[Freeciv] Re: Diplomacy

[Christian Knoke <chrisk@xxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 11:08:01PM +0000, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> 
> I suggest we change the condition for conducting diplomacy from having an
> embassy (as now) to merely having made contact.
> 
> This will be a big change of gameplay; but that is also the only good
> reason I can see against it.

IMHO there should be good reasons *for* the change if you do it ;)

> Reasons for:
>   - It was this way in Civ2 (duh).
>   - Diplomats less important.
>   - No longer have to micromanage a diplomat into the land of each enemy
> to do diplomacy with him.

Well that's part of the fun isn't it? In a multiplayer game, I can hide
and follow my own strategy, until others send diplomats.

>   - It will be very hard to get diplomats to establish embassies with AIs
> (and players) with autoattack.

This will be challenging :)

>   - AI diplomacy (coming soon) is much more fun this way.

Ok thats a technical reason. I can't comment on this.

> If nobody objects, I'll put this change into the AI diplomacy patch (two
> lines of code change).

What exactly do you want to do? Do you mean that I can do treaties with
everybody, from the very beginning? I wouldn't like that much. This would
give diplomacy even more importance than it has now.

Or just exchanging info (Intelligence)? What is needed for AI?

Having (embassy OR recent contact) as predicate for Intelligence can be
a compromise. But then I think it should be always possible to gain
information from [F3], which is updated on contact, with an indication
how old it is.

Christian

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