Diplomatic Spying and the 'shadow game'

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

Moderator: Oberlus

Message
Author
emrys
Creative Contributor
Posts: 226
Joined: Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:44 pm

Diplomatic Spying and the 'shadow game'

#1 Post by emrys »

One of the big problems with diplomacy in most 4X games is the horrendous difficulty of programming the Ai to cope with fairly free form and wide ranging effects that diplomacy tends to produce, as a result the AI usually has almost no hope of playing a decent diplomatic game. N.B. this is NOT an AI thread!

I think one method of alleviating these problems, along with getting interesting game effects, would be to integrate the Spying part of the game more closely with the diplomacy part. In other words to give more spying type options to diplomacy.

Under this idea most "diplomacy" would in some respects become a form of "legitimate" spying. (Coincidentally, this is apparently much like real life). Having (varying levels of) diplomatic contact with an empire would allow you to perform various actions such as encouraging trade and research transfer, influence their behaviour and opinions, influence the attitude of their military, and apply propaganda for or against other empires.

The core of this system would be two measures of relations with antoher empire (drawn from EU and what Moo3 should have been) Cassus Belli (CB) and Current Relations (CR). Lots of what I'm about to say will be familiar to people, but there are key changes:

Cassus Belli

Cassus Belli would represent in effect the moral justification for war between two empires. Any aggresive move (violating territory, destroying ships, conquering planets, declaring war, making alliances with enemies) would shift this down. The key way this would be improved from Moo3's laughable attempt at this, is that the validity of complaints would decay over time, and the history of events with their relavtive importance and current effect would be visible to the players. e.g. a certain event could result in a change of CB of X, with a decay of Y% per turn. Some events would be small events quickly ignored (territorial incursions), some small things remembered for longer (small numbers of ships destroyed), some 'big deals' but quickly forgotten (making alliances with enemies), some long lasting grudges (destroying major fleets, conquering inhabited planets etc.). This would give 'flavour' to relations. "The silicoids are dismayed at your alliance with the bulrathi, but they will forget it soon, we have nothing to fear.". "The Psilons have never forgiven our destruction of Mendarl IV". The result would be that CB would drift back towards neutral, but that things could easily mount up over time.

Cassus Belli would be the key to the diplomatic effects of declaring war or taking other military action. The less strong your justification for war, the less likely other races will treat the declaration favourably, your allies may refuse to join, and the independants may side with your opponent, In addition your current relations with other races will suffer, as they will see you as untrustworthy.

You could have diplomatic missions which attempt to affect your CB with another nation, you could either attempt to improve things (negotiate compensation deals, make official apologies, provide justification to the foreign media etc, discourage warmongering), or make them worse (if you want a war) (bluster, make inflamatory statements or agressive demands etc, spread details of foreign atrocities around the galaxy). These would be diplomatic missions conducted by official diplomats, which the foreign empire could only block by either counter-diplomacy(normal), unrecognising your embassy (mild), or expelling your diplomats (harsh), with increasingly harsh actions invoking Current Relations damage or Cassus belli effects if not justified (by CB) or supported (by CR).

Current Relations

Current Relations on the other hand would represent the fickle whims of public opinion. This would be much more volatile than Cassus Belli, with almost no effect for events beyond a few turns. Current Relations would reflect your populations' view of another empire. It could affect things such as the level of trade between them, the rate of technology transfer (If we have that), but vitally would be the key to the 'popularity' of war. If you go to war with an empire that you have a good Current Relations rating with, even if you have a strong justification (Cassus Belli), you will find it difficult, the poopulation won't support high taxes to fund the war, nor will your military have good moral etc.

Again there would be diplomatic missions (legitimate and hard to prevent but slow, gradual and unfocussed) and spy missions (risky, potentially damaging, but quicker, bigger effects) that would affect the current relations between empires.

This would allow there to be a shadow game of controlling other empires' CB and CR with you, you could force players to hold off starting a war with you by diplomatic missions to ingratiate yourself with their population, the player would then find they didn't want to fight a war with one hand tied, and pick on someone the populace disliked instead. Equally you could try to compensate for a gradual encroachment on their borders by a concerted attempt to negotiate appeasement and mitigate the effects by providing justifications and excuses, so holding the Casus Belli too high to allow them to go to war without alienating their allies.

Diplomatic missions

The Diplomatic missions could extend into the kind of things that spies do, such as stealing technology (but here it would be "organise scientific exchange forum") or locating military facilities ("suggest joint military exercises and planing"). The difference between spying and diplomacy would be that diplomatic efforts would be less focused (less control over the specific result), not guaranteed to be one way (though you would get the major benefit), less immeditaely effective and strongly affected by the Current Relations level, but there would be no risk from being caught, because everything would be out in the open. In addition I have the idea that having a well established diplomatic presence in an empire would give you a better chance of spying, since your diplomats could be used as cover for your spies.

Benefits

The idea of Current Relations being the key to popular support for war and hence the effectiveness of going to war would tend to (naturally) encourage the player to effectively play by similar rules as the AI, by attempting to manipulate the CB and CR to suitable levels to support their actions. This would tend make the AI more able to judge what are reasonable decisions with less effort. An AI which made it's decision based on the level of these variables (amongst other things) would seem less hamstrung when compared to a player who makes immediate decisions based on the same basis, but plans long term to manipulate the values to where they want them, than would an AI deciding on variables which do not have any kind of direct game effect, compared to human players who are often judging on an entirely different basis.


Anyway, enough of the essay, what do people think? Any ideas for extension or improvement? Equally what drawbacks do you see to the idea(s)?

Ablaze
Creative Contributor
Posts: 314
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2003 6:10 pm
Location: Amidst the Inferno.

#2 Post by Ablaze »

I like the idea of combining diplomacy and spying.. but why make it so complicated?

You need to think of ways to make that idea simpler. If the whole game was built like that it would take a week just to learn how to play one turn. I would start by combining Cassus Belli and Current Relations.. I don't see any real difference between them.
Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

emrys
Creative Contributor
Posts: 226
Joined: Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:44 pm

#3 Post by emrys »

I agree that the post was fairly complicated, and the model is heading that way, first let me try and justify the complexity, and then invite suggestions to get the same kind of effect with an easier (or more easily explained) system or variation.

The idea behind having the two concepts (Cassus Belli and Diplomatic Relations) was to model the difference between legitimacy and popularity of war. So that you could have a war that seemed a great idea when you start, you had a list of grievances against them as long as your arm, but time, lack of success, enemy propaganda etc. cause public opinion to go sour and all of a sudden you're in a Vietnam type situation. That would give a small empire a way of 'punching above their weight' by undermining the enemies war effort with diplomacy.

Equally I wanted to model the situation where you've sold the war to your populace so well, and your military is so hyped, that the lack of any kind of reasonable justification is irrelevant, you just go ahead and do it and damn the diplomatic consequences.

The better alternative would be to steward both effects, and hype the war internally, whilst justifying your actions outwardly to isolate your oponents and put off any response as long as possible, i.e. Nazi Germany's approach in the run up to the Second World War.

That's the justification, any one have any ideas how to slimline or tidy up the model?

User avatar
Krikkitone
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1559
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm

#4 Post by Krikkitone »

well first of all, I'd say leave the 'spying' jobs under spying but give them bonuses,
ie its easier to steal tech from someone you have good relations with, if you have a trade agreement,
its easier to blow up their factories (laxer border control, etc.)

Official diplomatic contact would also make 'influencing the enemy populace' easier.

You also should have things like 'research agreements' and 'military agreements' but those would involve sharing... if you really wanted to, you could have some type of a research agreement that allowed you to automatically get each others techs/research together, etc. (with lesser versions that allowed sharing less classified ie non military/spying techs, or just a slight boost to each others research)

As for the two concepts, I'd say that is Very good...One represents how much your people support the war, the other represents how much other race view the war as justified (and therefore how much they will trust you in the future)

To maybe simplify the every offense having a specific decay time perhaps each offense has some 'short term' and some 'long term' effects (where the short term drops by 20% a turn or more, and the long term drops by 10% a turn or less) So taking an inhabited world would have substantial long term effects, as well as short term effects where as an unallowed fleet incursion would have almost no long term effects but would have some short term effects.

Other ones... if they are occupying a world with your people on it... every turn add to the short term effects (that way restoring racial worlds to their original empires would have some justification.. even after a war)

Basically you have four factors involved in each war
1. Their CB against us
2. Our CB against them

(Those two determine the 'trustworthiness' hit that you will take by going to war... if you ave more grievances against them than they do against you, going to war will involve less of a drop in your trusworthiness... note: your 'trustworthiness' should also drop anytime you cause a grievance)

3. How much their people want war with us
4. How much our people want war with them

(this determines the internal consequences of going to war..and would change as the war goes on...the more costly the war the less popular it will be, but the worse your people think the peace is/was/will be the more popular the war will be.. so offering a nice peace treaty while killing lots of enemy soldiers will make the war unpopular and may force your enemy to accept those terms, on the other hand if few enemy soldiers are killed and you are publicly proclaiming your desire to annihilate the enemy population...your enemy won't be able to stop the war if they want to.)


Finally you would have one remaining set of values between two empires and That should be the diplomatic relations, the official treaties and so forth that bind them.
The more treaties you have, and the longer they have been in place, the worse the hits to your 'trustworthiness' for betraying them either through war or greivance.
So if you launch a surprise planetary destruction on your 1000 turn ally's homeworld, your trustworthiness will never recover, but if you do the same thing to someone you have been at war with for 1000 turns your trustworthiness won't change at all (it may actually go up slightly).. although your aggressiveness or ruthlessness rating, etc. may change.

luckless666
Pupating Mass
Posts: 90
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2003 3:16 am
Location: West Sussex, United Kingdom

#5 Post by luckless666 »

This thread sounds very intriguing indeed. I think that as well as long and short term effects some should be permanent. These should be extreme, like the annilation of one of there Core worlds (maybe even just there homeworld) by a Stellar Coverter (or similar).
Chris Walker
| c.walker (at) mgt.hull.ac.uk |

WorldForge.org

Ablaze
Creative Contributor
Posts: 314
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2003 6:10 pm
Location: Amidst the Inferno.

#6 Post by Ablaze »

Umm.. I know that the term "Cassus Belli" was used in moo3, but I don't really understand what it means. I mean I understand what it represents in the game, but as far as I'm concerned they may as well have called it "Trait X."

We should use a term that is commonplace enough that it will evoke the idea immediately. I suggest "our popular opinion" and "their popular opinion."

So what I'm thinking is that each race would have just one opinion of each other race plus an indicator of the opinion that other race has of you. Perhaps the other player's indicator should be delayed by a few turns, otherwise you could use it as an indicator of when someone was going to declare war on you.
Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

User avatar
utilae
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 2175
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 12:37 am
Location: Auckland, New Zealand

#7 Post by utilae »

Opinion sounds good. So there opinion could be good or bad. Notoriety could also be factored into whether they declare war on you. Notoriety is like who they are focusing on. The would have high notoriety to a race if you destroyed their homeworld. So even though they might hate race A more, race B just destroyed their homeworld, so race B is the next to be obliterated from the face of the universe.

luckless666
Pupating Mass
Posts: 90
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2003 3:16 am
Location: West Sussex, United Kingdom

#8 Post by luckless666 »

utilae wrote:So even though they might hate race A more, race B just destroyed their homeworld, so race B is the next to be obliterated from the face of the universe
Wouldn't fancy coding that one into the AI. Basic on itself, but with everything else, it looks like the AI will need some kind of complex mathematical equation to figure out just who its going to go to war with!!! :shock: this idea is intriguing though...
Chris Walker
| c.walker (at) mgt.hull.ac.uk |

WorldForge.org

PowerCrazy
Creative Contributor
Posts: 383
Joined: Fri Jun 27, 2003 2:35 am
Location: Texas

#9 Post by PowerCrazy »

Well luckilly our rule of "If it can't be done in a board game, we shouldn't do it" doesn't apply to AI. Ai WILL be complicated, and it SHOULD be as complicated as it needs to be. If the AI must factor a 20th degree polynomial to work correctly so be it. But if the human player is expected to do that... Nix it. There must be an easier (even if less functional) way.

As far as diplomacy though. We need to make sure that whatever we decide all actions will not only affect the two empires involved. Thats not diplomacy. Diplomacy involves the global community. If Race A backstabs Race B, Race C is going to react whether that means declareing war on Race A or simply not entering into any treaties, the needs to be some global effect.
Aquitaine is my Hero.... ;)

luckless666
Pupating Mass
Posts: 90
Joined: Thu Nov 06, 2003 3:16 am
Location: West Sussex, United Kingdom

#10 Post by luckless666 »

I agree PowerCrazy. And on the subject of AI, whos coding it? theres a great resource here where not only they can discover great AI routines but discuss it with others in the forums.

Theres a few essys of interest here, here, here, here and finally here.
Chris Walker
| c.walker (at) mgt.hull.ac.uk |

WorldForge.org

User avatar
Krikkitone
Creative Contributor
Posts: 1559
Joined: Sat Sep 13, 2003 6:52 pm

#11 Post by Krikkitone »

PowerCrazy wrote:As far as diplomacy though. We need to make sure that whatever we decide all actions will not only affect the two empires involved. Thats not diplomacy. Diplomacy involves the global community. If Race A backstabs Race B, Race C is going to react whether that means declareing war on Race A or simply not entering into any treaties, the needs to be some global effect.
Well as far as I can see, For AI purposes in particular your decisions regarding a particular power should have at least two fold cost-benefit of all the players.

So I first guess how everyone else will 'feel' about some diplomatic change based on their relationships with me and the other person. Then I look at all the relative power levels and relationships with each other to determine how they might react (who would 'worsen' realtions to me, who would 'improve' relations to me, and who wouldn't care). Then I run the cost-benefit of that scenario compared to Not doing that change, and that says whether I should risk attacking someone or allying with them.

So if you have two allies and relations are worsening between them, they will worsen their relations with you unless you worsen your relations with their new enemy..unless they don't really care about you, or are afraid of worsening relations with you (ie you are really weak or really strong)

Or if you have two enemies relations will tend to improve between them and if relations worsen between them they may seek to improve thier relations with you.

In any case looking at who your public 'likes'/'dislikes' I'd stick with the simple enemy of my enemy is my friend and ally of my enemy (or enemy of my friend) is my enemy.

One final note on involving the global community is that means the global community must have some power... if race A and Race B each control 35% of the power, then Race C+D really don't matter. This means that for diplomacy to be really significant you need a situation in which going to war against the world is a losing strategy. This requires

1. The concept of a balance of power.. no one wants anyone else to get to powerful so as soon as someone Starts to become powerful people will Tend to gang up on them..Of course after a certain point, they should start grovelling (usually most empire games start making them gang up at the time they should start grovelling)... this is the 'mop up' point.

2. The means to enforce the balance of power... basically more players... I think the Mininmum# of players for truly good diplomacy is about 16.. maybe 8 if you are dealing with good Human players or trully advanced AIs. Otherwise the 'community' is not as much of a threat.

Aquitaine
Lead Designer Emeritus
Posts: 761
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2003 1:54 pm
Location: Austin, TX

#12 Post by Aquitaine »

The idea of CB and various other notions from EU2 diplomacy are definitely a cornerstone for what I'm thinking about diplomacy. It does seem a little confusing if you've never seen it before, and in many ways we won't be able to enact it like EU2 does (both because it's not turn-based and because we have a fewer number of overall empires and eXpansion is probably more 'legitimate' by default in FO than it is in EU2).

I like it, though, and I hope to steal as much of the good stuff from EU2/Victoria/HoI as we can. :)
Surprise and Terror! I am greeted by the smooth and hostile face of our old enemy, the Hootmans! No... the Huge-glands, no, I remember, the Hunams!

Ablaze
Creative Contributor
Posts: 314
Joined: Tue Aug 26, 2003 6:10 pm
Location: Amidst the Inferno.

#13 Post by Ablaze »

So I'm thinking of "white hat" spies and "black hat" spies, both of which can be integrated into the system. White hat, of course, means diplomats and black hats mean actual spies. Diplomats sway public opinion and a certain number of them are required to create any treaty. They can also get you technology, but you have to pay for the effort (by having a lot of diplomats in their empire) and you have to have permission from the other player. This would be a vast improvement over the classic method of just giving the other person the tech.

I see every player having a “spy network” composed of both black hat and white hat spies for every other player. You can build spies as quickly as you want and insert them into another empire. Black hats are much less limited, but white hats are required for effective diplomacy.
Time flies like the wind, fruit flies like bananas.

Daveybaby
Small Juggernaut
Posts: 724
Joined: Mon Sep 01, 2003 11:07 am
Location: Hastings, UK

#14 Post by Daveybaby »

Pffff...

I hardly think theyre going to be wearing hats. More likely to be some kind of space helmet. :roll: :roll:

:wink:

emrys
Creative Contributor
Posts: 226
Joined: Fri Oct 24, 2003 3:44 pm

#15 Post by emrys »

Krikkitone wrote:To maybe simplify the every offense having a specific decay time perhaps each offense has some 'short term' and some 'long term' effects (where the short term drops by 20% a turn or more, and the long term drops by 10% a turn or less) So taking an inhabited world would have substantial long term effects, as well as short term effects where as an unallowed fleet incursion would have almost no long term effects but would have some short term effects.
That seems a good simplification, just two values for an event, the short term and long term effects, with consistent decays for both.

Post Reply