Diplomacy Ideas

from Sins Forums
Pretty much every strategy game i've ever played has terrible diplomacy. "Alliances" last a few turns and then your ally turns on you for no apparent reason. For the love of mustard, please do not let this game fall into that pit.

I know this is only the stability testing version of the game, and im sure more features will be added as time goes on, but I figure I may as well throw these ideas out there while the game is still young. All of these ideas are focused on single player gameplay.

Some gifts to other factions should offer *permenant* bonuses to your relations. That is, if you give a struggling faction a few systems, it should be almost unthinkable for them to attack you for the usual reasons the AI attacks you.

All diplomacy options should have a specific, negotiable duration and should be unbreakable except for the case when two of your allies go to war with each other, then you have to choose which to support. If you dislike this feature, i would at least ask that whenever a player cancels a peace treaty that all their ships inside your territory be warped back to one of his colonies to prevent cheap shots ( Civ 4 style ).

Allow permanent alliances to be formed. THis should be hard to pull off, require a decent amount of time spent with good \ great relations and maybe require a few gifts. This would change the AI's stance toward you so that it would be identical to a game where you started off on the same team. That is, the AI should never again consider you a threat, and never conspire against you. It would probably be best if you could only make a permanent alliance with *1* faction during a game.

As you begin to dominate the game, the factions with a neutral, or hostile stance toward you should realize that you are the main threat to the universe and start to band together. They should pool their fleets and make a concentrated effort to destroy your ships and take back a few regions. If successful, they should revert back to their old hostilities and begin fighting again. THe same should happen if an AI faction is dominating, the other factions\human players should band together to try and stop him. If implemented, this will make the end game a lot more fun and make it very challenging to steam roll the whole universe.

One last idea.

Shared campaigns. When dealing with an ally or potential ally, you could offer a shared campaign against another faction. This option would bring up a map of the enemy's systems and the player \ AI would divide up those regions among themselves. IF an agreement is made, those systems automatically go to their rightful owner once conquered. Each side would have to pledge ships to take part, and the player would get to choose who gets control of those ships. THat is, if the AI offered some ships and you wanted to control them for the duration of the campaign, that would be possible. The opposite would be possible as well, that is, you could let the AI control your ships so you can focus on other things.


Let me know what you think.
3,961 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Diplomacy will most likely shine in Multiplayer, but Backstabbing and devious acts of sedition against your allies should be expected. Thou, you can win if you are allied to all the remaining factions.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Im mostly talking abour single player, since with multiplayer you can do all of the things ive described just by talking to each other.

In most other games your "allies" will turn on you on a whim, Im still waiting for a decent strategy game where your allies matter. Pretty much every other game has a feeble diplomacy system which isnt worth your time as its nearly always better to just fight everyone and go it alone.

Im hoping they will make a distinction between having a cease fire agreement and an alliance.

Really i just want to play a game where your decisions matter. It should be VERY hard to go it alone. Maybe they should throw in a galactic senate to make things more interesting. You could vote on things like making it illegal to fire on trade \ refinery ships etc. Or sanctioning factions that are deemed too aggressive?
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I am all for much more in depth diplomacy. However, I don't think alliances should be permamenent, seems to care bear-ish to me. Here is what I would like to see and I think this would work for you.

First of all, players should have an alignment rating (i.e. good /evil) you start the game neutral. As you play the game the choices you make cause you to be good or evil. Here is a few numbers to show what I mean:

+20 = Holy
0 = Neutral
-20 = Pure Evil

Seeking any diplomatic solutions = +1
Giving resources to other player = +1
Attacking people your not allied with = 0
Betraying people your alligned with = -3
Eradicating a factions homeworld -2
Nulling a Cease Fire Treaty = -1
Ignoring diplomatic Solutions with someone over +1 = -1
Moral decisions when taking planets = +1-4, 0 or -1-4
Defending yourself = 0

Im sure there are plenty more scenarios that you can think of.

What I would like to see is that the AI has personality types, some are very reluctant to go to war and are pretty much warmongers +20 A.I. would take their alliances very seriously but would turn down alliances with player -5 and lower and nullify alliances with players who reach -10. Neutral A.I. would be comfortable allying with just about anyone but the truly evil and the painfully good. And evil players would ally with evil players though neither could be trusted.

So if you want to play as good (which you seem to) you would not seek out war though you can defend yourself if necessary, and the other good A.I. that you ally with will be loyal unless you attack or your ideals stray too far from theirs.

One other cool thing about this, is that if our multiplayer games are tracked, this data might be able to be extracted from each game, the same way wins and losses are and each player account could have a running, averaged alignment indicator, so when the game starts you can see the alignment of other players which will give you some idea as to how trustworthy they are. Might be kinda cool.



Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
Gal Civ and Gal Civ 2 tackled the alignment idea, which is partially successful. I believe you are spot on that diplomacy need sto be revamped and the AI needs to be given true reasons. Although I have noticed that I got to a point where I was the same size as another AI and that AI was getting picked on by the other AI's who were bigger.

In turn I offered an Alliance with them, got sight and gave them access to trade and my artifacts(having 6 out of 9 = Nice ). I then proceeded to fight with my Ally and we took down 2 AI's together(total of 10 to start, two were already eliminated[by me]). By that time we had both grown large and the other AI's started attacking us from the other solar systems(we'd effectively controlled two star systems). As it turned out I actually carried an alliance with my fellow Ally AI to the end...I was surprised, I'd half expected him to cut off diplomatic ties about half-way through the end of devouring the last enemy AI. But we won....

So the possibility is there, I do believe there is some randomization of the AI personality that we don't see, and though it is rare I think it would be nice to have one or two AI have a "friendly" stance toward the player and have them strewn about. It does look like it is random generation of the AI.
(Note, I had complained about the AI before I played this game).

So I think they just need to tweak their settings if they want to continue down this route of AI development, however I'm a supporter of the alignment system, although that would require a lot more game elements than we currently have to be effective.
(Not to mention it seems like it'd almost be possible to Mod in alignmnt, but that is just a guess )

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
I don't want to make the game too carebear-ish. I just want a strategy game where having allies isnt striclty worse than going it alone. Wanting allies doesnt mean that you are good either. One of my ideas was having a preset plan on taking over another faction so that the AI can figure out how much it will gain \ lose in a war against another faction.

In my current game, ive conquered one galaxy \ solar system and im in the process of steamrolling the other. In my mind, the remaining factions in the second galaxy should be teaming up and trying to take out my fleet as their number 1 priority.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
well, in alpha centauri, your allies would generally stick with you unless the 'You're Too Powerful' condition kicked in or unless you starting making social engineering choices that were unacceptable to them.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Ah, Alpha Centauri. A while ago, while playing it, I decided to probe my ally. I of course tried to cover it up and say someone else did it. They both found out, and both went to war with me. Immediately after this happens, my two remaining allies, sensing my weakness, call me up and threaten me, causing me to declare war on them. I had just lost 4 alliances (Can't remember if pacts or treaties) in one turn.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Pretty much every strategy game i've ever played has terrible diplomacy. "Alliances" last a few turns and then your ally turns on you for no apparent reason. For the love of mustard, please do not let this game fall into that pit.


Kickass Single Player diplomacy would definitely set Sins apart and get it great reviews. I can't agree more.


Some gifts to other factions should offer *permenant* bonuses to your relations. That is, if you give a struggling faction a few systems, it should be almost unthinkable for them to attack you for the usual reasons the AI attacks you.


Actually, everything could offer permanent bonuses. If you ever want to change your net relations, just do good or bad things to another faction. As for giving them a bunch of systems, why, that would give you an enormous amount of positive relations. But I don't think they should ever forget about the time I gave them a couple credits.


All diplomacy options should have a specific, negotiable duration and should be unbreakable except for the case when two of your allies go to war with each other, then you have to choose which to support. If you dislike this feature, i would at least ask that whenever a player cancels a peace treaty that all their ships inside your territory be warped back to one of his colonies to prevent cheap shots ( Civ 4 style ).


I disagree. First, about warping ships away: If we add neutrality to the mix (right now all we have is friendly and hostile), allies can still issue warnings to keep your forces away from X planet or you'll pay. You should be able to do the same (As well as annoy them about building more tradeports, for example). You already get messages about where fleets are, so if you're worried about the position of a neutral fleet, yell at them, and if you're worried about the position of an allied fleet, you should have the option to break the peace treaty at this point.


Allow permanent alliances to be formed. THis should be hard to pull off, require a decent amount of time spent with good \ great relations and maybe require a few gifts. This would change the AI's stance toward you so that it would be identical to a game where you started off on the same team. That is, the AI should never again consider you a threat, and never conspire against you. It would probably be best if you could only make a permanent alliance with *1* faction during a game.


As long as you get an allied victory, fine.


As you begin to dominate the game, the factions with a neutral, or hostile stance toward you should realize that you are the main threat to the universe and start to band together. They should pool their fleets and make a concentrated effort to destroy your ships and take back a few regions. If successful, they should revert back to their old hostilities and begin fighting again. THe same should happen if an AI faction is dominating, the other factions\human players should band together to try and stop him. If implemented, this will make the end game a lot more fun and make it very challenging to steam roll the whole universe.


It would be a challenge to implement, I'd think, but would make the game sooooo much better. Perhaps this could go hand and hand with your next idea.


Shared campaigns. When dealing with an ally or potential ally, you could offer a shared campaign against another faction. This option would bring up a map of the enemy's systems and the player \ AI would divide up those regions among themselves. IF an agreement is made, those systems automatically go to their rightful owner once conquered. Each side would have to pledge ships to take part, and the player would get to choose who gets control of those ships. THat is, if the AI offered some ships and you wanted to control them for the duration of the campaign, that would be possible. The opposite would be possible as well, that is, you could let the AI control your ships so you can focus on other things.


Another difficult but potentially amazing feature.

So, to summarize:
-Diplomacy in this game MUST be drop-dead amazing in order for it to stand out as far as it truly should. This is the difference between an 8 and a 9 in a review score.
-Everything you do to another faction has a permanent effect that is visible, Civ 4 style. To change your relations, you must make up for what you've done so far.
-Enable the ability to message AI players about keeping their forces away from other planets, building more tradeports, asking for aid, and perhaps even saying "Your destruction is inevitable" could have a (positive or negative) effect, making them either fear or resent you.
-Peace treaties should be breakable at any time for any reason, but the AI must have a good reason (and EXPLAIN WHY THEY'RE DOING IT, like Master of Orion 3 didn't do).
-Alliances, however, cannot be broken. You do get allied victory, though.
-Shared campaigns, orchestrated by you or the AI, are an amazing idea.