Diplomatic states

[Corbeau]

Ideally, a democracy should be able to declare war under certain circumstances (an obvious buildup of forces accress the border, elbowing in neutral territories, attack on an ally...)
Alternatively, nations should be able to make alliances with other nations regardless of state of affairs with other nations (A and B are at war, C can't make alliance with both which blocks out many possibilities).
Alternatively, there should be a diplomatic stance "none".

Or all of the above.

Unfortunately, all of this is a coding matter and we can't expect for it to be fixed any time soon.

So, to make some things go more smoothly in diplomacy, a ruleset proposition:

1. Return Statue of Liberty (or was it Eiffel Tower? The one that allows you to switch between governments immediately and with no anarchy period) as a small wonder.
2. Make it cheap. 200 shields, maybe even 100.
3. Prerequisite: something that is 2-3 steps after Democracy and/or requires all other governments to be discovered. Espionage comes to mind, but it can be discussed.

[wieder]

It might be possible to edit the ruleset and allow a player in democracy to declare a war but this is really a matter of game mechanics. The reason for that not being possible is that your units or cities can't be bribed and that's a huge advantage. To compensate this there needs to be something making the rest of the governments viable.

There is a plan to make Mausoleum of Mausolos to expire later in the game. With that wonder it's still possible to bribe units but it's not possible to incite cities until Mausoleum of Mausolos becomes obsoleted. It was planned to become obsoleted only with spies but maybe that's not the right call. How about making it becoming obsolete when guerilla warfare is invented? That's a powerful tech people wouldn't want to miss but also later in the game.

The Statue of Liberty would be too powerful and it would encourage some nasty TC tricks. It's not that great if you are required to be online at the TC to really use it to the max. With that wonder you could have your nation in communism for the TC and the rest of the turn in democracy so that cities and units can't be bribed.

Also making spies cost more might help with this but I'm not sure about this. It may be enough if the base chance for diplomats and spies to succeed would be reduced from 50% to 25%.

[Nimrod]

I'm not sure what the purpose of this thread is, given the title of "Diplomatic states"; however I propose the following, assuming a Team game:

1) Team players are initially allied or in a state of peace
2) All other players are in a state of war
3) Vision sharing on by default within Teams

This was accomplished already in my World War I scenario on GT, so there is precedence. Being a set map that was already revealed to all players, it made for an interesting game. Alliances were already pre-set once the game started to reflect the accuracy of re-creating the feel of WW1.

It's a bit more work for the admin, however. It requires editing the game sav file prior to launch and ensuring that all the various Diplomatic states are correct for each team. I'm happy to lend my expertise in the matter should we decide to try this out.

The benefits should be self-explanatory. Teams will be able to see each other's starting positions, plan ahead for growth based on distances and placement on the map, and increase cooperation. Veteran players will be able to help out the new ones even more so from the very beginning.

[Corbeau]

It might be possible to edit the ruleset and allow a player in democracy to declare a war but this is really a matter of game mechanics. The reason for that not being possible is that your units or cities can't be bribed and that's a huge advantage. To compensate this there needs to be something making the rest of the governments viable.

There is the compensation in the form of added unrest if your units are outside of your borders. Also, the advantage of not being bribable is also decreased if you decrease the chance of diplomat/spy success.

Al that said, why does it really have to be balanced? How about being aware that Diplomacy really pays a lot?

About TC shifting betwen Democracy/Communism, for me, the main advantage of Democracy is additional trade and decreased corruption. So, how about increasing corruption for Communism so that the TC change has a more negative effect? Maybe also further decrease corruption in Democracy?

[edrim]

Al that said, why does it really have to be balanced? How about being aware that Diplomacy really pays a lot?

Because when something is not balanced there is only one way to play and it is a race not playing. If you have only Democracy style winning a player who will get it first will win.
There are some races in game but you can race to different techs.

Now it is a race to espionage, I dont like it, I loose one game because of it and now i try to win another in same style. This is quite unbalanced in this ruleset, spy+production=win (when you are able to build more spies then opponent you win -> stupid)(it was some diplomacy and other stuff but mostly for getting spies as a first in a board), when an enemy alliances has quite same tech research rate you need to have backup plan, so overproduction is a backup plan.

[wieder]

Spies are a problem but they are there for a reason.

Maybe they should be more expensive, like 60 shields and the base success rate should be 25% instead of 50% as also proposed in other threads.

[Corbeau]

How about increasing unit unhappinness under Democracy to *three*? Then it's a choice regarding how to play, not a race. Especially if you decrease production corruption (waste) in Communism.

[Nimrod]

The inherent problem with spies is that they cost nothing to maintain. Military units have a cost, so it limits your ability to maintain an unlimited army size. Not so with spies - you can literally have an unlimited number of them and simply keeping growing that number because there's no impediment to maintaining them. I've often found that somewhat unrealistic, and certainly here it's proven to be both the winning strategy and the "exploit" which is used to attain the win. Which is sad. At least in Warciv, the focus is on good starting moves and strategy/tactics. Oh my god, I can't believe I just said something positive about Warciv, which I hate. Ugh !

[kevin551]

Here's a hint for beginners. Longturn games are slightly different each time mostly because there is a different set of players and starting conditions.
What works best in one game is not necessarily the best for the next.
In LT31 people thought communism was the best and that democracy was too hard.
In LT32 the defensive use of diplomats/spies was more important than the offensive.
Changing the balance of the game because of one example eg LT33 is risky.

[mmm2]

in all your comments you missed the biggest abuse of all for spies/diplomats. That is inciting revolts... it's so easy to use spies to find cities that are loaded with units of opposing team, shrink to size 1, and then incite. Even if the price is very high, you are getting all the units inside the city with full moves to switch sides and to attack the player that they belong to.. It's really dirty trick. In warclient games, we banned inciting. This is one of the last exploits left in Longturn, sorry to point it out to those players who still like to use it - maybe it will still be around for a few more games .. But worry not too much, because it's not too easy to exploit if defending player has court houses and is celebrating..

[Corbeau]

I think we had a discussion about inciting cities in the CivLand forum (I think... maybe it was here?) Came to pretty similar conclusion. Spies should be able to incite population under some circumstances. But that means *incite for riots*, not pick off the shelf and put it in the cart.

However, then the issue remains of cities being fortified so well that, other things being equal, an attacker will *always* lose more units then the defender, even if the conquest was successful. Which is far from the real situation.