What about diplomacy?

[GeneralZed]

Everybody is talking about improving the gameplay, graphics, more units, more techs etc. But I dont remember of anyone wanting more diplomatic improvement! This is going to change now...

Well, one of the things what I thought about is asking another civ to stop a threat against another Civ, dismount the nuclear arsenal, share tactical movements (who attacks which city).

 

[Louis XXIV]

There's no question they need to combine the drag and drop interface of Civ3, with some of the options of SMAC. Stopping other nations from declaring war, and coordinating attacks are both ideas that would make the AI useful for something besides conquering

 

[dh_epic]

A lot of people have ideas for diplomatic improvement. I've seen a lot of different ideas, good ones.

- multi-party arrangements
- force someone to make peace
- force someone to surrender, become a vassal
- trade intelligence

These are great suggestions. But suggestions for the diplomacy screen are not enough to improve diplomacy.

Why do you care about trading intelligence when there's no intelligence to trade (except maps)?

Why would someone surrender when they can make your life a living hell just by running a settler out to some far off artic tundra?

Why wouldn't somebody's friend surrender to them in the ancient age in a multiplayer game, giving them twice the territory with no cost?

Even negotiating a peace treaty isn't that profitable, except that it could be a useful delay tactic. You keep conquesting, but you try to keep the rest of the world at peace.

Once again, there's always the big picture...

 

[KrikkitTwo]

The two main methods for improving diplomacy are

1. Removing the all or nothing nature of the game...have the computer play for maximum relative points.. and have that be the main method of determining winners (if you fuse with your friend that means you only get 40-60% of the points from this new civ..and the other civs might be more cautious in dealing with you, because you are now more of a danger to them)

2. Remove the all or nothing relationship between a civ and its territory, allow 'partial ownership' of a city. Allow a civ to continue to exist until after it has surrendered because its culture is not gone, or because it only partially surrendered (became a protectorate, etc.) [this is why we still have many of the countries in Asia that we had even 2000 years ago, even though they all 'surrendered' to European countries.]


Another really simple one is increase the number of civs (once the game can support 100 or so "civs" (possibly including minors or pseudo-barbarians) diplomacy becomes Much more important)..because even the strong are weak compared to the rest of the world.

 

[GR8Madmax]

Diplomatic improvement is one of the most or THE most requested improvement for Civ 4.