Minister's not given enough choices

[tonystowe]

Looking at the State Dept Minister's choices for AI controlled Priorities, I find that his priorities are lacking in terms of possible treaties/trades etc that currently exist in the game.

Would the game benefit from the player being able to give the State Dept Cabinet Minister the priority to negotiate treaties in order from smallest to largest, potential trade deals and other such actions on his behalf?

The player would still have a say in the final points of the negotiation as the Minister would present the negotiated deal to the player in an email for a YES/NO/HOLD/change type response.

The player should also have the ability to "focus" his Minister's diplomacy from all regions to regions with XYZ rating against/for player country, countries that hate my enemy, etc.

My BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) is that the SR2010's diplomacy is extremely time consuming and finding the right mix of "this for that" takes the fire out of the game sometimes. Honestly, the current system pushes me away from diplomacy altogether after several hours of continuously being hated when I am offering far more than they deserve - resulting in me sending in the troops in order to not have to deal with them.

I like diplomacy in this type of game and I am not asking that the AI give in to me 50% of the time - but it would be nice to see diplomacy actions that make sense, are somewhat viable, and to see me to get beyond a simple Embassy and free trade agreement!

Tony

[George Geczy]

There has been discussion of allowing the Minister to do trades for you, though in the past we've said no to this - among other things, it's hard to create a 'priorities' interface that would keep the Minister from doing deals you didn't want, etc. Though this is still being looked at.

Regarding the idea of having the Minister send the player a deal 'for consideration', that's a good one, I don't think we've had that suggested before (not that I remember). I'll make sure to add that to our wishlist - I like that one.

We have also discussed adding a 'deal indicator' to the diplomacy screen - something that would give you an indication of how your minister (and possibly the other player's minister) considers the quality of the deal, so you can take out some of the guesswork. This is found in other games, such as the Civilization series, and generally makes good gameplay sense. It's also on our future 'wishlist'.

-- George.

[BigStone]

There has been discussion of allowing the Minister to do trades for you, though in the past we've said no to this - among other things,

And how the hell do you explain this:

http://www.battlegoat.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7094


Ps: Sorry Tony for being using your topic for this

[George Geczy]

I should have specified 'ministers don't do diplomatic trades'. Of course, there are some identified oddities with product trades, but the ministers are trying to make sure you don't run out of important stuff (like bullets).

-- George.