Diplomatic Wonders?

[DRJ]

In Ancient Times, gifting "wonderful" Items, or even slaves etc. were acts of diplomacy between states.

In this thread I wish to make a list of those "wonders of diplomacy". The reason they were made and gifted may verify:

from tribute to a larger nation to show goodwill towards a stronger

(for example you as player would build this wonder maybe to get better relations with the #1 in points or the techleader so you would benefit in better trading possibilities and slightly better prices),

to the idea of showing off cultural achievements
for getting better chances to sign a defense pact or getting an ally

(I already have an example for this, the Amber Room (Bernsteinzimmer), which Germany once gifted to Russia)

Spoiler :

or to promote the economical interests (like states do nowadays when trying to build a pipeline through some tribes land, if they don't act like warmongers)


Do you guys know more Diplomatic Wonders, and situations they appeared in? I am quite sure there are a lot, and especially in asian history I am not very well informed


On the long term my goal is to integrate some sort of civ-to-civ interacting immigration mechanisms through diplomatic layers, maybe someone can help me with establishing a concept of this idea

 

[strategyonly]

Were do you think the USA got the Statue of Liberty from: France.

 

[DRJ]

Of course, right! I think thats a great wonder that could be diplomatically specified, for instance it should only be able to be gifted, maybe only if certain requirements cultural~, civic~ or mutual enemy-wise are met!
That would favor small nations to catch up instead of the normal #1 in points building it usually at first and then skyrocket even more...

 

[hotrodlincoln]

I would think a more sensible mechanic would be to /allow/ the gifting of certain wonders, not requiring it. If you want to keep the Statue Of Liberty, you should be able to do so. This, also should be limited to transportable wonders for obvious reasons. I have a hard time imagining the pyramids of Giza being gifted away!

 

[strategyonly]

I have a hard time imagining the pyramids of Giza being gifted away!

ahahaha I agree here, but haven't you heard of "The Ancient Astronauts Theory?"

 

[Hydromancerx]

ahahaha I agree here, but haven't you heard of "The Ancient Astronauts Theory?" Actually South America has twice as many Pyramids as Egypt. And they were built at the same time, explain that??

The age of the pyramids reached its zenith at Giza in 2575 BC - 2150 BC.

The 1st Mesoamerican pyramids were built during the "Formative Period" 1800 BC–200 AD. Remember the civilizations of the Americans got a much later start. I mean the Aztec empire only came about in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. This is how the Spanish got to be so much more advanced than the Aztecs.

 

[DRJ]

I am pretty sure he meant the peruvian Pyramids of Caral, dating back to more than 2627 BC

The date of 2627 BCE is based on carbon dating reed and woven carrying bags that were found at the site. These bags were used to carry the stones that were used for the construction of the pyramids.


Here is a nice panorama view, to enjoy it work with crtl - a few times and then to change size back use crtl +

Spoiler :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caral

 

[DRJ]

Ok here is what I think how the Amber Room could work, please tell me what you guys think about it.


Hammer cost:

-->same like Sistine Chapel


available with :

--> Political Philosophy and Stained Glass
(as this pic spoiler [below] shows the amber is formed in Stained Glass like patterns plus this art tech is close to Political Philosophy)

--> Amber needed in the trade grid

-->Can only built in city with the Throne Room and Treasury

New: Amber Room building civ must have a throne room and a treasury somewhere in its borders to be able to build the wonder, but wonder would be able to be built anywhere else.

--> +50% building speed with culture german

Effects:

--> After finishing the Amber Room you can decide which nation you want to gift it to.

Relations with this nation will improve a base level of +2; the more your nations civics match up the more extra +relations you get (0,5 points for every matchup of the 8 most important branches, makes a potential +4 max +2 base = +6 relations possible, but with the turnout of about +3-4 points relations change in average, which for this wonder should be balanced, I think).
Once you or the other nation shifts civics, the effect of the Amber Room may disapear more or less.

--> Amber Room receiving AI civ will have to ask for tribute, even if it's planning to attack out of the blue.
If requested tribute then is not granted, war is declared (note this requested tribute may even be a good city!).


-->The Amber Room receiving nations capital gets +5 and +1 GP Artist point/turn


expires with:

--> Semi-Automatic-Weapons


pic:

-->

Spoiler :

Possible strategic importance of the wonder:

-->You might want to change yours (or the enemies via spies) civcs to get the full effect of this wonder.
And in case you have a strong neighbour, known for his warmongering and who is annoyed with you and therefore parades a lot of troops at your border
the Amber Room can make the difference between life and death, maybe it gives you the very much needed last turns of peace to complete the Encyclopedia to finally catch up in tech with the big guys and upgrade your outdated army to survive the upcoming steampunk battles^^?

-->but would it really be wise to gift it to the one techleader AI who deep in his heart is furious at you or might another middlepower be a useful and very friendly future ally, if chosen? Lots of variants there!

 

[Koshling]

Ok here is what I think how the Amber Room could work, please tell me what you guys think about it.


Hammer cost:

-->same like Sistine Chapel


available with :

--> Political Philosophy and Stained Glass
(as this pic spoiler [below] shows the amber is formed in Stained Glass like patterns plus this art tech is close to Political Philosophy)

--> Amber needed in the trade grid

-->Can only built in city with the Throne Room and Treasury

--> +50% building speed with culture german

Effects:

--> After finishing the Amber Room you can decide which nation you want to gift it to.

Relations with this nation will improve a base level of +2; the more your nations civics match up the more extra +relations you get (0,5 points for every matchup of the 8 most important branches, makes a potential +4 max +2 base = +6 relations possible, but with the turnout of about +3-4 points relations change in average, which for this wonder should be balanced, I think).
Once you or the other nation shifts civics, the effect of the Amber Room may disapear more or less.

--> Amber Room receiving AI civ will have to ask for tribute, even if it's planning to attack out of the blue.
If requested tribute then is not granted, war is declared (note this requested tribute may even be a good city!).


-->The Amber Room receiving nations capital gets +5 and +1 GP Artist point/turn


expires with:

--> Semi-Automatic-Weapons


pic:

-->

Spoiler :

Possible strategic importance of the wonder:

-->You might want to change yours (or the enemies via spies) civcs to get the full effect of this wonder.
And in case you have a strong neighbour, known for his warmongering and who is annoyed with you and therefore parades a lot of troops at your border
the Amber Room can make the difference between life and death, maybe it gives you the very much needed last turns of peace to complete the Encyclopedia to finally catch up in tech with the big guys and upgrade your outdated army to survive the upcoming steampunk battles^^?

-->but would it really be wise to gift it to the one techleader AI who deep in his heart is furious at you or might another middlepower be a useful and very friendly future ally, if chosen? Lots of variants there!

I like the idea but there are issues on the implementation side:

1) There is currently no mechanism for events to record user-choice parameters beyond the choice of pre-defined event outcomes. Specifically no way to choose a target player to gift it to, and no way to record that choice once made. If you wrote bespoke Python to do this you would wind up with an event that couldn't be replayed on modifier rebuilds, so all effect would be lost the next time a modifier recalc took place (explicit ctrl-alt-T, or accepting the prompted rebuild on load after an asset change). Consequently we'd need to add to the event infrastructure. The most general way to do this would be to add a Python onReplay callback, together with some means to store arbitrary parameter values. Then you could use bespoke Python to get the target player choice on initial firing, and retrieve and re-apply it on event replay (you'd also probably need to store some civic settings and possibly date info so that the replay could dermine if it was even still applicable)

2) There is currently no way to record or act on the cannot-attack-without-demanding-tribute status. This would require a new boolean on the player, interpretted appropriately, plus Python-accessable APIs to read and modify it. Possibly also tags to set it declaratively.

3) There is not really a good way to trigger the change of benefits on a civic switch. I guess this COULD be done by a Python callback on each civic change that searched for the player concerned being involved with a wonder gifting, but I don't think this would be easy to write (primarily the bit about figuring out which players are involved in wonder gifts from the onCivicChnage callback)

From a purely gameplay perspective, I think the must-be-built-in-capital requirement is very awkward. Typically capitals tend to have a preponderance of early wonders (since they are one of a handful of large enough cities to build wonders early on), and be up against their wonder limit by mid-game. As such you really only get to build a couple of later game wonders in your capital in most games so only the very most important ones tend to go there (personally that tends to be commerce/yield multipliers as my capital tends to wind up specialised).

 

[platyping]

From a purely gameplay perspective, I think the must-be-built-in-capital requirement is very awkward. Typically capitals tend to have a preponderance of early wonders (since they are one of a handful of large enough cities to build wonders early on), and be up against their wonder limit by mid-game. As such you really only get to build a couple of later game wonders in your capital in most games so only the very most important ones tend to go there (personally that tends to be commerce/yield multipliers as my capital tends to wind up specialised).

That's the point!
You give it away to free up a slot to build more important wonders in your capital.
At the same time, you purposely give it to someone you hate, and take up a wonderslot in his capital, preventing him from building more important wonder

 

[DRJ]

I like the idea but there are issues on the implementation side:

1) There is currently no mechanism for events to record user-choice parameters beyond the choice of pre-defined event outcomes. Specifically no way to choose a target player to gift it to, and no way to record that choice once made. If you wrote bespoke Python to do this you would wind up with an event that couldn't be replayed on modifier rebuilds, so all effect would be lost the next time a modifier recalc took place (explicit ctrl-alt-T, or accepting the prompted rebuild on load after an asset change). Consequently we'd need to add to the event infrastructure. The most general way to do this would be to add a Python onReplay callback, together with some means to store arbitrary parameter values. Then you could use bespoke Python to get the target player choice on initial firing, and retrieve and re-apply it on event replay (you'd also probably need to store some civic settings and possibly date info so that the replay could dermine if it was even still applicable)

WOW great thinking! As this is a blackbox for me, I suppose - reading into what you write - that the cat in the box may still be alive in a way

2) There is currently no way to record or act on the cannot-attack-without-demanding-tribute status. This would require a new boolean on the player, interpretted appropriately, plus Python-accessable APIs to read and modify it. Possibly also tags to set it declaratively.

Didn't a new programmer knock on C2C's door yesterday? ;-)
But I think maybe the "cannot-attack-without-demanding-tribute status" (you put it wonderfully!) is really a useful mechanism, after all sometimes the AI does request tribute and then, if it isn't granted DOWs immediately so can't this situation be reproduced and modified and then overtagged on the receiving civ somehow? That's probably what you wrote anyway (it's sometimes oracle-ish and way beyond my understanding but I like it!)

3) There is not really a good way to trigger the change of benefits on a civic switch. I guess this COULD be done by a Python callback on each civic change that searched for the player concerned being involved with a wonder gifting, but I don't think this would be easy to write (primarily the bit about figuring out which players are involved in wonder gifts from the onCivicChnage callback)

Absolutely stunning to see how you improvise on such a high level.
It's an honour for me to see programming in action as a form of social art.
This is really the future of gaming (and humanity), so much is possible if you just have the talent, the passion, the "little" help from your friends & the place and the time.

From a purely gameplay perspective, I think the must-be-built-in-capital requirement is very awkward. Typically capitals tend to have a preponderance of early wonders (since they are one of a handful of large enough cities to build wonders early on), and be up against their wonder limit by mid-game. As such you really only get to build a couple of later game wonders in your capital in most games so only the very most important ones tend to go there (personally that tends to be commerce/yield multipliers as my capital tends to wind up specialised).

You're absolutely right, I forgot about the wonder limits. I usually play with no wonder limits in my games as for my games 4 wonders/city for all game was not enough for so many wonders in general and I didnt want to build more cities for wonders cause I hated to micromanage all of them or leave AI building useless archers

I should then maybe change the requirement to:

--->Amber Room building civ must have a throne room and a treasury somewhere in its borders to be able to build the wonder, but wonder would be able to be built anywhere else. [edited to post above]

 

[DRJ]

That's the point!
You give it away to free up a slot to build more important wonders in your capital.
At the same time, you purposely give it to someone you hate, and take up a wonderslot in his capital, preventing him from building more important wonder

Yeah that's interesting a posioned gift hehe.
Anyone wants to suggest some requirements/effects/features for
a possible next diplomatic wonder, the
Trojan Horse?

For right pic size after clicking on spoiler work with crtl - and ctrl +

Spoiler :

 

[DRJ]

Btw. why is this thread now in bugs/crashes subforum? it's a discussion/ideas thread.

 

[DRJ]

Btw. why is this thread now in bugs/crashes subforum? it's a discussion/ideas thread.

Sry to quote myself but since it hasn't been adressed yet:
This is no bug thread, it's a discussion thread and should NOT be in bug/crash forum. Thx in advance!

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

@DRJ the best way to get this to happen is for you, the thread creator, to send a PM to StrategyOnly, the mod owner, asking for him to request the move, providing him with a link to the thread and telling him where the thread belongs. He can then just forward it to a moderator and the move will happen.