Gamespot: chat with Firaxis about Civ5 - April 22

[Kazimierz Wielk]

So you ARE claiming they look up a diplomacy matrix?

Yes, they do. It might not be a single screen, since, of course, real life diplomacy is not a game. Their "matrix" is the myriad of advisors and experts that filter through the data, history, etc.... to present the leader with both current situations and historical context.

While, most modern leaders tend to be somewhat familiar with their major counterparts, you can not expect that they know the history and relations of all their nation's contacts. That is what briefings are for. That is what CIA researchers are for (for the US). They provide concrete data and impressions based on that data.

For example, an incoming US president is probably familiar to a certain degree, with the US relationship with Russia. It is doubtful that the same president has much of a familiarity with the relationship with Tuvalu or Chad or Yemen.

Leaders are able to ask concrete questions such as "What is the likely effect on our relations with the D.R. of Congo if we invade Angola?" "Why does Iran have such animosity towards the US?"

What the data that is currently available in Civ4 (regardless of a mod) does is act like that myriad of advisors/researchers. It is not simply a single advisor, but rather the whole of the diplomatic/research corps at your disposal. Something leaders have access to.

Again, I state again, in single player games, if the data is available to those that want it, it will have absolutely NO EFFECT on those players that choose to not look at it. I don't understand why there appears to be such animosity towards those that want to see the data. Each can play the way they want - which is one of the enduring features of Civ.

Example: I like my corndogs with mustard. My wife likes corndogs with ketchup and mustard. Should I tell my wife she should only be allowed to have mustard because that is my preference? Should we attack each other when the preferences are mutually exclusive and don't affect each other's eating pleasure? I say "no".

 

[Ddude97]

Yes, they do. It might not be a single screen, since, of course, real life diplomacy is not a game. Their "matrix" is the myriad of advisors and experts that filter through the data, history, etc.... to present the leader with both current situations and historical context.

While, most modern leaders tend to be somewhat familiar with their major counterparts, you can not expect that they know the history and relations of all their nation's contacts. That is what briefings are for. That is what CIA researchers are for (for the US). They provide concrete data and impressions based on that data.

For example, an incoming US president is probably familiar to a certain degree, with the US relationship with Russia. It is doubtful that the same president has much of a familiarity with the relationship with Tuvalu or Chad or Yemen.

Leaders are able to ask concrete questions such as "What is the likely effect on our relations with the D.R. of Congo if we invade Angola?" "Why does Iran have such animosity towards the US?"

What the data that is currently available in Civ4 (regardless of a mod) does is act like that myriad of advisors/researchers. It is not simply a single advisor, but rather the whole of the diplomatic/research corps at your disposal. Something leaders have access to.

Again, I state again, in single player games, if the data is available to those that want it, it will have absolutely NO EFFECT on those players that choose to not look at it. I don't understand why there appears to be such animosity towards those that want to see the data. Each can play the way they want - which is one of the enduring features of Civ.

Example: I like my corndogs with mustard. My wife likes corndogs with ketchup and mustard. Should I tell my wife she should only be allowed to have mustard because that is my preference? Should we attack each other when the preferences are mutually exclusive and don't affect each other's eating pleasure? I say "no".

^My opinion +

 

[Ahriman]

How does the glance screen show this? It doesn't, it's state in time not historical

All the player cares about is the current state of time. This is response to your argument, which basically said "we don't need to be able to see diplo modifiers at a glance; instead, the player should just remember every declaration of war that ever happened, and use that to figure out the current relationships"
Which is just bad design.

Who needs a diplomacy modifier to know that?

How do you know this kind of thing without observing a diplomacy value?

Because the AI isn't smart enough to manipulate the diplomacy numbers to fit their goals.

The AI IS smart enough to use the diplomacy values you complain about.
The AI is actually pretty good at bringing in war allies.

So you ARE claiming they look up a diplomacy matrix?

I'm claiming that real leaders have at least as much information available as is given by the diplomacy values in Civ4, yes.
You can add as many emoticons as you like, that doesn't make it any less true.

(IE sneak attacks on best friends)

I don't understand how people can think this is a sign of good diplomacy. For most people, its insanely frustrating if your close ally, who you've spend all game carefully shepherding towards positive diplomatic relations, suddenly declares war on you.

Lets poll-test this puppy.

 

[Dale]

All the player cares about is the current state of time. This is response to your argument, which basically said "we don't need to be able to see diplo modifiers at a glance; instead, the player should just remember every declaration of war that ever happened, and use that to figure out the current relationships"
Which is just bad design.

You don't have to remember every single instance. But you do get a feel for the game. You know if a certain Civ has had a few wars. You know where that Civ's enemies are. It doesn't take a genius with a photographic memory to tell that Montezuma has annoyed his neighbors by being at war with them.

How do you know this kind of thing without observing a diplomacy value?

There is a HUGE difference between knowing that a Civ does/doesn't like you, and that two Civs are at +7 and +8.

The AI IS smart enough to use the diplomacy values you complain about.
The AI is actually pretty good at bringing in war allies.

Using yes, manipulating no. There's a big difference.

I'm claiming that real leaders have at least as much information available as is given by the diplomacy values in Civ4, yes.
You can add as many emoticons as you like, that doesn't make it any less true.

Problem is, even the best advisors in the World are only guessing. It's "their best guess" at what relations are like. The glance screen is the strict actual numbers. Big difference between "how we think they feel" and "how they actually feel". Seeing the numbers takes out the fun of diplomacy as you already know how they will respond.

Ahriman you appear to enjoy using extremes as your example (ie: asking NK to join the US Coalition). Anyone will know who your extreme opposites are. But let's say Germany and Russia joining the US Coalition. A lot harder to pick their diplomacy modifier, isn't it? There's no diplomacy fun if you know exactly how they feel about you from being shown the exact "how they feel about you" diplomacy number. It's not strategy, and that's what this game is about.

I disagree with "diplomacy modifiers MUST be shown", but can see where it would be useful for "diplomacy modifiers CAN be shown".

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Don't quite follow you...

Diplomacy, if it is gong to be a part of the game consists of altering the behavior of the other players.

There are 2 ways to do this
1. Alter the gameplay benefits + costs of a players actions (can be done to both humans and AIs)

2. Alter the values used in decision making (can be done on AIs and any humans you are doing brain surgery on at the time)

Currently the game operates by #2... If I declare war on an AI Aztec, there appears a + to a little counter making it more likely for the AI Aztec player to attack me and less likely for them to sign trade+peace treaties with me (there are multiple counters like this interacting in many ways)

For an example of #1.. If I sign a trade treaty with a human player, I have Manipulated him.
That human player will suffer a loss of commerce if they attack me... so they are less likely to attack me. (probably)

Note: this 'less likelihood' is based on gameplay situations, NOT me knowing what the other person is thinking. If I assume they are trying to win the game, then they will avoid losing trade income (although other factors may make it worth it)

Example, UN resolutions: The AI or Human secretary general here does not Force other players to do anything... they can Always veto.... but vetoing comes at a large cost. So they alter player behavior by altering the costs+benefits

Strategic Diplomacy (ie manipulating diplomacy) should consist of the player altering the benefits+costs of other players performing certain actions

I should be able to make it More costly for the French to declare war on me.... by attacking their enemies, befriending their friends, offering them gifts, making treaties with them, not attacking them myself, etc. This should all make it Harder (not less likely but Harder) for the French to Attack me (whether the French are a Human player or a computer player)




The numbers that indicate the success/payoff of my diplomatic action MUST be shown
But those numbers must apply to Both Humans AND AIs, so the part of the program that corresponds to the human player should Not be visible (because the human player's thoughts are not visible)

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Whether they admit it or not, those advocating that the diplomacy modifiers be visible to the player are really just asking to retain a system which is ripe for exploitation (as opposed to manipulation, which is different).
I want my diplomatic efforts to influence how my neighbours view me, but don't see it as necessary that I *know* to what extent each effort has influenced them. If I need to know how an AI civ feels about me-or other civs-then I should be required to seek that information from my Foreign Adviser-& even this info should be incomplete. i.e., my foreign adviser-or the leader themselves-should be able to *tell* me that breaking my trade treaty with them has upset them, but not that it has given a -4 to my relations with them-that kind of information leads to EXPLOIT (in this case, I just make sure I do something which grants a +4 or +5 bonus to relations to get us back on an even keel-nothing more than a numbers game). In the former, though, I don't know *how* upset the leader is with me, so cannot be 100% sure that my offer of a bribe is sufficient to get us back into positive territory.
I don't even mind if the adviser or leader runs of an entire *litany* of my past misdeeds or acts of kindness (a la the glance screen), as long as I don't know-in integer terms-how each act contributes to our current diplomatic standing.
Now by contrast, manipulating diplomatic relations is entirely different. If my foreign adviser tells me that two civs have recently gone to war with one another, then I know I might be in a good position to "play both sides against the middle". However, if I don't know what their current diplomatic penalty is, then I can't be 100% that my ploy will succeed-which is just as it should be!

Aussie.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I want my diplomatic efforts to influence how my neighbours view me.

Do you want your diplomatic efforts to influence human neighbors or only AI neighbors?

If it is only going to influence your AI neighbors then diplomacy is nothing more than a single player exploit, whether numbers are shown or not.

It can be an annoying and obtuse single player exploit (ala Civ 3)
or a clear and usable single player exploit (ala Civ 4)

As long as Civ 5 diplomacy allows you to influence AI behavior in ways the AI can't influence your behavior, it is an exploit rather than a game mechanic.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Sorry, my experience of the AI in both Civ2 & Civ3 was that it *never* remembered your past deeds in diplomacy. At least in Civ4 I knew this wasn't the case but-though I liked knowing that the AI was behaving rationally, I don't want to know *exactly* how much my actions effect them.
As to the actions of the human player-I always role-play my Civ games, & when I play MP I only play Diplomacy games-which are also heavily role-played.
That said, I think a mixture of diplomatic modifiers & limited amounts of happiness modifiers-as you suggested-would work well.

Aussie.

 

[beefybro]

I don't understand how people can think this is a sign of good diplomacy. For most people, its insanely frustrating if your close ally, who you've spend all game carefully shepherding towards positive diplomatic relations, suddenly declares war on you.

Just to be clear, I don't want friendly AIs attacking me for the fun of it, but if it feels like it has to attack me to have a chance to win, then it should attack. Humans play this way and humans are much better at civ than AIs.

I gave the spaceship example in my original post. Having an AI watch helplessly as I build my spaceship, unable to attack because it likes me, does not seem like the best solution.

 

[Charles Martel]

I wouldn't call it BUG's glance screen, since it existed pre-BtS in the default game.

Yes, but if I remember correctly the glance screen was at some point removed by an official patch (was it 3.13?), and then made available only through the BUG mod. I remember the official motivation for removing the glance screen: the change long said "it was ugly". Note that they didn't say that it was exploitable, the motivation was merely cosmetic. Understandably, many people didn't agree with that, and the glance screen was re-enabled, I think, by the next official patch.

The screen itself is not the exploit, but what you can do with that information.

Then you think that the glance screen gives exploitable information. But I still fail to see how this justifies removing the screen altogether. It doesn't seem any more exploitable than other useful interface info, such as the combat odds. Would you propose to hide those as well? Couldn't you exploit the combat odds too? Perhaps the reasoning here is that while AI knows the combat odds, it can't quantify your diplo attitude (as someone put it: "the AI can't scan your brain"). But if your point is that the exploit consists in "what the player can do with the information" (as opposed to the information itself), then the combat odds are exploitable too (here's an example from Civ4: you could decide to prioritize attacks where your combat odds are just below the threshold for getting a certain amount of experience points. The AI doesn't do that, but you could, which seems gamey to me.) However, the exploits that players could do with combat-odds info are, I think, no good reason for hiding the odds themselves.

Bottom line: Let the information be shown (at least as an option), and let the player decide whether to “exploit” that info or not.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Bottom line: Let the information be shown (at least as an option), and let the player decide whether to “exploit” that info or not.

Here's a better bottom line: Hide the information, & if people want to see it, let them wait for the inevitable mod.

 

[Charles Martel]

Here's a better bottom line: Hide the information, & if people want to see it, let them wait for the inevitable mod.

Even better bottom line: Show the information, & if people don't want to see it then... don't look!

 

[Dale]

Yes, but if I remember correctly the glance screen was at some point removed by an official patch (was it 3.13?), and then made available only through the BUG mod. I remember the official motivation for removing the glance screen: the change long said "it was ugly". Note that they didn't say that it was exploitable, the motivation was merely cosmetic. Understandably, many people didn't agree with that, and the glance screen was re-enabled, I think, by the next official patch.

Having been on the test group that tested those patches, let me just say that the change log doesn't always reflect the real reason.

Then you think that the glance screen gives exploitable information. But I still fail to see how this justifies removing the screen altogether. It doesn't seem any more exploitable than other useful interface info, such as the combat odds. Would you propose to hide those as well? Couldn't you exploit the combat odds too? Perhaps the reasoning here is that while AI knows the combat odds, it can't quantify your diplo attitude (as someone put it: "the AI can't scan your brain"). But if your point is that the exploit consists in "what the player can do with the information" (as opposed to the information itself), then the combat odds are exploitable too (here's an example from Civ4: you could decide to prioritize attacks where your combat odds are just below the threshold for getting a certain amount of experience points. The AI doesn't do that, but you could, which seems gamey to me.) However, the exploits that players could do with combat-odds info are, I think, no good reason for hiding the odds themselves.

Bottom line: Let the information be shown (at least as an option), and let the player decide whether to “exploit” that info or not.

Combat-odds are another argument for another thread.

In terms of the diplomacy modifiers, I'm not advocating removing them. I am arguing against the premise that the information MUST be there. Make them a startup option, so if a player wants them on they can turn them on when setting up the game.

 

[LDiCesare]

I mean horrible as in "not fun in a game I am paying money to play", not horrible = immoral.

I want to be in charge of my population, not at their mercy.


Propaganda is when countries manipulate their population in order to (for example) implement the foreign policy they want. This is common.

We rarely (if ever?) observe leaders trying to use foreign policy to manipulate their own population's preferences for other countries. Which is what the proposal would imply. Which has all kinds of messed up causality.

Can you provide examples?

I might declare war on Spain because my people hate them, so doing so might make me more popular and give me more domestic power. But I don't choose to start trading with Canada in order to make my people like the Canadians more. And I don't choose to stop trading with Mexico in order to make my people hate Mexicans.

After WW2, France started trading with Germany to get closer with them and lessen the hatred between the countries. I think, yes it is a good example. It was more important to get on good terms with Germany than to actually trade with them. Officials would sell trade to the public, and the trade part was beneficial, but it was largely inconsequential when compared to the good relationships it helped bring between the people of the countries.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Here's a better bottom line: Hide the information, & if people want to see it, let them wait for the inevitable mod.

Hiding information is BAD, TERRIBLE BAD.

[sarcasm]
Currently the game displays tile yields... that is pointless, you should know that a hill produces more hammers and a farm more food, (after all in the real world you don't know how much ore a certain mine will produce, you just have a good idea)

The game displays how far production on a certain project has proceeded....you shouldn't need to know that, maybe 'started' 'working on it' 'almost done'

The game displays the exact costs breakdown of all your expenses both in the cities and in the overall. That is pointless, our government doesn't even now how much it spends, much less how much our whole soceiety spends, it is all just guesswork... you should know if your income is going up or down and if you are broke or not... the treasury should read 'broke', 'poor', 'ok', 'rich'

You shouldn't know the hitpoints of a unit, just whether it is healthy, damaged or dead

You shouldn't need to know the strength of a unit, just the type...That is probably the Most unrealistic portion of the game... who came up to the President and said... sir our tanks have a strength 28... thats 40% more than our Infantry at strength 20, but they don't have the 25% bonus v. gunpowder units
[/sarcasm]

ALL information that is 'visible' to your civ should be displayed fully somewhere
ALL relevant formulas should be accessible in the civilopedia

If you don't like it, don't look at those screens

 

[Ddude97]

Thanks Krikkitone for explaining.
Why don't we make it an option? I fail to see the problem with it as an option!

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Thanks Krikkitone for explaining.
Why don't we make it an option? I fail to see the problem with it as an option!

Having "Hide information" as the option with the default be "reveal information" would be Reasonable.

It might be interesting to have "Blind Research"... although it wouldn't "Really" be blind because I can look up the costs and calculate my output. and I can look up the tech tree. (unless it actually took away some decision making power.)

That might be interesting... You don't know what you are researching until you get it.

Whenever you finish a tech, you select 2 techs that you have the prerequisites for
The game then randomly decides to research one of them.... but you don't know which one has been selected or how far you are in researching it until you actually get the tech.

 

[Ddude97]

Fun, but I'm thinking that would be in a mod. You could take that a step further and just have the game randomly choose techs to research (earlier ones would have some priority so as to not have you climbing a path while neglecting early ones)

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Currently the game displays tile yields... that is pointless, you should know that a hill produces more hammers and a farm more food, (after all in the real world you don't know how much ore a certain mine will produce, you just have a good idea)

Sorry Krikkitone, that's a *very* poor analogy. The difference is about having information visible to you that the AI lacks (or which is irrelevant in terms of knowing how the human will behave). Tile yields is info *everyone* has access to, & access to said info has no competitive advantage to the AI or the player.
For the record, I'm equally opposed to the AI having complete knowledge of the entire map, & was glad to see it done away with in Civ4. I want a level playing field, & visible diplomacy modifiers tip the balance too far in favor of the human!

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Sorry Krikkitone, that's a *very* poor analogy. The difference is about having information visible to you that the AI lacks (or which is irrelevant in terms of knowing how the human will behave). Tile yields is info *everyone* has access to, & access to said info has no competitive advantage to the AI or the player.
For the record, I'm equally opposed to the AI having complete knowledge of the entire map, & was glad to see it done away with in Civ4. I want a level playing field, & visible diplomacy modifiers tip the balance too far in favor of the human!

That depends on what diplomacy modifiers ARE

If diplomacy modifiers are something that Exist for the human, then the ones that apply to the AI Should be displayed for the human (and human ones displayed for the AI)

Should a "Friendly"/"Furious" state be displayed?... I'd argue it should not... al least not if it Controls AI actions. If the AI can't Lie about being "Friendly" or "Furious"

For the "Diplomacy" assuming no 'modifiers' all you should know is what affects gameplay
so Your current state (are you at war, trade agreement, etc.)
and that's it

Because that is the only thing that the AI can examine to know aout the human player, it is the only thing the Human player should be able to examine about the AI player.

However,

If diplomacy is actually going to be something strategic... then you need to have something to manipulate besides 4-8 states (war, peace, trade, defense pact, trade+defense, etc.)


Basically your suggestion of simply making the AI purely try to win removes diplomacy from the game... at least as anything like what we'd expect diplomacy to be like.

So the options are
1. no real 'diplomacy', AI is just another player trying to win.. peace is through superior firepower
2. invisible/guesstimating AI manipulation diplomacy (Civ3)
3. visible AI manipulation diplomacy (Civ4)
OR
4. something completely different

I'm only saying that #2 is far and beyond the Worst way to do it
You sound like you'd prefer #2 over #3

If the AI CAN be directly manipulated, then those manipulations had better be visible