Why can't Winni sleep? (thoughts at 3AM on the diplomacy system)

from Elemental Forums

Why can't Winni sleep?

Because Frogboy's game has hold of his cortex, and won't let go.

In thinking about the diplomacy system, these are what's swilling around in there now:

1: Instead of the usual "love-hate" single slider along which all of the other AIs see you (and therefore make choices of diplomacy based upon), how about 3 sliders that color the AI's judgement of you?  "Trust-Distrust", "Respect-Disrespect", and "Love-Hate".

The trust scale is based upon how much you follow through on your commitments (You do what you say you'll do), and influence how the AI will commit economically to aiding you (I don't trust you, so I'm not going to engage in a swap of resources)

The Respect scale is based upon how often your decisions match up with what the AI's choices are (how aligned you are with the AI's goals), and influences how the AI will commit militarily to aiding you (I respect your choices, and will send units to aid you)

The Love scale is based on how the AI "grew up" in your castle, and is somewhat random seeded, but could be influenced by random events and your choices during the rearing of that child.  If the child is born, there's some time for it to grow up in your town, during which you get random events that you get to make choices on (it's their 3rd birthday!  Do you A: Throw a big party, at a cost of -35000 gold, but the love of your child, B: tell him that a birthday is no excuse for not studying, and the child gains +2 capability to research spells (but may hate you a little bit for it), or C: can't be bothered with children; I'm too busy drilling my army to be bothered with this whelp! (+20 experience to some unit in your garrison, but the child resents you for it).  At the end of the child rearing, the love scale is set, but then is affected by your attention to them (how often you contact them when they're an adult), and trends towards neutral every turn that you're not in contact with them (hate and love both lessen with distance).  This scale colors the other scales, and also influences how they react to you in general.

But, you can only really see the love scale, in the form of the facial expression (or a number that represents it) of your child.  The other scales can't be directly observed, but need to be found out through spying, scrying, or asking OTHER AI's about how a given AI respects or trusts you (and those AIs in turn might not tell you the truth, given their own trust, respect, and love of you).

Okay, now I've got it out of my head, and can go back to sleep.  As always, I welcome the community to help make this a better idea.

Winni

3,008 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Nice idea but probably very complex to program and have it work at all well.  Also I'd go with only two, fear-dismiss and love-hate, for power/friendship workings.

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

Good ideas, thanks.

For the second of them, perhaps this could also be influenced by the magical affiliations of those involved.  If both were Life (or both Death) then you would have a natural affiliation.  If opposites, then a strong natural dislike.  From there, the use/learning/acquired nodes of the earth/air/wind/fire could also influence the closeness.

As a reference, think of how diplomacy is used in Civ IV.  Having the same civics and religions influence diplomacy, as do past actionis and natural tendencies.

Crusader Kings/Deus Vault has some interesting child rearing/dynasty & family management interactions that are worth studying.

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

I'd be down for at least two sliders, trust-distrust,  love-hate.  I imagine that 'respect' would be shown somewhere in there.   Or what relivance would it have on the diplomacy.  

If there is "Love/respect" it should be the same as really love.  

If its "love/disrespect" then they still love.

If its Hate/respect, its the same as fear.  Many games have this anyway when its max-hate but they haven't declared war yet.  It really doesn't need to be stated, if they hate you.. and they arn't declaring ware, then its because they don't think they can win yet.  

If its Hate/disrespect, then its war.  They would attack.

So ultimatly, I think "respect" can just be assumed by comparing power charts, rather than giving a slider for it.

 

Trust is very important.  Certainly if you might love somebody, but their actions have made them untrustworthy.  So you're a bit edgy around them.   The AI would logically take more dramatic retalation to anything that might seem a threat compared to one that is trusted.

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

I like how galciv 2 does it - one slider, but you can see what is causing it to be at it current state as opposed to neutral.

So positive influences that could be added would be marriages, common enemy, etc and negative influences could be marriages, common enemy (each other), etc...

Many moons ago there was a thread about introducing a respect/fear element into it, I think machiavelli even got quoted once or twice. Although I am thinking that may have been directed more at the morale of your own population...

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Landisaurus, yeah but you can hate someone, and distrust them..but if they're hugely more POWERFUL.  Fear is a greater motivator. 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Landisaurus, yeah but you can hate someone, and distrust them..but if they're hugely more POWERFUL.  Fear is a greater motivator.
End of quote

 

Or perhaps we don't need a slider for "love"   I realized I switched definitions of "Love" and "respect" as described above... 

Its the slider that I have a problem with, not the calculation.  The enemy should always factor in power scale or level of threat.   I think thats my problem with the system described above.   When I read it the 1st time I mentally inserted a measurement of threat under the "love/hate" catigory, the way it usually is in most systems.   The location of troops is a major factor of diplomacy, and should be a fairly major factor.

 

I like the idea that you have a few sliders that you can only see through scrying/spying/whatever, but at the same time it seems like doing so would automatically lower trust.  

It seems that what is described above is more of how a personality develops, rather than a way of managing the diplomacy system.  Like having a slider that represents how one grew up in a castle?  shouldn't that be more of start game stuff?   Perhaps I am not understanding when it would even come into play.

 

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I really like this idea. Although I don't think our channeler's children (or children of our faction's noble family, whichever way the dynasty system ends up working) will take direct control of other civilizations; the channeler will retain that role indefinitely. However, if there is lots of intermarriage between two nations, there will be a strong familial bond that will unite the two civilizations, or families, even if they don't have much else in common.

I like your 3 categories; and I like how respect/disrespect vs. trust/distrust would affect different aspects of diplomacy, modified by love/hate. I'd also add that I think respect should also go up if you grant them significant aid (and go down if you're a worthless ally and can't even commit to much help at all).

But I think in addition to all of that, they have to consider other miscellaneous factors like the current state of the world. Are you friendly with their enemies? Do you have a large number of troops close to their border, or even infringing on their territory? Some of that should be modified by those 3 overall categories though. If they trust you completely, then they shouldn't be too worried about you stationing lots of troops by them. The downside to this, though, is that it might be easily exploitable... Maybe to mitigate that, they could make backstabbing someone who trusts you really screw with how much everyone else trusts you. Enemies of the person you backstab, or twisted AIs in general might respect you for it, but they would learn not to trust you.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

If you look at the way real-world nations feel about one another those relationships are very complex.  So as not to insult anyone's particular nationalistic tendencies I'll use a fictitious example to illustrate.  Last night I was watching an episode of the West Wing in which the leader of another country which hates the US needed help to save a child with a medical condition.  In that case there was definitely the love-hate scale, and some sort of inferior-superior technology scale in play.

But the undertones in the real world are so much more complex.  Someone mentioned religious differences, but there are also cultural differences, political differences as well as historical issues.  It may have been mentioned here already but one thing CIV4 did well was add that modifier based on past relationship.  I think something like that should definitely be part of the recipe.

For this game I'd like the developers to err on the side of complexity for explaining in-game relationships as I've always been disappointed with the complexity of diplomacy and diplomatic options.  Another thing I'd like to see if the contributing factors explained well (Like in CIV4) rather than being left to guess based on 2 sentences of greeting text (Like in GalCiv2).

Edit: Spell check

Reply #9 from Elemental Forums Top

Hm, yeah I think that fear or intimidation is a very important thing to document.  What kind of interplay will be between a fear slider and a relations slider could be very complex though.