GEM Stage 3: Diplomacy

[Thibaulthc]

(I'm creating the thread as I don't see Thal's one, I'll change the title asa he does)


I have a few questions about Diplomacy changes:
-Research Agreements: does the 3% from both player is in addition of some boost at the end of the RA? I don't really understand how it works in GK. Only 3% means you win 2 turns only (3%*30turns*2players).
-does "Alliances" means "Defensive Pacts" ?
-"diplomatic reward for returning barbarian-captured workers to players": last time I did so in GK, I kept the diplo bonus till the end of the game, I guess it was a bug?
-I don't understand the "finite amount of food" stuff; can somebody explain me please?

some thoughts:
- isn't "permanent war" required to avoid the exploit of DOW-attacking CS units-Make Peace in the same turn, every turn (to win XP without consequences) ?
- I like the +25% changes, excepted for finding a natural wonder, which can be quite haphazard
- +50% further camps combined to +25% influence is a big bonus for the AI at high levels, when they spam a bunch of units

one minor suggestion:
-when you have 30 influence and one unit in CS' land, the very next turn you'll be at 23 because of the -6 penalty for having a military unit in their land; is it possible to add one turn extension ? Maybe applying the penalty only when you are at 28 instead of 29

 

[wobuffet]

He hasn't created the thread yet because he's still working on Stage 2!

edit: I see Thal's updated the WordPress now. I assume a mod can merge this into Thal's thread once he creates it anyway. :]

 

[GenjiKhan]

Diplomacy will be addressed at Stage 6,as said on the first thread of the first GEM stage .

 

[Thibaulthc]

I was referring to that:
http://civmodding.wordpress.com/

GEM Stage 3: Diplomacy

The diplomacy stage will include the following changes from VEM, some altered to fit G&K.
Click for discussion.

Citystates

• Do not declare permanent war.
• Can give quests at turn 20 (was 30).
• Can target barbarian camps for quests at a 50% further distance.
• Attacking gives less of an influence penalty to neighboring citystates.
• Maritime CSs distribute a finite amount of food among allied cities, instead of unlimited food.
• Militaristic CSs pool their unit rewards, which gain experience based on era.
• +25% higher influence reward for completing these quests:
  • Liberation from occupation.
  • War assistance.
  • Road.
  • Kill barb camp.
  • Find player.
  • Find natural wonder.

Diplomacy

• Mutual open borders adds 1% of combined gross income of both players per turn.
• Research agreements add 3% of combined total science of both players per turn.
• Alliances double income from mutual open borders and research agreements.
• Doubled the diplomatic reward for returning barbarian-captured workers to players.
• Peace treaties last 20 turns (was 10).

Misc

• Added balance adjustments for the G&K natural wonders.

 

[mitsho]

I ws the one who wrote the stages down "on the first page of the first thread", so it's not authorative at all And frankly, it doesn't change anything wether you take Diplomacy first or not, all the stages are so interdependent that it really doesn't change lot where you start.

I actually just got two questions when reading this list:

How will the Pool for militaristic city states affect the new unique unit feature for those? And can we either kick out the Landsknecht from that possibility - since it defeats all purpose to get a cheaper unit for free - or make it give two units of Landsknecht in that case?

As for Thibault's questions, these are the basic changes from VEM, so the Research Agreement gives you bonus over time and none at the end and Alliances just sound better then Friendship Agreements...

 

[Thibaulthc]

the Research Agreement gives you bonus over time and none at the end and Alliances just sound better then Friendship Agreements...

I like the fact that it gives you every turn, but isn't the total amount very low? if both player have a 100 output, you will pay 300 (normal speed, medieval era I think) for 30*3*2 = 180 total Am I right or did I miss something? Seems pretty weak for that much gold?
Also i don't know how much it gives you on vanilla/GaK.

For the "Alliance" and its bonus, you HAVE to sign a Friendship Agreement to be allowed to make a RA now on GK. So that is obsolete right now.

 

[Stalker0]

Let me check the math on open borders.

When you say gross income, is that before expenses or after? (I never remember).

If its after than that means if I have +100 GPT and my partner has +100 GPT, I get +2 gold with an open borders agreement.

That is so underwhelming it might as well not be there

 

[Thalassicus]

@Thibaulthc
Vem and Gem rename the wordy "declaration of friendship" to "ally". It's shorter, historically accurate, and the word "ally" is already used for citystates. Each time you declare war on a citystate you get diplomatic penalties with all leaders in contact with the citystate.

@Stalker0
Income - expenses = profit. Say we have 200 gold income and 190 expenses, giving us 10 per turn profit. Signing mutual open borders with an ally with half our income gives:

Player A: 200 income * 1% = 2 (twice player B)
Player B: 100 income * 1% = 1

2 + 1 = 3
3 * 2 = 6 /turn (double from alliance)

Player A: 206/200 = +3% income
Player B: 106/100 = +6% income (twice player A)
​

The agreement lasts 30 turns and gives both players 180 in total. This is more than what we get if we ask for a one-way border deal. The mutual border bonus accomplishes several things:

• Makes mutual deals worthwhile.
• Helps struggling players.
• Rewards peaceful relations.

@Thibaulthc
The removal of standalone RAs is not intended, and I'm trying to figure out how to change it back. Firaxis has a pattern of removing stuff to hide balance problems. They've gotten rid of:

• Standalone RAs
• Early trading posts
• Early specialists
• Close-spaced cities
• Policy saving
• Promotion saving
• etc...

I like to balance options instead of removing them (when possible). It may take less effort to just hide a problem... but it doesn't make the problem go away, and often makes the game less fun!


@mitsho
It's the same system as in vem. It doesn't make sense for militaristic citystates to give unique units, since the citystate is a different civilization than the ally. Unique unit rewards would also cause balance problems like you mentioned.

 

[Stalker0]

@Stalker0
Income - expenses = profit.

Ok, since it doesn't factor in expenses then I would imagine it will be a much strong bonus overall.

 

[Lord Byte]

Diplomacy! Several things NEED to change from G&K.
"Declaration of friendship" circle jerk - Someone declares a declaration of friendship with you and since you declared friendship with a few others suddenly you get several rounds of DOF. I think this is the major reason for wars between AI being so rare. Also the entire world DOFing is very strange. AI should stick to his guns more often and not get pulled into DOF from allies unless their standing with that other side is already pretty high.

Same goes for the dreaded "denounciation of doom". One denounces you (because you were DOFed with someone who attacked him turns later) and because he's buddy buddy with someone that one also denounces you, suddenly the entire world does, no matter how good a guy you were.

AI should prefer to trade his rare resources with the player, or at least keep them long enough for the player to find out and make a deal. Any excess resources seem to be traded away the instant they are available to the AI Unless he's at war with everyone else I can never get any rare resources from them.

AI should create a gameplan and stick to it more often. How many sneak attacks never happened, how many times war gets declared and the AI does NOTHING at all. Seriously I once declared war on every AI for the heck of it (and in hope of a challenge), unless the AI actually does a "sneak attack" you NEVER get a decent attack. At most a half-assed unit poking around. Their defenses tend to be okay though.

 

[Seek]

Thal - MilCS now give UUs of civs who are *not in the game* as gifts during appropriate eras. It's a great little addition!

 

[wobuffet]

Thal - MilCS now give UUs of civs who are *not in the game* as gifts during appropriate eras. It's a great little addition!

I agree, it's a fun addition.

(That said, if GEM got rid of it, I'd still install it in a heartbeat, of course.)

 

[mitsho]

I like the fact that it gives you every turn, but isn't the total amount very low? if both player have a 100 output, you will pay 300 (normal speed, medieval era I think) for 30*3*2 = 180 total Am I right or did I miss something? Seems pretty weak for that much gold?
Also i don't know how much it gives you on vanilla/GaK.

Well, for once, you can double that amount by signing a Alliance as Thal pointed out. This then of course means that you only should enter research agreements with that in mind. That said, I'm not too sure about the math right now, but it was balanced very well in VEM, maybe Thal can show you his tables (that he undoubtedly has ).

@mitsho
It's the same system as in vem. It doesn't make sense for militaristic citystates to give unique units, since the citystate is a different civilization than the ally. Unique unit rewards would also cause balance problems like you mentioned.

But... that new feature is fun!

Pro

• It's a popular feature
• It distinguishes Military City States
• It makes Military City states worth more.

Contra

• It creates unbalance, i.e. if you can upgrade the unit into your own unique unit (see this thread)
• It creates unbalance if you can get several same uu's at the same time, i.e. the deadly combination of Keshiks and Naresuan Elephants.
• It thus can be abused by a strategically thinking player quite easily (rush that city states with Roman Legions and take over the next civ with them...)
• It clashes with the Pool since the reward of the uu would be uncertain
• It's counterintuitive, since military city states are worth most for peaceful cultural tall empires (get promoted unit without building Heroic Epic and so on), while a unique unit would most probably be wanted by a conquest empire.

I'm not sure. I definately vote for keeping that feature in, because fun and continuity with G&K. Maybe the pool and the chances and the incread competition balance the whole thing? (On this note, the city states should definately use their own uu's in that case)

[This feature is one btw. that I assumed would be in the game from the start and was even teased in one of the first previews I think. It makes totally sense for them to have reskinned own UUs. The first example in vanilla was that Edinburgh should get a Highlander, and now Valletta is just perfect or a Knight's Templar]

*snip* Diplomacy Rant

I do agree with you, those are severe problems. I just don't remember them that much from VEM, it may be because Thal changed something there, or they reintroduced that patched "feature" with G&K or the increased AI competence in VEM/GEM just makes their Foreign Policy make more sense, I don't know. We can change something of this now, but the bulk of it belongs to the AI-stage which does make the most sense of doing last (to include all the other stuff).

As a general comment, is it possible that you declare too many Decl. of Friendships? It's best not to accept all the propositions as it will lead to strange diplo hijinks. If I get a proposition I always go first to the Info Addict and check who his/hers friends and enemies are. If you don't have it already, I would strongly advise to download the InfoAddict mod.

 

[Tarquelne]

+25% higher influence reward for completing these quests:...

How about generally emphasizing influence from quests and de-emphasizing influence from gifts? IMO quests are quite a bit more interesting than just spending gold. Say a total shift of no more than 30%?

How about a reward for completing X quests from a CS? Something like a permanent improvement in the decay rate or a big chunk of influence.


And later, more quests involving player choices/actions? At least for me, the frequent quests involving science, culture, or great people don't change what I'm doing. Wonders: might change the order in a build queue. Though maybe if the reward were greater...

 

[mitsho]

I wouldn't do that, quests are highly random. For example take the Faith/Culture quests. There's no way I am going to change my whole gameplay just to get that quest. If I'm the culture leader, I will get it, otherwise not. Now if the quest chose 2 or 3 civs that are near to each other (from culture output) and then did the quest. It would be different. For now though, the timer doesn't make much sense.. Gold on the other hand gives less influence already. (But I see now, you already wrote that...).

If we are on wishlists, I do think differentiating between raw influence and decay rate gifts would be beneficial. Say if I gift a luxury or strategic ressource to a city state, it should give me lower influence rates (up to near!-zero), as long as I gift it. Can't gift gifted ressources back of course .

And the quests should be more short term and more active, i.e. discover the most tiles in the next few turns. But even here we have the same problem. If I already have a caravel, I will probably win it, I will not be able to build one more just in time to win the quest, and it would not be cost-effective as well..

So in the end, I'm clueless what to do with city states. More rewards for quests however doesn't seem the way to go since they're really random (which quest? which city state?) and thus not good for long-term planning.

 

[Tarquelne]

I wouldn't do that, quests are highly random....

I see your point - and there's also an anti-rubber band effect, which is bad - but there's an upside to the randomness: It can make you need to adapt and partially base choice of city-state to pursue based on quests. (So very similar to the "chess or not?" SR discussion.)

(EDIT: Actually, maybe emphasizing quests would have a rubber-band effect, helping pull up lagging civs. Very good. It could be a play-style thing, but having spare gold is something I associate being ahead of the pack in a game. So (my theory is) while a civ that's not doing well overall will seldom have a lot of gold to fling at CSs, it might be doing well in Faith or Culture.)

But, ATM, I consider quests noise in the signal. It's there, and they can give or cost you happiness, food, etc... but it all tends to cancel out and in the mid-to long term they don't change anything.

Less frequent quests might go well with higher rewards.

If we are on wishlists, I do think differentiating between raw influence and decay rate gifts would be beneficial. Say if I gift a luxury or strategic ressource to a city state, it should give me lower influence rates (up to near!-zero), as long as I gift it.

That's a neat idea. Some more meaningful gift-types would be good.

And the quests should be more short term and more active, i.e. discover the most tiles in the next few turns. But even here we have the same problem. If I already have a caravel, I will probably win it, I will not be able to build one more just in time to win the quest, and it would not be cost-effective as well..

Why not make a quest like that long term? Why should they generally be short term? (I completely agree with "active.") If there's a long timer on it I may have the time to crank out a caravel or two. And that'd be a change in my play I'd be a lot more willing to make compared to (for example) pursue Piety and/or different Wonders to win a Culture or Faith quest.

So in the end, I'm clueless what to do with city states.

Fewer, more powerful/wealthy (in resources) city states might be better. Half or 2/3s as many. I can see some advantages, but I suspect it'd be too many eggs in too-few baskets situation.

 

[rhammer640]

city states have always been a bit of a pain in my book. The only fun response if had towards them was when playing with the CSD mod which made city states something you had to consciously go towards instead of just throwing gold at if you had extra. I think the quest system in G&K is going in the right direction but as many of you pointed out above doesn't really add all that much depth and you end up just getting friendship with them by default a lot without doing anything if you are already doing well.

I would love to see the ideas from the CSD mod maybe incorporated here and maybe mixed in with some sort of quest system, but I'm not sure how others feel about moving in that direction as it is a fairly large change from vanilla.

 

[mitsho]

I'm not sure what you want to take from the CSD mod. Maybe you could elaborate?

For example I don't like the CSD-mod because it makes me move yet another unit on the cardboard. It gets clustered and the AI has more problems calculating it. I like the espionage because I can just send the spy to the city with one click and I don't have to worry about it anymore. I dislike the worker system since it can get annoyingly multitask. I really dislike that they didn't combine worker and workboat. See the missionary, it's just a huge micromanagement to send that missionary to that other continent, if you let the computer calculate the route, it may go a long way around, get picked up by pirates, lose a lot of power with attrition, etc. ...

So I really don't want the diplomatic units.

As for the quests in general, yes on second thought, the culture and other yield quests go better when running longer, but the chance that I actively pursue something is really small. Especially if there are like 10 city states all demanding something and I have no oversight at all...

So, having fewer quests with bigger rewards may be the way to go. There can be really short term with small rewards kind of things, like clear that camp, but the longer ones should be worth fighting for (and thus maybe confined to fewer civs?).

Maybe there need to be simply more ways to interact with a city state. Instead of "declare war with me", maybe I should ask them to provide an "assistance to the war" (money, unit or so), since they are on the other side of the globe from my opponent. Maybe the Spy needs another option "Extract Money" instead of giving influence. Maybe...

 

[GenjiKhan]

It has been easier to accumulate lots of happiness in G&K,thanks to the fact it's easier to get allied with city-states in earlier game . One of the things it could be done to solve that is to remove the luxury resources bonus that city-states naturally gives to the allied players(with the obvious exception of Mercantile city-states),while buffing the bonus that city-states already gives .

I would love to see the ideas from the CSD mod maybe incorporated here and maybe mixed in with some sort of quest system, but I'm not sure how others feel about moving in that direction as it is a fairly large change from vanilla.

Perhaps an alpha version could answer us if such thing would be accepted by the users . But I think that adding diplomatic units may become too much for some users .

 

[Ahriman]

CS diplomacy is one of the few areas where I would use G&K as a base rather than VEM. I think it feels pretty balanced in G&K; it is much harder to buy influence, and quests matter more.

How do the proposed values compare to G&K?