[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#4100) Transitive treaties under alliance

["ChrisK@xxxxxxxx" <ChrisK@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 12:58:15PM -0700, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> On Mon, 28 Apr 2003, ChrisK@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> ...
> > I think alliances have to be transitive. War state is not.
> >
> > So make an alliance is only allowed when all allies of A are at least
> > neutral with all allies of B. When the alliance actually happens, all allies
> > of A and B become allied to each other.
> >
> > When A cancels an alliance with B, all his other alliances are cancelled,
> > too.
> 
> What if allied(A, B) and allied(C, D), and then war(A, C) and peace(A, D)
> while war(B, D) and peace(B, C)? You don't get stacking problems, but it
> is still pretty schizophrenic.

I agree it doesn't look beautiful at first sight, but isn't it somewhat
realistic?

> To sum up:
> 
> I see five different solutions:
> 1) Keep the present approach.

Maybe possible, but I fear more problems to come up.

> 2) Make only alliances transitive.

My choice. What I don't like here is that players are forced to go in
alliances. Maybe we need a vote or general agreement.

> 3) Make both war and alliance transitive when in alliance.
> 4) Make war, ceasefire and alliance transitive when in alliance.
> 5) Make all treaties transitive when in alliance.
> 
> I think 3 and 4 are bad, since in 3 we can get to exactly the situation we
> want to avoid with transitive war as alliance members make individual
> peace deals while in 4 all treaties are transitive except peace which is
> inconsistent. I'd prefer 5 myself.

3) to 5) are bad, because the more transitiveness, the harder to change
treaties, cancel and make new ones.

> I see four ways to implement this:
> 1) Any alliance member can negotiate treaties and declare war on behalf of
> her alliance.
> 2) Only the most powerful member of the alliance can do so. (This is the
> solution presently adopted in the AI diplomacy patch to solve alliance
> deadlocks.)
> 3) First player to initiate an alliance becomes its leader. In diplomacy
> dialog, you can give away the leadership position.
> 4) We implement one new diplomacy meeting possibility: "Meet with Alliance
> of X". All treaties options are disabled for individual meet dialogs.
> Instead, when A "meet with Alliance of B", there may be multiple players
> on both sides (allies of A on one side and allies of B on the other), and
> for all these the diplomacy dialog pops up. Only treaties are possible. If
> any player cancel their diplomacy meet dialog, the meeting is off. All
> players on both sides must 'ok' a deal if it is to be put into effect.

I don't like this because I'm very much for the concept of self ruled
nations; each player has full freedom to make treaties on his/her own, but
has to carry the consequences, fx when she cancels an alliance, she looses
other allies, when she declares war to an alliance member she risks other
wars (but is not forced into necessarily).

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke     * * *      http://www.enter.de/~c.knoke/
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.