Diplomacy: Whats the best attempt you have seen?

I think the best attempt I have seen at handling diplomacy was the rather simplistic but enjoyable approach used in Lord of the Realms.

It basically kept a running score on what the other faction leaders thought of you and you were able to directly influence that score by your actions. So, sending a lot if insulting comments to the Countess resulted in her opinion of you dropping rapidly, whilst flattering the bishop and sending him gifts saw your credit in his eyes rise appropriately.

I think the transparency of this system was its greatest asset. You knew more or less exactly what the other faction leaders thought of you and could pretty much predict their reactions and try and influence them.

What was lacking was the multi-faction aspect which would have allowed you to snitch and pass false allegations to faction leaders about other faction leaders. So, you couldn't send the Countess a copy of the letter from the Bishop which called her a 'horse-faced old crow', that would have added another whole aspect to the game.

Something like that would certainly raise the profile and importance of diplomats in MTW2, particularly if spies and assassins were able to intercept these notes and allow them to be re-routed via your own diplomats.

"Excuse me your Holiness but I thought you might be interested in seeing what the King of France has just written about you to the Holy Roman Emperor. Oh! and I think that new hat your wearing really does you justice by the way.":2thumbsup:

For me Paradox games have always had the best diplomacy handling. They've changed the model substantially in various games but they always seem to come up with something that a) is transparent and b) has plenty of scope. HOI2 in particular, had an excellent model.

To be honest, for deep grand strategy games they're pretty much the undisputed masters in my book but they definitely fall down on the 'light entertainment' stakes. You can't sit down and 'fire up a quick bash' with a paradox game.

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Originally Posted by FunkyDexter

For me Paradox games have always had the best diplomacy handling. They've changed the model substantially in various games but they always seem to come up with something that a) is transparent and b) has plenty of scope. HOI2 in particular, had an excellent model.

To be honest, for deep grand strategy games they're pretty much the undisputed masters in my book but they definitely fall down on the 'light entertainment' stakes. You can't sit down and 'fire up a quick bash' with a paradox game.

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Paradox games are great, but sadly as a company they have alienated a lot of gamers by there release and patch strategies of thier games. From what i have read that changed with HOI2, some call it support, some call it necessary fixes of a released beta.

As far as the diplomacy model in HOI2, yes it was pretty good, superior to MTW2 imho as well. However the resources in HOI2 play a big role as you needed them to run your economy, and trades helped diplomatic relations.

Additionally There were several political orientations in HOI2, and MTW2 is religous based (appropriately) so its a tough comparisson.

I have been a vocal critic of Paradox for many moons, but i will never deny the breadth of thier games and the depth. Johan makes a fine game, but the comparative diplomatic models is a hard comparisson based on the time frames of the games.

I think this really should go to an off-topic forum.

Moved to the Arena.

I'm having trouble thinking of many games with a decent diplomatic side to them. The only one that's coming to mind is Civ IV, which finally has a rational and predictable diplomatic interface that works in all situations. You know exactly what will please and anger people, you can tell specifically how they feel about you at all times, and you can repair relationships that you've damaged.

From reading this thread, it seems like transparency is the thing that people really want in diplomacy. As long as we understand why the AI makes the decisions that it does, people seem to be happy.

Like TinCow, I am having trouble recalling many games that have a strong diplomatic system. In general, those systems in games tend to be rather simplistic. Diplomacy in Civilization IV seems to work pretty well. I'm not really too fond of the diplomacy system used in the games developed by Paradox, but it is amongst the better ones.

I agree that transparency is important. You really need to have the means to see the AI's motives, or it will just seem illogical, which is frustrating.

Yes! I think thats the most important need. It does not have to be 100% accurate but most diplomatic agencies would keep a running assessment of what other governments and rulers thought of your country and how likely they were to be hostile or co-operative.

I can't really add anything else to what you guys have said. I can only agree that the best diplomacy systems are ones that are transparent, and where you can understand why the computer-controlled factions make the decisions they do.

By the way, Didz, I agree with your assessment of Lords of the Realm 2's diplomacy model. Yes it was simplistic, but it also worked in a way that made sense. :yes:

EDIT: It was also very amusing as well. If you look at the game from the perspective of sexual innuendo, many of the nobles' comments are pretty hilarious. :laugh4:

The Diplomacy in GalCiv2 is pretty good. It satisfies the transparency requirement at least. For each faction you see a slider showing how they feel about you, between the extremes of hatred and best buddies, with a text report showing the plus and negative modifiers, like a plus for trade relations, minus for militancy or good/evil alignment conflicts. It's also reflected in their language when they negotiate (text only), their willingness to trade, etc. There is even a Diplomatic Victory condition if you want to avoid full-scale military conquest, although that's a bit tedious to play out.

The diplomacy isn't perfect; I don't love the way civs tend to surrender to another faction when you're about to take their last planets(s) instead of negotiating a surrender or cease-fire alliance. There should be more game events that trigger choices along the good/evil axis, which is a big modifier for diplomacy. But it's still one of the better strategy games I've played that include a diplomatic element. You can also ignore playing the diplomatic side of the game completely, if you want to... assuming you're going for straight military conquest. That's another good game design (IMO). In the real world, diplomacy is often bypassed by strong military powers, so you shouldn't be forced into it, if you're playing a Ghengis Khan-type expansion.

Boo. I thought this was about Diplomacy, the all time classic board game.

Does anyone else remember board games?

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Originally Posted by English assassin

Boo. I thought this was about Diplomacy, the all time classic board game.

Does anyone else remember board games?

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Board games??

Hmmm..., for some reason those old days when we used to play Risk are coming back in mind.

Making a pact with some other player e.g. not to attack each other for x turns, or we unite against player x who is getting too powerful, or I attack you there to take continent X, instead of attacking me back, I'll retreat on continent Y, allowing you to take that...

And the arguments, anger, hatred, yelling and harshly discussing when somebody broke such a pact and the other one argued he didn't, and claims the other party misinterpreted the pact (I had an argument for about an hour once with a friend of mine. Imo, our pact meant don't attack for 10 turns, he claimed it was don't attack on the african continent for 10 turns. I was upset because he took a territory away from me in North America, thus preventing me from winning the game. Since we couldn't resolve the dispute, we decided to blow up the entire map...)

That's what happens when drunk law students play a board game and start inserting a diplomacy system with badly formulated and not written down treaties and conventions... :embarassed:

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Originally Posted by Didz

I think the best attempt I have seen at handling diplomacy was the rather simplistic but enjoyable approach used in Lord of the Realms.

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Ha, that's funny, LOTR2 is one of my favourite games of all time, but I never even bothered to look at the diplomacy system in it ~:) I guess that says something about the depth of that game.

Possibly the best diplomacy model I have come across is in Imperialism II. In that game, you have access to a chart which gives you not only an exact measure of your standing with every major power in the game, but with all the minor powers including the native American tribes. The chart also shows you the exact relationship every other major or minor power has with each other! This means you can get an exact picture of the world diplomatic situation in a matter of seconds.

You can influence your diplomatic standing in that game by (extensive) trade with other nations, by giving them money, by making alliances and pacts and by declaring war on countries they are at war with.

The diplomatic AI is also quite sensible. If you fall too far behind other powers in army, navy or tech they are likely to declare war on you. On the other hand, if you beat another nation down, the other AI powers will join in, and be just as likely to pinch the spoils from you at the last moment! The AI is never silly enough to declare war on you when it has no hope of victory either, so it behaves very sensibly in that respect too.

One of the features I like best in ImpII is the courting of minors. You basically have to compete to get ahead of the other majors in popularity. Then if another power declares war on that minor, the minor will come to you and ask for help, which means effectively that that minor nation along with its entire army is added straight to your empire. But other majors can do the same thing to you.

One often has a sense of a real intelligence behind the diplomacy in ImpII. That's pretty rare in games, most of them do really stupid stuff when it comes to diplomacy.

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Originally Posted by AndresTheCunning

Board games??

Hmmm..., for some reason those old days when we used to play Risk are coming back in mind.

Making a pact with some other player e.g. not to attack each other for x turns, or we unite against player x who is getting too powerful, or I attack you there to take continent X, instead of attacking me back, I'll retreat on continent Y, allowing you to take that...

And the arguments, anger, hatred, yelling and harshly discussing when somebody broke such a pact and the other one argued he didn't, and claims the other party misinterpreted the pact (I had an argument for about an hour once with a friend of mine. Imo, our pact meant don't attack for 10 turns, he claimed it was don't attack on the african continent for 10 turns. I was upset because he took a territory away from me in North America, thus preventing me from winning the game. Since we couldn't resolve the dispute, we decided to blow up the entire map...)

That's what happens when drunk law students play a board game and start inserting a diplomacy system with badly formulated and not written down treaties and conventions... :embarassed:

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That was what was so great about it. It was even better if you were playing Apocalypse, for some reason that game just lent itself to back stabbing. Probably it was the nuclear weapons...

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Originally Posted by AndresTheCunning

Board games??

Hmmm..., for some reason those old days when we used to play Risk are coming back in mind.

Making a pact with some other player e.g. not to attack each other for x turns, or we unite against player x who is getting too powerful, or I attack you there to take continent X, instead of attacking me back, I'll retreat on continent Y, allowing you to take that...

And the arguments, anger, hatred, yelling and harshly discussing when somebody broke such a pact and the other one argued he didn't, and claims the other party misinterpreted the pact (I had an argument for about an hour once with a friend of mine. Imo, our pact meant don't attack for 10 turns, he claimed it was don't attack on the african continent for 10 turns. I was upset because he took a territory away from me in North America, thus preventing me from winning the game. Since we couldn't resolve the dispute, we decided to blow up the entire map...)

That's what happens when drunk law students play a board game and start inserting a diplomacy system with badly formulated and not written down treaties and conventions... :embarassed:

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The creator of Diplomacy recounts one incident when, playing in a lab after working hours, a fellow player stole his orders and threw them into a locked bin, causing him to miss the deadline and resulting in his units standing idle. There are other accounts of players finding out about the personal lives of other players (eg. England is having an affair with Italy's wife), and blackmailing them with the information (support me into Belgium or the IRS finds out about your interesting little side business).

In computer games, Alpha Centauri had a potentially interesting diplomacy system, with factions favouring a particular social values system and turning against those who ran their societies differently. With 4 sets of 3, it was the most sophisticated simulation of social engineering I've ever seen in a computer game, and to some extent can even be used to model RL.

From memory:

Society: Democracy - Police State - Fundamentalist
Economics: Green - Planned - Free Market
Values: Wealth - Power - Knowledge
Advanced: I can't remember, I was never that interested in those

So the western world is mainly Democracy/Free Market/Wealth, with some tending towards Knowledge, and most people trying to make the switch to Green. Their economies are very powerful indeed, but there is massive pollution, and the populace doesn't like foreign wars. China is Police State/Free Market/Wealth, which means pollution once again from Free Market, but the Police State means they don't efficiently use all the resources that are gained from that economic system. Saddam's Iraq was Police State/Planned/Power, which meant a hugely inefficient economy and even less efficient government, but it also meant a very effective lockdown on unrest.

Democracies don't like Police States or Fundamentalist states, while Free Market economies are antithetical to states wanting efficient Green economies or properly managed Planned economies, and citizenries with one values system can never understand why anyone would think differently, and try to convert them.

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Originally Posted by AndresTheCunning

Board games??

Hmmm..., for some reason those old days when we used to play Risk are coming back in mind.

Making a pact with some other player e.g. not to attack each other for x turns, or we unite against player x who is getting too powerful, or I attack you there to take continent X, instead of attacking me back, I'll retreat on continent Y, allowing you to take that...

And the arguments, anger, hatred, yelling and harshly discussing when somebody broke such a pact and the other one argued he didn't, and claims the other party misinterpreted the pact (I had an argument for about an hour once with a friend of mine. Imo, our pact meant don't attack for 10 turns, he claimed it was don't attack on the african continent for 10 turns. I was upset because he took a territory away from me in North America, thus preventing me from winning the game. Since we couldn't resolve the dispute, we decided to blow up the entire map...)

That's what happens when drunk law students play a board game and start inserting a diplomacy system with badly formulated and not written down treaties and conventions... :embarassed:

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Hah, that was always the best part of Risk. In high school, there was a group of 5 guys, including myself, that used to play Risk together regularly. In one particular game I controlled South America and was trying to advance into North America. My friend Matt controlled Africa and was trying to move on Europe. We made a formal pact not to attack across the Brazil/North Africa crossing for several turns, so I withdrew almost all of my armies from there and sent them north.

After taking a beating in Europe, Matt decided the only chance he had at staying alive was getting out of Africa, so he violated the pact and attacked me in South America. He had a VERY difficult time making agreements with any of us for the next year and a half. Since we always played with the same group of people, everyone remembered his betrayal and didn't trust him. It was hillarious, especially since I ended up beating him in South America and won that game.

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Originally Posted by TinCow

From reading this thread, it seems like transparency is the thing that people really want in diplomacy. As long as we understand why the AI makes the decisions that it does, people seem to be happy.

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Transparency is important, it's true. But the other thing I like is personality. One of the things I've always liked about Civ is that the Mongols behave like Mongols should (or at least how I imagine they should). And Ghandhi behaves like I think Ghandhi should etc. When you first encounter Mongols in a Civ game, you start to sweat; when you first encounter Ghandhi, you relax. Some of the Civ4 personalities are quite maddening, they are so well realised (Catherine, Isabella, Louis...). It's partly a matter of differentiating AI stances and priorities; but also a matter of writing and chrome.

TW has made strides in improving the player generals, but the AI generals and factions still feel bland and generic. People used to say Takeda were more treacherous and Shimazu more trustworthy, but that aspect was not pronounced and has not been developed.

I don't know what game has a good attempt at diplomacy, but I know this: as long as it's easy/good to handle and not too difficult, is clear and exciting enough. If developers can make superior human-like diplomacy that'd be great, but if we have to settle for something less then I want it to be simple and good, well-functioning instead of messy and difficult.

The most important thing would have an ai that can actually use diplomacy. RTW diplomacy could be good (it would need some tweaks, such as being able tell what they think of your faction, to be great) but because of the abysmal diplomatic ai it is rather bad. So when one look at good diplomacy in a game, the ai will invariably play a part.

Now a game with good diplomatic system and ai that actually can handle it, can't really decide on one yet, perhaps EU III, possibly.