Civ5 Diplomacy. What to do... what to do...

[blitzkrieg1980]

Okay, so I think many of us can agree on one major front with regards to Civ5. Diplomacy is incredibly oversimplified, underpowered, somewhat broken, and totally boring. I am in no way a power modder, or even a sort-of modder. The extent of my modding is making a bunch of civs, uniques, traits, wonders, leaders, and buildings for civ4. As you modders know, this is nothing more than copy/pasting and slightly changing the xml files.

However, I am in school for computer science and I think it would actually be quite beneficial to utilize modding Civ5 not only for some experience, but also to get some real hands on coding practice. Now, I have no idea how difficult it would be (or possible for that matter) to do a complete overhaul of diplomacy for this game. But I would really like to try.

I'm looking for individuals who have a similar distaste with the bland diplomacy in Civ5 and have some experience (and free time) for modding. I can, in no way, take the lead on this (as my lack of coding/modding experience would make me a poor candidate), but I will definitely be a main contributor. I'm not looking for overnight results (as this whole thing may be impossible), but I'd like to give Firaxis a run for their money and have an overhauled diplomacy system out to rival their first Expansion Pack release.

The first step, of course, is finding out what kind of diplomacy system we WOULD like to see. I don't think a return to Civ4 is what we're looking for. But I know I'm DEFINITELY looking for more control and less nonsense over the AI diplomacy.

If you have any interest in this kind of a project. Please post up here and let me know. This is going to have to be a team effort. Diplomacy is going to have a lot of AI programming in it, I imagine.

 

[dinobot386]

The DLL will have to come out before anyone can do any of this

 

[Spatzimaus]

This forum is for completed files, not discussion. Threads like this go in the general C&C forum. I've notified to moderators to move it.

 

[Gedemon]

The DLL will have to come out before anyone can do any of this

depend if we can make a "neutral" AI using the current flavor setting.

 

[The_J]

This forum is for completed files, not discussion. Threads like this go in the general C&C forum. I've notified to moderators to move it.

Moderator Action: Thread moved.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

The DLL will have to come out before anyone can do any of this

I see. Gives me more time to practice my C++ and oop practices. The project will probably take a long time, anyway (as the AI is quite a complex system). Well, no one says we can't discuss the kind of diplomacy we'd LIKE to see. The actual implementation may have to wait until the DLL is released. But until then, we can always brainstorm.

Some of the big points I would like to change:

1) Severely reduced warmonger status points only when allied in wars (ie civ x and civ y are in a war with civ z. civ x eliminates civ z by capturing their last city. civ y doesn't react by denouncing/calling civ x a warmonger). Other known civs will react the same as they do now, though.

2) Reduced warmonger status points when getting DoW on by an enemy and then taking a couple cities because of their avarice. There should definitely be warmonger points added for capturing cities, but if it is an effect of a counterattack, the points should be diminished perhaps even eliminated if the civ that declared had FRIENDLY relations before DoW. After 2 cities (or 25% of a civ depending on map/civ size), warmonger points will return to full strength. Perhaps we can base the threshold on population rather than # of captured cities. After all, capturing the capital shouldn't receive the same treatment as capturing an outlier city.

3) Rework the AI reactions to the player nearing a victory condition. If an AI is weak, is NOT near a victory condition of their own, or has been FRIENDLY with your civ for > 67% of the game (consecutive turns) and not in direct competition for winning, the diplomatic relations should remain nearly unchanged with the exception of domination and some warmonger leaders. Of course, if the AI is strong and is nearing a victory of their own, they should attack. They have a REAL reason to.

4) Lower the importance of denouncements. Make them more of a declaration of unfriendliness rather than one of the sole methods of conducting diplomacy. Due to this, we will need to add in another mechanic that will allow attitudes to sour, but in a more tangible and understandable way. Perhaps having open borders with an enemy could cause negative modifiers along with excessive trading (along the lines of civ4).

5) Add modifiers for keeping open borders. Having open borders and allowing rival troops to cross your land and see your strategic advantages requires trust especially in this game where tactical placement of units is quite important. This should be reflected in diplomacy. Also, we can keep the AI attitudes towards allowing open borders the same as it currently is. Open borders should be [diplomatically speaking] a display of trust between 2 civs, not a way to fix souring relations. If a civ is GUARDED, they should not allow open borders solely for open borders. They will need more convincing than that.

6) Remove the ability for the AI AND human player to DoW during a DoF with each other. Backstabbing is one thing, but to try to get the AI to act like a human by using a DoF to trick us just makes diplomacy a sham. Make it impossible for BOTH the AI and the human and the DoF actually has some meaning to it. Or, we could add a non-aggression pact that holds more diplomatic weight with the partnering civ than does the DoF but has little effect on the rest of the world (ie civs that DoF with the same civ you DoF with will gain positive modifiers, but not with non-aggression pact)

7) Loans. I've wanted to see this in Civ for a long time. Let's say you're working on a culture victory and don't have a lot of gold to mess around with. Civ x DoW on you b/c you are about to fill your 5th soc pol tree. You need units. Borrow 3000 gold from Civ Y while giving them 65 GPT for 50 turns. Buy your units to defend your land. Defend your land. Continue towards your victory condition. There would be no way to pay back in lump sum, and for the duration of the loan, you get a slight diplomatic negative modifier for being in debt to the civ (not enough to turn a FRIEND into a GUARDED, but enough to force you to walk on eggshells for a little while with them). If your victory condition will come before the loan is paid back, the leader may come to you and ask for a lump sum as a gift. If you refuse, this could cause insta-DoW as well as a negative diplo hit against all other leaders for not honoring your debt.

The debt could be a way to allow the AI a little help with an invading human. An AI can take out a loan with one of their friends in order to build more units if the invader needs more time to heal after a particularly punishing attack. However, on lower levels, this may just cripple the AI to an unrecoverable level (as they are very bad at handling gold on Prince and below).

Well, those are some of my suggestions. Let me know what you guys think. We can tweak the goals a bunch and get an idea of where we will want the diplomacy to be at once the DLL gets released so we can get right to it! Thanks for your interest.