On AI and Diplomacy

[Odin]

Interesting Seasoned Alcoholic (great nic).

Never played CTP2, as you describe it its certainly a good option. Only thing I might add would be the religion factor. Granted as a catholic you might have a good repore with a muslim leader, but if other catholics are sending crusades against him he might start to dislike catholics altogether.

MTW already has influence for kings which dosent seem to matter to much in my diplomatic actions. The system you mention does it have variables for the prestige of the players? If my 5 influence king wants to befriend your 1 influence king, in that system is more apt to make the pact?

One of the aspects that isnt in MTW is the perception of the power of kingdoms. When the pope made an edict kingdoms listened, when England weighed in on the French people listened (sometimes). So expanding on this point, the system you present is a good one, splash in the subtleties of influence, or "titles" influence into the impact of the negotiations and now we have something pretty dynamic.

[Seasoned Alcoholic]

MTW already has influence for kings which dosent seem to matter to much in my diplomatic actions. The system you mention does it have variables for the prestige of the players? If my 5 influence king wants to befriend your 1 influence king, in that system is more apt to make the pact?

If you were a world superpower for example (in terms of both military and economic strength), when dealing with lesser nations you would usually choose a Kind tone in diplomacy. This is because you are in a sense 'looking down' upon your smaller and weaker rivals (this would usually improve your standing amongst nations). On the other hand, if you were a minnow in a pond of bigger fish, you would usually select a Neutral tone, because you don't have the power to concern your rivals. Most are suspicious of a superpower's motives, and these would be closely watched by the AI.

Basically if you were a superpower hell-bent on destroying the world, backstabbing your weaker allies and threatening every civilizarion you encountered, nobody would want to deal with you in diplomatic negotiations (at least this is realistic ).

Its a shame that Influence doesn't seem to come into play as often as it should do, as you've highlighted. The ISF feature was used rather than influence in CTP2, so basically the AI would treat you as you have already treated others, but this would depend on the AI's core attitudes. For example:

* Elizabeth I (English) - Aggressive Imperialist

These attittudes towards expansion, recruitment, construction, diplomacy and so on were quite broad, as there were a number of variations such as:

* Isolationist Autocratic
* Militaristic Expansionist
* Agreeable Trader

You already see elements such as this present in RTW (I'm not sure about MTW as I haven't played it ) in the AI's recruitment and construction biases. EG Balanced Caesar, Craftsman Napoleon, Comfortable Stalin etc.

[Spartiate]

Lots and lots of good points here.I particularly like the ideas put forward by Seasoned Alcoholic from Civ2.I would however add something else to the whole diplomacy section of the game.I believe we should have a scale or a rating with each faction even if it was something simplistic like the progress bar in MTW to show your standing in the GA mode.For instance if you formed a trade agreement with a faction you might move up the scale to 1 with that faction.If you married one of your Princes to the youngest Princess of a rival faction you might move up the scale with THAT faction to 2.If you married one of your Princess's to the heir of another faction thus making her the future Queen then you should move up to 4 (just as an example,i'm still making this up) on the scale.Also this might unlock further Diplomacy Options that might have been greyed out on the options list earlier.When the heir becomes King and your beloved daughter becomes Queen you would then have even FURTHER options in your dealings with that faction e.g most favoured trading nation, guarantees of military assistance in the case of an attack by an outsider not allied to that faction.If you attacked someone without first declaring war or maybe even without letting your ally know about it maybe you would move back down the scale with that faction and even with some other factions you are not even dealing with yet (a negetive scale ranking).
I think religious agents should also have some diplomacy and conversion options e.g dropping an Iman on to a Catholic General might reduce that mans faith(or strengthen his resolve in case of failure) or even start to convert him if his faith is low enough.What if this could be done to Kings or Heirs e.g conversion of state religion could become a possibility and maybe opening up the tech tree for new buildings.Maybe even the formation of a secular state with freedom of religion (imagine the loyalty issues arising from these examples).

Okay i'm done.Just a few ideas i threw out there.Good?Bad?Probably too hard to implement.