[Freeciv-Dev] Re: treaties and embassies (PR#2274)

[Davide Pagnin <nightmare@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 2002-11-08 at 12:33, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> Let's start over.
> 
> The problem is that you can have a treaty with a player that you do not
> have an embassy to, and you therefore need a dialog for diplomats that
> enter allied cities.

Well, this is not a problem, IMHO.
I can agree with you that this can be annoying
(from the player point of view).
Or that it is annoying from the programmer point of view, perhaps.

> 
> When I think about it, I realize that of course this isn't just because of
> Marco Polo's and civil war, but it can also happen simply because the
> other player made an embassy and suggested the treaty.

THIS IS THE WHOLE POINT!

> 
> There is, I think, only one realistic way of solving this, and that is by
> having both sides get (permanent) embassies to each other when entering an
> alliance. This makes good sense for in-game reasons, since alliance
> partners are supposed to be sharing such information.

I disagree with you.
As you say later, embassies are viewed more as 'spy networks'.
(and perhaps embassies are also spy network in the real world...)

I don't remember the name, but it was a big scandal, some years ago.
It was discovered that United Stated used satellites and other way to
control communication inside UE nations.
AFAIK, NATO is an alliance, thus United States, were spying their
allied, and this is not 'strange' at all.
And perhaps some or all the UE nation try to spy back against United
States.
The point is that being 'allied' don't means being a team!
(You are perhaps confusing the two status ...)

Instead of embassied made by default for an alliance, I suggest to make
possible to trade 'make embassy' as a diplomatic Clause, like shared
vision or the other clauses.
(A strong nation that want to have its own secrets can obtain an
'alliance' without the counterpart having the embassy).

Last, for the annoying popup, we can study a way to make a client
option, that can disable that popup (the same as the default settler
can't be built in dimension 1 cities)

> On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Davide Pagnin via RT wrote:
> > Per, Do you want to talk about 'real world' ?
> >
> > Well, AFAIK no embassies are opened without the agreement of both sides.
> >
> > In war time, embassies are closed and diplomats expelled.
> 
> I think *civ embassies are more like spy networks, and not actually
> embassies. At least, that is the way they work.

Ack. But many real embassies are also spy networks in the real world...
(United Stated embassy in Russia, isn't?)

> 
> > I have to check, but if I remember well, in civII you can ask to meet
> > every other leader to whom you are in contact with, even without having
> > an embassy. (This is different from Freeciv...)
> 
> I remember the same. Why is freeciv behaviour different?

Don't know, but we can change this...
We need to agree on a definition of 'contact' between two nations,
because even in civ II, you can't meet with king you don't have contact
to.

> 
> > At the end of this, I think thatwe should consider that changing
> > diplomacy will change a lot of the game...
> 
> Obviously.
Then we should ask also to players, not only to developers...

> 
>   - Per
> 
> 
>