That already existed in medieval era : family hostages. You "lend" your son to other lord while he lends his daughter. so everyone is sure to remain at peace. If war is declared, hostages are slained.

I wasn't clear enough : I think that's a good idea, and it would add an interesting option in the usual pacts/treaties/etc .. that would be a real way to be sure your allies will remain ... allies.

Sometimes reality is a good teacher.

Erm....isn't this already in the game? I mean you "offer" your daughter/son to marry to another Kingdom's Sovereign or family member. -> You improve the relations between the 2 sides, plus you can obtain the lands of the other Kingdom if their Sov dies.

Ok, back on topic:

I don't think that these are necessary.

Yeah, but this is a fantasy strategy game. Why should an "immortal" Sov care if his daughter/son is being kept as a prisoner? This would only make sense, if we would have a successor system and if the Sov would die because of old age. Right now the children of the Sovereigns are "only" champions, nothing more. It won't be hard to recruit champions you know.

the idea is good but i dont think these forums are a good representation of the wider target audience. some people will be turned off if the game becomes too complex. some people just dont want to spend a lot of time managing diplomatic relations, i stopped playing medieval 2 total war because of this. its not that a cant do it its just that i cbf spending a crapload of time sending individual people around. if there is complex diplomacy elemental should have customisable difficulty settings where the difficulty of individual aspects can be changed like in tropico and anno 1404

I'm very much against having envoys as units on the map which require micromanagement. This always annoyed me in the TW series.

Decided to present my idea graphically:

http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/9098/21036256.png

If anyone's played MOO2 they'd work like governors, just instead of assigning governors to star systems you'd assign an ambassador to a faction. They'd then rest in the capitol city/palace and travel to the other faction's capitol city/palace whenever you request an audience. High rank or importance can simply be translated into a bonus.

The impact of who you send would be some function of faction relation level [shown on the thermometer] and the diplomat's own bonuses. So if you send a guy who was a champion and fought against the faction he'd apply a negative bonus to the overall relations by being the ambassador. 

Lots of good ideas. Whatever diplomatic system is made, it shouldn't be easily gamed by players against the AI, and it should try no to be completely useless in multiplayer...here are my thoughts on some of the topics brought up in this thread.

Diplomatic Units

I have to agree, the diplomat units in TW were annoying more than anything, BUT the priest units were fun to use. They seemed more like "diplomatic warrior" units, and I enjoyed flooding a region with my priests and seeing the populace there change religion. This is how diplomat units should behave imo. Once in a region , they grant you a passive ability or bonus....so its less micromanagement, but you still need to move them around the map and watch out they don't get assassinated.

Initiating Diplomacy

Initiating diplomacy should be simple...once you make 1st contact, you can contact them again whenever you want. Requiring a diplo unit to walk up to the sovereign or something is just a unnecessary PITA. HOWEVER, grant diplomatic bonuses to diplomacy if you do have a diplomatic unit within close proximity of the sovereign you are engaging.

Diplomatic Points

I do like the idea of diplomatic points..for one main reason. It demystifies diplomacy and quantifies it, which should help the devs and modders in programming AI that can't be gamed as easily. And it makes it obvious to the player whats going on.

Multiplayer

In multiplayer, players should want to use diplomacy with/against each other. I'll use a the simpliest example..trading maps.

Player A has explored and uncovered a good portion of the world and has a map worth 20 diplomatic points. He wants to trade with Players B who has a map worth 5 diplomatic points. They are both ATM neutral to each other, neither has diplomatic techs research nor have diplomats.  In order to engage talks about trading maps with Player B, Player A must spend 5 diplomatic points (the cost of B's map).  Player B does not want to uncover his portion of the map to player A even though he is getting a good deal. However refusing also costs diplomatic points.

Lets say for this example, since they are both neutral, refusing cost 50% of whatever the other side is offering. In this case it cost 10 points to refuse (20*50%). In this case player B just "lost" the diplomatic skirmish. Player A spent only 5 points, while player B spent 10 points.

Had they been at war with very low standing with each other, the refusing cost would have been next to nothing. But had player A flooded player B with diplomats the diplomats could have passively granted bonuses which would have artificially boosting the 'cost' of his map (and/or lowering Player B's map) and increasing the cost of refusing. Player A can then diplomatically strong arm Player B to accept his conditions, and maybe even asked for additional items and still come out ahead in the diplomatic point attrition game. Additionaly diplomatic techs can push this advantage even further. AI should know when they are being strong armed by calculating the base value of the deal, and comparing it to the modified value by techs, diplomats and other such things.

A player who has researched and developed their diplomacy game can completely shut down another player's diplomacy who hasn't developed theirs at all.

The goal is to allow diplomacy to just as easily be used against players/AI and that the AI can use it against players. Hopefully something like that can do this.

Awesome post Le Blaque!  I very much like your idea for the political system, I don't even want to change even a little bit!!  It seems to address the political aspect of the game extremely well.  I'm with you on the Diplo points shuoldn't be a resource, but I cannot see how your system allows for "bonusing" deals.  I may be readung wrong, but it looks like your version of the diplo point is jus a number calculated at thetimeof negotiations, that give each party a common "currency" to work with.  ie, my map is woth 20 points, but yours is worth 10 points.  Is that what you mean?  Perhaps, the bonus is in the computed number value for what each party is offering?  making a sour deal sound sweet because of the overbearing diplo bonus one has?

Also, How would diplo bonus work when you are the party being contacted?  You're not going to create an embassy in your own city are you?  I suppose, this is actually a viable option.  Makes sense too, having a diplo team at home helping the sov out with negotiations.

I think cool down times is the easiest to understand, implement, and balance, of the systems that have been suggested to stop the political system being Exploited.  The other option that is viable, but is harder to notice and keep track of (cool down time is easy, because you either can do diplo this turn, or not.  THere is no middle ground), would be to drop all diplo bonus to 0 straight after a round of negotiations, and have it slowly go back up to max.  Problem with the diplo bonus reduction system, is that it will be extremely hard to balance, and creates a "why is doing diplo always different" question for the player (only hardcore players actually look at how everything interacts).

The trick will be how to implement the bonuses of 1) an expensive Diplomatic Team & 2) Family Member bonus

How about you can do TWO things to increase your relations with Faction A? Build an Embassy of A in your city, and send a Diplomacy team to their city.

If they haven't built an embassy (for you), then upkeep of your diplomacy team will be slightly higher.

I like the embassy idea, with a couple of tweaks.

First off, as a player I would like to be able to designate an embassy district in my capital city for foreign embassies (they can only build an embassy if there is room in the embassy district... that is a tile, or several, I reserve, with up to four embassy buildings per tile).  If I can't, then those embassies that other people are building willy nilly shouldn't count against my building count for that city (or possibly even if I can... embassies with numerous foreign entities could take a real bite out of your capital city).

Second, an embassy isn't just a manner in which to contact other nations.  It is a way to influence politics within that city, serves as a base for your countries interests, and can assist you in all manner of espionage and quests within that city and/or nation (not to mention having the possibility of creating a few quests itself).

Thirdly, diplomacy should be conducted through champions.  You should have an ambassador personally assigned to each embassy, who is required to be stationed there in order for anything other than basic diplomacy to be conducted.  This reduces micromanagement and the necessity of spreading your champions too thin (I could see champion replacement, as they die over the years from old age, becoming a bit of a hassle) while still giving the appointing of an ambassador a use.  You want to negotiate that long term trade treaty or alliance?  Anything other than a simple "hey, I need a ceasefire" or "hey, what is your opinion of _____?" is going to need an ambassador.  While you wouldn't need one for established treaties to remain in effect, to create new ones would require the movement of a champion.  So will using your embassy for espionage, or supporting the criminal underworld in a city in order to facilitate your goals/undermine the opposing sovereign in their own land.  Or assisting your champions (or independent champions) in quests through that empire.

I personally don’t like the idea of using actual units, whether it is special envoy units or actual heroes/family members.  The Total War series used that method and it just gets bogged down late game with envoys all over the place.  It’s too much micromanagement and lessens the “fun factor.”    Similar to what was suggested above, I do like a point based system. 

A simple way to accommodate this would be similar to the way “influence” was used in GalCiv2.  Perhaps you could get X diplomacy points per town/size level, more X points for certain buildings, and further points for researching certain techs, etc.  The total is your diplomacy points bank.  That bank could be used for certain activities.  Every diplomatic contact costs some number of points, with different values set based on the particular action conducted (peace/trade treaties could cost more, etc.). 

The inherent problem with this, as already noted, is with the late game.  With several towns, buildings, and tech, you will be gaining diplomacy points at a fast rate.  A solution would be to scale the points based on what you’ve already done via diplomacy, and who you already have relationships with.   For instance, your first 5 tech/magic trades costs 1X diplomacy points, next 5 trades costs 2X diplomacy points, and so on.  This could work for peace treaties as well, and with a higher cost basis, it penalizes people for constant war/peace tactics.  Ideally, war would be free because you don’t need diplomacy for that.  Other diplomacy options, such as “attack kingdom A,” could work in a similar way.  The higher cost basis for subsequent diplomacy actions can be rationalized (for the rpg folks) as your envoys requiring higher salaries for work, etc.

If you have an “alliance” with a particular team, the other diplomacy actions could be halved in point cost due to the good relationship.  Also, to stress their inherent cultural and philosophical differences, Kingdom to Empire (and vice versa) diplomacy could always cost 2x the standard set values.

I've thought a couple of things while reading all of these...and I want to say that this is a great idea. But I think that it's being torn apart. Scroll down to "What I'd Like to See" to skip my feelings on various points. See "Short Version" for the...short version.

Regarding Points

No points. I think that taking diplomacy and putting it as a set value that you can do every so often is fairly pointless, if you'll excuse the pun. It seems childish to be told, "Okay, Sovereign, you've already talked to 4 people this week. You can talk to more next week" when I am the lord and master of a whole civilization. Likewise, diplomacy points wouldn't be as 'solid' as, say, gold or food points - when you use gold or food, the result is definite. If I make a soldier costing my 5 gold and 10 food, then I get a soldier for 5 gold and 10 food. Having a large chunk of my structures producing diplomacy points seems a waste, as the results are far from certain.

Regarding the 'value' of trading object, my first thought was back to an Alpha Centauri game. I met another person early on in the seas, and he told me, "I have a copy of Sister Miriam's map, want it for 50 energy?". While that was fine and dandy, Miriam was on the other side of the map, and I wouldn't have to deal with her for several scores of turns at worst, several dozen at best. In that case, the map had real value, but just not to me. Likewise, it could have explored 100% of the world, but the value to me is limited because I don't need to know 100% of the world at that time. It could be worth 20 points in terms of value overall, but worth 0 points in terms of me.

Regarding Diplomats as On-The-Map Units

This was done by TW, and I didn't much care for it, for a couple of reasons. One, it would require me to hunt down a certain diplomat, drag him across the world, and hope that I shouldn't be sending armies instead. Plus, they seems to just have no value. By the time I ran across another faction, it was pretty much, "Stay out of my way, I'll stay out of yours. Declare war and I'll destroy you, if you want anything come find me." I felt it discouraged diplomacy, less because diplomacy was important, more because diplomacy was just a chore.

Regarding Diplomats as Champions or Important People

This one is kinda nice, I think, but there's also the point that early game you would have to risk losing an army (albeit temporarily) for a gamble. While the gamble itself seems viable and shouldn't detract from it, I doubt that it'd be useful to strive for a long-lasting relationship with your also-peaceful neighbor(s) when you have only one champion to send scurrying around the countryside. Furthermore, as a Sovereign, I feel that my children and my chosen generals shouldn't be messengers. I think it seems tacky to turn military leaders into bowing-and-scraping ambassadors.

Regarding Instant (Telepathic/Magical) Communication

If I were a Sovereign, I'd hate the thought of sitting down to dinner after a long day of Sovereigning and have thirty minds suddenly batter my own with questions and requests. Likewise, if I were a military Sovereign, I'd hate the thought of giving anyone access to even a small part of my mind. The same with magic, such as teleporting a scroll somewhere - if I can teleport a scroll with a request, isn't it just as easy to teleport a nuke and blow the heck out of my enemy? This seems like a risky method with lots of problems in a war-torn world, from a lore standpoint. I'd use it only if there isn't time for anything else to be implemented.

What I'd like to see

Something akin to GalCiv 2's espionage. That is, I manually build a diplomat, and he goes into my 'diplomat pool' for distribution. The way I'd like to do it, though, is by manually making a diplomat, who would come out at a certain level. Let's say this...

I build a diplomat, Bob. Because I have no research regarding levels, he comes out at level 0. I want to send Bob somewhere, so I click on him in the 'diplomat' or 'diplomacy' screen and click 'deploy'. From there, I can send Bob someplace after he travels there (negating instant communications). Once he arrives, I can communicate with Bob as much as I want, and Bob sees to it that whatever I want is relayed. That is, I tell Bob "Alright, I'll trade them Advanced Fishing for Horseback Riding." Bob tells them, they deliberate, and a few days/turns later Bob speaks up and says, "They say throw in 15 gold and you've got a deal." For completing this transation, Bob gains more XP, and thus becomes level 1. With a more difficult transaction (more back-and-forth, perhaps) Bob would have gaiend level 2.

However, what if I don't want Bob to be level 0, and I don't want to spend an eternity researching techs? Well, when I click on Bob, I can also click on another button called 'study'. In essence, Bob goes to study diplomacy in the city, and depending on the city's research output comes back swiftly (high research, or lots of academies and the like) or a while later (Fewer research/academic structures) at level 1. Doing it again nets him level 2, 3, 4...etc. Thus, it may help to train Bob up a bit before sending him out, but at the end of the day Bob will learn more through practice than through study.

So long as Bob stays in that faction's place, he and I can communicate with each other, and he can tell them my wishes. If Bob dies a horribly painful death, I can't communicate with that faction anymore until I make a new diplomat. 

Another thing that I just now thought up...a sort of diplomatic influence. If Bob has spent the last 150 turns in my now-ally's city, he's likely to have more influence with them than, say, that brand new diplomat I just made yesterday.

Short Version

1. Build a diplomat manually, deploy him with a click of the mouse on a place, and he travels there invisibly (that is, it takes him X turns to get somewhere, and he gets there when he does, no map interference)

2. I can also train my diplomats, helping them gain levels so they function better.

3. Diplomacy tree techs would allow for higher level initially for diplomats, as well as open up specific options.

4. Having the same diplomat in the same place for a long time will net improved benefits with that faction, as clearly you and the diplomat both care to have been there for so long.

That's my take...phew. Long one!

-N