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

["Gregory Berkolaiko" <Gregory.Berkolaiko@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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

On Thu, 20 May 2004, Per Inge Mathisen wrote:

> <URL: http://rt.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=8394 >
> 
> On Thu, 20 May 2004, Gregory Berkolaiko wrote:
> > I took some time to read the archive and I am glad you are also not happy
> > with your original model. An alliance with an all-powerful leader is a
> > pain to be in.
> 
> What about a named alliance with votes before war is declared or anyone
> else is allow to join? Would this also be a pain?

Less painful but more technically difficult.  I also don't see the 
advantages to be in such a union.

> > Notation: A and B are in alliance. C is another player.
> >
> > Rule 1: Alliance is a mutual protection agreement, nothing more.If C
> > declares war on A it will be immediately at war with C as well (through no
> > additional reputation loss to anyone).
> >
> > Rule 2: If A is at war with C and B is not, A has a right to ask B to
> > declare war or nullify the alliance.If the second option is chosen by B,
> > it is B who suffers the penalty (later on technical implementation).If B
> > chooses to declare war, there is no reputation penalty (or even a bonus?).
> >
> > Rule3: If both A and B are at war with C, (a) B may agree on a cease-fire
> > with C, (b) B may sign a peace treaty with C, but with a certain
> > reputation loss, (c) B may not enter into an alliance with C.
> 
> Minus some of the reputation stuff, this is pretty much as the code stands
> today. The cascading war declarations is a problem, though, so at the very
> least they should not push an existing alliance straight into war but stop
> at peace. Eg if A&B and B&C and A declares war on C, B now declares war on
> A to honour its alliance with C, to give him a chance to decide which side
> he wants to be on.
> 
> The cascading war stuff is in general pretty non-transparent and
> frustrating. So I think we should drop it, and instead only cascade
> alliances into peace treaties to avoid the dread love-love-hate triangle.

Ok.

> > Optional amendment: The penalty in rule 3(b) is aimed at preventing people
> > from formally fulfiling their obligations to an ally and then stopping the
> > war right away.Instead, we can create a "deferred penalty": if B
> > declares war on C either through aggression of C or through a request from
> > A, it suffers no reputation penalty unless he stops the war too soon.
> > This "deferred penalty" slowly decreases to zero as the war goes on.
> >
> > Technical note: How to implement A's ultimatum in rule 2?  Simple, no
> > need for dialogs, A just puts B on a countdown. In X turns B will
> > automatically declare war unless he denounces the alliance (and suffers
> > the penalty) or A removes the countdown manually or by stopping the war
> > with C.
> >
> > So basically it's the same as Per's ultimatum but without much GUI and
> > withsome time to think.
> 
> It is very complicated, not transparent and extremely hard to extend to
> further forms of diplomacy. The AI pretty much does the above already by
> keeping track of patience towards other players and having its own concept
> of alliance leaders. It am not very satisfied with it.

I don't see how is it complicated.  You get a message "Player A evokes
clause 2 of your Mutual Protection Pact" and then "According to the Mutual
Protection Pact you will declare war on C in 4 turns".  Pretty transparent
to me.  It also offers some new bargaining possibilities: you can ask A to
not to insist on a war in return for some gold and techs.

I actually like this idea a lot.  You can turn it around a bit: instead of 
making war the default, make the dissolution of the Pact with reputation 
loss the default.  It's more logical but less fun.

> The goals of the original patch was not just to fix love-love-hate (this
> was already fixed), nor just to fix cascading war declarations (cascading
> peace treaties can fix this), but also allow in-game creation of teams.

This is a valid goal, but it shouldn't fully take place of the present
system.  The present system might require some tuning in reputation and
cascading, but it should stay.

I think as Jason suggests we should have different levels:

Mutual Protection Pact -- essentially present alliance but maybe without 
                          allowing units on the same tile
Alliance -- dynamic team
Team -- static team

> While I think the original patch now is pretty flawed, I still do not
> think Freeciv diplomacy model is very good (esp not for single-player).
                                              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Do you mean especially bad for single-player?
Why?

> Please look at the original post in this thread and comment on that
> proposal.

It adds a completely new dimension to the game.  As a single player I 
don't want it (being in a team with an AI?  No thanks!  AI has spaghetti 
instead of brains!).  But if it is going to be implemented, voting is an 
unfortunate necessity I feel.  Another option is "if there are humans in a 
team, one of them must be the leader" rule.

G.