Diplomatic Warfare (<-The hilarious version)

While reading the random and comical backstabbing at schlock's mercenary i got an idea which just might add another (rather caotic) layer of depth to the game while probably not to hard to implement. At this point you might already guess what it's about, but please follow me a bit while i explain the idea behind it. Oh, and it'll get pretty dark. If it's to time consuming for you, you might just skip that part.

So, you might ask yourself how such a game mode might benefit a game happily called planetary annihilation. And now i want to give an answer to that.

One of the unique points to reach such an experience is that all teams are setup at peace on first contact. This System proved to can be engaging in many senses. There is more than just the scary aspect. It's not be always fair, but extremly engaging. It might be even fun in games with ai, since their sometimes random behaviour might put you under pressure. You can hardly know when the enemie strikes. This concept will heavily profit by the probably included information warfare.

You see? I think this might not just be engaging, but also a hilarious ton of backstabbing fun without any sense of guilt.
This heavily supports the human aspect in multyplayer games and could add suprising turns in singleplayer matches you wouldn't have in a normal, rather predictable fight against an ai.

Also, this might help to keep galactic conquest's for beeing to boring on the long term. If you proceed to the next planet, it might be populated by different factions. Maybe you can try to win one over? Promise him to share the planet with him or to protect him from superior enemies and your conquest will get easier.

Just don't turn your back to him or diplomacy is going to unwrap it's claws and point out your mistakes with nuclear brilliance.

A diplomacy feature couldn't hurt, as long as it is in an optional mode/game option.

I would be all for a DEFCON style diplomacy system. I loved that game and played it quite a bit.

Having a toggle for locked allies in the lobby would be a must for times when players felt like a simpler game without the backstabbing potential. Were this to be implemented I would like to see it pan out a few ways.

1) Allies are set in the lobby and are locked.

2) Allies are not set in the lobby but are locked once made in game

3) Allies are set in the lobby (or not) and are completely mutable once in game.

I wonder also whether diplomacy like this should be announced to all players "Players 1 and 2 are now allied!" or whether it should be silent diplomacy or both. I could see some interesting exchanges happening in such a situation. Player 1 wanting to go public with their partnership with 2 in the northeast to deter 3 from attacking on their northern front, while Player 2 wants to keep the partnership secret because of the surprise attack this affords them as they are leading player 3 on with a partnership against 1 which they plan on cancelling the moment 3 is sandwiched between 1 and 2.

Whether such things would become unwieldy would remain to be seen but I would like to see options 1 through 3 included.

Haven't you learned from history? What did World War I and II teach us?

That secret alliances are awesome.

world war 1 was a massive mess of secret alliances made by every nation in europe. thats why a squabble between 2 tiny nations turned into one massive 4 year party.

Hence why I then went into the discussion surrounding secret alliances and why people may have reasons for wanting an alliance to be announced loudly or kept secret if such a system were in place : )

And that's exactly the chaotic and complex development an actual diplomacy-system can bring. A small campaing turning into a war with 5 participants and 10 teams^^

Yeah, this should be optional. Your idea of just setting everything up in the options is probably the best way. A single switch to start the game at world peace would be enough. Of course, the ai would have to be adapted to this ideas.

I think when making threaties, an option to choose secret treaty or open would be the best way to do it .
There's a tactical gain in openly declaring an alliance as there is in hidden ones.

So, only difference from FA is that you want to have NO screen for viewing current alliances, and you want p2p alliances, so each player could be in several alliances.

How units AI should behave if player is in two alliances confronting each other? Attack both? Do not attach anyone? Probably we should have different options for alliances - economics (resource sharing), recon (sensor and vision sharing), warfare (units are not enemies). You may compose any alliance (under both parties agreement) from any combination of this options to obtain required effect.

For insane superiority there should be one-side limitations to said options - you may mark some base/units group/territory as hidden from particular player, even if he is in your recon alliance. As well as establish no-enter zones for opposite side units (it allied units enter said zone they are considered enemy) or target opponent units (if said unit is in fire range of your unit, your unit shall attack) for warfare alliance (to prevent his forces surrounding your ACU and then breaking the alliance), and resources limits for resource sharing (do not give more than +10 mps, for example). All limitations could be visible for allies or not.

Also, for diplomacy, it should be nice to have some units auto-transfer command to your ally and possibility to mark units as someone else units (for a some price, or particular units) to make ambushes.

But all this is so much outside of PA main direction, that I doubt it will be even looked at.

Not exactly, my idea was quite a bit less complex. Multiple kinds of treaties for example would be, as you said, quite a bit outside the main direction.

This is supposed to orient exactly along the ideas behind an rts like PA. Basically, my approach can be limited to starting at peace and maybe making alliances invisible to outsiders, but that's the maximum level of complexity.

In a game, this will add to multiple concepts of rts. You have your arms race, that especially in these games will probably play a great role, which will lead sooner or later (probably sooner) to the first war. These wars have to be planned, potential enemies have to be scouted without allerting them to much. Defense installation on their borders might also do that, as gathering armies does.
You have to plan your strategie, know your enemies, try to effectively evaluate defenses, make adapted army compositions. All this is a bit more complex, since the chaotic system of alliances will make games more complex that the usual skirmish, where you just have to watch one enemie your know you'll fight.

Why not just do it like in Age of Empires II?

So, just ability to disable alliances announcement? I suggest to make this moddable, so you can make defcon inspired mod with limited number of defensive and offensive capabilities with zero price, but limited unit cap =)

It's not that easy. Starting with everyone in the same team and hidden alliances might be a start. There are a few problems though.

1. Even a very general and less-than-bright ai support might already suffice, but i doubt you'd even get that by modding.

2. There is still a distinction between not being at war and making an alliance. Again probably impossible to mod.

And you're right this is a rather small change. But one which might add a completely new layer of depth to a game. Different game-modes often work that way.

I'm just going to get this out of the way:

Phantom mode.

Phantom is more like Mafia-for-FA. And it's more or less turtlecrap, IMO =) But yes, it also heavily relying on diplomacy.

In modern gaming world almost every non-performance crucial part of game logic is implemented as script. All performance-critical parts are just implemented as build-in functions for said script language. Extreme modding capability (something promised by Uber) means that every script could be changed. In other words AI should be moddable, for both client-side and server-side. Otherwise PA won't be that super-moddable game as it was promised.

That's why I've said you need an user-controllable options for making alliances. That's harder to implement moddable than AI support, but with client-server model things are much easier - it's a single point of almost all operation. IF it would be single point of almost all operation.