Suggestion for Galciv2 Diplomacy Screen
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WinCustomize Forums
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Hi,
Let me just start by thanking you for making Galciv 2. I've been anxiously awaiting it since Galciv 1 and my only complaint is that I wish I had more time to play it.
I have a suggestion. Perhaps you're already doing this behind the scenes, but I suspect you aren't.
One of the ways that information can be abused in the game is via the diplomacy screen. By opening a dialog with any of the other races with whom you are playing, it is possible to derive information about what technologies and ships they have. I realize the purpose of this is to allow you to choose from the various goodies they have to offer so that you can create a deal that interests you (and hopefully them), but this brief glimpse into the state of their empire offers an unrealistic advantage.
My proposal is simple in it's most basic form: filter the list of technologies and ships that are displayed as up for offer based on your relations with the computer race you're dealing with. If I'm at "hostile" with the Drengin, or my relations with them are even "cool", the list of technologies and ships they're willing to discuss with me should be vastly curtailed. Otherwise, I can use the negotiation screen to get a sense of what the Drengin are going to be able to field against me before I go to war with them, including number, kind and how their ships are likely to be armed. This makes it too easy.
If you want to get more advanced with the filtering, you might also add the ability for the AI to examine any significant relationships the computer race has and curtail the technology/ships list based on that. Consider this as an example: I'm negotiating with the Drengin again, who are close with the Yor. I'm at war with the Yor. (Sorry for the rhyme...won't happen again.) It doesn't make sense for the Drengin to sell me advanced weapon technology under these circumstances, because obviously I'm going to turn around and use it against their buddies. Nor should they sell me propulsion technology because then I can take the fight to the Yor even faster. Nor any ships with any significant combat capability, however outdated. These things should not even be displayed.
Three other enhancements come to mind that would make this feature even more interesting:
1) Make one of the negotiating options that can be put on the table, "Trade for Information", or some other clever way of phrasing it that I'm sure a marketing person can do a better job of coming up with. The purpose of this option would be to offer something in trade for the computer to "put a little more on the table", as it were. By offering a suitable amount, some of the filtering restrictions put on the list of technologies/ships would be relaxed and provide the player with some things that are potentially more interesting to them, at the expense of giving away something of their own. The more valuable the offering by the player, the more you reveal...up to a point of course, again based on relations. A big gift to a close friend would reveal a lot. A big gift to someone at "cool"...not so much.
2) Espionage spending should of course affect the filtering. The more the player knows diplomacy-wise about the computer with whom they are negotiating, the less restrictive the filters should be.
3) THE BIG ONE: It would be *really* cool if you could figure out a way to use the difference between what the computer is willing to share with the player and what the player *actually* knows about the computer to affect negotiations. The way this would make things interesting during negotiations is this: If the player tries to deal for a technology they know the computer has, but that the computer doesn't want the player to know about, it could either adversely affect the negotiation, as the computer realizes that the player *must* be spying on them if they know about that tech, or it could seriously up the price for that given bit of tech. If you wanted to get really mean, you could also have it affect relations between the player and the computer in question as the computer is offended when they find out that the player has been spying on them.
As a quick example, so I'm clear what I mean:
-Via espionage, I know that the Drengin have: Tech 1, Tech 2, Tech 4, Tech 7 and Tech 8.
-Because of my relations with the Drengin, they are only willing to talk about: Tech 1, Tech 2, Tech 4.
-If I try to deal for Tech 7 or Tech 8, which I should not know about because the Drengin haven't offered them, but I *do* know about because I have been spying on them, the Drengin should be surprised that I would bring either of them up. This could either:
a) Cause the Drengin to immediately break off the negotiation.
Significantly up the price for either Tech 7 or Tech 8.
and optionally:
c) Degrade my relations with the Drengin by one "class" because I pissed them off.
Ahh, one final thing I thought of as I was rereading this... it would also make a *lot* of sense to color code the technologies/ships in the negotiation window to indicate items the player knows about but shouldn't. Make them blue or something - just so that we'll know that *if* we decide to bring those up, it could have repercussions because we're not supposed to know about them.
I hope that all made sense. Again, if you're already doing this in some manner, please just ignore me. Sometimes I get a creative burst though and have to get it out before I lose it.
I guess that's it, for now. Keep it up. As a fellow software engineer, I have a lot of respect for you guys.
Take it easy,
Geoff
Let me just start by thanking you for making Galciv 2. I've been anxiously awaiting it since Galciv 1 and my only complaint is that I wish I had more time to play it.
I have a suggestion. Perhaps you're already doing this behind the scenes, but I suspect you aren't.
One of the ways that information can be abused in the game is via the diplomacy screen. By opening a dialog with any of the other races with whom you are playing, it is possible to derive information about what technologies and ships they have. I realize the purpose of this is to allow you to choose from the various goodies they have to offer so that you can create a deal that interests you (and hopefully them), but this brief glimpse into the state of their empire offers an unrealistic advantage.
My proposal is simple in it's most basic form: filter the list of technologies and ships that are displayed as up for offer based on your relations with the computer race you're dealing with. If I'm at "hostile" with the Drengin, or my relations with them are even "cool", the list of technologies and ships they're willing to discuss with me should be vastly curtailed. Otherwise, I can use the negotiation screen to get a sense of what the Drengin are going to be able to field against me before I go to war with them, including number, kind and how their ships are likely to be armed. This makes it too easy.
If you want to get more advanced with the filtering, you might also add the ability for the AI to examine any significant relationships the computer race has and curtail the technology/ships list based on that. Consider this as an example: I'm negotiating with the Drengin again, who are close with the Yor. I'm at war with the Yor. (Sorry for the rhyme...won't happen again.) It doesn't make sense for the Drengin to sell me advanced weapon technology under these circumstances, because obviously I'm going to turn around and use it against their buddies. Nor should they sell me propulsion technology because then I can take the fight to the Yor even faster. Nor any ships with any significant combat capability, however outdated. These things should not even be displayed.
Three other enhancements come to mind that would make this feature even more interesting:
1) Make one of the negotiating options that can be put on the table, "Trade for Information", or some other clever way of phrasing it that I'm sure a marketing person can do a better job of coming up with. The purpose of this option would be to offer something in trade for the computer to "put a little more on the table", as it were. By offering a suitable amount, some of the filtering restrictions put on the list of technologies/ships would be relaxed and provide the player with some things that are potentially more interesting to them, at the expense of giving away something of their own. The more valuable the offering by the player, the more you reveal...up to a point of course, again based on relations. A big gift to a close friend would reveal a lot. A big gift to someone at "cool"...not so much.
2) Espionage spending should of course affect the filtering. The more the player knows diplomacy-wise about the computer with whom they are negotiating, the less restrictive the filters should be.
3) THE BIG ONE: It would be *really* cool if you could figure out a way to use the difference between what the computer is willing to share with the player and what the player *actually* knows about the computer to affect negotiations. The way this would make things interesting during negotiations is this: If the player tries to deal for a technology they know the computer has, but that the computer doesn't want the player to know about, it could either adversely affect the negotiation, as the computer realizes that the player *must* be spying on them if they know about that tech, or it could seriously up the price for that given bit of tech. If you wanted to get really mean, you could also have it affect relations between the player and the computer in question as the computer is offended when they find out that the player has been spying on them.
As a quick example, so I'm clear what I mean:
-Via espionage, I know that the Drengin have: Tech 1, Tech 2, Tech 4, Tech 7 and Tech 8.
-Because of my relations with the Drengin, they are only willing to talk about: Tech 1, Tech 2, Tech 4.
-If I try to deal for Tech 7 or Tech 8, which I should not know about because the Drengin haven't offered them, but I *do* know about because I have been spying on them, the Drengin should be surprised that I would bring either of them up. This could either:
a) Cause the Drengin to immediately break off the negotiation.
Significantly up the price for either Tech 7 or Tech 8.and optionally:
c) Degrade my relations with the Drengin by one "class" because I pissed them off.
Ahh, one final thing I thought of as I was rereading this... it would also make a *lot* of sense to color code the technologies/ships in the negotiation window to indicate items the player knows about but shouldn't. Make them blue or something - just so that we'll know that *if* we decide to bring those up, it could have repercussions because we're not supposed to know about them.
I hope that all made sense. Again, if you're already doing this in some manner, please just ignore me. Sometimes I get a creative burst though and have to get it out before I lose it.
I guess that's it, for now. Keep it up. As a fellow software engineer, I have a lot of respect for you guys.
Take it easy,
Geoff
