Yeah um. So diplomacy I can declare war, or I can try to trade. But if it has been pretty recent I can't trade again for awhile? So really all I can do is declare war or piss off? I don't really understand the mechanic on this. Is how often you can trade a function of a technology? Please enlighten me on what is going on here with this...
To keep you from spam trading each faction. That way you can't get a tech from faction A, trade it to B to get something to trade back to A and trade that to B and so on.
20 turns is too long. And there is no countdown or notice so you have to check them all to see who you can trade with. Solution causes more problems than it solves.
This is what I figured, still, it's annoyingly opaque. What's the in-game reasoning for why I can't discuss trading a starbase with Faction A in order for help in a war against a common enemy after I finished tech agreement with him a few weeks ago?
Don't forget the AI can make demands of you like destroying a starbase near their stuff or claiming nearby relics, but you can't do the same to them. It sure seems like the 3rd talking option in diplomacy is for such things, but I have never, ever been able to click it.
I think this game is beginning to look more and more broken the more I learn about it. If that is the reason that is complete crap. If a galaxy with 30-50-100 other races you should be able to trade with whoever when ever and if you can make sweet deals dealing all the tech good on you. Trading another empires tech should with a diplomatic penalty not an artificial restriction. Wow. Talk about Beta.
It occurs to me this restriction is largely to prevent 'cheating' for the purposes of the leaderboard. It seems that the solution might be similar to that for the Console usage, which disqualifies you from the leaderboard listing.
It would be possible to have an 'opt in' or 'opt out' on leaderboard listing, thus enabling or disabling certain restrictions.
For me, leaderboard is a non issue (I'm just not that good at this game yet but I love it) so it might make sense to make these restrictive rules optional, so that those of us just playing in the sandbox can do so, and those wishing to show off their skills can do so with the appropriate rules in place.
I agree the lockout period is way too long. In a game of mine I had the Altarians as a buffer zone between me and a highly aggressive Krynn faction. I had just allied with the Altarians, and was very happy to let them be the buffer between me and this war-crazed lunatic. However after a few turns it became apparent the Altarians didn't have the fleet power to stop the Krynns, and I wasn't about to let the Krynn effectively double in size by swallowing the Altarians and then becoming my neighbors either.
I was aiming for a diplomacy win so declaring war not what I wanted to do (and it would also anger Yor who was friends with Krynn, and my neighbors, which I really didn't want to DOW on me), and I couldn't reach the front even if I wanted to. What would be the solution? Feeding the Altarians war material of course! I prepared a decent fleet to give away to the Altarians so they could hold off the Krynn threat. Then I discovered I was locked out. So I waited... and waited... for the opportunity to give my ally some much needed military aid. And while I watched the Krynn kept destroying them for 15-20 turns. Yeah, that was a bit frustrating.
The lockout is in my opinion really stifling the already somewhat limited diplomacy game.
Also, why shouldn't I be able to spam trade (a bit) with the AI? THAT is what would make it cool to play a trader-faction with a high focus on creating good deals and trade for resources, tech and ships! I think the value AI puts on certain deals needs adjustment, but information and tech brokering should definitively be a way to play a trader faction.
Agree, being a trade whore should be a totally acceptable Mizarian or Ferengi or any race in Starwars, method to not have to actually invent tech to use it. I also think the AI should be doing more diplomacy than sharing the same insigth like what is new to me is old to everybody else every 3-5 turns or hittng me up for money. Every single one of them.
Sigh,
The lock out is fine. They are going to reduce it to about 12 turns, it used to be longer. I agree more Diplomo options would be nice. They are coming. However to say the game is broken is a falsehood.
The game is playable (more than E.S. on launch) and has diplomacy far better than other vanilla 4x at launch.
Relax and play. What I want are options to threatened an ai or go to war. That option will be in but likely to come later. If you watched the streams you would know that they are going to get Steamworks in on the first major update. This will allow mods and ships to be easily traded and installed between players just like you can with Civ5.
My feeling for the diplo-timer of 20 turns is that it should be scaled based on how big the previous interaction was. And it should be by "category" instead of an entire "do not talk to us" switch.
Traded me for tech? First off, there should be a limit of no more then 3-5 techs traded at a time, then a 20 turn average cool-down before you can trade tech again with that race. Races that like you might be willing to trade again as soon as 12 turns, races that don't like you might refuse to talk tech trades for 30 turns.
Asked me to go to war or embargo or sign a treaty? Probably 20-40 turns until we will speak again of treaties based on how much they like you.
Lend-Lease items like ships? The AI should put an upper limit on how many ships it will accept, never accepting more then one fleet's worth based on logistics and/or maint costs? After which a 10-30 cooldown on ship trades.
Similar for planets and starbases. If you've traded for a starbase within the last X turns, you can't talk about starbases again for 10-30 turns.
I`d be quite happy with a 3rd option, "What would you want for that?" So I don`t have to click thru everything to find out.
Clever thread title, by the way...
The reason for the trade delay is to guard the AI from some exploitive stuff the player could do (like, declaring war, militarily taking stuff from the AI like resources, then sueing for peace the very next turn for far less than the damage done/bonuses gained, or other stuff like buying colony ships the turn they it a planet etc); although I agree right now it is too long. Actually it should be tight to the mapsize, because, the bigger maps are the longer wars are going to take, as well as on larger maps you usually have more stuff to trade so a longer shutdown of the connection would be justified.
The problem with AIs that are "trade whores" is that this will lead to a scenario in which the AIs get & distribute all techs from the global pool of available techs to each one of them, which can result in frustration for the player who then cannot trade techs anymore to the AI because all of them already have them. There was a time in GC2 where this was the case, a lot of people came complaining in the forums, subsequently the AI got dumbed down. Excessive techtrade is more or less a player-feature.
Another thing is that the AIs diplomacy coding isn't really smart, so keeping it low actually prevents it from doing silly mistakes all over again. (like, giving away warships to a third faction when currently at the brink of loosing a war)
The whole diplo game feels quite restricted and placeholder-y, tbh. I've been assuming it's going to get a serious looking at in patches; once the diplo AI has been improved the player can be allowed to fiddle with it more and things like Threats can be added.
I really like the idea of a trade lock-out per trade item type. Different lengths of lockout per item, just let those things (tech, ships whatever) be grayed-out with a mouse-over tooltip saying how long till you can trade those again.
My personal favourite is when my allies are screaming for aid, and every time I try to give them ships to defend themselves, its...."Leave us, we are preoccupied."Har har har har haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar.Close second is "We surrender, let us discuss terms!"... "Ok."... "Thanks for the peace!"....Wait, weren't there supposed to be "terms"?Another longstanding favourite is "You stay on your side of the border!"... "Remove that starbase!"..."Faction has created a starbase in your Zone of Control"...Hey, apparently they can pester you endlessly, but the only thing you can do is declare war."Benevolent", eh.
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quote who="Larsenex" reply="9" id="3558453"]
diplomacy is far better than other vanilla 4x at launch[/quote]
I think it is an overstatement.
I have disabled tech trading in my game, to give myself more of the challenge. So that AI won't to be exploited with unfair tech excexchange. And I found that I didn't have reason to go the diplomacy screen for entire game. Not that I was specifically avoiding diplomatic options, but there were almost none left to use. Trading resources - I was winning with what I had. Aliances - not sure, why do I need them especially in their current simplistic format. And that's about all you can do.
Sure, you can trick one faction to start war with another. Seems to be not very exciting though. It is not helped by the fact that I am winning any war there is. This is on Tough, large maps.
Diplomacy in Civ games (mostly Civ4 and less so Civ5) feels better since the personality of AI has longer time to present itself and it is happening over bigger span of changing circumstances, I.e. with each epoch the balance of power shifts and player has to adjust to it.
CalCiv3 for me at the moment goes by one scenario, initial development (quite interesting since you have to develop somewhat in the efficient manner), get to medium sized hulls, and start picking up AIs one after another. Which get more and more boring the longer it goes on. AI can't do anything to stop you . Nor alone, neither teamed up.
So, it is all kind of Ok, but feels a bit shallow, overall gameplay and diplomacy in particular.
Yeah sad isn't it. You can build 50,000 star ships now and load up every tile on the map if you want right but there is increasingly smaller and smaller backbone of depth. I mean it is almost like the single player experience was diluted so much in order to overhaul for multiplayer.
1) Being able to give gifts should always be allowed. That would solve a lot of issues right there. If you are trying to keep an ally alive, you should be able to feed him ships as needed, as long as they are gifts. Giving a gift should not count towards the diplomacy trading waiting period, or maybe even allow gifts of sufficient value to speed up that waiting period.
2) Please add something on the main diplomacy screen to let me see who is currently willing to engage in trade discussions with me. I hate having to scroll though 20 civs on a large map to see which ones are ready to talk again!
Yeah this whole diplomacy design sucks. It is poorly thought out and not very deep at all. Add to that Space Battles and AI build scripst on worlds and you have a starship designer and a galactic empire simulator which might as well be done on a spreadsheet for all the actual care the AI seems to give to acting like it cars about anything.
I`ve seen worse... quite a bit worse.
I don't want to measure by that stick. In a game where you can have 128 opponents you would want diplomacy to be above average no? LOL
Hi,
In other words, “I feel diplomacy needs additional work in order to give the player a more satisfying game experience. Combined with the concerns I have with the battle viewer and how the AI builds their planets (mentioned in this and other threads), I do not enjoy the current game. However, if these things were addressed I might sing praises” (J5S, 2015).
I know you may not care about my opinion as a fellow gamer and forum poster, but my tactful response to your untactful posts is to please consider that this is SD’s proverbial house, albeit a forum; therefore, please conduct yourself in a civil manner. If any developer wants to experience toxic venom, they can visit other sites but should not expect to tolerate it here. Delivering what may be a valid message of concerns via your written packages of condescension will never be received well. I have been on these forums for five years and although Brad may emotionally respond at times, because he is human and cares about SD and his team, I have never seen him or SD shoot down objective criticism that is provided in a civil manner, supported by solid arguments.
Thank you.
Signed,
Self-Proclaimed Etiquette Reminder-Extraordinaire
Hi,In other words, “I feel diplomacy needs additional work in order to give the player a more satisfying game experience. Combined with the concerns I have with the battle viewer and how the AI builds their planets (mentioned in this and other threads), I do not enjoy the current game. However, if these things were addressed I might sing praises” (J5S, 2015).I know you may not care about my opinion as a fellow gamer and forum poster, but my tactful response to your untactful posts is to please consider that this is SD’s proverbial house, albeit a forum; therefore, please conduct yourself in a civil manner. If any developer wants to experience toxic venom, they can visit other sites but should not expect to tolerate it here. Delivering what may be a valid message of concerns via your written packages of condescension will never be received well. I have been on these forums for five years and although Brad may emotionally respond at times, because he is human and cares about SD and his team, I have never seen him or SD shoot down objective criticism that is provided in a civil manner, supported by solid arguments.Thank you.Signed,Self-Proclaimed Etiquette Reminder-Extraordinaire
We were feeling a lot more civil prior to the revelation that if and when someone who doesn't agree and expresses is therefore censored, meanwhile what point they make has merit and truth and discussion ceases. The tact I use in the post is a reflection of the level of diplomacy available to players in the current build. All or nothing. Trade lockout means you can declare war or nothing. Furthermore, you can understand or can not understand but not everybody sees the value in sugarcoating and fluffy-izing as opposed to direct.
Feedback is feedback. If you want only to encourage only tactful feedback and see that all others is censored well I conclude that is a contributing factor to what led to the state of the release as it is.
None of my comments have been toxic or venom. Diplomacy is all or nothing is it not? Once you've made a trade you are locked out from doing anything but declaring war, even if it is an ally. What if you need help from that ally or want to propose another agreement? Too bad. That sucks. It is not well thought out. I said as much, if you want specific details on all of the unfinished and poorly done have a look at the threads in general. Not all of my threads are negative either so have a cookie.
Very well put. Apologies if my poor English and probably poor tact were also considered rude. On the way of how the Diplomacy might be improved with the current game mechanics:
1. Currently resources in the game play secondary role. They are not needed to win the game. They are not even needed to make your empire stronger. What if resurces were the essential components to build the ships and starbases? Then all the sudden you uncover a very important strategic and diplomacy layer. Now you will have to do these resources trading treaties. You will have to visit diplomacy screen often to see who has what you need. And either trade with them or go to war with them, which will be dangerous since they have that critical resource and you don't.
2. Trade routes. Make freighters to execute specific trade treaties. If you agreed to trade something in eexchange to something else, then you need to say 5 freighters constantly working on the trade routes for resources or cash to be delivered to your empire. If pirates or other hostiles kill the freighter, then you loose the delivery.make each delivery a persantage of overall deal.
3. Empire bboundaries need to start working. Currently, open boarders do not have any meaning. And any faction can fly freely through your space.
4. The like/ dislike option needs to work better and as was suggested on this forum take in account how far you are on the particular root through ideology. I personally would consider restricting your ideology to one or two options insyead of giving freedom to select all 3. That would make possible to outline AI personalities better. AI would prefer some ideology combinatons to others.
5 Consider adding additional race specific features, I.e. the way they run economy, what planets they live on , etc. That will make playing them more unique experience and might and should affect diplomacy as well.
To fantasise a bit) - consider having 5-6 ideologies instead of 3. And let player and AI to choose only 2. Each combination of 2 fully covered ideologies will will give that race some superability Of course, diplomacy will take these new combinations in to account as per 4.
Seems like applying a relationship penalty for "we just talked to you! stop bugging us!" would be sufficient. Obviously giving them gifts every turn would counterbalance the penalty, so there'd be no actual hit to your relationship. But if you're spamming the trade window then each successive interaction would result in increasingly diminishing returns as your relationship would decline.
If they applied your relationship level to the diplomacy cooldown timer then you'd have an inbuilt mechanism that would shut the trade window as excessive trading you ruined your relationship and would gradually open it back up when the "stop bugging us" penalty faded.
I think the other element here is that the trade window actually has a LOT of information about the other races. You can see what techs they've got that you don't, what kind of ships and starbases they have, what resources, their cash level, etc. There should be a way to access that information outside of the trade screen. (I'm thinking of GC2's espionage screen.)
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