Regional Relations and what should affect them...

Discussion about the Diplomacy System in SR2010

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Il Duce
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other diplo calcs - buildcap...

Post by Il Duce »

Buildcap has always been pretty limiting - perhaps a more subtle interpretation such as Buildcap UTILIZATION - that is if you have it but you are not building at high rates, you ought to get international recognition of your restraint [rather than having to tear it down].
Tearing it down is too simplistic - retaining but not using buildcap is a way to put backbone into initiatives [sort of the "or else" part of your offer without actually clicking the snarly-face tone].

Likewise, research utilization ought to be considered - I have seen a starving moscow build research facilities that it could only fund in its dreams - so it ought to be charged for mismanagment.

...
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BigStone
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Re: other diplo calcs - buildcap...

Post by BigStone »

Il Duce wrote: Likewise, research utilization ought to be considered - I have seen a starving moscow build research facilities that it could only fund in its dreams - so it ought to be charged for mismanagment.
Good point....

Maybe another point to consider:
A while back i proposed an idea to seperate the research into 2 groups
* Military R&D
* Civilian R&D

Spending more money on the military R&D should give a negative drop on the ratings if you can't effort it...
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Post by Silent Storm »

CptBritish wrote:I think Declaring War on a Allies invader should improve Civilian Relationship alot really...

If your not asking for anything in return in order to declare war on their Enemy... they should love you for it (Esspecially if you have a war winning force) because if you think about it (And most of the Free Iraqi people haven't Relised it yet !) You country is sending its Husbands, Fathers, Brothers and Uncles (And in some cases Grandfathers) to fight for them... Yes they may get some land from it... Maybe they will get most from it but if your ally is bound to lose in a war without your help then they should see it as a token of friendship and that friendship should be strenghtened... (even if you are planning to invade them later anyway :D)
I agree! This is important since it will make the player feel apart of a real world.
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Il Duce
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More slants

Post by Il Duce »

I have noticed that regions will generally declare on the highest buildcap holder. Internally I suppose that having the high buildcap generates belli against you period. The problem is that a non-adjacent region that does this can then escalate to defcon 1, thus making their lower numerical buildcap as effective as the high buildcap holder. Once they have this jumpstart going for a few months, they then declare on an adjacent region whom they can actually attack - a surprise attack with a heavy buildup of force.

I would almost call this a cheat.

How you address this is anybody's guess. Either you are at war, or you aren't. Just declaring without action, or the possibility to act, should cost you something, and it should be intolerably expensive - not just force your adjacent regions to also declare on the same remote region and buildup in anticipation of your surprise attack. This is not what I would call a controlled escalation, although it probably does have historical precedent. It just shouldn't go for free.

This brings up the issue of the AI's inability to negotiate a little more meaningfully - which would be a nice feature, but is probably the next level of intelligence, and probably not provided for in the engine [yes I know, you were making a wargame, not a diplo game].

In the situation outlined above, it seems like the declarer should have the ability to communicate what it's up to with its other allies. Or should adjacent regions just start growing belli against the declarer? I suppose the latter is the only alternative - that is, if you make this kind of proxy declaration to accelerate buildcap, it should immediately cost you in global belli against you, including the cancellation of treaties... something we rarely see, which is also a means of communicating displeasure with an ally other than raising belli or dropping civ/dip. Perhaps your failure to act should cause your regional treaty integrity rating to plummet...? Now that's a number that gets overlooked a bit.

dunno.
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Il Duce
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Another stupid buildcap trick...

Post by Il Duce »

Just curious if anyone is doing this to get around buidcap slot limits...

If you are reducing buildcap to appease the WM and peer regions, and you are not in a real big hurry, is anyone doubling up the size of certain units and then splitting them after they are built?

For instance, you have a small base [3 slots] and you want to produce a tank, 4 lite infs and 2 arty units at that location. If you double the inf and arty unit strength [size], you can pretty much have them all complete by the time the tank is done [haven't tested extensively], without using slots at other bases. You just split the units into their original sizes when they complete.

This is presented basically as evidence of a buildcap utility issue - I still believe that the percentage of population in service plus some component of build cost, maint cost, and total potential build cap is probably a better indicator of overall threat potential than just pure slot count...
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Il Duce
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another thought

Post by Il Duce »

dunno if anyone recalls an old, old game called Balance of Power...
Basically, it comprised a series of diplomatic posturing and military and economic aid gestures in a cold war setting...

Where I'm headed here is that it might be interesting to add some simlar characteristics to State [which it seems was already anticipated but never inplemented].

At present, players do in fact send econ and tech aid to allies or neutrals, as 'gestures,' provocative or placating. Perhaps the effect of these could be made more evident, up to and including map overlays that reflect sentiment, similar to fog-of-war and sight overlays. This would give the minister of state something to work with, advise about, and monitor. I would like to see at least two map overlays - 'sentiment towards us,' essentially a graphic of diprelate/civrelate, possibly one for each, and 'WM approval,' which would provide a grand view of how the wm feels about all the regions.

Not asking for a major revision here, just making some of the existing influences more evident and possible more effective [or at least play up the importance of this activity as part of the arsenal].

I suppose this would also lay the groundwork for covert ops, by at least providing a basis to determine targeting and to select tactics.
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haenkie
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Post by haenkie »

Il Duce i dont see many comments here, but i think you oversaw one important thing. Settings at defcon 1 are very very pricy. I dont think anyone uses it, I never even set my defcon at 1 because i cant pay for that amount of money.
The only way i can pay that price, is when my economy spins out of control, and that will never happen again. thansk to update 4...

grrr

:D
The_Blind_One
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Post by The_Blind_One »

haenkie wrote:Il Duce i dont see many comments here, but i think you oversaw one important thing. Settings at defcon 1 are very very pricy. I dont think anyone uses it, I never even set my defcon at 1 because i cant pay for that amount of money.
The only way i can pay that price, is when my economy spins out of control, and that will never happen again. thansk to update 4...

grrr

:D
Actually you only need to cut on social expendiature and it works out perfectly, it's just that people don't like to divert resources to other allocations :D specially in communisme it isn't so hard to keep defcon 1 :D
Il Duce
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Hadn't thought about it much

Post by Il Duce »

Defcon 1 is a situation I can rarely afford - I'm pretty stingy with regional resources. I like to keep military spending high at low defcon - basically to achieve high military efficiency but to do so at my discretion - I hate that the declaration of war forces you to defcon 3 minimum, so I limit my actual time at war. In fact, I spend defcon 4 amounts at defcon 5, but again, it's discretionary.

War ain't cheap. I'd rather watch two other regions sock it out while I sell them both military goods. I guess I'm just a born capitalist. By the way, I love that their populations abandon them to come work for me as well.

This of course requires high social spending. I suppose that these are all strategic preferences, but I like to have something to show for my investments. A happy region with a high GDP, and no significant belli with anyone is fine with me [I generally go to war only to assist an ally - which allow me flexibilty to position my troops, declare war, blast 'em, and leave soemone else to celan up the mess]. With all of the other pieces that go to build my strategy, it's not surprising that I am interested in the diplomacy and international market aspects of the game.

If I think in terms of how hosilities can be best resolved in a post-nuclear world, I believe that covert/special ops and economic/cultural activity are [and will be in the future] far more meaningful and effective. In the last twenty real years it is hard for me to recollect a shooting war that achieved anything lasting. We seem to be re-fighting world war one and the korean war forever these days. World war 2 didn't really end until the USSR collapsed.... Just my opinion.

This is not to say that we do not have a great universe of warriors [in many nations and cultures, for whom I have the greatest respect], I just think that overall they have been misused. I suppose I consider warfare obsolete in terms of policy implementation, and ultimately, societies have to have policies and get along.

So those are things I look to play out in this game. So far, it's been interesting. Just depends on your point of view I guess.

Regarding AI regions declaring on remote regions which they are not in a position to actually attack, I can only speculate [based on wm news traffic] that they do this in fact to run at high defcon levels - again, to be at higher levels [1 or 2 or 3] without actually threatening their immediate adjacent neighbors ["It's o.k. - we're really gearing up to attack those other guys - honest!"]. I see this type of declaration a great deal. Again, these are AI regions - why do they do this? My speculation persists, that they do it to gear up for war with their adjacents by way of preparing for a surprise attack. [Does St. Petersburg really have a righteous grievance with Eastern Siberia - one that justifies the expense of declaring on a region tht they, in all likelihood, will never send an offensive unit into? I think not.] The only other reason for it is to drag an ally - who is in fact adjacent to the region they declare against - into a war they can not afford, or force them to renege on their alliance. This is obviously a diplo tactic, not a military one.
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Uriens
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Post by Uriens »

I think AI declaration of war against non-neighboring region actually only hurts that AI and a lot. AI seems to do this when cassus belli goes high enough and then I always see the same pattern of behavior - AI first slowly and gradually goes to DEFCON 3 or 2 (which is fine since it prepares his military for war) and then declares war. Then he goes DEFCON 1, waits until his own economy collapses or nearly collapses and then starts to 'juggle' DEFCON levels between 3 and 1.

There is no real benefit for war declaration against far away region since war declaration does NOT provoke ally to attack that region as well. Alliance does not force you to declare war on someone who is fighting your ally (it does give you cassus belli against that region though, but only if your ally is not the one that fired the first shot). Only defense treaty ‘forces’ you to go to war and only if ally is the one that is attacked (if he attacks, you have no obligation to help him). BTW, game 'forces' you to declare war by giving you large diplomatic penalties (other regions get cassus belli against you, significant drop in WM relations) if you don’t declare war on someone that attacked a region you have defensive treaty with.

From what I gather AI globally suffers from 2 main problems - declaring wars against regions that they can't really attack and not building factories/mines/etc. to get resources that his economy lacks. These two combined lead to pretty fast economical crash of AI and his inability to produce any more units to actually defend himself if he does get invaded. In fact, in Europe scenario AI gets his balance to negative values in record times, and if you play it for about 2 years you will notice that many regions report critical shortages of some resources. Critical shortages happen when AI can't produce a resource himself AND can't afford to buy it on the market.

Of course, economical aspect that I mentioned belongs to economy forum but, as you can see, these 2 problems have a connection - diplomatic problem leading to economical one.
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Post by Balthagor »

We seem to be drifting off topic...

There are some good points here but they are more in the line of what the AI should be doing diplomatically than what actions should have what effects. Would you like me to split these posts to a new thread in AI for further discussion?
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Uriens
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Post by Uriens »

I agree, we drifted. New topics seem like a good idea too.

More on topic - I'd really like to see some way to increase some specific regions causus belli against your own region (in other words, to provoke someone to attack you). I've red that military buildup against borders should increase causus belli but I didn't really see it happen. I would mass all my troops against someones border and causus belli wouldn't change. Still on to-do list?
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Post by BigStone »

Uriens wrote: I would mass all my troops against someones border and causus belli wouldn't change.
Why such complicated.... you can march all your troops into a allied
territory and say ... SURPRISE.....

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Uriens
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Post by Uriens »

And then I can kiss my WM membership goodbye, not to mention that EVERY region will declare war on me. Not exactly provoking a specific region, huh?
Il Duce
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Specifics

Post by Il Duce »

specifics...

first off - one of the things that differentiates SR2010 from operation war games is the econ and diplo aspects - which make us, as players, deal with why are these factions at war, as well as how do we fight that war.
Therefore, I am interested in seeing those aspects improved. It's not just a matter of plopping some units down on the map and fighting. In the real world, all wars are ultimately a failure of diplomacy.

So - Regional State AI's should in general be more active.

Market-based attacks [cornering, flooding, withholding] should have more immediate and observable effects on any or all of dip/civ/cb. Without making the econ too much more complicated then it is, trade issues need to be more evident - in diprelate.

Breaking a treaty under reasonable circumstances should be more possible - e.g. your ally forms an alliance with your enemy - clearly a conflict of interest. You should be able to respond, not just by withholding trade and aid [and forget boycotts] but by 'forcefully' breaking [for example] a free trade clause. No 'request to break,' just break.

Regions that form conflict of interest alliances should suffer on regional treaty integrity, as well as on diprelate. Hard to say if that happens now as these values adjust far too slowly to be observable in a meaningful way.

It still isn't clear to me how civrelate differs from diprelate, nor what factors affect either significantly, so it is hard to get specific about what should be. In reality, there are cultural biases that can not be overcome - they are numerous and hard to define [but ethnic cleansing and holy wars are still alive and well aren't they]. Perhaps civrelate should just be static? Our people hate you and they always have and they always will. Nothing you can do about it. On the other hand, this has never stopped alliances, primarily of a covert or convenience nature. However, I think that you can do more with the diplo before you implement a major covert ops/intelligence/insurgency model.

Diprelate should certainly move in synch with regional treaty integrity - Integrity, I suppose, should be a ceiling on diprelate. Integrity should be a global advertisement of your reliabilty as an ally, whereas diprelate should be a measure of your success in specific negotiated relationships. In this regard it might be worthwhile to eliminate the a->b / b->a pair of measurements, and just indicate a sum for a given regional pair, with ministers being more verbose about specific proposals as you prepare them. For instance, you want to send a gift of timber -the minister should tell you that it isn't going to work as your counterpart is selling timber, and perhaps propose that you send coal instead.

For every bit of wisdom I've read here [or written here] about diplomacy, I ultimately encounter a situation where the same set of stimuli yields an inverse response, and the reason for those exceptions is never really clear to me.

There is one situation, I believe that it is the China map, where the initial total bond indebtedness has dragged the integrity of most regions down to the point where negotiation is just not possible at all. I would definitely suggest that indebtedness should have no effect on treaty integrity. I may be broke, but I'm honest. Or maybe I'm dishonest but too stupid to rip anyone off successfully, so I'm also in debt. There have been some other comments regarding indebtedness in other threads, and I generally agree with those. If you follow that line, maybe we need to have WM-Moodys issue monthly bond ratings and have thoe affect your trade, perhaps by adding to the commission that the WM could charge for handling your goods.

Belli factors seem, among other things, to be related to the volume and frequency that you shut other regions out of the marketplace. This is as it should be - but then, reducing your volume of trade in a given commodity never seems to cause a sliding belli to stop sliding. This mechanism needs to be more straightforward and predictable.

This leads me to think that the abilty to form a cartel might be a cool addition, but way too complicated to implement in single player mode [although MP humans could easily do this, and so AI's should be taught to recognize it].

I often see situations where over a multi-year period, my relations with allies shows as a high dip and civ, but I also have growing belli towards that ally. This confuses me, and I also do not see how the game engine can interpret or enforce that kind of situation. If that is the case, my diprelate toward them ought to be falling. And again, since the AI's will never release you from a treaty/clause, it is impossible to do what the numbers suggest - i.e. slowly back off clauses until I am pulling my ambassador home and keeping my internal popularity up. My counterpart ought to be doing the same [as they begin to mistrust my rising belli but my continued free trade and aid], but they don't.

I suppose the question of how dip/civ/integrity and the wm ratings should interact is hard to discuss because the kinds of actions that these ratings suggest is not being taken by AI's nor is it being enforced [meaningfully] on human players. Speculating - If I maintain a treaty with an ally towards whom my belli is increasing, does this cause my civrelete to to fade also, as my people grow impatient with my appeasment tactics? See what I mean? it's real hard to talk about.

Perhaps an overall simplification of these mechanisms is needed? - maybe its just so complex that adding or adjusting interactions is not meaningful. Maybe update 5 ought to be a simpler diplo model, and let a new body of experience guide you into update 6 and 7....
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