08-06-2002 03:45									#1
	FIRAXIS: Diplomacy and AI. Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

Here's some ideas I wrote up in another forum:

"As for diplomacy, I'd like to see full Arms Agreements, the ability to give units to another civ, reworked MPPs, improved AI, and the ability to coarse civs/nations/empires into "revolution."

Full AAs are self-explanatory. Basically, when you sign, you are forced to cut down military production, of any kind. Those should be simple to implement, as you only need to tweak governor settings a bit. If the player breaks the agreement, the AI becomes hostile towards the player and may declare war, depending on their(or your) military strength. Basically, this would either lead to peaceful relations with a rival civ, and lessen the chance of war, or strengthen hostility and cause war.

Having the ability to give away units to allies is also self-explanatory. Giving away units would strengthen ties with your ally, and would not require you to go to war, to help that civ out.

MPPs, under my thinking, would work differently. For a civ to agree to an MPP, they have to be either tolerant of you, or be polite towards you. If they Hostile, Furious and Annoyed, they will never sign an MPP with you, because they feel you will betray them. No matter how much gold you add to the table, they will never give in, and might become more annoyed with you. Furthermore, MPPs will no longer be based on turns, but based on how the AI feels towards the deal. If they feel they want to cancel, they can at any time, and vice versa. Also, as long as the AI keeps the deal, they will always be polite, or tolerant of you. When they drop the deal, their opinion of you can change, depending on what you do.

As for the AI, I'd like to see it be tweaked to respond properly to certain situations. As an example, in my current games, when I offer gifts, the AI's opinion of me never changes. I'd like their disposition to change accordingly. If I offer the AI a free tech or a substantial ammount of gold(lets say: 10 in anciest, 50 in middle, 100 in industrial, 200 in modern), they will become more friendly towards me and our relations can be repaired.

The "revolution" concept is based loosely on the PC game currently in the works, called Republic: The Revolution. Basically, the citizens of an empire can become unrest, and barbarian, if they feel their nation isn't progressing enough. They will become so unrest, that they will overthrow their governemnt, and change to a more viable form, based on current in-game statistics. For example, if I'm running my empire under the red banner, and my economy is healthy, and my people are happy(basically, I'm ranked #1 and #2 in all categories), the citizens of the former will either switch to my government type or seceede into my empire, becoming my ally. If I'm not doing so well, they will switch to another government or join a rival empire, where they can become either your enemy or an ally, depending, on that empire's disposition towards you.

Another way to cause a revolution is to send a diplomat into a rival nation; inciting riots, giving powerful speeches, and therefore, conforming the people into your way of thinking. Once a few cities and the capital descend into civil unrest, the nation will overthrow their leader, and will automatically join your empire. However, if that nation is a dictorial, tyrannical form of government, you'll have a hard time converting the people, because their resistance will be quelled by military police. Therefore, you will either need to send military units to help the resisters, or chance it, and see if the resisting force can fight off the military(there will be a few units that will still be against the revolution; these will need to be destroyed; since production has stopped, the leader can longer build anymore units, so he'll use the remaining forces to counter-attack the revolutionaries)

The "revolution" concept will allow non-warmongers to play a peaceful game, and expand their borders(almost) without starting wars."

That's my bag. I hope Firaxis reads, or at least, skims through these, and takes some notes.

Thanks for reading.

EDIT: BTW, I realize that there are some similarities to the "initiate propaganda" option, in my revolution method, but I feel it would make the game more in-depth and much more fun for us non-warmongers.

Last edited by Propaganda on 08-06-2002 at 04:00