I think exchanging goods and techs in lieu of credits is a good idea. It would be easy enough to have a static conversions table (i.e. 1 deuterium = 5 credits). It would also be possible to have those values fluctuate according to supply and demand, though that might unnecessarily complicate things.

Instead of counter-offers, you could specify when making a demand that you wanted, for example, "5,000 credits [or approximate value in resources [and/or technology]]." That would give you the option of paying, for example, 2,000 credits and the rest in resources or research points.

i think that a market system for these resources is something new and gives the game a more economical gameplay. Managing your resources, or influencing the market by selling and buying resources at certain times might give you a extra boost in the long run. A fluctuating value for resources sounds good to me, but should be refined totally and might be very nasty to program depending on how big this is going to be, if it even makes your game.

If a "market" system were to be included, it would likely be added much later. I would definitely use a static conversions table first, and would not change it until all the core game features had been implemeneted. In this case, though, I think such a feature would ultimately prove to be one of those ideas that looks good on paper but never seems to work quite right in implementation.

The Civ III advisor guy was a really useful tool. Think about TNG... whenever Picard needed to interact with the Klingons, all he had to do was turn around and bounce his idea off of his chief of security, who would promptly tell him if it was a good idea or if he'd get stabbed in the face. Hell, he also had Troi to get a general idea of how other people thought/felt/reacted. In just almost every situation, decision makers have access to advisors for diplomacy.

Now, assuming the diplomacy AI actually has some "I" (which it should), then the computer already knows what would be required for a race/empire to accept a specific request such as friendship/affiliation/alliance/whatever. Now I'd assume that a certain level of treaties will require the level before it to exist. For example:

War -> Non-aggression-> friendship-> affiliation-> alliance (and anything I'm forgetting.) So, if you're at just a non-aggression, it should be impossible to make an affiliation treaty regardless of how much money you throw at them. Granted, in BoTF1, I can bribe the hell out of a minor race and then have them be members in two turns. But even then, I think diplomacy should have a specific chain to follow - just like researching technologies.

Now, it should also be impossible to step up to the next level of diplomacy on the next consecutive turn. For example, I shouldn't be able to go from War -> Non-aggression on turn 56 and then hammer out a friendship treaty on 57. There needs to be some time - a base amount (I dunno, 10 turns maybe) before you can proceed to the next level of diplomacy. That would allow for a "period of time" to pass where the trust of the other empire could be earned/improved (or lost.) Also, that number can increase based on the empire's/race's attitude of you. If they do love you to death, then you only have to wait the 10 turns. Any treaty request within that time frame is 100% guarenteed to be rejected/ignored. If they barely tolerate you, then the timeframe before ANY treaty is considered could be multiplied (by 10 or 20, maybe forcing you to wait 100-200 turns). If they are half-pleased with you, then the multiplier could be 5, requiring you to wait 50 turns before you can send a new peace treaty offer.

Now, nothing is stopping you from throwing money/resources/trade at them to help increase their attitude towards you, thus lessening the amount of time you spend in the 100% rejection area.

Sounds complicated? It's not really, and would help to incorporate a diplomacy advisor. If you're in the 100% rejection zone and you attempt to initiate diplomacy with a race, the little advisor will appear and tell you so (or even disable some of your diplomacy options) and give you a recommendation on how to improve the empire's attitude with you to reduce the time, if it could use improving. Also, it might be a good idea for the computer to track recent transgressions which might be contributing to the poor attitude of the race. If an empire's attitude of you is going down, then some adjustment must be getting applied. Perhaps all of the negitive adjustments in the last 100 turns could be recorded or the last 100 negitive trangressions, which ever is less, could be recorded. For example, if you keep blowing up the Rom's ships as they travel around, that would probably piss them off and your Romulan advisor might say, "Hey, if you want to improve their attitude, don't be a dick and blow up their ships, stupid," but in a nice way :p

Keep in mind, if the diplomacy AI is smart in any way, the majority of this information is already known by the computer or can be recorded easily, as I understand things (but I have very limited knowledge of the current system/design). After all, the AI needs to know when to accept any treaties you send and when to reject them.

Now, if you're beyond the time required to get a new treaty across, the advisor can make a recommendation of what it would take to get a treaty established. Again, the computer should already know what it will take, so this simply just requires some output onto the diplomacy interface.

Oh, and if you want to get things a tad more complicated, you could modify your advisor's attitude into your intel level. For example, if you're doing espinage on the Romulans, you might have a better idea of what they'd want for a treaty (but also run the risk of getting caught and lowering the Rom's attitude of you). This might be too complicated and/or impractical.

Another idea is to allow for a margin of error on the advisor's part, allowing for a chance for the advisor to be inaccurate, particularly at the beginning of the game. As time goes on and more and more dialog is carried with another race, the better your advisors get and are able to more accurately advise you of what to do and what not to do. If the game goes long enough, then your advisor could correctly you advise with 100% accuracy 95-99% of the time (no one is perfect, so s/he can never be 100% effecient 100% of the time.) Let me expand...

At the beginning of the game, you encounter the Romulans. With the new encounter, there WILL be people devoted to learning about the Romulans and studying how they react. Since it's a new encounter, any interaction with the Romulans would be a learning experience. So, while your advisor may suggest something, there's a good chance it won't be the best solution. Your advisor could say that sending the Romulans 10,000 credits would secure peace. In actuallity, it could be WAY more than neccessary... or down-right insulting (thus hurting their attitude of you).

As time goes on, that margin of error could diminish, thus allowing your advisor to be more accurate when advising. There also needs to be a chance that the advisor advises accurately, regardless of how much experience your faction has had with said empire.

Again, this might be more complicated than neccessary, but would add a bit more depth into the diplomacy aspect of BoTF2, which I thought BoTF1 was a bit... weak on.

The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of having a diplomatic advisor. I think Azh made a lot of good points. I've been tossing around a couple of ideas for how diplomacy should be implemented, and I think this could be made to work pretty well. I think I shall require the advisor to be a paperclip like in MS Office, but wearing a Starfleet communicator for the Federation, ridges and a sash for the Klingons, etc.

Yeh these are nice ideas. External Affairs is the department that will control these matters, so some sort of icon, menu or control interface for them in the diplomatic screen will be required. Having a designated advisor, or representative of the department would be the way to go, and how Azhdeen described the inter-relationship and interaction with diplomatic events and the AI is a solid and logical system - if it can be implemented..

Oh, and Neutral should *definitely* be a treaty status. It should be very possible to tell another empire "If you stay out of my sandbox, I'll stay out of yours." And if either side ignores it, there's going to be a brand new dust cloud in someone's sector.

By far the most complicated thing that will be needed (I think, keep in mind I don't actually know details of anything) is determining the relationship between intelligence and diplomacy. Even then, it's probably just going to be coming up with some math equation to crunch numbers and modifiers. And whatever number the computer comes up with results in the action that the computer will take (ie: saying sure or to go screw yourself.)

The advisor itself, on a basic level, would be rather easy to impliment since the computer **already knows what is required to accept a treaty** because it will have some sort of artifical intelligence. The computer has to make the decision of whether a treaty will be accepted or rejected, so it's just a matter of outputting that information in some sort of descriptive manner.

Things get complicated when you try to add error to the advisor (ie: try to make it more human and capable of mistakes). Go figure, the one time where being perfect is easier than being human :p

Well, there is a partial random component to many of the AI decisions in the game, including whether or not to accept a treaty. So there will always be some "error". The AI will not take any shortcuts, so when they propose a treaty, the other race will still weigh whether or not to accept in it the same way they would as if the proposal had come from a human player. They may accept it, or they may reject it. Granted, rejections may be less common, as the AI will only propose a treaty if there is a good chance that the other side will accept, but the decision structure is still the same.

Basically, the diplomatic advisor could calculate the desirability of a treaty without the random component, and could determine how likely the proposal is to be accepted based on how likely the needed desirability level is to be reached once the of the as-of-yet unknown random component has been introduced into equation. We could use the same logic for incoming diplomatic proposals--the advisor could say something along the lines of, "it would be wise to accept this proposal," or, "this arrangement would be disasterous!"

As for the relationship between intelligence and diplomacy, I think the best approach is one of ambiguity. Certain intelligence events could adjust some of the diplomatic relations modifiers, but the reasons for these changes do not necessarily need to be known or tracked by the diplomacy logic.

Perfect. That sounds solid and gives players an excellent basis idea how the other empires/races feel. I'm liking it.

Just make sure that I have the option to either execute or simply slap my advisor for giving me bad info or attitude. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to smack that Civ III guy for being nasty to his god.

One thing I want to point out, though, is that I think it's a very bad idea to have a forced diplomatic level progression over time. In your standard, day-to-day galactic affairs this would work, but when the Borg invade? While you're wasting time crossing T's and dotting i's in diplomacy, the Borg are swallowing up your empire. If I've been Neutral to the Dominion, and we're both losing planets/ships to the Borg or any other race, why shouldn't I be able to propose an alliance of some sort--even if it is only temporary? Likewise, if I'm fighting a war with the Klingons when the Dominion decide to take advantage of our situation and fight both of us, why can't I tell the Klingons, "While we waste our strength fighting each other, the Dominion is slowly killing us both. We should band together, if only for now, in stopping this greater common threat."

Aside from these emergency concerns, an enforced diplomatic string would severely diminish the natural bonuses in attitude from the various minor races. What would it matter if the Vorta absolutely love the Dominion but still need to wait 50 turns to join up because trade hasn't happened yet? Sure, maybe another power wouldn't be able to swoop in and nab them as easily, but this enforced treaty progression would strongly weaken the point of having different race attitudes. You'd be better off just making every race think of every other race equally. The idea of forced diplomatic progression simply doesn't make much sense from a realistic or gameplay scenario.

Okay, here's an idea. We could make diplomatic exchanges a bit more involved like in GalCiv2. For any diplomatic exchange (excluding statements, breaking of treaties, or declarations of war), you could specify the following provisions:

1. Proposed change in relationship (optional)
    a. New treaty (upgrade only)
2. Offerings / Demands (items given by sender / recipient)
    a. Give...
        i. Some amount of credits (once/recurring)
        ii. Some amount of resources (once/recurring)
        iii. Some tech(s)
        iv. Some objects (ships, systems, etc)
    b. Break treaty with... [civilization(s)]
    c. Declare war on... [civilization(s)]
    d. Grant independence to... [system(s)]
    e. Make peace with... [civilization(s)]

Whereas in GalCiv2 you knew could see the response from the other ambassador as you changed the stipulations, we could use the diplomatic advisor to the same effect. Thoughts?

I never had the opportunity to play any of the GalCiv games, so I'm not really sure on the specifics of the concept, but it seems solid.

Ritter: you bring up an excellent point, one that I had not thought of. I was looking at the diplomacy tree as if each treaty was permenant. I could see where some temporary treaties would be able to bypass some of the requirements. They are temporary and will expire so some corners could be cut to get them through, or perhaps allow for a breather while something more solid is offered.

Example: You've been at war with the Romulans for 120 turns. You're getting kind of sick of it. You check your diplomacy screen and the advisor tells you that the Romulans are growing weary of war. So, you send a temporary 25 turn non-aggression to them, which they accept. This allows you to settle down, perhaps even throw some money/resources/whatever their way to soften them up, and then you can send a more permenant resolution such as a fully-fledged peace treaty or a permenant non-aggression treaty. This would also allow you to bypass the 10*n turn wait. There could be no waiting period (IE: a multiplier of 0) after a temporary treaty to "upgrade" it.

Now, think about this for a second. If you're fighting the Romulans, and the Borg decide to show and nuke both you and the Roms, do you honestly think the Romulans would just allow you to peacefully stroll into their space right away? Not likely; you guys have been at war for several turns. And would you trust the Romulans enough to be able to access your space, shipyards, and starbases? But as desperation mounts, empires are more willing to take risks, so the ability to "jump" treaty levels could be dependant on both empire's relative strength. Also keep in mind that if an empire is pretty weak, their attitude towards you (assuming you're significantly stronger) will probably be going up since they're more worried that you'll just conquer them during their weakness.

My solution for this problem is modifying the purpose of War Pacts. I always thought that if a War Pact is established, an affilation would be formed up until one side declares peace with the at-war empire or until war between the first two empires is declared.

This could be applied to any "Oh ****, we need to stop killing each other and focus our forces elsewhere" scenario. So if the Borg start assimilating systems, they now become an empire (although I hear they suck at diplomacy - the whole "assimilation" thing). The War Pact could come into play, and can be offered to any empire/race regardless of the current state of things between the two sides. When the Pact is accepted, an affiliation will be formed between both sides, and war would be declared if not already at war (BoTF1 sucks at this, so if I accept a war pact as the Federation against an empire I'm already at war with, I take a morale hit - how lame) and now you have a new ally with a new goal.

So if you hook up a war pact with the Romulans against the Borg (or any empire) then the affiliation will last until the Borg are wiped out, or until either you or the Roms make peace with the Borg (well, not so much the borg but with other empires), or until either you or the Roms declare war on the other.

Now, since you're in an affiliation treaty, you can probably set up trade routes and toss some money around and get better results than when you were at war. So if you do manage to elimiate the Borg, you might find yourself in a position to get a permanent treaty.

I missed one of Ritter's points....

The attitude bonus is still very easily applied. The waiting period will vary depending on the race's attitude towards you, and also allows other races the chance to interact with them. Lately during my BoTF travels, I'd come across the Minitakens or the Mizarians, and very next turn I'm getting membership offers. WTF? That wouldn't happen in real life. Ever.

Guy A: Hello there. Nice to meet you. How are you today?
Girl A: I'm great. Let's get married.

Uhh...?

Now, instead of me getting membership proposals on turn 4 of the game, I'd instead get a peace treaty. If they still love me that much, then I can offer to go up a diplomacy teir around turn 14, or just wait for them to send me one around 19-24 or so. It's only 10 turns. Diplomacy is a process. No compitent leader of any country/planet/empire/whatever would jump around and let you have their way with them and accept anything.

Now, if I'm offering peace treaties and they're accepting them just for amusement, then there is no way I'd be able to successfully offer a new treaty so quickly, hence the longer the 100% treaty rejection period. So instead of only 10 turns, it's now 100 turns... and if I want to reduce that amount of time, I had better have some deep pockets.

A small revision to my previous idea: if you are in a state of neutrality with another race/empire, I could see where a non-aggression OR a full peace treaty could be offered without repurcussion. Either course of action seems like a logical step in the diplomatic ladder between two sides who are neutral.

Ok, cool. So from a BoTF1 standpoint, if diplomacy used your system, a race could have you pegged at worshipped, but if the current treaty is neutral, they'll only go up to friendly even if you send affiliation?

Oh yeah, and a way to tell the computer AI to get out of your space (like they do to you ALL the time) or pretty much anything they can warn you about would be pretty neat.

The Cards would get bent out of shape when a science vessel cuts a corner, but they're sending 8 ships into my system to cause trouble.

This could be another Civ manerism - where you demand they remove their troops (or ships in this case) from your territory, which they either agree to or declare war on you.

I think that could be done. If they agree to move their ships out of your territory, the acceptance trigger could move all of their ships residing within your borders to their nearest friendly system or starbase. That may not be the most realistic solution (if the nearest system or starbase is farther away than those ships could normally travel in one turn), but it would be the simplest and most straightforward solution.

I really hate the idea of enforced treaty progression just because it doesn't seem really logical to me--if I'm the absolute leader of an empire and I decide I want to let these neutral nothings join my empire as members, why shouldn't I be able to?--but this is also a time-consuming game being developed for free, so beggars can't exactly be choosers. If there were obvious exceptions, that might help to offset it. Such exceptions might be:

1) A race--minor or major--you are at war with but trouncing offers to join your empire in exchange for peace. Basically, they admit defeat and become your subjects in the hopes that you won't completely wipe them out.

2) A weaker race/power faces an imminent threat from another power, the Borg, or whatever and comes to you begging for help. Here, you could obviously say, "I'm not going to help you unless you grant me full access to your shipyards, join my empire, whatever," regardless of your current standing with the askers.

3) Wars can be ended and turned to temporary military alliances if a greater threat to both powers looms, and after say 25 turns the option to "Formalize" this treaty appears. Think of it as fighting side-by-side gives both powers a new respect for each other.

4) Stronger powers (within a certain point value, perhaps), should be able to demand greater treaty allowances. Maybe this could be a graduated thing. Say if you're 200 points above someone, you can demand that they not only end the war between you but allow you to trade with them/through their space. If you're 500 points above, you can demand that they become your military affiliates in exchange for peace. If you're 1,000 points above, you can demand they simply surrender and become a member of your empire. The "points" I listed here are just random numbers to get the point across.

5) Weaker powers should be allowed to offer more advanced treaties as a bargaining chip to strong powers. Say you know the Romulans are getting ready to invade you with a massive fleet, and you're still trying to colonize your first few planets. In order to stave off the invasion, you should be able to offer greater diplomatic benefits--maybe even one-sided benefits.

I think these would all be great ideas to have in, although I have no idea how difficult programming them would be. The basic point is please, please, PLEASE don't have some rigid, unrealistic diplomatic forced progression. One of the perks of being absolute ruler is being able to do anything you want and make any treaties you want. I'd absolutely hate losing that, but of course it's up to the programmer to decide what actually will be included.

Well, all AI components will inevitably need to be tweaked for realism. If the diplomatic system seems too rigid, I'll try to make it more flexible. At this point, I'm just looking for ideas regarding the types of diplomatic relationships and exchanges that should be available. AI is still a long way down the line.