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Foslex
Join Date 04/2005
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GC2 Political Game - Wishes

Diplomacy in Gal Civ 2

April 22, 2005 10:11:05 AM from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I only recently bought GalCiv, though I was interested in the game for some time, and have loved it so far. I have by no means discovered all that it has to offer, and have not yet played the expansion pack. I have, however, long enjoyed 4X games and since playing GalCiv and reading about GalCiv 2 I have been thinking about my universal 4X wishlist in the context of GalCiv 2.

I am so far unaware of any offical word on the political games of Gal Civ 2, but some comments in interviews - Brad's on Gamespy, I think - have lead me to believe that the diplomacy is getting at least a tune-up, if not an overhaul. I hope it's early enough in the development that player ideas about that part of the game could still have influence, and in the spirit of that hope I've written, at some lenght, my own thoughts on Diplomacy, the Senate, and the United Planets.


DIPLOMACY
In Diplomacy I want a lot of options, and I also want things to realy feel meaningful, even when they sometimes aren't.
In Gal Civ you have only three official states: peace, war, and ally. These are shaded by the relationship slider, and the difference between a "wary" peace and a "close" peace feels huge, even if it isn't.

There is still room for more "official" relationships, treaties, and stances.

Cease Fire
When at war the combatants might want to stop fighting, but be unable to come to an agreement. They could sign a Cease Fire for 5 or 10 turns, during which the diplomacy window between the two opens every turn and they can propose peace treaties. The losing AI, or the one that wants peace more, could get more desperate as the clock ticks, but Cease Fires could also stand a chance of breaking down completely if negotions don't seem to be progressing (ie, the player keeps offering the same deal over and over). Military buildups and maneuvers could be watched more closely by the AI, and a too aggressive stance could be seen as a breach of the cease fire.

Rites of Passage
I like how in GalCiv the official territory is understood to be open to everyone to fly through. Space is space, after all. But as a way to cement relationships, or hurt an enemy, having official recognized rites of passage might be fun. I would like to see thins left as they are now, where you can basically fly around wherever you want, so long as you don't scare anybody with your military fleets, but recognizing a ROP increases relationship, and issuing a Denial of Passage decreases it - and opens up the possibility of AIs ignoring your DOP if they don't think you can back it up. Having a DOP with one civ at war and an official ROP with another could be seen as hostile.

The idea of Civilian Denials of Passage struck me - basically forcing the Civ it's taken against to choose YES/NO to whether or not they will respect the DOP. If they choose Yes they avoid an incident, but their mini-freighters have to go around the other guy's territory instead of through it (needs to balance so it increases freighter travel time without increasing trade route benefit - so it hurts the guy). Or you could say "tough shit, space is big and belongs to everyone" and the minifreighters keep going, but relations drop... and don't be surprised when they shoot them down!

Mutual Embargoes[b]
Two Civs agree not to trade with a third.

[b]Embassies
You sell the right to build one one square of your political capitol (of your choosing). Then that square holds an Altarian Embassy, for example. If the Humans let the Altarians build an embassy on Earth, then both sides get increased trade from routes between the two Civs, the humans get a small Diplomacy boost when dealing with the Altarians (to compensate for the square), and relations go way up. To even out the score, you build one on their capitol... even better trade and the Diplomacy boost evens out. Could be a must for Alliances. There could be other benefits to these - what do people think?

Longshot Diplomacy Ideas
These are the ones that strike me as super cool, but too much for an AI to handle - and possibly UI nightmares. Still, I like to dream...

Trade Goals
I agree to have two routes going to you if you have three going to me at the end of one year. If either side misses the goal, then there is some diplomatic or monetary penatly. A successfully met goal increases your relationship and shows the rest of the galaxy how trustworthy you are. Goals could be set by volume (average of 100 bc / turn) or routes.

Divide the Enemy
We agree to divy up a third parties holdings. I promise him two systems by his border, he promises me two by mine. If I conquer one of "his" systems he can call me up and say, "I'm thrilled you were able to secure Andresona II for me. I'll look forward to taking control of the planet by the end of the year.

Boolean Treaties
I would love to be able to create IF...THEN statements - LucasArts style maybe - in which you can agree to certain future actions if conditions are or are not met. You could agree to go to war with the The Drengin along with the Torians, but only IF the Torians can manage to take a key system first.
You could agree to open a new trade route with the Yor IF they stop picking on the Alexians.
You could convince the guy who looks like he's losing the war to surrender to you IF he chooses to surrender, and IF you give him three battle cruisers right now so he might not have to.

Seems like so many possibilities, so much potential. Both for great gaming and poor AI handling.


Diplomatic Fluff
This stuff is less important, easily ignored by those who don't like it, but potentially a great immersive tool. I like in GalCiv that you get messages and reports on other Civ actions. Knowing who is destabilizing whom, and that one race is collecting tribute form three others, really livens up the galaxy. I naturally want more!

Plan Sharing
We've been told that the AI makes long term plans. Maybe sometimes they'll tell us what they are. A friendly Civ might call us up and say, "You know, I really want to beef up my culture to absorb my neighbor. Maybe you'll help out with a constructor or two, or spend some BC to destabilize him?"

Or someone you are less friendly with might show up and say, "Those three class 18 planets? I've got some ships being built that are going there. And my military is twice the size of yours... just saying."

One AI civ might issue a general decree, a Roosevelt Corollary if will, that messing with this minor would mean messing with them.

These would just be little pop ups, you could heed or ignore them at your wish - or even turn them off in the options screen. They wouldn't even need to have any actual game impact - if I don't send constructors nobody gets mad, and if I do settle those planets then regular game mechanics would dictate that they get mad anyway.

Response to Galactic Events
So and So lost control of his Senate!
Should we:
-Praise his people for being forward thinkers, and welcome the new direction in their government. (decrease relations with government, their people love you)
-Express hope that the radical movement will be short lived, and proper control will be reestablished soon. (their people hate you more, but their leader likes you more).
-Nothing, it's not our business. (dismisses window, no impact)


Altarians declared war on Yor, saying that good must triumph over evil!
- The Yor may be evil, but so is naked aggression. Admonish the Altarians. (relationship hit with Altarians, increase with Yor)
- The Yor had it coming. Rock on, Altarians. (other way around)
- We cannot stand for the Altarian's actions. We will join the war on behalf of the Yor!
- Wait, we were going to conquer the Yor too! Let us in on that action!
- Nothing (dismiss window).


I could come up with Fluff windows all day long. Some fluff that's just informaiton like capital building, X noticed Y has a fleet in their space, etc, which I think would be so easy to implement, could add so much to the game, and could so easily be ignored by those who don't want them that they should really be in the game.

I have lots more about the Senate and UP, but this is more than enough for now.

Comments hoped for.
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Foslex
Drachir Shonthar
Join Date 11/2004
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Reply #1 April 22, 2005 4:16:29 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
sounds good Ideas but realy we need a dev to comment on what they want for the game and I am no dev
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CortesMaltose
Join Date 09/2003
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Reply #2 April 22, 2005 6:02:36 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I agree GalCiv II would benefit from having more diplomatic options than GalCiv I. However there is a limiting factor IMHO : the AIs should be able to use all those options reasonably well.

IMHO the most needed diplomatic concept should be a kind of Peace Treaty or Cease Fire Treaty. For a given period of time, both races agree not to wage war on each other. If the treaty is broken before it expires, the attacker should be penalized, for instance by a loss of morale, morality worsening, diplomatic relations with other civilizations hurt, loss of influence, temporarily banned from the UP... Instead of suing for peace as races do in GalCiv I (i.e. the hostilies end but there is no formal binding agreement and do not prevent alliances from dragging you to war again,), you would sue for a given time of cease fire, the longer the more expensive. Alliances against the contracting parties would not work during this period of time, and that could lead the neglected allies to terminate an alliance he now considers useless.

I'd like to see some kind of Trade agreement too, Im' not too sure about the exact way it should work because I don't know how the Trade system will be done in GalCiv II. If the current system is not revamped (and I hope it will), there is no real need for Trade Agreements.
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Ugleb
Join Date 09/2003
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Reply #3 April 22, 2005 7:26:59 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
IMHO the most needed diplomatic concept should be a kind of Peace Treaty or Cease Fire Treaty. For a given period of time, both races agree not to wage war on each other. If the treaty is broken before it expires, the attacker should be penalized, for instance by a loss of morale, morality worsening, diplomatic relations with other civilizations hurt, loss of influence, temporarily banned from the UP... Instead of suing for peace as races do in GalCiv I (i.e. the hostilies end but there is no formal binding agreement and do not prevent alliances from dragging you to war again,), you would sue for a given time of cease fire, the longer the more expensive. Alliances against the contracting parties would not work during this period of time, and that could lead the neglected allies to terminate an alliance he now considers useless.


Fragile Allegiance (ancient game) had a feature like this, and thinking back I really liked it. Having a pre-determined 'cease fire duration' really did add some tension to the procedings, as both sides had to work against the clock to bolster their position before the cease fire ended. Due to the forfeit clause you could be fairly certain that the other party wouldn't break the cease fire, but it was sometimes worth taking the fine to gain the element of surprise and launch a pre-emptive strike.
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VagabondNomad
Join Date 02/2005
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Reply #4 April 23, 2005 5:14:01 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I would really like tradiing to be abstracted, as in the Master of Orion games, instead of actually having to build freighters and route them to their destinations. Oh my gosh, that's more involvement than I care to have in establishing trade. So to the point of this thread, I too would like trading to be simplified in the form of a Trade Treaty.

Another wish of mine is to create military alliances, similar to NATO. The threshold for such an alliance needn't bee "Close", but something above neutral. Part of such multi-civ alliances would be calling meetings, similar to the galactic senate meetings, where your alliance decides whether to declare war on another civ or alliance. That would be very fun, in my opinion.
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Foslex
Foslex
Join Date 04/2005
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Reply #5 April 25, 2005 9:29:58 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I have to say that I would be against abstracting trade more. Having to choose where to send your ten routes - and for much of the game much less than that - is a big deal to me. It's a very important decision that makes the economic game worth playing.

That said, I'm in favor of various trade agreements in diplomacy. I don't mind the idea that there are independent merchants running around, and that various treaties might impact the revenues they provide. There could be Trade Treaties, but that shouldn't mean scrapping the routes.

Especially seeing as you never have more than two or so routes to fill at a time - unless perhaps some are destroyed - it's not a micromanaging problem.

As for NATO type alliances - I love that idea, and the idea of multiparty diplomacy in general. I don't know exactly how it should work, in a UI sort of way. But the idea of one party brokering a peace (if I'm a big trader, and my two biggest trading partners are at war with each other then I'd want to bring them to peace so they'll send me more frieghters, for example), three people singing into an alliance, or just pooling researched techs sounds amazing.
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Foslex
Join Date 04/2005
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Reply #6 April 25, 2005 9:49:28 AM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
Also, I think one simple addition that I really want is to have a screen that shows all current diplomacy states. Including tributes paid, duration of tribute, recent events that changed relations ("Oh, the Yor moved from wary to hostile right after they commissioned their first Overlord, making their military graph higher than mine."), and other agreements (if other agreements are included).

Just a tribute screen would make things much better... while learning the game I ruined my economy more than once because I didn't know when my tributes would run out. And even now it's a pain to have to keep a written list of who is paying what for how many turns.
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Lord_StarPilot
Join Date 03/2003
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Reply #7 April 25, 2005 12:21:21 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I really like VagabondNomad's "different council" ideas. Form an alliance with the Yor and Drengin? Create a council so that the three of you can discuss militiary and economic issues! I think a military alliance should be able to agree that they will support each other ships (their range assets are effectively "shared"). Why wait on the UPN? The Altarians, the Torian, and the Arceans in a military alliance? Then they should be able to vote to allow their starbases to support their allies, regardless of what the UPN does. Would add diplomatic flavors (now those Alien Civs that are against you can better help each other), and would allow for the UPN to pass "pacifists" or "anti-war" measures so that any civ that allows for range sharing or star base support have to pay 5/10/20% trade tax to the UPN members that aren't in violation (ie, members that aren't sharing military facilities).
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HercMighty
Join Date 03/2003
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Reply #8 April 27, 2005 6:56:06 PM
from GalCiv II ForumsGalCiv II Forums
I really think a diplomatic add-on would be great. I do not think it should be added now, they have to much on their plate and they need to make money to. I would gladly pay for an addon that would increase the diplomatic portion of the game, and the job they do it would be worth it.
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