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

[Ituralde]

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! (Don't we have an 'evil' smilie here?)

Cheers!

Ituralde

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

[Ignoramus]

Thanks a lot Ituralde.

[r johnson]

[/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.
[/QUOTE]

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.

[Anardil]

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.

[Alien_Tortoise2345]

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

[zakalwe]

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?

[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.

[Ituralde]

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:

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.

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?

Cheers!

Ituralde

[Mount Suribachi]

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

[edyzmedieval]

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

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

[BeeSting]

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.

[IrishArmenian]

Sounds really good.

[Myrddraal]

I think some of you are wrong when you say there is nothing to indicate that Diplomacy will be usefull and affect the game. I think this implies that:

AI factions can now have their view towards you altered in degrees. This means the player’s behaviour in diplomacy will actually effect what they have to face in their campaign.

We then applied the same philosophy of exposing a shift in stance from the actual act of diplomacy, out into the whole faction relations system that tracks what every faction thinks of every other faction. When things either break down between two factions, or relations improve – the player is notified.

I also think that a knowledge of how strong an alliance is will help us to know if we really can expect any help or if they are just waiting to betray us. I think this will clarify a lot of the seemingly random behavior.


In any case, I hope so.

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?

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

Again, I'm not sure you right:

and then… tuning and testing – Something that the mod community may well also be able to dabble in without too much issue.

To me it reads the mod community may be asked to help with tuning and testing. I don't know how you could think this is a bad thing Ituralde... It's something I beg CA to carry out. A small hand picked group of testers, who have experience of how the totalwar series works in detail would be a great thing.

[Ituralde]

Well, I guess that would be the third interpretation for that sentence and that's exactly why I didn't quite get its meaning. I was just throwing a couple of random guesses there, which does not mean that I believe in any of them.
My hope is though, that they meant the easy modability with that statement.
And while I agree with you that working with some mod-members would certainly benefit the game, I think there are better ways to communicate a mod-maker beta-test than hiding it in such cryptic lines.

Cheers!

Ituralde

[Lusted]

For all of you worried that Ca are just focusing on graphical touch ups to diplomacy and not improving the core ai:

In Medieval II, the AI will not only remember previous dealings you've had with it but your dealings with other factions, too. It'll then base its stance towards you on all of those factors.

We're making the campaign map AI far more proactive than before. You'll find that your homeland will be attacked a lot more.

What's more, once your medieval empire becomes overwhelmingly powerful, you'll quickly find your rivals rallying together to oppose your expanding kingdom, a feature which the team hopes will make the game challenging from beginning to end

http://www.computerandvideogames.com...42571&skip=yes

Talking of the campaign map, there are new agents, improved diplomacy, and improved trade, as well as a host of new buildings added to the tech tree; new sabotage and espionage options,

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/m...4512&page=2&q=

The diplomacy system has been improved. We're going to give the player a lot more information about how the artificial intelligence feels both about them and about the offer on the table. However, at the same time the AI will take offence at insulting offers and will have a better memory of past dealings. You should be able to trust your allies, but only up to a point.

We're definitely committed to improving the AI on both the campaign map and battlefield and plan to make a significant step forward from Rome.

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/m...ml?sid=6146146

We've also introduced a new recruitment system, a new enhanced system for the treatment of religion, enhanced diplomacy, new trade options, improved missions, improved sabotage and espionage, improved AI, new tech tree buildings and new agent characters.

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/699/699515p1.html

[A.Saturnus]

I also think that a knowledge of how strong an alliance is will help us to know if we really can expect any help or if they are just waiting to betray us. I think this will clarify a lot of the seemingly random behavior.

That depends. As Doug-Thompson's post that is now making my sig says, the problem of the diplomatic behavior of the AI was not just that it was acting randomly but that it was acting insanely. Degrees of strength of an alliance make only sense if the AI doesn't complete ignore it. In ROME the AI often could not resist blocking a port if it had a fleet at hand. The AI could often gain nothing of it and it broke alliances that were profitable just to seek a ceasefire in the next round. Knowledge about how strong the alliance is doesn't help if alliances are at risk due to obsessive-compulsive behavior.