if it did, would the nation you signed it with come to your aid??

Doubt it