About Diplomacy: What Are Treaties and How to Get Them Respected.

[unmerged(490380)]

(This has also been posted in the suggestions thread)

I can just use a non aggression treaty to enter someone's territory and surround his capital, then attack him.

Actually that would be the exploit... But we are not even there yet! In fact You can always do that: even with no treaty, even if we barely know each other the AI never complains about me enter their territory ...only occasionally the AI attacks when realizes we are being too cocky with the units we push into their territory.

We Should have warnings and then a declaration of war. Maybe not for just one unit which could have entered by mistake or auto-following an enemy after an attack... let's say if 3 units are in the enemy land he should get angry.

Let's start from the beginning:
This is the only game of this kind that introduced borders (together with Elemental, while Age of Wonders has something similar but it's not quite a territory) the AI players though don't seem to be concerned at all about their land!!! Very very very wrong. I don't want enemy armies enter my land, why should they allow me to do that?

These are the the diplomatic condition we can have right now:
War - Peace - Non Aggression Treaty - Alliance

I have played several games now but I still can't quite make the difference between the three peaceful treaties.

They should be:

Peaceful: we are not at war, no condition.
Non Aggression Treaty: Don't enter my territory and we are fine.
Alliance: You can enter my territory and we have to declare war (and actually fight) the same enemies.

OR

Peaceful: Don't enter my territory and we are fine.
Non Aggression Treaty: We can enter each other territory for x number of turns
Alliance: You can enter my territory and we have to declare war (and actually fight) the same enemies.

NOTE:
In this game there are gods, that offers a great way to have treaties respected:
Breaking a treaty could just be considered an insult to the god the other player is closest to (if we want to be sophisticated and cool) or it could be a generic insult to gods in general. The insulted gods (or god) would then give HELL to the player that broke the treaty, maybe starting with simple demands like build a temple to ask for forgiveness... If the player is VERY close to a specific god IMO that god should be even more upset and really attack the traitor. There could be divine units attacking the traitor's territory, there could be area spells cast over his capital and armies...

That would give an extra reason for player to worship gods! For protection against traitors, if you are very close to a god nobody should dare mess with you diplomatically! (NO OTHER GAME OFFERS THAT) ...But that means that the AI should learn how to build temples as well...

As it is now I have no idea what the diplomacy system is.

Opinions...?

 

[UncleJJ]

I am still trying to figure out how the diplomacy works, but here are two observations I have made about the terms Tresspassing and Border Tensions.

At Peace and maybe Non Aggression (I need to check this), but not for full Alliance status there is a negative for having a unit in their territory, even a green bat just moving through. This is called tresspassing and it seems to be a minus that increases by 1 for each of your units and each turn, so 3 units tresspassing for 3 turns is -9 and this can quickly be the trigger for war. If the units move out of their territory the negative seems to decay at about -2 per turn. That is one advantage of being allied, you can move through their territory without a serious malus.

At non aggression status there is another malus called Border Tensions and I'm not sure what causes this but a lot of border tiles adjacent to their tiles seems to increase it. In my game this is -23 and the most significant negative. When eventually I upped the status to full alliance (this cost 1100 mana I couldn't use anyway) this term dissappeared and I have exceptionally good relations with the second most powerful player. That frees up most of my army which I can use to crush the other players that he's at war with as well.

JJ

 

[unmerged(490380)]

Once in fact I made an alliance with a AI wizard, using lots of mana I didn't need, and just entered his territory surrounded his capital and killed him in two turns.

That's an exploit. A human player wouldn't have trusted me like that! At least the gods should sanction such behavior. This game has gods and therefore a supernatural way to enforce ethics. Games like Total War, which goes for realistic warfare have no way to do that, but here with gods there is an exceptional and relatively simple opportunity to enforce treaties.

 

[player1 fanatic]

The thing is, in this game there is not such thing as ending the treaty. Only "breaking it". AI breaks treaties all the time (usually when relations drop under some threshold), and doesn't get penalized for that. Player usually gets something like "treachery" penalty.

Anyway, when I am not in hurry, I let AI break the treaty and then consider going to war. Or wait a bit more until he makes a demand.

 

[Keioel]

My relations with them has never even gotten this far, shortly after meeting them they make a demand for gold and since the only option is war or accept I'm shortly at war with them.

 

[unmerged(494828)]

My relations with them has never even gotten this far, shortly after meeting them they make a demand for gold and since the only option is war or accept I'm shortly at war with them.

If you build a lot of units early, AI seem to come with much more peaceful proposals. Especially if they consider war with each other. Not sure about the diplomacy effect, though.

 

[ColdAshen]

Diplomacy is extremely basic, and I don't think border tention has anything to do with playing in their backyard, I never do it unless at war, yet I get border tention with those that have a border next to mine.
Yet other mages that are not close by seem to have no border tention, so It's the closeness of the border, not the tresspassing, in my experience anyway.

 

[unmerged(490380)]

The only sure thing for now is that the diplomacy "doesn't work as intended" since one of the tips during the loading screen seems to suggest the presence of lots of features regarding behaving diplomatically with the AI, which in fact are not there at all. (in case you guys haven't noticed I'll post that loading screen message when I get it again, or if someone else gets it, it would be interesting to have it here.)

 

[unmerged(502169)]

diplomacy has im my opinion 3 major draw backs:
1. breaking a alliance or peace must keep troops out of territory of the other nation, it should be impossible to place troops around a city, then break treaty and attack!
2. for outrageous demands of other leaders, I need more options than just "yes" or "war". They may just try a bluff, so I need the option to say a short "no". If the go for war then, it's their choice, but should not happen automaticly.
3. I need to be able to make treats like "leave my country now".