Diplomacy

[Ranos]

Here are my ideas on diplomacy options. If this is something that has already been discussed, I apologize. I spent an hour looking for details on the game and couldn't find anything.

I) Treaties
--A) Peace-time
----1) Trade - Automatic trade of goods between empires. Generates money each turn.
----2) Research - Automatic trade of research between empires. Generates research points each turn.
----3) Intelligence - Automatic sharing of galaxy maps and known ship locations.
----4) Non-Aggression Pact/Right of Passage - Allows ships to pass through the empire without conflict.
----5) Defensive Alliance/Mutual Protection Pact - If an enemy attacks an allied planet or a ship within an allied system, a war declaration is demanded.
----6) Full Alliance/Alliance - If war is declared on an ally or by an ally, a war declaration is demanded.
--B) War-time
----1) Cease-Fire - Initiates a cease fire between warring empires. Ships currently in system do not engage in combat. Ships enroute arrive without conflict. Ships may depart the system without conflict if they are heading away from your territory. If a ship departs any system heading towrads your system, the cease fire is automatically broken.
----2) Peace Treaty - War between two empires ends.

II) Trade
--A) Maps
----1) Galaxy Map - Trade map of your knowledge of the galaxy to other empire or request the same from them.
----2) Empire Map - Trade map of your empire to other empire or request the same from them.
--B) Money
----1) Lump Sum - Trade a specific ammount of money once to another empire or request the same from them.
----2) Per Turn - Trade a specific ammount of money per turn to another empire or request the same from them.
--C) Resources - Trade Luxuries to another empire or request the same from them.
--D) Technology - Trade specific technology/technologies to another empire or request the same from them.
--E) Ships - Trade a ship/ships to another empire or request the same from them.
--F) Planets/Systems - Trade a planet/planets or system/systems to another empire or request the same from them.

III) Mediation - This brings up a window in which you choose what warring races to mediate peace between.
--A) One empire vs. one empire
--B) Multiple empires vs. one empire
--C) Multiple empires vs. multiple empires

IV) Requests
--A) Colony ship conflicts - with each of the below choices, a negotiations window would come up and trade offers would be made.
----1) "Your colony ship is in my system, please remove it."
----2) "I would like to colonize a world in your system."
----3) "I would like to colonize this world in our system. In return I will give you this world to colonize."
----4) "I would like to colonize this world in this system. In return I will give you this world to colonize."
--B) "Please remove your ships from within my borders."
--C) "Will you declare war on this empire with me?"

I probably should explain some of these and some I may not have explained well enough. It's late and I wanted to throw this out for discussion.

[Satyagraha]

i like the idea of trading luxuries & special resources like in civ3. would have to be better implemented though, civ3 was so half-assed... 1 piece of iron would provide your whole empire with iron, while having 10 was no real benefit except of backup & trading.

i would suggest to replace research treaties with tech trading like in civ/SMAC. players have more influence on what to give away and what to keep secret.

and you need to be able to threaten/blackmail others

[Ranos]

The Research treaty isn't an automatic giving of technology, it is automatically trading research points, just like a trade treaty you get a bonus to your income every turn.

Giving of technology is in the trading area and would be exactly like in Civ, SMAC and MOO.

Strategic resources would be cool in FO but what would they be? Here on Earth, there area specific locations that must be mined or harvested to get the resources, but every planet would, presumeably, have its own metal deposits and other such things.

I was just thinking of doing luxury resources. There would be planets that would have extremely unique resources that no other, or maybe a few other, planets would have. An animal that secretes a chemical that is relaxing, gems that are even more amazing than diamonds or a plant that can be grown into whatever its master sees fit, like in Star Wars: The New Jedi Order. Get the seedling and make it grow into a ship or something like that.

[guiguibaah]

Oh, I can think up of a few

- Ketracyete
A mind altering spice that enhances clairvoyancy to it's consumer. Only harvested on special desert planets.

- Kerion Crystals
Crystals that store a massice amount of energy within their lattice. Only formed on special barren worlds.

- Mestybybs
A harmonic type of alien fruit that rejuvinates the body. Can only be cultivated on special jungle worlds.

- Matter Pearls
Small marble-shaped spheres that emit a vast amount of light from all wavelenghts found in the infrared and visible spectrum, not unlike a disco ball. Found only on special, deep ocean worlds.

- Bio-Ore
Ore that will learn to reconfigure itself / intelligent silly putty, if you will / to certain items and objects. Found only on special inferno worlds.


Anyhow, those are just some examples. Most taken from other sources to

[Marijn]

VGA Planets 4 (or 5?) had something like that - special expensive goodies that had little gameplay value except that you could trade them and make lots of money from them. I think this is generally a bad idea - it just makes things more complicated and incoherent (why can you manage your mestybybs production but not your production of really-hip-space-sunglasses?

[Satyagraha]

making sure your supply of resources is save is one of the most important things in politics & can result in wars... anyone seeing a connection between iraq & resources?

imo has high gameplay & strategical value & should be in.

[Ranos]

VGA Planets 4 (or 5?) had something like that - special expensive goodies that had little gameplay value except that you could trade them and make lots of money from them. I think this is generally a bad idea - it just makes things more complicated and incoherent (why can you manage your mestybybs production but not your production of really-hip-space-sunglasses?

Obviously you haven't played Civ3. It has two separate tradable resource categories.

First is Strategic. To build more advanced troops, you have to have the strategic resources within your civs borders or have built a colony on one. For example, Iron. If you don't have access to a source of iron, you can't build Swordsmen, Pikemen or Knights, just to name a few. So while your rival civs around you are building good offense and defense, you're stuck with dinky little Archers, Spearmen and Horsemen. Guess what that means? You lose the game because you can't build better units.

Second is Luxuries. These make your people happier. Happiness of your people can also mean the game. They get cranky, they revolt, you lose production, research and monetary income from that city. They may even decide to join another civ. You can of course make entertainers to make your citizens happier, but that means you have fewer people to harvest food and may mean that your city can't grow above a certain ammount due to the lack of crops.

Both of these can be traded to other civs for money and/or other resources that you don't have.

Wars have been fought, civs destroyed and games won because of resources. This would add a whole nother level to the game.

I was just suggesting luxury resources to add to trade and give us another tool to make the citizens happy. Strategic resources would be fun too, but the only resources needed would be varying metals and possibly fuel sources. I really can't think of many more than that, and only two or three resources would not add very much to the game.

[Marijn]

I was not attacking the idea of a single 'luxury' type resource, I was attacking the idea of having multiple different types of luxury resources.

[Ranos]

What is the point of having just one? Civ 3 has eight. If there was only one, one or maybe two civs would have direct access to that resource and then everyone would go after those one or two civs to get their hands on the luxury. With eight, there are sources all over the globe and each civ has direct access to at least one resource.

Now of course FO isn't a civ type game, its space based. Therefore, have lets say five different resources that will appear on between two and four planets each. The probability would be that these would be spread out over the galaxy and that every race would have direct access to at least one.

Instead of requiring you to have more than one access to the resource to be able to trade to other civs, that one source of it would be enough to supply the entire galaxy with it. It would be possible to gain control of all of the planets with a specific resource on it and corner the market on that resource. This in turn would allow you to put whatever price on the resource you desire. Instead of the AI saying, "I will not pay more than this ammount for the resource," their citizens would be saying we want this, get it at whatever cost, depending on the resource of course. This would inevitably cause wars.

Whether one civ has cornered the market on that resource or whether there are four civs with access to it, these resources, strategic and luxury alike, would add a whole nother level to diplomacy, colonization, wars and general gameplay.

There would be no complexity to it. It is simple in Civ 3. With the way I have suggested doing it, it would be even more simple.

[Satyagraha]

This in turn would allow you to put whatever price on the resource you desire.

until all other players got their fleets ready to kick your ass i don´t think cornering is worth it if this is the only benfit you get. and if you own 3 of 4, but cannot get the last piece, there is no benefit at all.

probably limit trading to 1 trade-pact/piece of resource you own. make the bonus of each of the resources stacking at the same time, so there is a double benefit of owning more than 1. encourages both getting more than 1 and trading at the same time.


edit: imo luxuries & resources should also be merged into 1. no need to have different names.

[Ranos]

Thats what I meant, I just didn't state it.

In Civ 3, yeah I know I keep mentioning that but it is the first game I have seen do this, there were eight luxuries. If you had one, one citizen was made happy, two luxuries, two total were made happy and on up to eight. With a certain improvement, by default it was the Marketplace, the benefits would increase. Then the way it worked was the first two luxuries made one citizen each happy, the next two made two happy, the next three and finally four. That meant that when you had all eight resources, twenty citizens were made happy. By citizen I mean one population level.

The benefit of controlling all of one resource means that unless you allow it, all other civs have no access to it. The downside in Civ 3 was that if they didn't like the price, they wouldn't trade for it. In real life of course, people want it no matter what the price and if you don't get it, they will be angy. I would like to see something in FO where the populations of an empire will demand that the empire acquire this resource, or else. That means if you have all the sources of a luxury, you can say give me 100 credits per turn where as normally you would have to give it to them for 25 or 30, because they could go to another empire to get it.

[Krikkitone]

In real life of course, people want it no matter what the price

The problem is that is not true,
a society/civilization/government/individual will only pay so much for a luxury. (or any good)

If the price of an luxury (even an addictive luxury) went up to beyond what the people could afford (on the black market as well as the legal market) less people would buy the luxury (even for an addictive luxury less new people would become addicted to it because it would be harder to get)

For example, consider salt as a luxury good... right now the US probably spends a whole lot on salt.
However, if the price of salt went up to a billion dollars a gram, no one would buy it (except maybe for an occasional billionaire to put on engagement rings) the point is as the price/amount went up the amount consumed would go down such that the Total amount the US spends on salt will NEVER go beyond a certain level (assuming all other things like the total size of the us economy and such stays the same). The only way to get the US to spend more on salt than that limit would be for the US to become richer. (able to spend more overall)

Civ 3 actually modeled this very well I thought.. the price they were willing to pay SEEMED to depend on
1. how much money they had
and
2. how many people they had

Which makes sense because they did a cost-benefit analysis on the good (how much is it worth to make one person happy, and how many people will I make happy with this.. that is how much I am willing to spend... the more people I have, the more people this luxury will make happy, the more it is worth)