Diplomacy

[woodelf]

I plan on going through the default diplomacy and eliminating all Vanilla Leaders and thus their diplomacy. I've done this for 4 other mods so it isn't that hard anymore. The generic stuff will still be around for a while.

My question is: Does anyone want to volunteer to add some of the faction specific text? I'm going to do the XML work and set up the Text XML file, but the text for peace, war, first contact, ect will all need to be written. This is about as low a priority as you can get, but if there's any quote you love or there is a faction you feel you'd like to "speak" for then please do. I'll post tomorrow with the exact types of text needed so put on your SMAC talk cap!

 

[GRM7584]

It may be low priority, but its quick and easy enough to do, I'd think. I don't mind running through and putting some quotes in; I'll take a look at the diplo xml for civ and the diplo text in SMAC to compare/contrast.

 

[snipperrabbit!!]

I'll check and give advice in that department.

 

[woodelf]

Here is a listing of the Civ4 diplomacy tags that have civ specific text:

First Contact
Refuse to Talk
No Peace
Greeting Friendly
Greeting Furious
Tribute weaker, equal, and stronger

Not a huge listing.

Now here are some more that in the past I've enabled civ specific text for and plan on doing so again.

Declare War
Peace
Trading
Accept
Offer Peace
Thanks
Try this deal

These are all forms of diplomacy that I feel add to the game.

Here's a last partial list of more possibilities that I normally don't muck around with. All have Friendly, Pleased, Cautious, Annoyed, and Furious options:

Glad
Reject
Sorry
No Deal
Offer Deal
Cancel Deal
ect, ect, ect.

These are all generic in game and I've never seen anyone bother with them. Cosmetic, purely.

So anyone who comes up with text for the first two listing can post it here and I'll c/p it into the Text file I'm going to create.

 

[woodelf]

So everyone has two choices on how to add in this faction specific text:

1 - put it here and I'll put it into XML. Not a big deal.
2 - D/l the latest version and find the Civ4GameTextInfos_Diplo XML in the Text folder and make the additions yourself.

To do this find the appropriate tag, for example Lal declaring war:

<TEXT>
	<Tag>AI_DIPLO_DECLARE_WAR_LEADER_PRAVIN_LAL_1</Tag>
	<English>need pedia</English>
</TEXT>

and replace the "need pedia" with your Lal declaration. Easy as pie.

Sorry to teach this at a 2nd grade level, but not everyone has done Text modifications.

 

[GRM7584]

Alright, I've updated the diplomacy text, although the generic messages definitely need rewriting as well. I may look into that.

 

[woodelf]

Super. Feel free. It's mind numbing c/p after a while. I can't believe Firaxis only uses about 20% of the capabilities of this file.

 

[Pfeffersack]

Sorry for resurrecting the oldest thread in this subforum in advance, but the following just seems to fit here best, so I think its better than overcrowding the thread for issues of the current version v8 or posting it in my XML-tag one, where this just doesn't fit.

I always like that SMAC AIs often offered you something as "compensation for your expenses" when they wanted you to go to war with someone else. Civ4 has that as a hidden feature, only available for inter-AI-diplomacy. I asked DanF5771, how it works and what prevents it for diplomacy between AI and human players and he kindly explained how he made it working:

re. the bribery hack:
IIRC I had only changed a few lines of code at the very end of CvPlayerAI::AI_doDiplo() to achieve the bribing of the human player described in this post. I removed the isHuman()-check and copied the code block from the trade-maps offer to establish the diplo contact. But of course I didn't run any sophisticated tests whether or not this change introduces any game-breaking "side effects" plus I guess there are some good reasons the developers decided to not allow this bribery for the human player... But feel free to hack this restriction -- I'd be interested in your findings .

I would be really glad if this makes it one day into Planetfall, as it is for me one of the things which make SMAC's diplomacy so outstanding (beside giving out/taking loans, gradual reactions/counteroffers [like paying only half of a tribute or denying a request, but offering a trade instead] or buying council votes...)

 

[Maniac]

There should be some way to penalize players who declare war but then just sit on their arses.

 

[Pfeffersack]

There should be some way to penalize players who declare war but then just sit on their arses.

A kind of "war-o-meter", which measures your war efforts (say by killed units, earned experience or captured cities) could affect the diplo bonus you get for shared wars as well. However, I imagine that hard to implement, so perhaps reducing the bribe (if it feels too much at all) would be a better way - because there is partly a trade-off for you respective an advantage for the bribing civ anyway:

1. You seriously ruin your relations with the faction you declare on and to a lesser extend with its friends as well.
2. Even if you repair relations later, eventual trade has took a hit (trade routes yield depends a lot on peace years)
3. You will be a more juicy target for any dogpilers out there.
4. Even if you remain passive, you might get attacked...
5. ...what helps the bribing civ because it draws some forces away from them.
6. Also they will get better peace conditions, even if you just do a phony war.

Moreover, the AI among each other might not be too active as well when assisting each other in war (they might try, but often they just lack the means to help a far away ally)

BTW, the formula which determines the actual bribe is quite complex and factors in a lot of stuff I wouldn't have thought of:

What about the price?

Stalin determines iOurValue = AI_declareWarTradeVal(victim, Suleiman) which depends on:
-number and size of the victim's cities: 10*NumCities + 2*TotalPopulation(incl.Vassals)
-Suleiman's attitude towards the victim: * 1| 1.25| 1.5| 2.5| 5 for Furious|Annoyed|Cautious|Pleased|Friendly
-Power Ratio (incl.Vassals): * ( 0.5 + Power_Victim/(Power_Suleiman+Power_Victim)) --> *(0.5...1.5)
-Victim not a LandTarget for Suleiman? --> *2
-Stalin's WarSuccess against victim: *(1...1.5) // 1.5 = no success
number and size of Suleiman's cities: + 20*NumCities + 15*TotalPopulation(incl.Vassals)
-Suleiman's attitude towards Stalin and number of wars Stalin is fighting: * (0.75...0.9) | (0.5...0.8) for Pleased|Friendly
-number of victim's nukes: + 250*NumNukes //Don't want to get nuked
-number of Suleiman's nukes: + 150*NumNukes //Don't want to use nukes on another's behalf
-scaling for elapsed game turns: *(0.6...2.0) // early wars are cheaper