All I really want from Diplomacy is...

Alliances and reasons for back stabbing are a tricky thing it seems. Lets break down the advantages and disadvantages:

The current alliance benefits as I see them:

1) Safe passage through allied controled sectors.

2) A buffer zone between enemies.

3) Military and economic bonuses by means of pacts. Race specific pacts make some alliances more beneficial than others.

4) Military aid by means of harasment, distractions, and in some cases weakening or complete anhilation of enemies.

5) Economic bonuses by means of trade alliances.

6) Fewer enemies to contend with.

What are the alliances costing us?

1) Large numbers of envoy ships to keep relationship numbers up.

2) Investing in diplomacy tech that could be going towards, military, defense, or economic research.

While the cost of focusing on diplomacy is not exactly minor, the fact that you can make and keep alliances fairly easy does not encourage a variety of diplomatic strategies.

Alliances need to be more costly so that in some cases, the disadvantages out wieght the advantages.

Here are some suggestions I am throwing out there.

1) Culture does not extend into and beyond allied sectors no matter how strong your culture is. Culture works the same as it does now with adjacent non-allied sectors.

2) Military passage through allied sectors is the highest achievement available only to those long term friends, possibly the last in the line of diplomacy techs. If you send military ships through allied terrority without this pact or permission, it has a dramatic effect on relations. If aid is requested to a certain sector, no negative impact is inflicted while the enemies forces are still present and for a short time after they have departed or been terminated.

3) Grant bonuses based on territory control. For example, controlling all phase lanes to the sun, controlling all ice planets in a solar system, or even controlling an entire solar system in multi sun maps could grant bonuses worth getting rid of an ally blocking you from getting them.

4) Relations with your ally's allies should have an impact. If you are at war with a friend of your ally, your relationship should suffer.

5) What if AI players had a certain strong attachment to specific planets. Your relationship or chance of alliance is greatly reduced while the sector is under your control.

These suggestions below are unrelated but I might as well add them here.

a) Add player specific pacts. The race pacts I think are a great idea. I would take it one step further. What if at the beginning of each game, a player is randomly assigned one of 8 techs you can gain by forming a strong alliance with that player. They would be like player artifacts that have both a positive and negative impact. For example an alliance with player A grants increased ship speed however the cost to modify and outfit them increases the cost to build them.

Set or randomize AI goals from galactic domination to economic superiority. Make it more difficult to make alliances with some AI players, not only due to being a different race but based on that players goal.

Successfully updated karma reason!

1) Culture does not extend into and beyond allied sectors no matter how strong your culture is. Culture works the same as it does now with adjacent non-allied sectors.

It already works this way. Allied cultures interfere with each other.

2) Military passage through allied sectors is the highest achievement available only to those long term friends, possibly the last in the line of diplomacy techs. If you send military ships through allied terrority without this pact or permission, it has a dramatic effect on relations. If aid is requested to a certain sector, no negative impact is inflicted while the enemies forces are still present and for a short time after they have departed or been terminated.

The problem I have with that is that it means sending ships to help defend an ally would reduce your relations with them. Also (I'm not sure if this has changed with diplomacy) but relations have no effect on human players anyways.

3) Grant bonuses based on territory control. For example, controlling all phase lanes to the sun, controlling all ice planets in a solar system, or even controlling an entire solar system in multi sun maps could grant bonuses worth getting rid of an ally blocking you from getting them.

The problem with these is that they're all map dependent. For instance, on any significantly large solar system, it would be utterly impossible to control every planet of a single type.

4) Relations with your ally's allies should have an impact. If you are at war with a friend of your ally, your relationship should suffer.

This doesn't change the problem of large and permanent "blocks" of teams forming. Maybe the AI is psychotic enough not to form into a coherent team, but players will.

5) What if AI players had a certain strong attachment to specific planets. Your relationship or chance of alliance is greatly reduced while the sector is under your control.

This "solution" just makes the AI more psychotic, it still means unlocked teams is unplayably broken in multiplayer, and it just makes the AI's behavior even less sensible than before.

None of these are as simple and graceful as what I suggested in my original post: limit the number of winners. If there can only be three winners in a ten player game, then at some point a five-player alliance will have to break. It's that simple, someone will be backstabbed sooner or later, which will create the subterfuge we want.

For example an alliance with player A grants increased ship speed however the cost to modify and outfit them increases the cost to build them.

I don't have any problem with pacts (though player-specific I think is wrong; randomly giving each player a different special ability at the start of the game is unfair. It takes away player choice and throws balance to the wind since some abilities will inherently be stronger than others). However, the kind of pact you just suggested bothers me. It's just a scalar bonus that improves existing military units. You can't do anything new or different with them, they're just a little better than they used to be.

That's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking for new and distinct abilities on the civic tree that let me pursue new strategies that would never have been possible without them.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I believe a lot of the posters on here are shying away from the original concerns that Darvin brought up and are just adding their own desires in the game arbitrarily. The first problem of there being no reason to backstab an opponent has to do with the fact that there is no advantage in doing so where there should be one. If you make an advantage to backstab someone, whether it be due to a winning condition or a gameplay mechanic that makes backstabbing an attractive option (like the Ascention resource from Gal Civ II), then it becomes a valid reason to backstab rather than being a jerk. I believe that this is covered enough, however, to focus on the second issue.

The main problem is with the civic tree: people are suggesting that it should provide bonuses to existing military, rather than being an alternative (albeit less overt) than going through the military tree first. Insurgency is a good mechanic, but it comes very late into the picture and is more of a nuisence than a threat to sovereignty, similar to Rome: Total War's slaves forming small groups and skirmishing with your armies. RS-fx had some really good ideas that would be race specific and provide bonuses that are both a strategic threat and relative to civic and cultural aspects. Integrating more refined versions of his suggestions in the Diplomacy research window would make the civic tree more threatening.

Successfully updated karma reason!

We all know the AI needs to be tweaked, and countless suggestions have been poured in in this and many other threads.

One of Darvin'3's points is giving a purpose to backstabbing.

I think drawing from the War table game series is one good option. we have to draw 3 mission cards at the beginning of the game.Likewise, in Sins we could have a random set of conditions for a player to achieve its 'personal victory condition'. A start-game option could be configurable to change the game difficulty, by giving 0-10 conditions or winning the game. Default number of conditions would be 3. ALL conditions would have to be met for the game to be won. As a twist, a 'sudden death' mode could be in so that if a mission becomes unachievable, that players instantly loses.

Those missions could have varying difficulties, and the map itself would change the difficulty. Some possibilities:

Build at least N starbases.

Control all ice planets. (same for earth/volcanic/desert)

Control all resource asteroids on neutral gravwells.

Destroy the pirates. (unachievable if someone else does it)

Destroy faction X. (unachievable if someone else does it)

Make all advanced tech pacts.

Ally with faction Y [or list of factions] with at least XX%. (at least 100%)

Control all phase lanes to the sun/all suns.

Colonize planets [planet list here].

Do not kill any opposing faction.

Kill at least N opposing factions.

Control at least N planets.

Build starbases on all neutral gravwells.

Control all artifacts.

Build a trade route generating at least X money (before fleet upkeep discount).

Build a trade route with at least X nodes.

Have at least N planets generating M culture each.

Be the first to colonize planet X/the star.

Raze all capital planets but your own.

Build P superweapons.

Max out fleet capacity and use all slots.

Play without capital ships for at least 80% of the game, and for at least an hour.

Play with only caps, scouts and colonizers for at least 80% of the game, and for at least an hour.

I don't know of anyone which is against the suggestion of having a victory condition of at most N allied players, which I am also in favor of.

Other good suggestions have been placed as well, such as the wonder victory like AoE had / ascension from GalCiv.

Other good options would be economic victory: having the strongest economy AND banking XXX amount of money. Possibly a cap on stored resources and a 'storage bank' logistic structure (and civilian tech) could be introduced just for this purpose.

A diplomatic victory would involve making peace with everyone, more than 100% relationship with everyone for at least X time, and maybe something else, like not having killed any faction.

A domination victory would involve dominating a great portion of planets, like 80%.

A cultural victory would also be fitting to match sid meier's civilization.

Successfully updated karma reason!

ZombiesRus5

Join Date 02/2009

+340

That's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking for new and distinct abilities on the civic tree that let me pursue new strategies that would never have been possible without them.

I've been trying to think of new abilities that would make sense in the civic tree and might also allow for new strategies. Here are my thoughts.

1) Have as part of the civic tree research that links your culture with adjacent ally culture to extend any positive benefits such as AM regeneration (TEC), shield mitigation(Advent) or damage bonuses (vasari).

2) Make culture improvements either more significant (higher bonuses to military strength/defense strength) or split the culture into econ benefits and military benefits. For example, I could choose options off the culture improvement research that better directly impact my econ or military. Currently, I find I rarely need to research past the initial broadcast centers. It would be nice to add research off of culture that actually improves my colonies and compells me to research past The required Tier for trade/culture. Combined with option 1, this positive impact may spread to nearby allies (This might conflict some with the pact system as this is a more passive approach to extending benefits to allies). Either way, I still would like better modifiers within the culture.

Econ in culture research: Tax income %, population growth increase %, planet bombing damage reduced %, etc
Ship in culture research: Planet jumps in culture increase speed %, Ship build rate %, Damage increase %, Weapon Range increase, etc

I know there are already existing research that impact many of these areas, but it would seem planets bathed in culture would be more compelled to operate at a higher effeciency.

3) Add a civic tree research ability that improves civilian labs to allow research in advanced defense structures such as starbases, hangers, and other improvements in the defense section. Not sure how big an impact this would have as only 2-3 military labs are required to research basic defense systems, but it was a thought.

4) Add a civic tree research ability that allows purchasing slightly more advanced black market ships. These ships would not benefit from any military upgrades such as weapon/hull/shield so long term use would be discouraged. The ships would need to fit in the current ship fleet size command points so you couldn't over fleet up.

Successfully updated karma reason!

The thing is, you may have lots of non-military tech, but if a foe with less developed civics has kickass guns and is not interested in talking or reasoning, he has the ability to run over you. It's hard to change that without resorting to civilian techs that indirectly boost the military side.

One thing that springs up to my mind is multiplying the number of research structures, having one structure type for each research tree.

A 'defense center' could be created specifically for the defense tree, leaving the current military lab for the offensive techs. Similarly, a 'Government center' could be created for the diplomatic tree.

A civic player can then work on defense and civics, without being mashed to a pulp. A purely offensive player would be vulnerable, and the bigger the game, the more likely to be crushed while his fleet is away.

The constraint of increased number of technology centers will force players to pick and choose more, specializing on what they want to be good at. To compensate for the loss, the structures could also have a feature each which would make them more desirable, perhaps to the point of having more than 8 of each if possible.

if they are going to mimic other buildings skills though, they have to cost more, in terms of logistic slots, resource cost, or both.

One suggestion of extra properties for each of the 4 lab types:

A civilian tech center could double up as a culture generator for the advent, an orbital colony for the vasari, and a trade port for the tec.

A military lab could double as as very long range missile platform for the vasari, aircraft hangar for the advent, and have a few extra long range gauss cannons and/or flak for the tec.

A defense center would also work as a shield recharge for tec, AM recharge for Advent, phase out enemies for vasari.

A local government would give a small boost to max allegiance (5-10%) for all races.

Another suggestion which can coexist with the previous one or be implemented by itself, is to have a civic research option of implementing an 'alien threat protection directive', which grants logistic structures stationary defenses.

It could be a follow-up higher tier on the TEC 'civilian ship protection', which grants greater hull to trade and refinery ships (but should exist in some form for the other races as well).

It could have four tiers, to give flak, laser, missiles and squadrons successively to each logistic structure. it could be a small number of weapons on each tier, but the collective power of all logistic structures upgraded for defense would demand a greater effort to crack an enemy gravwell. Granted, this is again resorting to military power but it is purely defensive in nature.

Successfully updated karma reason!

from the defensive/ econ type of view: would it make sense to allow civic labs (also) research into defense techs? for me, there would be a synergy. a player who focuses more on economy and culture is maybe less agressive and rather seeks to consolidate and protect his holdings. these probably profit most from defensive tech and it does make some sense to give them slightly easier access to these things. so what I am saying is: good idea to allow both military and civic labs to research the defense tree (as in fleet supply tree)?

a second idea would even more controversial and maybe more complex. what about 'renting' military ship technology? you pay a constant stream of resources and while this is up, ships of this type can be constructed (mind you, this would be independent of ordering them. you order 50 things, then end the deal, construction stops and you got maybe one or two ships from it). it's essentially a quick and easy way to gain access to higher tech, but also pretty expensive. yes, it is quite alike the ship black market idea, though a bit more combersome, but I thought I'd still bring it up for discussion.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I omitted 'King of the Hill' victory conditions- as this was the classic Master of Orion style, it merits a mention. I've often wondered whether the Antarans had escaped, to pursue the Vasari... Then you could have allies but only one winner, as only one of the alies could occupy the planet. I like Joe's secret victory conditions as well, though they might need more work. A simpler implementation, perhaps, based on a combination of artifacts that would yield victory?

Darvin's original suggestion was to have civic strategic possibilities, and while these are partly dependent on new victory conditions, new technologies might be in order. Sabotage is present already though, and the concept of space mercenaries seems very odd- mercenaries have weapons looted from battlefields, not entire ships. The only historical mercenary navies were pirates, and we already have them. Culture spread could be made more effective, it seems to take several centres to get more than a single grav well.

The classic foreign relations defence is to organise a civil war in the hostile empire, by funding a splinter group. This might require new gameplay concepts. However cultural warfare before the twentieth century aimed at elites, not masses. The current implementation of culture is more like Sim Radio Tycoon.. however if you implemented bonuses for the current overall % culture leader only, in areas like relations with the AI, research and finance, culture might become more of a 'non-arms' race?

Successfully updated karma reason!

ZombiesRus5

Join Date 02/2009

+340

The only exceptions are Vasari with phase stabilizers (now THOSE are dangerous) and Advent that has PJI's on the harmony tech path for some reason.

How about adding a Scorched Planet (Scorched Earth Policy) ability to TEC that renders an abandoned planet un-colonizable for x minutes (if you abandoned the planet before they bomb it away). Might fit with the abilities like Heavy Fallout and the Novalith Cannon. This would prevent enemies from colonizing front line planets you retreated from while potentially re-inforcing on a fortified backline planet which you should have the economy for at this point. Activation of this ability would leave logistic/tactical structures in place possibly allowing you to carry on the battle for a bit longer but not allowing them to take the planet for some time.

I could also see taking this ability into enemy territory with a small strike team. Go in bomb the planet, if they bring in resources to take it back, scorch it.

TEC seem to have no moral issues with destroying their own stuff/people anyway. Take the Red Button for instance on starbases.

Successfully updated karma reason!

The thing is, you may have lots of non-military tech, but if a foe with less developed civics has kickass guns and is not interested in talking or reasoning, he has the ability to run over you. It's hard to change that without resorting to civilian techs that indirectly boost the military side.

That is exactly the issue at hand.

The problem is someone has guns pointing down at you, and I want real civic abilities that let me undermine his ability to use those guns. Mutual pacts aren't helpful, because he's not interested in listening to peace. Why would he? he has big guns I have not.

The only historical mercenary navies were pirates, and we already have them.

Actually, the historical pirates were originally contract mercenaries hired by sovereign nations. They were under direct control of their patron nation and were essentially soldiers. They only turned to piracy when their contracts expired and were not renewed, leaving them unemployed but still paying the costs of maintaining their ships and crews.

In that respect, the pirates of Sins are a little out of place. It's never discussed where they came from. The pirates are exceptionally numerous, but there is no indication of who builds their ships. Furthermore, there is no indication of how they earn a profit to begin with. Unless you leave a completely defenseless flank for them, they almost never earn enough bounty to match the losses they take in terms of ships. In that respect, the pirates of the Sins universe make little sense. There does not appear to be a rational explanation for where they came from, nor why they continue to operate.

The classic foreign relations defence is to organise a civil war in the hostile empire, by funding a splinter group.

Although attempting this throughout history was very popular, it has a notoriously low success rate. In the modern age, this is simply not feasible. At best you might have a couple of automatic weapons at your disposal; what are you going to do against a tank? There is no indication that civilians have any real military hardware in the Sins universe, or else we'd see militia popping up to defend the planet when the first nukes fall.

From a gameplay standpoint, I ran the math on causing a planet to spontaneously turn. Just in terms of the planet upgrade investment of the victim player, we're talking about a minimum of 3000 credits or so of direct damage, before we count any strategic losses. Quite frankly we're talking about superweapon-level abilities here.

Espionage and subterfuge is one idea. Another approach might be unilateral pacts. These pacts could be someone "forced" on an enemy (we'll just hand-wave this as a skilledful diplomatic maneuver) and have penalties if broken. This would allow a player to put hurdles and limitations on an enemy. One dangerous ability might be this:

Forced Negotiations: All military units in the current gravity well are frozen while they participate in a forced negotiation. Requires all players to have at least one allied capital ship present in the gravity well. These negotiations last for 200 seconds and there is a substantial timer before new negotiations can be forced. Breaking this agreement will cause your units to remain frozen for an addition 20 seconds while all enemy units will unfreeze immediately.

Successfully updated karma reason!

The Mediterranean pirates were essentially sovereign nations of pirates, operating from Crete, Malta or the Barbary Coast- they captured or built their own ships and were available for hire as sizable fleets, much like the Sins pirates. The privateer wars of 'No Peace Beyond The Line' were limited to the phase when Spain looked likely to take over half the Americas if the rest of Europe failed to combine against them, even then there was no direct control from the patron nation, this wasn't possible in the age.... what were you referring to as being soldiers? When almost all seagoing ships were armed, there were Letters of Marque that allowed attacks on hostile ships not to be considered piracy, and these were very loosely interpreted by a very limited number of famous individual anti-Spanish pirates, but these pirates were only contract mercenaries with small fleets in exceptional circumstances. I've always wanted the Sins pirates to capture trade and refinery ships and convert them for their own uses, then they could turn a profit, especially if they demanded enormous sums for specific fleet attacks on planets, and only generally raided the trade of the target otherwise. You could finance specific attacks and bid for general raiding, perhaps? Maybe you would have to buy the specialist ships- cruisers and siege, and the pirates could throw in some regular raiders with each one for free, to make it vaguely worthwhile to pay for a single-use fleet?

Our differing perspectives on history are somewhat off-topic- but far from not being feasible, it is a normal practice to fight any war as a proxy war in the modern age, and tanks are notoriously ineffective outside their designed combat environment? However, it wasn't a revolutionary splinter group that I meant, but a splinter group within the elite, a dissatisfied Baron, heretical religious leader or opposition political party, where those parties are allowed to exist. The forces would be those of the regular fleet which have turned traitor, rather than built by some backyard spaceship manufacture commune... Also, there have always been plenty of independent powers in human history, which allows intangible power to have a greater effect- in the game defeated empires are simply defeated, rather than being temporarily inconvenienced with pacts being imposed on them. You could make a game with the latter, but it might require too much time for the design alteration horizon of Sins.

It would be good to have an economic analysis of the culture option, it is also my impression that it is extremely expensive unless the opposition have no culture at all, and even then you have to advance a single step at a time.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well 1 thing for sure that could be improvewd about civic is culture.Civic could be used to gain intelligence about the enemy(useful information to help you defeat them).Also how about cost decrease for defensive structures.Makes sense that civiloians would like defense around their planet and more people ,ecoand maybe better law and work ethics would make it more efficient.Ability to sell weapons and use pirates for mercenaries.The pirate deal would have to be planned and picked by player not a random event like insurgency or it would be worthless.Stuff to help you fight off a militant force while you go civic.Civic should not become so powerful it overcomes military tho imo.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Well, I'll presume you know more than I do on the subject of historical pirates and concede you the point.

In any case, on the topic of proxy wars, these are fought by groups that are either already established as splinter factions or are highly disenfranchised groups with loyalties in the military. That would work in primitive feudal societies, but in any stable country these kinds of splinter groups do not exist. Even if you could somehow bribe a general or someone else with military command to turn to your side, it's unlikely that their subordinates would follow. Moreover, the size of militaries in the Sins universe is quite small. Even a 2000 command fleet comes in at about 100k active personnel. That's tiny even if we're just talking in terms of a modern military, forget an empire spanning over dozens of planets. With such small numbers and a presumably strong screening process, you'd have a hard time getting a single frigate to turn, forget about a large section of the military.

Culture as it exists now is really easy to negate. Just stationing a capital ship nearby enables you to fight off culture with roughly half as many culture generators as the opponent. Not feasible without some sort of rework. At this point, I'm leaning towards subterfuge and espionnage as well as unilateral "diplomacy" as features to make the civic tree more dangerous..

Successfully updated karma reason!

As I posted, civil war might require new game concepts, placing it beyond the development horizon. Yet all empires are composed of colonies, all coalitions are of groups with divergent interests, all religions split, there are many examples from post-feudal history. What is exceptionally unusual in historical terms is that the Sins empires allow major research and manufacturing capabilities outside the home planet. Also, the Sins navies expand very rapidly, it's just not possible to expand a force that much and also have it severely disciplined. The colonials might be considered part of the military as well?

Espionage might combine very well with secret victory conditions. Subterfuge is something that Sins lacks in the extreme, and when I've proposed it before the response has been that it would be too difficult to balance, it has to be a straight slogging match. However, you could have a civilian team researching uses of phase space leading to subterfuge spin-offs. Forced 'pact' elements from a weaker military might not be best presented as from foreign relations, but some sort of direct influence on the crews.. perhaps you could have civic technologies for fear, phasing out, imposed armistice etc, though they are already capship abilities. But again this is adding substantial development time to the game, suggestions that already fit the elements we have, like making more use of artifacts, culture, planet upgrades and pirates, seem more likely to find favour?

Successfully updated karma reason!

[/quote]

Quoting Darvin3,

reply 27

1) Culture does not extend into and beyond allied sectors no matter how strong your culture is. Culture works the same as it does now with adjacent non-allied sectors.
It already works this way. Allied cultures interfere with each other.

2) Military passage through allied sectors is the highest achievement available only to those long term friends, possibly the last in the line of diplomacy techs. If you send military ships through allied terrority without this pact or permission, it has a dramatic effect on relations. If aid is requested to a certain sector, no negative impact is inflicted while the enemies forces are still present and for a short time after they have departed or been terminated.
The problem I have with that is that it means sending ships to help defend an ally would reduce your relations with them. Also (I'm not sure if this has changed with diplomacy) but relations have no effect on human players anyways.

3) Grant bonuses based on territory control. For example, controlling all phase lanes to the sun, controlling all ice planets in a solar system, or even controlling an entire solar system in multi sun maps could grant bonuses worth getting rid of an ally blocking you from getting them.
The problem with these is that they're all map dependent. For instance, on any significantly large solar system, it would be utterly impossible to control every planet of a single type.

4) Relations with your ally's allies should have an impact. If you are at war with a friend of your ally, your relationship should suffer.
This doesn't change the problem of large and permanent "blocks" of teams forming. Maybe the AI is psychotic enough not to form into a coherent team, but players will.

5) What if AI players had a certain strong attachment to specific planets. Your relationship or chance of alliance is greatly reduced while the sector is under your control.
This "solution" just makes the AI more psychotic, it still means unlocked teams is unplayably broken in multiplayer, and it just makes the AI's behavior even less sensible than before.

None of these are as simple and graceful as what I suggested in my original post: limit the number of winners. If there can only be three winners in a ten player game, then at some point a five-player alliance will have to break. It's that simple, someone will be backstabbed sooner or later, which will create the subterfuge we want.

For example an alliance with player A grants increased ship speed however the cost to modify and outfit them increases the cost to build them.
I don't have any problem with pacts (though player-specific I think is wrong; randomly giving each player a different special ability at the start of the game is unfair. It takes away player choice and throws balance to the wind since some abilities will inherently be stronger than others). However, the kind of pact you just suggested bothers me. It's just a scalar bonus that improves existing military units. You can't do anything new or different with them, they're just a little better than they used to be.

That's not what I'm asking for. I'm asking for new and distinct abilities on the civic tree that let me pursue new strategies that would never have been possible without them.

Um you pick apart my post yet you did not provide any tangable examples beyond a general statement and your one suggestion of limiting the number of winners. Honesty it sounds like you want locked games without diplomacy. Besides I didn't post to please you, they are my suggestions.

1) As far as I am aware, culture can overpower an ally's and effect enemy planets on the other side of a friendly sector. I've seen mine encompass and expand beyond.

2) When I spoke of relations, I meant the percentages which you need in order to make pacts or stay allied.

3) That is why I gave different examples which would work on single and mult sun maps. Yes, I understand sometimes you could get screwed depending on your position but the same can be said right now in game with asteroid and planet positions.

4)This does help if you can't keep your allies for very long and if you want to expand everywhere. Yes, it is a forceful method and not so much a strategic choice.

And how does random player pacts take away from choice? In fact if you neighbor has a pact that you really want but is also in the path of where you want to expand, you need to decide if the benefits of the pact is worth breaking the alliance or not.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Um you pick apart my post yet you did not provide any tangable examples beyond a general statement and your one suggestion of limiting the number of winners.

Yes, I did pick apart your post. I fully expect others to pick apart mine. If you disagree with my analysis, you can pick apart what I said and we'll discuss it. There's nothing personal about it, just my opinion on the matter.

If we go back to my fundamental problem, it's that if players choose to cooperate, there is nothing stopping them (not even a minor penalty) from making a permanent alliance. The solution I gave was simple: you cannot win if you have an alliance that's too big. Therefor a big alliance cannot be permanent.

Honesty it sounds like you want locked games without diplomacy. Besides I didn't post to please you, they are my suggestions.

If I wanted to play locked teams all the time I wouldn't have bothered making this issue a part of my topic to begin with. I wrote this because I want solid unlocked team mechanics that work. I believe that limiting the number of winners is the best way to fix the current problem. I'm open to other suggestions that solve the problem, but they have to work. For the reason I described (point by point) I don't believe your's will.

I didn't post to please you, either. That is my opinion of your suggestions.

1) As far as I am aware, culture can overpower an ally's and effect enemy planets on the other side of a friendly sector. I've seen mine encompass and expand beyond.

So what? Allied culture doesn't stack, and in fact will interfere with each other. If one player builds super culture of course it will flood over the other player's territory, but why would you do that in the first place? It's expensive to do and achieves nothing when said ally can just build their own culture centers for a fraction of the cost to get culture bonus. Culture is already a relatively weak effect, spreading slowly, and essentially being negated if it contacts another culture.

2) When I spoke of relations, I meant the percentages which you need in order to make pacts or stay allied.

Not having joined the beta yet (standing on the sidelines for now) I don't know the full mechanics behind how these work. However, my point still stands: the way you've described it I'd get a relations hit for defending my ally. That makes no sense.

3) That is why I gave different examples which would work on single and mult sun maps. Yes, I understand sometimes you could get screwed depending on your position but the same can be said right now in game with asteroid and planet positions.

My initial objection was based on the fact that the prerequisites for these bonuses would likely be difficult or impossible to obtain in any event. However, let's handwave that and just presume that it's a non-issue. The bottom line is that this still doesn't solve the problem that players can just choose to cooperate in a permanent alliance. It's not uncommon to have specialist players in team, one running economy and two or three running military. Why wouldn't they just let the economy player stack up all those bonuses; they only need to control enough planets for military labs and factories anyways.

4)This does help if you can't keep your allies for very long and if you want to expand everywhere. Yes, it is a forceful method and not so much a strategic choice.

I don't understand what you're saying here. I said this won't do anything because everyone on the "team" is allied together. I'm not talking about the AI. I'm aware the developers can just program the AI to refuse to form large teams. The problem is that human players will not do this. They six or seven will get together and form a single superpower team and gang up on the remaining three. They are all allies of eachother.

And how does random player pacts take away from choice?

Because the randomly assigned pact may not be the one I want. I have no choice in the matter, my pact is just the one I got randomly at the beginning of the game. This would be like saying your capital ship is randomly selected at the start of the game, and that's the only type of capital ship you can ever build. That takes away my choice of building a different type! Better to give every player the choice of all capital ships for their respective faction.

In fact if you neighbor has a pact that you really want but is also in the path of where you want to expand, you need to decide if the benefits of the pact is worth breaking the alliance or not.

So? Make an alliance with him and work out between yourselves who gets what planet. Even if you get fewer planets individually, not having to waste time fighting each other over them means your alliance will be stronger for it. I reiterate my basic point: there is NO REASON to actually fight him over these planets when we can form an alliance and share and be more powerful collectively. Or, one of us can specialize economy and take all non-strategic planets while the other specializes military and receives money to kill everyone in his path.

Successfully updated karma reason!

What if the defense tree was linked to civics?

Successfully updated karma reason!

What if the defense tree was linked to civics?

Not sure how much that would achieve. Aside from Vasari with repair bays in the defense tree, it's entirely possible to play an aggressive rush game without touching it. Starbases, perhaps, but by the time you're trying to put up one of those you probably already have ice/volcanic techs, so it's only one lab away anyways.

It could work, but I'd prefer something entirely new that fits the theme of diplomacy, which is why I prefer the pact and espionage suggestions.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I do too darvin but Im sayin link the defense to civic and games will be much more diverse and alot more reason to be able to go civs.Right now if you go civs you cant even put up a repair bay.I think all repair should go to defense.Then 2 levels of defense cost reduction maybe tier 2-4.For something like 50% price reduction on defenses.This is one of the probs with civs is that you cant even do defensive structures.Link this and you will see much more civs and empire building imo.More trenching I know but its one way to make civs waaaay more useful.Along with culture buffs and more tecs with culture.Give a few espionage stuff and civ tecs will be nasty.I think for culture to work the repel rate from caps needs to go way down.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Okay, if you moved all repair bays to the defense tree and converted that to civics, it would certainly give a lot of incentive to put that first civic up (second for Advent), but then what? People already routinely get two civics for ice/volcanic colonization. Maybe they'd get a third for starbases with this new system, but I can't see it driving them further. I rarely get the high-level defense tree techs even if I do have the required labs. So this only solves the problem for level 1-3 civics, which (so long as there are ice/volcanics) isn't really a problem right now anyways. We really need more of a focus more on the 4-6 levels.

Successfully updated karma reason!

What if the defense tree was linked to civics?

WHile I agree with you guys for the most part on this. I think this will make players that use this a tough nut to crack yes, but dangerous no. Not for awhile anyway, until you build you fleets to do some damage.

What if (just as an example) there was something like the "Industrail Juggernaurt" research ability, that allowed your structures, fleets etc. to be very rapidly built, also an increase in fleet capacity, if you are under threat. And could have multipliers to fleet capcity depending on how many allies you have.

So if someone attacked you when you have this civ reseach they could potentialy make you stronger.

Successfully updated karma reason!

All I want from Diplomacy is nothing to do with Diplomacy...

- better and more varied MP support

- better and more varied stat system, clan support, ladders and leagues, anti smurf perhaps etc...

- more game modes (why domination only!?!?) - how about escort, capture the artefact, defend the solar system, etc...

- and of course SP that would tell decent story via different game modes...

But hey...

I preorderd the Diplomacy knowing non of this will come with it and pretty much as act of support for the devs...

IMHO - I always thought Diplomatic improvements to the game should be delivered as "side order" to the main dish and the main dish are the things mentioned above

Successfully updated karma reason!

We really need more of a focus more on the 4-6 levels.

Dont forget most of the new pacts are at the higher end tiers.So that helps.See I think this will make civ a playable straT.I dont really like the idea with the way this game is set up of being able to crush someone without getting any military.It would just seem wrong that someone with a big fleet of mixed ships would be losing and getting killed by someone without a fleet even.What would be cool is if we had some really awesome tecs that were linked to both civ and mil labs.You need 6 mil labs and 6 civ labs to get this awesome tec.You know what I mean.They need to add some more tecs for the higher tiers in civ labs.Maybe make trsining capships crew up to level 5 in the civ tree.More culture bonuses is what I suggest mostly for making it dangerous.Maybe an espionage tec that reveals what abilities caps and sb have could be around those tiers.

What if (just as an example) there was something like the "Industrail Juggernaurt" research ability, that allowed your structures, fleets etc. to be very rapidly built, also an increase in fleet capacity, if you are under threat. And could have multipliers to fleet capcity depending on how many allies you have.

Tec and vas have civ tecs like that.

It will make civs much more dangerous since you can build your defenses from it and make an eco.While a mil will be more risky since you will have no defenses.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I agree with everything neph said but alas I am likely to get none of it. Especially seeing that multiplayer is a small fraction of the player base.

[_]-Greyfox

Successfully updated karma reason!

I think a good reason to backstab someone could be that they result in a hostile take over. ie all planets ships and structures in an area are converted to your empire. it could the result of a tech that allows you to do the above if you take an opponents planet within a time limit of ending an alliance.

and another ability could be forced 'Forced Production' Which allows you to build one logistic or tactical structure(more at higher levels) on an allies planet for a cost and if they have the slots available. this could make back stabbing easier. as imagine how much easier it would be to grab someones planet if you were able to build a phase stabilizer or media hub in his grav well when his back was turned. meaning atleast as vasari that you could get untold amounts of units to his rear.

Or these could be race specific. the above could be vasari. while advent could have a tech that activates upon the formation of a truce called religious spread. that sows seeds of betrayal among allies fleet(that dont have to be used) but should the truce be terminated the allie looses fleet capacity to the advent as religious zealots choose to fight for their new religion instead of against it. the amount of fleet supply lost could be proportional to length of truce. And loss of fleet supply will also transfer to loss of ships ie. 1 TEC player has 70 supply and uses all of it when the loss occurs if he loses 10 supply that translates to a loss of ships equal or close to 10 supply (close being below 10 but never above)

Successfully updated karma reason!