[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Diplomacy problems and ideas (PR#8394)

["Jason Short" <jdorje@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=8394 >

Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:

> This is what you wrote earlier:
> "In my view, an alliance is exactly this: When it comes to war, _you stand
> together_. If this does not hold, then I don't see why you need an
> alliance in the first place."
> 
> I am sure we can do this without making alliances big and formal, like 
> teams.  Alliances should stay one-to-one relationship.  And we can design 
> rules to keep them consistent.

I think the problem is "alliance" isn't clearly defined.  When I think 
of alliance this is not what I have in mind.  To me an alliance is just 
like peace, but stronger (because borders are not enforced).

Perhaps we could have multiple different types of pacts.  Which are 
allowed is controlled by technology (and hence through the rulesets).

- Peace: mutual non-agression pacts.  Borders must be preserved.

- Treaty of Friendship: relaxes border restriction.  Units from the two 
nations may exist in the same tiles.

- Defensive pact: an attack on one is an attack on the other.  War may 
either be declared automatically or through a "call to uphold the 
alliance".  Note that if you have a defensive pact with two players and 
they war on each other you may not be able to uphold the pact with one 
of them.  This could be considered a problem, or maybe not.

- Union: relaxes border restriction.  War on one means war on all. 
Union with one means union with all.  This basically boils down to Per's 
faction idea.  Good for scenarios but I don't like it for the default 
ruleset.

Note that a treaty of friendship and a defensive pact are orthogonal, 
something which is quite foreign to the current design.  Both must 
follow a peace treaty.  In fact the rules relating the different 
treaties may become quite complicated if more are added.

Presumably the biggest problem with such a design would be in the AI 
code.  The AI would have to evaluate the merits of each type of treaty 
individually.  I imagine the user wouldn't be too affected; it's just 
more possibilities for the "pacts" submenu.

jason