Treaty Editor

So, I had an idea for a new editor, but a mini one at that. When you enter diplomacy with another nation, the Treaty Editor would allow you to make advanced treaties that expire, have specific terms, affect multiple nations, and have names. You would only be able to sign treaties with nations which you have an embassy in. An embassy is a just a building TO tagged with "embassy", and to receive that tag it requires an Embassy FP. Here is a basic mock-up of the Treaty Editor

Spoiler:

First, you give your treaty a name, or you can let it randomly name itself. You set a duration for which it applies. You then select which nations are offering the treaty, and which are receiving. By a minimum, you and the target nation must be included. Additional nations are optional. All nations, both signing states and member states, must accept the treaty before it comes to pass. If just one nation rejects it it cannot be signed. That nation could, however, just be knocked off the list and then it would be signed.

You then pick your offers, and their demands. Some offers are attract them, such as a gift, while others are to scare them, such as threatening them by making it an ultimatum. Some terms persist even after the treaty expires, and those are marked with an asterisk. The effect a treaty has on your relations with the country is based on the contents of the treat. Each term has its own specific effect on relations. The sum of all of these term's effects will be the effect of the treaty.

Some terms are mutual, which means either both parties offer them or neither.

Also, Influence, a value I have mentioned earlier, determines the weight behind the terms made by each nation.

Just to make clear, you can enter diplomacy with other nations without having to use the Treaty Editor.

That's all for now. Give me your feedback on it. I think it will greatly help in adding depth to the game's diplomacy, which becomes very important in the later stages of the civilization stages.

This seems well thought-out, but I'm always weary of adding in such small editors. This is why I leave society stuff up to you.

I agree that it adds a lot of complexity, some of which unnecessary, but its optional, and so the player can conduct diplomacy without it.

Plus, it's mostly just an editor in name. It strikes resemblance to the diplomacy in many other strategy games.

I'm afraid that I'm against the idea... TOO MANY things to do... I like the simple way of playing, like in Spore, I don't like complex games where you need to think of everything, have many options to care... I'll leave the game in the middle... Unfortunately I don't have patience for such games, unless you could make it for 'Hard' game, keeping 'Easy' and 'Middle' simple.

As Nick said, this is just optional, as you are able to do diplomacy only and still be just fine.

Plus, many of these are diplomatic options one would find in most strategy games that involve diplomacy screens, like Total War and Civilization.

NickTheNick wrote:

Plus, many of these are diplomatic options one would find in most strategy games that involve diplomacy screens, like Total War and Civilization.

I agree, but we're not doing Civilization or anything, we're creating Thrive.
Anyway, if it's possible to create diplomacy without complexity, then I'm fine with it.

I wouldn't see it as a stand-alone editor but most as a way to interact with other species. I haven't read all of them, but it make sense and would be nice to play a game of offer/counter-offer with the AI. Might be hard to implement in a efficient way thought.

This remind me of the way Colonization/Civlization handled it and I always liked it.

While it is not an absolutely necessary feature, I agree to add it to nice-to-have features.

[quote=FunnyGames]I'm afraid that I'm against the idea... TOO MANY things to do... I like the simple way of playing, like in Spore, I don't like complex games where you need to think of everything, have many options to care... I'll leave the game in the middle... Unfortunately I don't have patience for such games, unless you could make it for 'Hard' game, keeping 'Easy' and 'Middle' simple. [/quote]

I would also agree with making this feature optional in the sense that you can pass the game without doing more than have Ally/Neutral/Ennemy relation with other species. Negociating complicated treaty should only be done if you want to.

I like this. As an avid Civilization V player I find this is something really missing in strategy games. I do agree that it should be optional, however, because this could really scare off more casual players, but, as you said, that will definitely be optional. Great work again Nick!

Good Job Nick (as always :D)

I like this , it reminds me of Space Empires,Seven Kingdoms,Civ ( all 4x series that I love)

This will add Much more depth.

So, since I already created this thread for the Treaty Editor, I might as well extend it for diplomacy in general.

Now diplomacy is obviously a big thing in nation building. The current issue I face, however, is how the variable "Influence" will mathematically affect your effectiveness in diplomatic situations. All I know is that higher influence in relation to the country engaged in diplomacy with means more weight to your words.

Now, as Dani pointed out in his Crash Course AI thread, agents give certain weight to different options. For example, if I offer a deal to a nation in which I give them one city in exchange for another, the AI factors in things like the wealth of the city, the strategic importance, the potential use of the city I am offering, etc. Now what I want is that nations with higher relative Influence be able to get better deals with the AI, or affect the weights of the decisions in a way favourable to them. This would require a reasonable limitation though.

So I need help in two fields. First off, I need a mathematician to help specifically quantify diplomatic interactions into algorithms, and suggest how X influence affects it. Also, I need an AI coder to help specify how Influence could affect the AI decision making, and the feasibility of any suggested equations.

This is really all there is to finishing up the concept on diplomacy. After this, we will just have to assign weights to different diplomatic offers for the AI decision making to be balanced, so you won't be able to say buy 5 cities for 1 cow.

I see a problem here, There is a theory that Homo-Sapiens killed off Neanderthals (Neanderthals were different, we don't like difference (especially different SPECIES))

How will to nations of completely different species get along, they may not even be able to communicate well. (one might use low level sound waves that the other can't hear to communicate) or use bio-luminescence to communicate. And even if they could interpret each others languages, would they really get along with something that different, or would they be afraid and aggressive.

In the sci-fi (completely developed by scientists) documentary Alien Planet, the intelligent species on the planet could not understand the flashing on the probe and took the discs the probe was supposed to communicate with as something aggressive and trashed the probes.

If a species used hand signals to communicate, the other species might take the putting out of hands as aggressive and instantly attack, the brain structure of these creatures were most likely developed completely separately and they may even be UNABLE to communicate with each other due to these differences.

I think we should keep this in the back of our heads as we do this...

The two problems I see you posing are

• Failure of communication
  
• Relations affected by difference/similarities
  

(Thanks to Nimbal I now know we have a bullet list option)

I could think of some solutions to these, but like you said it is better to keep these at the back of the mind for the moment, until we address the aforementioned obstacles.

NickTheNick wrote:

So, since I already created this thread for the Treaty Editor, I might as well extend it for diplomacy in general.

Now diplomacy is obviously a big thing in nation building. The current issue I face, however, is how the variable "Influence" will mathematically affect your effectiveness in diplomatic situations. All I know is that higher influence in relation to the country engaged in diplomacy with means more weight to your words.

Now, as Dani pointed out in his Crash Course AI thread, agents give certain weight to different options. For example, if I offer a deal to a nation in which I give them one city in exchange for another, the AI factors in things like the wealth of the city, the strategic importance, the potential use of the city I am offering, etc. Now what I want is that nations with higher relative Influence be able to get better deals with the AI, or affect the weights of the decisions in a way favourable to them. This would require a reasonable limitation though.

So I need help in two fields. First off, I need a mathematician to help specifically quantify diplomatic interactions into algorithms, and suggest how X influence affects it. Also, I need an AI coder to help specify how Influence could affect the AI decision making, and the feasibility of any suggested equations.

This is really all there is to finishing up the concept on diplomacy. After this, we will just have to assign weights to different diplomatic offers for the AI decision making to be balanced, so you won't be able to say buy 5 cities for 1 cow.

Have you played many grand strategy games involving diplomacy? Civ IV has one of the most balanced and realistic ones I've ever seen. What effects will religion/culture have compared to the strategic needs of the nations? Would that vary from species to species?

I would also like to see peace, balance, and prosperity kind of settle over the world when most or all of the nations become dependent one one big power. Hegemonic systems usually are more prone to the actual maintenance of peace and stability whereas multipolar systems (operating under the silly "balance of power" concept), are intrinsically unstable.

I've played many grand strategy games involving diplomacy. It's why I contribute most to the strategy mode. Galactic Civilizations was one in which there was a variable in your nation called "Influence" which would increase your persuasiveness in diplomacy. I don't know the math behind it, however, and I can't think of a system for it, hence my plea for mathematical help. Discussions on religion and culture really don't belong on this thread. PM me or do some research on older threads. Most of the religious concept is the same, but culture I am revamping and will be posting on soon. Don't worry, those will vary.

Quote :

I would like to see peace, balance, and prosperity...

That will arise naturally without having to be hard-coded.

In regards to how influence will affect the "chances" of an A.I. accepting or rejecting a treaty here is a basic model.

I will call your civilizations influence on another, I.
The demands of the treaty I will call D.

D is a numerical representation of how demanding that treaty is, I.E. asking for more things or "valuable" actions increases D.

(I-D)=sigma.

where sigma is some threshold value for A.I.'s accepting a treaty. If sigma is greater than the threshold, the treaty will be accepted, if it is below, it will not be.

Of course, the next step would be to mathematically relate actions and demands to change I and D, and find an appropriate threshold value for sigma.

Does this sound like an appropriate model?

EDIT: It would have to be abs(I)-D=sigma.
Negative values coincide with hostile influence, Positive coincide with friendly.

That sounds good, but I was thinking of if I > D, then the offer is accepted. Nations always seek to get the most out of the deal for themselves.

NickTheNick wrote:

That sounds good, but I was thinking of if I > D, then the offer is accepted. Nations always seek to get the most out of the deal for themselves.

True. In this case the threshold value would be zero. I was trying to leave some flexibility for "stubborn" civilizations that may be difficult to appease. Or "friendly" civilizations who may be ok with the demands being lower than what they get in return I.E. having a negative threshold.

The most difficult part would be normalizing I and D so they always apply at any stage in the game. (and that Influence wouldn't swamp demand, or value, in the late game. Which is what you were discussing when you pm'd me.

Oh okay, that's genius then.

And yes, that is a very good point. I would think that since all nations more or less raise their influence at similar rates as they advance, the numerical difference between them would remain constant. I think that could work for influence.

Here is my sugestion about how to handle this:

Each part of a treaty is calculated independently of all other things. Each part has a value depending on what it is, for example, a gold payment value is the amount of gold. A tecnology is valued by how hard it is to get it (for the recieving party). Each one of those things get a weighted coeficient, so for example, a city is valued more than gold. Good things get a positive coeficient, bad things, negative. More important things get bigger coeficients.

Once all those values are calculated, the are added up together. If the resulting value is possitive, the deal is good for the recieving nation, if it is negative, it is bad.

Once that is done, you take both your influence and substract them. That will be the thereshold. If the resulting value is avobe the thereshold, it will accept the deal, if not, it wont.

Doing deals which benefit you decreases your influence with the nation you are doing the deal with. Deals that benefit the other nation will raise your influence with them. Whether a deal is good is taken from the raw value of the deal, without the influence thereshold.

Daniferrito wrote:

Here is my sugestion about how to handle this:

Each part of a treaty is calculated independently of all other things. Each part has a value depending on what it is, for example, a gold payment value is the amount of gold. A tecnology is valued by how hard it is to get it (for the recieving party). Each one of those things get a weighted coeficient, so for example, a city is valued more than gold. Good things get a positive coeficient, bad things, negative. More important things get bigger coeficients.

Once all those values are calculated, the are added up together. If the resulting value is possitive, the deal is good for the recieving nation, if it is negative, it is bad.

That's exactly what D is (well the opposite of it, just multiply by -1). The demand of the treaty based on all the individual components the treaty is made up of.

daniferrito wrote:

Once that is done, you take both your influence and subtract them. That will be the threshold. If the resulting value is above the threshold, it will accept the deal, if not, it wont.

Doing deals which benefit you decreases your influence with the nation you are doing the deal with. Deals that benefit the other nation will raise your influence with them. Whether a deal is good is taken from the raw value of the deal, without the influence threshold.

And this part would go into the determination of Influence for each of the civilizations. I don't think it's possible to have Influence as a single number. Each civilizations influence on another will have to be based on things like proximity, actions for/against each other, treaties existing between them, etc.

Well, yes, but i was just puting it exactly, not just as a number that is "somehow" calculated.

And yes, the influence is between two particular nations. That's what i said. In my post avobe i only mentioned it comes from previous agreements, but actually a lot of other facts outside the diplomacy menu will affect it.

Mouthwash wrote:

Have you played many grand strategy games involving diplomacy? Civ IV has one of the most balanced and realistic ones I've ever seen. What effects will religion/culture have compared to the strategic needs of the nations? Would that vary from species to species?

I would also like to see peace, balance, and prosperity kind of settle over the world when most or all of the nations become dependent one one big power. Hegemonic systems usually are more prone to the actual maintenance of peace and stability whereas multipolar systems (operating under the silly "balance of power" concept), are intrinsically unstable.

Yes I have played Civ, I have also played space empires, and many other great grand strategy games.
However this game is not Civ, it is Thrive.

Also it would vary from species to species, they may not even be able to communicate. I think you didnt actually read my post.

Peace would not settle easily in a world with multiple spaient species.You see how we as Humans react to people who are different, if it were a different species it would definetly NOT end in peace.

It would definetly NOT be a utopia.

We have to keep this in consideration.
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This system would be fun to prototype. (Maybe after the Microbe prototype I am developing is done.
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For the system itself, I feel we should at least take it into account that a species can be completely different.
We could make these species more 'stubborn' and a facist nation of a differnet species should have a very high negative relation when they become facist. This way it is still realistic and we dont have to take into account the insermountable 'communication between species' problem.

We should settle the influence calculations before getting into who to make stubborn and who not to.

I was planning for influence to be a single value for a nation that would apply for any nation they interacted with. I think it would be simpler that way. If you use the difference between the player's influence and the AI-that-they-are-interacting-with's influence, everything you mentioned, Rod, would be factored in. Relations would be factored in, and proximity could be as well if we add that in. Also, the other things you mentioned, namely past actions and treaties, would be factored in through relations. Those events would affect your relations with the country, which would in turn affect the weight of your offers, instead of having to be separate factors.

Let me point out that relations work in a simple manner reminiscent of Paradox Interactive games. Your relations with a nation are on a scale from -100 to 100.

So, there are two different options. Either...

A) Player_Influence > AI_Influence

or

B) Player_Influence < AI_Influence

The computer does this check when they enter diplomacy. Any changes to influence while the diplomacy window is open don't register in the diplomacy calculations until it is closed and reopened.

If A), then...

X + Y + Z = Weight of Player's offer to the AI

X + Z = Weight of what AI is expected to give

Where X is the value of the offer
Y is the influence of the player minus the influence of the AI, aka the difference
Z is the relations between the two countries

Only if the weight of the player's offer to the AI is greater than the weight of what the AI is expected to give will the AI accept.

If B), then...

X + Z = Weight of Player's offer to the AI

X + Z = Weight of what AI is expected to give

Where X is the value of the offer
Y is the influence of the AI minus the influence of the player, aka the difference
Z is the relations between the two countries

So, all in all, whichever country has the higher influence gets to have the difference between their influence and the other's influence added to the weight of their offers. If you guys have trouble understanding, I have an example with specific names and numbers.

Daniferrito wrote:

Here is my sugestion about how to handle this:

Each part of a treaty is calculated independently of all other things. Each part has a value depending on what it is, for example, a gold payment value is the amount of gold. A tecnology is valued by how hard it is to get it (for the recieving party). Each one of those things get a weighted coeficient, so for example, a city is valued more than gold. Good things get a positive coeficient, bad things, negative. More important things get bigger coeficients.

Once all those values are calculated, the are added up together. If the resulting value is possitive, the deal is good for the recieving nation, if it is negative, it is bad.

Once that is done, you take both your influence and substract them. That will be the thereshold. If the resulting value is avobe the thereshold, it will accept the deal, if not, it wont.

Doing deals which benefit you decreases your influence with the nation you are doing the deal with. Deals that benefit the other nation will raise your influence with them. Whether a deal is good is taken from the raw value of the deal, without the influence thereshold.

Why? If they need to make swords immediately to stop an invasion from a rivaling nation, and that requires (say) iron working, they would value philosophy more highly simply because it would be harder to get? I see a great many obvious holes in that scheme. Unless I'm misunderstanding you?

Also, if two techs are both required to research a more advanced one (my brain is still in Civ mode, although I assume it will work that way ), shouldn't the AI assign the pair a higher value than the sum of their independent values, rather than weighing each one purely on its own?