Medieval 2: Total War Designer Diary #1 - Introducing the New Diplomatic System

Just found this linked over at the .com.
Wanted to share it with you before I read, gonna post my oppinion about it afterwards:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/...&q=total%20war

Should also make for a really good addition to the post below me, but I'd rather start a new topic so that everyone notices it.

Well, my firs impression is quite good. Although the lack of things to haggle about taken from the Diplomacy screens is a bit meager, if they fulfill everything they have mentioned in the article and it actually works in the game, then M2:TW will really have made a good progress. I especially like the part where you can tailor the Diplomacy to the needs of another faction. You need military aid? Desperately? Well, I'll give it to you, but I'm gonna make you bleed for it! :2thumbsup: (Don't we have an 'evil' smilie here?)

Cheers!

Ituralde

P.S: Note that there are also screenshots of the Diplomacy menu available!

Thanks a lot Ituralde.

[/QUOTE]These points include the AI faction's military and financial power, its reputation, its relationship with your faction, and anything that the AI is known to be actively seeking from you. After all, there is no point in asking a very poor faction for a lot of money, as that's something that it may not be able to comply with. If that same faction however had lots of military forces, perhaps it could be asked for assistance in a war-- so when you deal with the French diplomatically, you will hear a Frenchman delivering the dialogue.
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I really like the diplomatic side to MTW2, it sounds like it's going to be alot more realistic. Although the idea of accents would be pointless for myself as i don't have any speakers.

Yeah I don't care what they do with the sound, as I turn it off anyway. I get tired of listening to the same things over and over again. As for diplomacy, it will be nice to have to AI act smarter when it comes to that. They need to stop having AI that asks for a ceasefire and demands their provinces be returned when they are getting owned.

Good. Saves me having to open another window to check whose allied with who.

I think a good point made elsewhere about this news is that while this clears up the issues of feedback and understanding, there is nothing here to suggest that Diplomacy will be any more useful than in RTW. Will alliances matter?

Hopefully promises of military assistance from the AI will actually lead them to send armies to assist you, and failure to fulfil a promise to the AI will generate antagonism.

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Originally Posted by Furious Mental

Hopefully promises of military assistance from the AI will actually lead them to send armies to assist you, and failure to fulfil a promise to the AI will generate antagonism.

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Yes basicaly only time AI would help you is if you fought someone right beside their army. And you would need to create that situation.

Any improvement to Rome’s diplomacy system will be appreciated but I am wondering what if any affect agents may play in the A.I’s outlook toward you.

If your assassins can not be seen destroying buildings or assassinating the blue bloods then their affect on diplomacy may be nothing but what about Merchants or Priests?

If you have these folks in their territory I wonder if the A.I. will draw the logical conclusions and realize the root of their problems?

Looks to have taken a very EUII like approach with "reputation" and what not, but it certainly looks alot more promising, especially if the AI uses it properly, which will obviously be key over what you do with it.

The screen did not show a listing of your allies and enemies, only his. I need to have a little reminder from time to time of who I am officially at war with to include that in my negotiations.

mfberg

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/ima..._screen002.jpg

I don't see any difference between RTW and M2 TW in diplomacy section, except few things.


And Byzantine coat of arms is apsolutely the same as modern Serbian.

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/cs-sr_pr.html

Well about time too - I've been banging on for years about the diplomacy system from SMAC being light years ahead of TW diplomacy, and that game was released 8 years ago.

However, as other posters have alluded too, a feedback & reputation system is all well and good, but how will the AI behave? Will they still demand 5800 florins a turn for the next 7 turns in return for your map? Will your diplomat still lose reputation points when the AI makes these ridiculous demands? Will alliances still be as worthless as they have been previously?

Diplomacy work in EU2 almost perfect and it seems that CA decided to use what already work.
But who knows?

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Originally Posted by DukeofSerbia

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/ima..._screen002.jpg

I don't see any difference between RTW and M2 TW in diplomacy section, except few things.


And Byzantine coat of arms is apsolutely the same as modern Serbian.

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/cs-sr_pr.html

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I allready pointed it. Now for a I soppouse more real Byz flag
http://www.oramaworld.com/images/flags/4b_300.jpg
As you see, on Byz flag are ß not C (or S (С) iin Cyrilic letters.). We Serbs modified that banner and put C instead of ß. The Byz should mean something like "King of Kings, ruling over Kings". At least that's what I found out. I would like to know if others know a diferen't meaning. And about the meaning of Serb one, you will have to wait antill we agree what excatly do we mean with four S, which will take us some time. Let's say 300 years?

And I agree with Mount Suribachi, all this is good to us as all those trailers were. Thay were all in all worthless in judging excatly how will AI behave. Untill we buy the game we won't know.

Sounds good and all but untill i see evrything myself im not getting to excited.

I think they couldve done a lot better. I heavily doubt they read any of our diplomacy threads.

Looks nice, but as has perviously been stated, it is not so much setting up deals that is the issue so much as to how the AI factions react to those deals and whether their responses have any connection to their situation.

Sueing for peace and attacking in the same turn, betraying an ally when you are losing battles on other fronts. Stuff like that...

As for the Worsening Relations thing, it sounds like the Transgression warnings we already have in RTW. The question is will we be able to work out what this supposed transgression is this time...

The designer definitely focusses too much on secundary points. That you'll know when you offended the other as a nice touch but it's pointless if the offended acts in the same random way factions do in ROME. It's not enough to give the player more options, these options have to make an actual differences. In ROME, whatever you do a faction close to you will attack you sooner or later, even if its trade is dependent on you and it is at war with three other factions.
The diplomatic behavior of the AI in ROME is that of a madman. If that doesn't change, diplomatic options are a waste.

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The designer definitely focusses too much on secundary points. That you'll know when you offended the other as a nice touch but it's pointless if the offended acts in the same random way factions do in ROME. It's not enough to give the player more options, these options have to make an actual differences. In ROME, whatever you do a faction close to you will attack you sooner or later, even if its trade is dependent on you and it is at war with three other factions.
The diplomatic behavior of the AI in ROME is that of a madman. If that doesn't change, diplomatic options are a waste.

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Agreed. There's absolutely no connection between how the AI behaves diplomaticly and how it behaves outside diplomacy, and the situation on the campaign map. Factions down to one province wouldn't accept peace even for money, or even demand that you become protectorate. If you were an AI's protectorate, they would often still attack you regardless, ditto if you're paying huge tributes to them. There's absolutely no coherency.

Not too impressed. I think it's okay.
I'm still buying Medieval TW II.

Many making the same good point, that feedback is one step but the core AI is what will really make this work. I can imagine it's insanely difficult coding but, with my title being what it is, I have to be hopeful.

That said, all the writing I did for the diplomacy doc on Rome, though it wasn't a waste, should have included a lot of disclaimers. I asked a lot of questions, both on many boards and privately to CA staff, about the weird behaviours (like refusing protectorate even with a cash bonus and after having their empire cut in half) and got no anwers. So I made a lot of guesses.

Perhaps there were no answers because, for Rome, the answers would have been alarming?

At any rate, here's hoping for M2:TW

I agree with all here: If the diplomacy does not connect with the Campaign AI, then the diplomacy is worthless. And if the campaign AI is poor, then diplomacy is made further worthless.

I regarded RTW diplomacy as a complete failure. I never used it and considered attempts by the AI to engage in diplomacy as an annoyance.

This is promising, but everything hinges on the AI. To play this game, I will have to buy a new computer (since mine just fried). Because of this, I am certainly going to wait for Orgah reviews on AI before I go throw away $1,000.00 on a new computer just to play a TW game. (Since I play nothing else)

At least we can enjoy the orgy of screenies that gamespot provides us.

After reading the article, I also got the impression that CA thinks the biggest problem with the diplomatic system was a lack of transparency. Many of us, meanwhile, think the big problem was a lack of sanity.

I will be glad to see more of exactly what's going on, however.

Just wanted to let you know that CA has added the Developer Diary I linked in my first post to www.totalwar.com. While not having compared them word for word they seem to contain the same text, except for the last paragraph:

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What’s next here?

For us, adding in more speech than we’d originally planned, and then… tuning and testing – Something that the mod community may well also be able to dabble in without too much issue.

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Don't know what to make of that last statement though. Does it mean that the diplomacy sytem will be easily moddable or does it mean that they will test and tune and once they realize that they've run out of time hope that the modding community can continue their work? :inquisitive:

Cheers!

Ituralde

It reads to me that it will be possible to mod the diplomatic speeches.

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Originally Posted by Mount Suribachi

It reads to me that it will be possible to mod the diplomatic speeches.

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Exactly. Not a big deal. I was hoping diplomacy to be modded... :shame:

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Originally Posted by Doug-Thompson

After reading the article, I also got the impression that CA thinks the biggest problem with the diplomatic system was a lack of transparency. Many of us, meanwhile, think the big problem was a lack of sanity.

I will be glad to see more of exactly what's going on, however.

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Sig

And how about a "Make Demand" option for, "Get the h*#@! out of my kingdom!" for when the troops of a faction you're not at war with just sort of show up within your borders, and you don't want to attack them because you don't want full-out war.

From reading the article, it seems they've improved the feature for us to know how the AI faction feels about the player's faction but nothing about fixing the AI's suicidal diplomatic policies such as taking on world and declaring war upon factions that are 20 times more powerful than it. RTW diplomatic AI does not consider before going to war the economic benefits/loss for fighting a faction. And it does not seem to recognize that it is losing. It would be down to its last city and still tell you to "Fk off!" even when you offer peace out of pitty. C'mon even the suicidal japanese empire was not that stupid. you then wake up to reality that this is indeed a game and you are arguing with a horrible AI script.