[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#5103) ai diplomacy

["rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx" <rwetmore@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> On Fri, 15 Aug 2003, Christian Knoke wrote:
> 
>>CVS 15 AUG 2003 GTK 1 conndlg9
>>
>>I declare war to a neutral AI player.
>>
>>1) I am not warned that this breaks alliance with other player
>>
>>2) Now 2 other player (1 peace, 1 alliance) declare war to me, but this
>> brings *my* reputation down.
> 
> 
> This is intentional. When you declare on a player, _you_ also declare war
> on all its allies. Its allies will not suffer any diplomatic penalties,
> since they are merely honouring their alliance obligations.

This interpretation of Civ alliance is incorrect. As a definition of Freeciv
alliance it is probably quite a poor choice.

You only declare war on a civ, not an alliance. The latter concept does not
exist.

Alliance members *must* declare war or suffer a penalty as an ally obligation.
This is *not* automatic, but a choice they get to make. *Alliance* members get
penalized if they do *not* support their ally. In diplomacy with an ally, the
attackee can force the choice, "Go-to-war" or "Break-alliance" with penalties
applied in the latter case.

Obeying the Civ rules also gets you out of the reputation problem with the
initial declaration of war, since that is a separate action from that of
the alliance members and thier obligations.

> However, the reputation penalty for such declarations of war on an entire
> alliance might be a bit hard. I think perhaps nobody should suffer
> reputation penalty when allies join the war.
> 
>   - Per

Cheers,
RossW
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