"Treaties"- Betray friends, Bribe your enemies or join them!

[Idanwin]

Changing teams in game has been proposed before, I know, but I would like to add a new element.
First of all there should be the possibility of having multiple "game modes".
These could include "Treaties", "Locked Teams" and others like "Kings" (kill the enemy king) or "Capture the Flag" (take the enemy flag and bring it to your flag, "Battlefield" (two armies fight against each other, no buildings), "Settlers" (multiple flags on map, place a building at each flag to win), "Wonders" (build a wonder), "Favour of the king" (would require trade carts, bring carts of gold to the kings castle, the first one to convert the king to their team wins) etc...

Most of these are more scenarios but I'll put them in the right order them later.

Treaties:
A new building could be added, some kind of diplomatic building where you can ask for a peace treaty with one of the other teams, you may have to pay a certain prize for it (resources, or even troups and buildings). You can bribe players, betray players (giving their armies location to the enemy) and do many more things.

[wciow]

Great Ideas!
 I'm sure most of these can be added via some clever use of the current LUA scriting tags.

[daniel.santos]

Yea, very good ideas.  We've discussed having different game modes before as well as diplomacy.  I'm not entirely certain if either of those made it into the bug database.  It sure sounds like fun though!

[horusofoz]

The treaties/Diplomacy ideas does sound great but another idea is to not have them set in stone. Maybe having various levels of alliance like in Civilization. That way you could buy a temporary ceasefire to rebuild your forces or be devious and buy the cease fire so you could mobilise and tactically position troops for a multi-pronged/multiple base attack. I don't know how difficult this is to code as I'm an absolute dunce with any code, cant even do HTML so if this is not practical for time it would take to produce please let me know.

Also being able to have a building where you can deposit shared resources in with your allies would be good. Like the AOE marketplace but where all full level allies have open access to the deposited resources. I suggest a tech to study that allows the uilding to be built and you could use it to share techs, resources and troops with allies though the ally has to study the tech and build the building to have access to the building. Say diplomacy as the tech and embassy as the building?

[@kukac@]

Once I played Master of Orion 2, and I think the treaties were the best there. If someone became too strong, the others teamed up against him, turning the tides, or the winner demanded 10% of the losers total income in order to let him live, and there were a bunch of other things, it's just made the gameplay really good.

[gameboy]

Say diplomacy as the tech and embassy as the building?

Nay, the upgrade should be called Commerce and the building Consulate, but i think Embassy will do.

[Omega]

That'd be neat! Get resources for betraying an ally, or make the ally pay you or get whiped out (either by you or via betrayal). How would such a thing work in glest though? Its not the game I see doing this...

[modman]

That's going to be really complicated!  Some resources are more valuable than others.  For example in Tech you hardly ever use stone except in buildings, so would that be fair to trade that away for gold?

How is the AI going to know if you're cheating it or not?

  What about figureheads for the different players!  They would be dressed in team colors and for Tech it would probably be a general, and for Magic some kind of mage.  For Undeads it could be some kind of skeleton and for Dark Magic, some kind of sorcerer.  (There is an Undeads discussion in the Mods forum)

The images should be able to be 128x128 so to show a little more detail.

[ZaggyDad]

That's going to be really complicated!  Some resources are more valuable than others.  For example in Tech you hardly ever use stone except in buildings, so would that be fair to trade that away for gold?

If you traded stone for gold with Magic (and you were Tech) then you would probably get a profit, but if it were Tech-Tech, then you wouldn't get much, if any, since with magic the stone has a higher demand. And the faction xmls could have some sort of resource demand string, so that the computer can tell how much of a profit you'd make.

[modman]

I don't think Glest is that kind of game.  Glest is all about the battle; even if there were peace treaties, then I wouldn't use them because battling is so much more fun! :]

[@kukac@]

Well, not the way what is important, but the result. If I defeat my opponents by changing my sides at the right time (For example, I have a lot of soldiers stationed at my friends base, and he goes an all out attack... ), it's worth me.

[Idanwin]

We should make sure AI always tries to have as much allies as possible.
And that allies take revenge.
That way you will have to think before betraying an ally.
And don't forget that AI will (hopefully) also betray you...

[Gabbe]

this got lost....anyone working on it?

[Little Helper]

I had this idea for a long time!! Wished glest had that lol. And maybe if you do a treaty with the AI , like a dice they might accept the treaty but your chances of creating a treaty with them increases if you offer more resources! There should be also time limit for treaty lets say 30 minutes till the alliance breaks! But the problem is.........................................what happens when your soldiers or peasants happens to be near your alliance but the alliance broke and they are there? Simple! BE RESPONSIBLE AND MOVE THEM OUT Before the time runs out!!! EH? anyone with meh!?!

[@kukac@]

Only if you make the game attached to this. If you want normal diplomacy, you shouldn't limit the max time. Also, you need to program a normal AI for this, since "it has a chance to accept" is a bit... illogical

[Gabbe]

lets start simple? alliance accepted when given 100 wood, alliance denied when given 50-99 wood and enemy made when 0-49 wood offered?

[John.d.h]

lets start simple? alliance accepted when given 100 wood, alliance denied when given 50-99 wood and enemy made when 0-49 wood offered?

I say go big or go home.  An allegiance system that simple and transparent would only make the game worse in my opinion.

[Gabbe]

The coders need some rest too you know, but i`ll rather see a bigger system, but that would take so long time and stuff...

[John.d.h]

The coders need some rest too you know, but i`ll rather see a bigger system, but that would take so long time and stuff...

Honestly I don't really want to see this implemented into any Glest engine.  There are good kinds of complexity in games, but I don't feel like this is one of them.  However, if it does make its way into the gameplay, then something simple and formulaic would be a piss-poor representation of something as complex and dynamic as political allegiances.  I just don't feel like this is a feature that belongs in a game like Glest.  It's more for the Civilization and Total War type games in my opinion.

[Gabbe]

probably because i love those games....that are...thousand of units at the battlefield..like empire earth 2 (but it sucked)

[wyvern]

Theres a problem with politics, if you've played AOE or warzone 2100 you'll see what I mean, in AOE my allies joined the enemy so I had to take him out myself without help, while in warzone all the ai's made alliances together and refused all of my alliance proposals leaving me to fight 1 vs 7, not fun ,I quit before getting completely crushed. the alliance system would have to be really worked out for me to like it.

[Gabbe]

I kinda get what you mean, a too smart AI will just unite all the AI on the map and then goo all on you.

[wyvern]

exactly.

[ElimiNator]

Make it so the AI cant send unite requests...

[Gabbe]

It should be able to do so, but if you made this a little more complicated:


AI1 wants alliance have not much resources
AI2 wants alliance and resources
AI1 propose alliance with 200 wood
AI2 denies, AI2 needs 300
AI1 becomes angry, AI1 attacks AI2
AI2 becomes angry, tries to ally with you, you accept
AI1 becomes scared, propose ally with AI3
AI3 scared of being attacked by AI2 and you
AI1 attacks AI3
AI3 becomes angry, propose alliance with you
You deny alliance request
AI2 and you crushes AI3 and AI1
Victory!

This can of course change if you choose different paths.