Diplomacy

[SJSerio]

I've seen a lot of complaints about diplomacy. About how hard it is to do diplomacy with an AI oponent. How negotiations never seem to make sense. How the AI declares war for no reason at all. There are many other complaints and quite frankly, I agree.

I can't stand it when I have something that the computer needs, yet they refuse to trade with me for something or even worse, I have trade with them and while at war with another civ, they suddenly form an alliance with that civ, losing the resource (which they have no other supply of). I also don't like the fact that the once I use a nuke, half of the civilizations start war with me, even if they are a civ of two cities, while I have 50 cities and overpower them by a gazillion times. If anything, nukes would be a deterent, at least for the smaller civs, against starting war with the civ that first uses a nuke.

My solution, I think that Sid needs to get on the phone with his old friend Wil and discuss a certain relationship handling AI engine. Yes, I'm talking about the relationship system in The Sims franchise. To me, it could be perfectly tailored to work with the Civilization franchise. Every time you meet a civ, your relationship starts at 0, which would represent the a neutral relation. Certain interactions will change increase or decrease your score with said civilization. Of course, over time, the score will gradually migrate back to 0 unless or until other actions are affected.

For example, lets look at Rome, Egypt and Greece with this system. Rome meets Greece and begins establishing friendly relations with them by giving Greece some gold that is needed. This bumps up Romes score with Greece to say +5 and Greece gains +10 in Relationship Score (RS) toward Rome. Next, Rome finds a lone Egyptian worker and decides that they need an extra hand around their home and captures the worker. Rome's RS with Egypt either remains 0 or drops, say, 5 points whereas Egypts RS with Rome immediately drops below 0. Egypt declares war on Rome, decreasing both of their RS's toward each other even more. Meanwhile, Greece, who had a high RS with Egypt, loses RS points with Rome through the action. Rome counters by pumping up the score with Greece, trying to prevent the score from becoming less favorable, possibly even spreading words against Egypt to lower the score between Greece and Egypt, resulting in either Greece joining the war against Egypt or becoming impartial, eventually siding with the victor.

In the end, different actions would have different values that would influence each nations RS. Some of those values may have variable factors such as leader traits, as well. I think this would help to prevent the sudden turns of supposed friends and help smooth out trading. Maybe, the friendlier you are with a particular nation, the better deals you would get for a trade.

Anyway, I figure it would be to late for them to include this system into Civ IV now, but I hope that they at least have something similar in place (or were way ahead of me on the thought). Hopefully, they will release more details on the diplomacy system (and many other facets of the game) soon. In any case, just some thoughts!!! What do you all think?

 

[warpstorm]

Uh, this is how most strategy games have modeled relations for ages, including the Civ series.

 

[ThePersian]

yes but not to this level. i think the depth to your idea is fantastic. "AI will no longer dickaround" Soern. That quote should explain much of how the deplomacy will work in civ IV,

 

[nicae]

im sure the ai implemented into games such as civ are more complex than that. yet it is still very difficult to integrate such a system with the dynamics and complexity of the game's situation and course of action. thus we have all those bizarre outcomes that torment even the most modern games.

 

[SJSerio]

I don't see how it would be too dificult to implement this system into the Civilization series. To me, at least, it would fit perfectly with the franchise. It would also make diplomacy more relevant and worthwhile. After all, wars get boring after a while. Especially when you are trying to bring one war to a close, and another war breaks out for no good reason. It happens way too often in Civ III for it to be using a similar system, or at least one as dinamic.

Hopefully, though, a similar system is already in place in Civ IV. After all, they say that one of the issues they tackled was diplomacy.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

This IS what the AI does. The thing to remember is that in this game the AI is also playing to win.. which means if it looks like you are going to win the smart thing for an AI to do is declare war on you (if they all do it maybe they will win)

To make the system reasonable, power does need to be taken more into consideration (of course declaring war on you when you have a resource I don't may make sense..if I think I can take that resource, for cheaper than the money you've been extorting from me.)

Also I think the AIs need to focus more on points and less on winning (by making winning hard, hopefully Humans would too.)

After all imagine the AI thinking about all the times You declared war for 'no good reason' (like wanting their territory, or trying to come from behind)

 

[SJSerio]

To make the system reasonable, power does need to be taken more into consideration (of course declaring war on you when you have a resource I don't may make sense..if I think I can take that resource, for cheaper than the money you've been extorting from me.)

Yeah, it may make sense to start war in this case, but, as you said, if one thinks they can take the resource. However, when the person holding the resource is way more powerful...

 

[warpstorm]

What choice do they have? Let you win?

 

[marvinGS]

Hi my first post here!!

First of all my english is not very well so I apologize for errors. Second I didnt suppose the post will be that long but when I started typing things just appeared in my head. I hope it wont annoy you too much.

I am not a hardcore civ player but i play occasionally. IMO diplomacy between countries is not a social relationship between individuals. The balance of powers is the key in diplomacy. Generally countries dont look into the history for making there decision. They dont say "hey, that country did good to me in the past so we should help him now". No, things dont work this way in real world. Countries declare war to other countries for there own interest only. (not in the point of view of people but leaders'). They make alliances in the same manner. Just after the WWI Turkey made a peace threaty with the allies and tries to have good relations with them. He never tried to take vengeance against there former enemies because this was his benefit. Today Turkey is a member of NATO and is allied with UK, Greece and France who invaded Turkey 80 years ago. USA waited to declare war on Japon until Pearl Harbor. It didnt enter the war against Japon for the free world but because he was threatened by them. Even USSR was unwilling to declare war on Japan until USA declared war. They declared war because they just didnt want to lose the control of Japan to USA. They wanted to control parts of Japan themself. The thing I want to point is that counties act considering there own good not depending on the behaviour of other countries. (Well it is not always that simple but that is generally true).

Also, the AI should simulate at its best what a country would do in a such situation. He should act as if this is real world not a game. In a game of RISK you can try your chance with your last armies until you are totally annihilated but in real life you just surrender if defeat is inevitable. This is what really happened in history. (Of course there are some exceptions).

Said that I wish that thing didnt actualy be so. I wish a world where world leaders works for the good of all humanity and I wish that wars are left on video games only. But this doesnt seem to happen in near future. :,,,(

 

[alms66]

I agree with you Marvin, the AI should play realistically first (on lower levels), then on the "Monarch" and above levels be triggered to ignore reality and play to win. I personally prefer realistic AI to unbeatable AI.

 

[rickb]

What choice do they have? Let you win?

Grrr, that's the whole problem with this "winning" thing for us players that don't care a lick about that nonsense. We play like we're actually ruling a civilization and just want the best for our people, and we just want the AI to act like a realistic country that more or less wants the same thing for their citizens (with a range of variation obviously, from very warlike to very peaceful). It's not like, say, France (as a random example) in the real world is looking at some winning conditions (ooh, hey prime minister need more points for a cultural victory, let's build an Eiffel tower, or hey let's achieve a domination victory, here we come Luxembourg) so they can "win" by 2020.

As far as the AI relationship, it's seems to me all it does is detoriate without end as time goes on, rather than going back to neutral. I never do anything to make the AI mad, I always let the AI declare war on me and since I don't care about winning I'm never a "threat" because I never have as many victory points as everyone else.

 

[Che Guava]

Grrr, that's the whole problem with this "winning" thing for us players that don't care a lick about that nonsense. We play like we're actually ruling a civilization and just want the best for our people, and we just want the AI to act like a realistic country that more or less wants the same thing for their citizens...

Hear hear! SHouldn't some of the civs just want to be happy in thier corner of the earth?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, it would be nice if attitudes/diplomacy-for both AI and human players- depended on the following factors:

1) Shared Culture Group/Religion/Civics.
2) Relative Cultural, Economic, Technological and military strength.
3) Reputation based on past actions (for instance, gifting units, techs resources or money to a civ on frequent occasions, helping to end a war for a civ and frequently honouring your diplomatic agreements will give you a positive attitude, wheras commiting atrocities, breaking diplomatic agreements or engaging in covert operations against a nation should give a negative attitude).
4) Negotiating tone.
5) Leader personalities.

On point #3 though, how this effects diplomacy should relate closely to points 2,4 and 5. For example, even if you have a negative reputation, if your relative military strength is 5x greater than that of another civ, then they will probably still do a deal with you-if only out of fear-especially if you use a threatening tone in negotiation. By the same token, if you are economically and militarily weak, then an AI civ might still try and railroad you in diplomacy, even if you have the best reputation on the block!
Hope that all makes sense.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[warpstorm]

Grrr, that's the whole problem with this "winning" thing for us players that don't care a lick about that nonsense. We play like we're actually ruling a civilization and just want the best for our people, and we just want the AI to act like a realistic country that more or less wants the same thing for their citizens (with a range of variation obviously, from very warlike to very peaceful).

I guess Firaxis can't possibly win. In Civ2, people complained because the AI tried to win the game. In Civ3, they complained that the AI wasn't trying to win the game but play as a nation.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, if AI personalities-amongst other factors-turns out the way I hope, then I think Firaxis will have won in this iteration of the game. The reason is because now winning alone will not decide the AI's behaviour-as it did in Civ2-whilst at the same time the AI won't just let you walk right over it-as it often did in Civ3. Instead a middle ground will hopefully be achieved where AI and player alike will act on the basis of shared beliefs and goals-and where constant conquest and expansion are no longer the best routes to victory anyway.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[strhopper]

I agree with Rick I dont really play to win the victory points I just play to survie and enjoy the thought of runnin a whole civilization

 

[Robi D]

I think this this is a problem with the balance of the game, not just the dipomacy, since at the moment playing to win = expansion and conquest. That is why i have advocated things such as civil war and a more detailed ecomonic model to make it harder to expand and also give a fair chance to win if as che says, a civ is just happy with their corner of the earth. Winning and being happy with the territory you have shouldn't be mutually exclusive.

As far as the diplomatic interaction goes, having started playing way back at civ1, where diplomacy was virtually no existant, i see that it has come a long way and i'm sure it will continue to improve in civ4. However my biggest gripe with it is that the ai dipomacy with humans is very different to its diplomacy with other ai. While it holds you accountable for all your actions towards it, and has a long memeory to boot, its suddenly has a very short memory and is very forgiving of the actions of other ai civs towards it.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

You see, I think there you have truly nailed the key problem Robi D. Not sure if you are familiar with Superpower 1 and 2, but in that game the computer actually had no idea which nation you were playing-if that makes sense?? Basically, the computer had no choice to treat your nation the same as all the other AI nations, because it could not be certain which of those nations WAS the human player. Thats how it ought to be in Civ4 IMO.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[strhopper]

You see, I think there you have truly nailed the key problem Robi D. Not sure if you are familiar with Superpower 1 and 2, but in that game the computer actually had no idea which nation you were playing-if that makes sense?? Basically, the computer had no choice to treat your nation the same as all the other AI nations, because it could not be certain which of those nations WAS the human player. Thats how it ought to be in Civ4 IMO.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

oh i hope they do this tired of fightin a war in the ancient age and then in the modern tryin to form a allaince and no cooperation due to that war thousands of years ago

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well there is some problem, in that in a game sense what you did thousands of years ago was at most last week, and so it is a good indicator of how you will behave towards them now (that war thousands of years ago may indicate your overall aggressive strategy in the game, or your tendency to break treaties...this changes in nations in a few or a hundred years, but not in the game.)

I think things like 'liking' the other players should be in but as a 'people' factor, happiness of your population at the deals you make with these people, and that should generally fade. Secondly there would be the AI remembering, over the whole game, of what approach you are using (do you play well with others or do you run with scissors)

The key is making the Histographic/Diplomatic/Space Race wins easier than the Domination/Conquest/Cultural Wins ie the Limited Territorial v. the Expanded territorial. By getting players (including AIs) to aim for the most relative points in the end rather than actually winning, you can inspire some realistic behavior. For example, small country helps larger country win. Small country may help the larger country move from 3 to 1st place, but in the process the benefits given to small country help it move from 10th to 5th. (The small country realizing that IT will never be first due to stability factors in the game and that opposing large country could move it from 10th to last)