Alliance Member Intraaction

I completely agree. I mentioned this in another thread, but I think that when AI players form an alliance, it could spawn a sort of 'parent' alliance AI that handles coordination between the alliance members. It would be responsible for things like determining actions that would benefit multiple alliance members but are unachievable by the individual members alone, and could coordinate efforst between them. Likewise if multiple alliance members are fighting the same enemy, the alliance AI could essentially act as a liason between alliance members, coordinating attacks and even defenses.

What would be even more challenging but equally awesome is if they can manage to create a good, powerful interface for meaningful coordination between AI and human players. The AI could inform you of some of their shorter term goals via messages, like "we are planning an assault on _____" followed a few turns later by "our army will arrive at _____ in X turns." Humans could effectively do the same for the AI by placing different types of markers on the map. Some markers could indicate your war plans; others could function as requests. For example, you could request that an AI ally attack a specific place in a specific timeframe, or defend somewhere. Things like requesting resources could be done more effectively in a diplomacy screen.

I think letting allies construct buildings within each others' cities might be going too far, though. Maybe you can make deals with other players where they agree to build something for you in one of your cities, though. For example your friend might have much better forges than you can build, but they aren't willing to teach you all of their secrets. They might, however, agree to build one or two forges for you in return for something. Maybe it would also have the side effect of giving you a bonus towards researching upgrades for your forge, too.

Another idea is letting allies temporarily lend each other their troops. This happens historically all the time, where troops of one nation are sent to battle under the command of allied officers. This would be most helpful for human-AI interactions, because of the intrinsic difficulty of humans and AIs coordinating. If I and an AI ally are at war with another civilization, and my army is much bigger/stronger than my ally's, but not strong enough on its own to conquer the target city or army, I could request that my AI ally temporarily place its forces under my army's control. There could be terms of agreement, such as "until army/city X is destroyed, or Y turns, whichever is first" or even just for a certain # of turns. I think this would make human-AI ally interaction much more meaningful without posing as high a challenge for the AI coders.

But basically, the most important thing is that allies should act like allies, like Darkodinplus said. If you are attacked, they should actively help you if they are able, either by directly defending your territory or taking off some of the pressure by invading your attacker. Too often are alliances more like non-agression pacts than actual alliances, which normally means that players don't have much of an incentive of actually defending AI allies because the favor will never be returned. In those cases, the only good reason for defending allies is to prevent potential future enemies from getting stronger off of their leavings. If AIs actually act like somewhat intelligent allies, or confer some meaningful advantage to the player, then humans will be much more inclined to help AI allies in turn; the result would be a much more convincing world and a more lively political dynamic.

intra-action eh?   wouldn't that mean they didn't 'inter'act with each other at all? 

But your point is true.   We need something so we can tell Allies " HELP! " or " Get off my turf " or " Attack this guy now "

I also want them to remember if I help them.   So like if I give them a bunch of gold, then they will send about that much gold worth support over some other time (based on availablity).   Or when I rush my guys over to help him, then he will do the same for me should the situation switch.

Intra is within, inter is between.  He's pissed at the lack of cooperation within an alliance, so it makes sense.  In a more common usage, the internet is the worldwide network between you and everyone else.  The intranet is the local network within your site, your printer, modem, any other users, etcetera.  Both prefixes would be applicable in this case because the alliance can be looked at as a separate entity inside a system or as a system itself.

I just got thru playing a game of Gal Civ that brought up something that kind of irked me.

I had disabled alliances (which you might wonder how it applies to this thread - read on).

So I was getting along well with the Altarians (pretty normal) and also we getting along OK with the Drengin (bad guys) I had gone with a neutral stance in the good vs evil thing.

So the Altarians attack the Drengin, and since the Altarians had been getting a little snotty with me lately regarding tribute etc, and they also were dominating the map a little too much, I supported the Drengin, and started attacking Altarian planets. I start giving tech to the Drengin like crazy to help them stay friendly to me and also to give the Altarians some big hurt.

Well the Drengin still pretty much get creamed, but instead of allying with me when they surrender, they say that the Altarians "made them the best offer".

I mean wtf seriously, I showered tech on these guys, was much more closely allied with their evil alignment than the goody goody Altarians,a nd they were enemies with the Altarians the entire game and they ally themselves with them at the end of the day? I thought that was really flawed.

I agree

I did like the way that AoW did it, where several people that are all in close proximity (I think it was 2 hexes or something.  It is hard to see the world map 'grid' in AoW) to a battle would become involved in the battle.   So the units would still be under control of the owner, but they would be in somebody else's battle.     If that isn't possible because of the X-com style battle system or whatever, then just temporary control is fine for me.

That is another thing I have a bone to pick.   *Normally* the regular peace treaty or wizard pact is the non aggression deal and the alliance means actively helping each other.

That being said, breaking a wizard pact should still have a minor cool-down time so you don't just backstab people (which is the way it seems to work in Sins) and alliance should mean they are going to be bending a little to help you, or at least do joint attacks for you.   in MoM, wizard pact meant nothing since you could break it at any time, and your guys didn't agro the way they do in most RTS games (where cease fire is important).

Things to say for allies include "I might be attacking yellow in the next 100 turns, might you prepare to help me?" and then "I'm attacking now, lets go"  or even "I'm going to help you, but I need 5 more turns to complete these bear-riders and get them over to the yellow boarder.  Delay your attack 5 turns if you can"

I really don’t see how this would cause a problem since the player would have control over where the buildings would be placed. This would really just formalize what happens in a lot of strategy games I’ve played. I’ll use Supreme Commander as an example, I find it very useful to build generators and production facilities in my teammate’s bases. That why I can assist quicker if their base is attacked or if my base were to be overrun I would still have a way to rebuild opposed to being totally finished. The problem that you run into however is a player building to much or getting in the way of his ally. I admit it can really rube someone the wrong way when you construct a building in a horrible spot in their base. By making this process more formal and requiring sanction on when and where a building could be placed you wouldn’t have the problem of someone building an armory right where you were going to place your alchemic research facility.  Then the only problems would be potentially becoming to dependant on an ally or having a falling out with an ally and them nationalizing all the buildings you constructed in their territory.

While I’m on this subject of formally adding systems I would really like to see a lease system in Elemental with some basic options between nations. That way you could give a nation money with out it always being a gift. This would really come in handy when dealing with allies or neutral nations that you want to help but don’t want to give them 50 million gold no strings attached. 

The more I think about it, the more I believe that some 'cross-cultural' mechanics for city tiles could really add to the 'epic feel' of the game. There's historical precedent for major cities having whole sections occupied by a minority from far away. Teotihuacan had several 'ethnic enclaves,' including a Maya quarter, and it was a long way from the Maya heartland.

In game terms, it might be simpler to try for something like the MoO2 mixed-population colonies; essentially a one-time exchange of skilled labor and/or infrastructure that leaves the receiving city one step closer to being a real metropolis and requires that leadership keep an eye on the contentment of the imported minority as well as the main population of the city.

A Transfer of Ownership option might be useful. Assuming a 2 front battle and you see that your Ally is currently struggling against greater odds than yourself, you could select some of your battle forces and transfer them to him/her control for use immediately.

As compensation, some pre-set percentage of any forces he/she/they are able to create after the fight has been resolved, this is assuming that your assistance actually turned the tide of the battle, come directly into your standing army.

The percentage could even be a negotiated price between the 2 parties with each parites level of Diplomacy and Trust rating towards the other would factor into how much the ally would agree to.

Or it would be agreed that if I ever ask after the fact, I will receive what ever can be spared by said ally during the next battle...

Me likey. It can usually be jerry-rigged, by offering a flat sum in return for a per turn tribute, but having an actual lease system would be awesome.

Another thing I'd like is an actual favor system. If you do a favor for someone, they will remember it and will be inclined to return the favor at some later date, if they can. The magnitude of the favor could be quantified based on effective cost and maybe even the need of the recipient (although I don't see how that could be calculated for a player).

Indeed. Perhaps some integration with quest mechanics could help here--"Our Vast Orchard has become infested with hostile faeries who've chased off the orchard-keepers, but our Heroes are all too far away to search out the faery queen and deal with her. If you can help us make the orchard safe before harvest time, you'll have a share of the crop and our lasting gratitude."

Mmmmmm Faerie Apples!

Need could be calculated as a function of time where you or the AI could flag a specific favor with a priority of low, normal, urgent, or immediately. This of course wouldn’t be a perfect representation of a need but it would be pretty close when combined with estimated cost I think.