More options for diplomacy

[insane Zane]

The UN idea most recently posted by HAND makes a lot of sense. Conferences of all the world powers to decide an issue is a very interesting idea and makes sense historically

For example:

Congress of Vienna 1814-15. The great powers of Europe meet to decide the fate of Napoleonic France and the outlook of postwar Europe. They agree to not occupy or dismember France, a remarkably realistic outlook. All major issues were decided by keeping the balance of power in mind.

So major wars in Civ IV should be closed by peace conferences. Only in rare scenarios should the victors attempt to dismember a defeated power. Such cases should require some backlash in the occupied territory, such as periodic revolts. Usually, postwar settlements should have the AI keep some sort of balance of power in mind. The AI should actually be willing to trade a conquest for a city you conquered from them.

The ability to pay another country to attack a third party like in Civ II would also be nice.

 

[Beloyar]

I always wanted to have more choices for making a response to the other guy when in diplomacy screen.
When arrogant Ghandi demands a tribute of 100 gold or a tech from me for nothing, I want to be able to tell him to go suck a lemon or something cute like that.
Also, after being humiliated during a war, when the Germans destroyed a couple of my cities, I finally build up my military and push him back to Berlin, I want to make him squirm and cry on his knees to beg me to spare his little civ from my wrath . I want to be able to make begging on knees as a condition for peace. These things would really give me a lot of satisfaction playing Civ.

 

[Verowin]

Increase the amount of possibilities of replying in the diplomatic screen.
1. Ad a possibility of insult.
2. Ad a possibility of involving a third party. I trade oil with you, if you trade silk with him, and he will trade me 100 gold, etc.
3. If I do not have the gold to make a trade, the other just says "it is not possible". Let me know what he needs, than I will see if I can change my settings to make it possible.
4. Join powers to research a tech together

 

[searcheagle]

In diplomacy I would like the ability to order another civ to renounce its treaties with another country. For example: Get rid of you right of passage agreement with the Germans because they are at war with me!

 

[Black Mage]

I personally dislike the personalised style of Civ diplomacy. I liked the way in Civ CTP 2 where you essentially wrote a letter to the foreign government, but at the same time it lacked a negotiation system. Of course, it's just cosmetics so not essential, but I'd prefer something like that.

 

[covenant]

Each civ has a point status of one to a hundred. All you see is a general term; 0-9 pathetic, 10-24 weak, 25-40 harmless, 41-60 aveage, 61-75 strong, 76-90 powerful, 91-100 mighty. The score will be combination of many things (economic strength, military strength, relation to neighbor, etc) and each is relative to the civ. So say one civ has a 83 and another 22. You would minus the weak civ and that number would determine the civs position of strength in relation to you. 50-60- would be respectful. He would honor all deals, and try to make them. 61-75 would be he will actual asks your opinion (on whether to take a deal with someone, etc), will look to appease you, and will do many thigns you ask as long as it does not break any deep traditions. Above 75. This is basically a puppet that you can make do as you please. Attack this person, give me this resource. Yet even they will only take too much especially if it involves going against deep traditions or attacking someone they like. This would cause a revolution and the civ would actually start under a new civ name.
This couples with provinces would be sweet. Imagine one of your provinces wants to revolt but your holding them back and suddenly a foreign government recognizes them as independent. What do you do? What if another civ's province asks for help via troops or support? With a multi-sided table for diplomacy it is much more dynamic in replayablility.

 

[covenant]

Well I have spend a bunch of time thinking about this and posted a whole bunch of stuff in this thread that I started... i guess I should have put it here, but I do not want to it twice... would love to hear what people think.... I especially liked my idea of being able to plant a moll in another government, so if a war happens you can still get some info on them....

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=92674

 

[Colonel Kraken]

The suggestions in this thread are all wonderful. (I would re-iterate the ones I support, but then I'd be copying and pasting the entire thread! )If I only had the option of keeping my "old" Civ III, but was able to add these features, I would feel like I had a whole new game again!

 

[Prince David]

I think being able to trade units would be cool. The U.S. today is a major arms exporter. Indeed, many modern nations would not be able to exist without arms trading (Isreal?).

I would also like the one of the advisors (trade?) to be able to allow you to access other civs tech trees so you could know where to barter off tech X or to pick up tech Y without having to access each civ individually. They do this already with luxury and strategic resources. This would be a nice shortcut.

 

[Diogenes183]

Option to ask for "please make peace with ...".

Also, searcheagle's idea is absolutely key (should have been in the game already!):

In diplomacy I would like the ability to order another civ to renounce its treaties with another country. For example: Get rid of you right of passage agreement with the Germans because they are at war with me!

 

[dh_epic]

Hey guys, I think these are all great ideas. I know I may have mentioned it before, but I'm a bit fan of liberating France from Germany, instead of keeping it for myself.

The reason that happens in the real world is because people aren't competing for victory, in the real world. There's an infinitely long term strategy in the real world. Britain gains a lot of things from returning France. They look good, they maintain moral high ground, people around the world respect them, France is endebted to them, and they don't have to deal with being the rulers of the French

But in Civ, it's hard to get these nuiances. So I came up with an idea called "Historical Victory", which is a way for rewarding people for doing, well, historical things. Doing something that's altruistic isn't rewarded in Civ 3, but could be rewarded with historical points. Doing something that's risky isn't rewarded in Civ 3, but could be rewarded with historical points.

The idea is for someone to look at Britain and say "ohhh they're trying to take France from Germany, they must be going for a domination victory." But then when they give the captured cities to France, you suddenly realize "man, those altruistic idiots are going for a historical victory! damn them!"

Here's the post, since this is a little off topic:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=92201

But allow me to voice my appreciation of this kind of diplomacy once again.

 

[Diogenes183]

I would like to know my reputation (trustworthiness), maybe even a list of events that effected my reputation for better or worse throughout history. Also maybe know more about other civs reputation other than just two big categories of OK and "... is a liar and a cheat."

It was ages ago, but I think this is kinda of how it was like in Civ2. I don't remember exactly.

 

[Elgalad]

1) Resurrecting dead threads is

2) So am I.groucho

3) This is a long post. Did I mention I was evil?


Okay, so this sorta popped into my mind while thinking up new civs for the Americas. I've read discussions on other threads about how to limit America (or other Colonial nations) by making them start later perhaps. That makes sense, but if we're really going for realism with Civ 4, then we need to dig up a few naughty bits from the past. Mainly..

Global Imperialism!!

Well, maybe not all of it, but how can we realistically simulate Europe making that first contact with the various tribes in the Americas, Africa, and Australia? Dont want to debate the ethics of this, that's not what this post is for. But isn't 'Exploitation' a historical fact? When an advanced nation historically met an aboriginal one or stone age one, it usually ended in one of three ways: 1) They enslaved them. 2) They wiped them out. 3) They exploited them.

Okay, so the first one is for another post. But as to the second and third... You want their land, bam, you invade. In about 5 turns they somehow make contact with one of your neighbors back in neoEurope, get bunches of neat techs from those dastardly neoFrench and on top of that get the neoFrogs and neoSpanish to declare war on you while you're just trying to ethnically cleanse your new summer resort! Or... you see that they've got a great supply of rubber in their little jungle, but they dont know it cause they're still trying to resolve the whole 'wheel is round' thing and you dont want to bother with conquering them all, just getting your grubby little hands on that prize. So you pass out copies of Encyclopaedia Brittanica 1850 to the assorted tribal chiefs and medicine men and point to the picture of the rubber tree (give them all the techs to get to that resource). They seem happy as clams and agree to give you the rubber for only 20 gold/turn or so. So you go back home, chuckling at the great deal you just made. 2 turns later you get a message from the Amazonian ambassador to the effect of, "We no longer feel this deal is good for Amazon, in fact, maybe you should pay us 750 gold tribute since We Now Have Nuclear Weapons!"

So how to prevent these nightmare scenarios and just be a harmless innocent little Exploiter of the world's resources for fun and profit? Some ideas..

1) Make trading technologies tougher. Only allow one new tech trade every four turns from any of your trading partners. This may widen the gap between leaders in the tech race and trailers, but so what? They cant get Too far ahead, since unique (noone else knows it) techs cost more to research than ones most folks know already. As it is now, there's far too much tech swapping imho.

2) Allow a new type of embargo in trade, a Technology Freeze. With this agreement, two nations will agree not to give ANY tech information to a third party. Further, it could act as a mutual protection pact that other nations would clearly see to this effect: Any nation that Does give techs to the target nation do so at the risk of effectively declaring war with the pact signees. No more third world musket proliferation!!

3) Some form of Great Wonder, or something tied in with Religion to represent the Treaty of Tordesillas, which gave Spain exclusive rights to all non-Christian territory west of 46 degrees, 37 minutes west and Portugal all territory east of that. This would involve two more nations and would act sort of like a mutual protection pact, allowing the included nations to attack Freely without war declarations any neutral or third party military units found in that area specified. The actual area itself might be better represented as a circle on the map and may or may not include unknown terrain (under fog of war). The two (or more) declaring nations would be bound to allow each other peaceful right of passage in the specified territory. Allow it to end based on an event like a technology researched (Nationalism comes to mind) or something else?

4) Allow a nation to trade away a resource before they can use it. It stands to reason that people know what iron is and where to get it before they can use it. Likewise for all the resources: horses, oil, coal, aluminum, even uranium nuke:it's that funny glowy rock... um, I dont feel so well ) Grant this, that not all resources might be clearly known from the dawn of time, some are discovered later of course, and the 'new resource' level should be increased. Maybe even allow thresholds to increase resource discovery (the original 'required' techs) but I digress. Point is, it would be cool to exploit a stone age civ you just discovered by giving it firewater, er, gold, for just some of that worthless black sticky, icky stuff you've got there. Oh yes, we know it burns too, we uh, want to use it as uh, incense, sure! To pray to our monkey gods back home, yep. So that'll be.. let's see now. yes, 20 billion bbls of oil, I mean black sticky stuff per turn and we'll send you wine and 20 gold per turn, how's that? I'm So glad we could come to an agreement!

5) Post your favorite third world exploitation suggestions here.

-Elgalad

"Civilization degrades the many to exalt the few."
Amos Bronson Alcott (1799 - 1888)

 

[dh_epic]

Hey Elgalad, I'd love to see that aspect of history simulated.

Not necessarily in opposition to your idea, but in complement to it... I'd like to see your Civs (and others close to you) consider Nations far behind in the tech tree "barbarians". Doesn't matter if we're comparing Rome to the Goths, Britain to the Iroquois, or Portugal to the Zulu, there should be a different dynamic in these cases. Different rules. Conquering them should be more forgivable among your peers -- after all you're just spreading the light of Civilization to these uncivilized savages. (Even if we have enough insight these days to notice otherwise.)

With a huge enough gap, you should be able to colonize such a nation in an instant, rather than conquering them as equals.

 

[doc mabuse]

I don't want to sound too negative but i liked the diplomacy/spy system much bettter in civ2. I hate to pay for establishing an embassy AND pay again if u want to see the city again later on.
Also i think u should be able to give improvements (like a harbor f.i. , so u can trade...). Also, i like to think of my embassy as a real unit, placed in an opponents city, one you can comply with whenever u want but is expelled or withdrawn from the moment a war starts.
BTW i also think that unit trade is a must!!

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Well, as pointed out the Foreign Advisor screen is a bit lacking, with many civs. I would redesign this, so that civ vs civ status is a separate thing. I always liked the way CTP used a grid system, maybe something like this would work. I would use a setup similar to the FA screen as it is now to host summit meetings, or UN meetings when UN became available. (I'd change diplo victory too, it sucks the way it is now.) On this screen you'd see all the heads of state, rather than having to click around to "see other civs" they would appear in the place of another when they had something to say. Here you could propose motions, and other civs would give input. You could put a motion on the table for everyone to vote on, these would necessarily be canned items, like "Ottomans must withdraw from Chinese territory" or "All UN members agree not to sell Mongols Uranium", stuff like that. This would still be more interesting than what we have now. A civ's attitude toward you would influence how they would vote on YOUR motion, making diplomacy vs strategy more important. Other civs could put motions on the table too, have to figure out how to order the meeting and limit the number of proposals allowed. Maybe elect a chairman (always AI) to determine when meeting is over. Also, need a way to figure out who is allowed at summit meetings, maybe have different types, like military summits, at which only the 5 most powerful civs may attend, humanitarian summits, only the civs with the most culture may attend, and so on. Also need a way to figure out when you can call a meeting, maybe anytime 2 civs go to war, or after a certain number of turns, etc.

 

[Doom]

Cheaaper Spying

 

[frekk]

I always wanted to have more choices for making a response to the other guy when in diplomacy screen.
When arrogant Ghandi demands a tribute of 100 gold or a tech from me for nothing, I want to be able to tell him to go suck a lemon or something cute like that.
Also, after being humiliated during a war, when the Germans destroyed a couple of my cities, I finally build up my military and push him back to Berlin, I want to make him squirm and cry on his knees to beg me to spare his little civ from my wrath . I want to be able to make begging on knees as a condition for peace. These things would really give me a lot of satisfaction playing Civ.

Yes, me too! I know it sounds like such a frill but it would be so easy for them to implement some different things as far as diplomacy goes. I really do want to see some squiriming, and defiance, and sometimes more obvious fear or anger. I would like sometimes to see the AI beg for peace, and likewise, when the AI has got one over on me and taken a couple of cities I would like him to pop up and taunt me. Lots of things like that. I'd also like to see reactions with more shades of ... I'm not sure how to put this, but currently there is only 3 different kinds of reactions that are based on relative power (weaker than, equal, stronger than) and I'd like to see finer variations in that. Also, I'd like the AI to be a bit more realistic in diplomacy, too many times a tiny, puny, backward civilization facing my enormous empire doesn't seem to realize the magnitude of the situation. They are good at knowing when they are ahead but they don't see to be aware when they're behind unless they are really, really, really far behind.

 

[von Bismarck]

First: UN and such.
I would LOVE to form my own organizations like NATO, UN and whatever. So I am saying: I play Germany. Well. come here France and England, we form a Union. Then, we might consider to grant other civs the right to join our union, or might not.. Among this union we cooperate on military and economy issues.
Or we say, well, every country that has reached a certain state of technology like the Industrail Age, is full member of a UN-like organization. Under-developed countries are under a protectorate of this organization. This would have a historic touch but does not necessarily fully comply with history.

At a certain point multilateral conferences should be possible too, independent from the UN or such like. They just need to be.


Espionage should be extended since it is an essential part of diplomacy. I dont know if it is possible but i would love to get reports on my virtual desk like: "Germany is moblizing for war" or "Russia trades Uranium to China" or "America has started producing 3 nuclear missiles" or "Zululand is gaining the upper-hand in their war against Egypt." It just lets you look more into the game and what is happening in the world -- and gives you chances to act that way.

I mean, just read a book on what happened in Europe from 1900 to 1914 then you will see how many options you could add..

So much for now.. more coming soon, I'm sure..


EDIT: I like the previous ideas very much. I love 'em. And I want to add that I would love to see more military and economic dependance between civs!! Like: We'll protect you but we are the only ones you may trade with..

 

[searcheagle]

It would like to see that but not have it so certain. In the real world (not that it matters) , nothing is certain. It would make the game more interesting. You would be forced to jump to conclusions to protect yourself.

Here are some sample intel reports:
Germany appears to be mobilizing for war on our southern border.
We belive that Russia is trading Uranium to China.
We believe that America is currently producing 3 nuclear weapons.