All I really want from Diplomacy is...

I like your line of thought on this.  

Could you expand on this further?

ESPIONAGE MY YOUNG APPRENTICE, ESPIONAGE *my KGB agents will easily eliminate your pathetic shipyards*

I think espionage/spies/counter-espionage/sabotage would be very cool.

Those two concerns are definitely the most important ones that I've seen brought up to attention. However, you are a bit vague with the terms you are using and it would help if you denfined what you mean by a "strategic threat." The way I'm seeing it is that you would want something akin to Galactic Civilization's "Ascention" resource where, if the player builds a starbase upon them and gather 1000 ascention points they'd win.

...Actually, something like that would solve both of the problems on your list. It would make (what I'm assuming you are defining) as a civic threat, and it would give reason to backstab your allies: to prevent one person from gaining the ascention and take it as your own. It would create suspicion and open up routes to espionage in relation to how far they are in collecting it and ways of sabotaging them to stall the Ascention collection. I guess the problem would lay within what you would use, plotwise and resourcewise, as the "Ascention" resource. Maybe something akin to fighting over the "star system" throne, so to speak?

In addition, it is difficult to picture a scenario in which the civic tech could be used offensively so that you could build more civic labs then military labs, which I believe is what culture is suppose to supplement. Perhaps more cultural options should be at the races disposal that affect military?

Darvin! the devs are listening! nows the time to talk about your only x people can win game setting... and... appearently all the civic techs you have in mind!

(happy 2010... yay.)

THE DEVS ARE LISTENING?!?!?!?!?!?! *succumbs to immense drooling due to mind being immersed in possibilities*

I was purposefully vague because there is a wide range of possibilities that could satisfy, but I guess I could be more specific.  Strategy is all about choices and options, and a "strategic threat" should open up new options for a player to somehow attack or undermine his enemy.  A hull point upgrade doesn't let you do anything you couldn't have already done before; your fleet may be stronger, the enemy still deals with it in exactly the same way.  In a sense he doesn't even care if you have the tech or not.  A Hoshiko allows you to perform rapid repairs in the field; you can't do that without a Hoshiko, and the enemy can't treat your fleet the same way he did five minues ago.  Therefor a Hoshiko is a strategic threat.  I hope that makes sense.

Anyways, I can think of a few concepts off the top of my head that would achieve this.  The most obvious is espionage and subterfuge, which has been suggested several times.  A revamp to culture to add more features and effects, as you suggest, would be another very viable possibility.  Another option might be to add abilities for the envoy that let them force special diplomatic "agreements" on enemies to manipulate their actions, with appropriate penalties if they choose to ignore these agreement.

Actually, I don't have anything specific in mind.  I just want something that achieves this abstract goal, and I'm really not fussy as to what it is.  In the same breath, if the developers have an alternative idea to the "only X winners" that achieves the same effect, I'm down for that.

Since culture only goes so far, maybe a building (embassies) could be built in opponents grav wells that spreads the player's dominative organization. Would need civ tech to increase number of planets where it can be used.

The faction doesnt have to destroy the oppenents planets or its improvements they just get the local resources. Very low upkeep costs, but culture cant spread in these worlds. However, only the building needs to be destroyed to liberate the planet and at lower civ tech levels system has a higher chances of failing.

Ex:

Advent- Pure Works Inc, -Planet dwellers forced to serve Advent Empire trough mind control

TEC- TEC Union- Trading Coalition that biasly favours controlling faction

Vasari- Galatic Improvment Organizationn - In reality just slavery

We need espionage; it's something that completes the 4x experience. That would also give those playing locked teams or online matches something out of this expansion.

Of course adding espionage probably asking too much of a dev team with limited time and others matters to worry about.

Barring that more powerful cultural effects would definitely make things a little bit more interesting on the civic side.

Just some thoughts...

Culture wins could be advanced by halving the tactical slot cost of culture centers, in effect allowing for twice as many centers, even if left at the same strength, the culture over run would start to drain the alligence of the surrounding planets.

If the culture ability were strengthened or modified somehow, this could do several things in addition to simply capitulating the planet. Such as take over current resources or available ships/structures, etc...

Economic wins, and even culture wins to a certain degree if they are relatively weak, would need to have a stronger planet defense system in place to ward off invaders. Lets say a single ring of defense platforms say (5) and a single hangar and a single repair platform can outlast first level pirate raids of up to 9 or 10 light to mid-heavy ships.

Two rings of defense platforms (10) and two hangars and two repair platforms can outlast mid to heavy ships invasions, say 10 to 20 ships, with 5 light, 10 to 13 mid-heavy (cruisers) and 2 caps.

What this means of course is modifying the number of tactical and logistical slots for the home planets. Right now, there are so few we are forced to go off planet to get more resources and out last or out fight the opponents.

If the home planet resources were changed to allow for more than enough resources to siege protect your home planet, we could have more players "hole up" to outlast the other players, surviving such an encounter, might make for an interesting way to win, since right now, there is no such thing, other than beating the other players. Diplomacy I was hoping would change this as well.

Cultural wins, protected by an armored planet, and economic wins, say, first planet to reach a million credits, would effectively constitute a win, but it would have to be done probably by establishing trade routes, (it would be nice to have tradeship escort ships that would defend these ships) and a locked down planet, so that abilities could be used to up the production rate of the resource asteroids.

To balance this sort of thing i'm assuming you would need some balance where military might precludes achieving the cultural or economic win situation, or very little of it. A sliding visible bar, red, yellow, green, that indicated one or the other, with military production lowering the economic/cultural possibilities and the reverse as well, the more economic or cultural resources built preclude a strong enough military force to win the game.

What might be very very nice is to have the game calculate the military/cultural/economic levels of all the players and give the red/yellow/green bar a very precise meaning in regards to your opponents in "this" particular game.

Just some thoughts,

-Teal

   I would like one thing addressed, for those of us who play 1x1 single player, what's the point of the expansion pack at all?

   I would'nt mind an expansion of the Civ tecs, but Diplomacy and civ techs dont necessarly go hand and hand. I dont see the point of befriending someone in these games. Kill them and move on to the next planet. Better time would have be towards new toys, new race,different types of planets and wells. This isnt exciting me the way Entrechment did. still love sins

    As far as the OP , maybe if you had things in the civ tech that you monoploise on for the whole game, it would be a big decision which tech to go for. Maybe if there was a third resource that would help greatly and would need say... 5 civ labs. But once you got this tech NO one else could resource it. It would have to be something that you would race to get to but there can only be one winner.

Really interested in your post darvin3 as i had an idea for a while that may work.

One flaw of the game was that, even if it considers itself as a 4X game, it lacked depth in civilization building : you upgrade all planets the same way and once you are done, you will focus only on the military.

There is no way planets can be as customized as in GalCiv 2, that's impossible but GalCiv had the bright idea to create Galactic wonders (one for the entire galaxy), civilization achievements (one per civilization) and super planetary improvements (one per planet)

What about civ Techs that allow you to create these improvements in your planet ? Only one improvement by planet (or maybe two on high quality planets like terran ones) and the more powerful the improvement is, the more civ labs it will need to unlock the tech and thus the improvement.

I see it that way :

you click on a planet and next to tactical, logistic and population buttons, you have a planetary improvements button that display a list of planetary improvements that you can build ifyou have researched the proper tech before.

For example you can have :

super planetery improvements :

TEC : manufacturing center : +  X % ship building speed on that planet

Advent : Mind focusing building : + X % AM regenerating in the gravity well

Vasari : Oppression center : + X % tax income on that planet

and so on...

civilization achievement : race specific, one per civilization : as wonders, they generate culture

TEC : large scale sensor arrays : allow them to see everything on planets next to a planet they own.

Advent : Temple of mind : ability cool down time - X %

Vasari : Repression agency : make this planet impossible to be culturally overcame

Galactic wonder : for all races, only one can be built

Galactic neutral ground : provides a neutral ground to all races for negotiating : + X % relationship bonus

Holy memorial : higly religious place where people from all races and civilizations come to pilgrinage : + X % culture bonus

Quantum buster theory : give your civilization an edge in quantic probability manipulation so your ship have now a X% chance to make a critical hit (damage x5)

Galactic wonders can't be destroyed but you can choose to destroy or to keep the enemy improvements when you take one of his planet.

They are only examples but you can make them powerful enough to give you a real advantage against a military-only opponent.

You can also imagine a condition victory where if you have 5 galactic wonders, you win.

I think it would be great but i don't think the devs has something that intricate in their plans for diplomacy release.

I have some ideas well.

espionage has been mentioned. my specific idea here would be bribing to ships and even planets. imagine you are economy heavy and your enemy sends a nice big fleet to your planets, your fleet is of course vastly inferior in terms of tech level und unit quality. but your good ol' economy produces enough money that you offer a big fat bribe to enemy ship commanders and ... oh, a portion of their fleet defects, some go neutral, others join your side even. now, THAT imo would be a very real way to counter military with economy.

another thing could be a black market for ships. imperium galactica II had something like this. basically you could buy ships way beyond your tech level, but the price tag is higher than your own ships. the attraction of the idea would be that here too the prices could vary depending on demand. of course, the offer side would be a bit though to justify, but there are after all independent actors around all the time. some could also come from above idea, if ships defect and go neutral, from neutral militias at the very beginning (think of Rise of Legends here) or leftover from eliminated players.

alternatively, you could buy the ships from the pirates directly, because they do have a few good ships. you can also look at wc 3 neutral mercenaries for some ideas here. maybe you could then even build favour with the pirates and when they like you enough, they give you access to their stuff for a price. however, the pireates would need a more complete fleet setup, ie also carriers and some support craft etc. for this to work effectively.

those ideas both give you the possibility to acquire or at least combat higher level ships without having the necessary tech, but it is not quite as effective as your own custom solution. of course, I am in favour and have always been for a more expansive effect of culture, or at least the subterfuge elements of beta 1. so let's see what will be new in that respect.

Well, since this has become a thread on specific ideas (not exactly what I had in mind, but it happened) I'll join in and share a few abilities I had dreamed up.  These are just standalone abilities, not parts of any coherent "system" I'm thinking of.  Most of these abilities would require some sort of limitation or counter to prevent them from being used too easily or frequently.

Mercenary Contracting:  Enables you to create allied mercenaries in the current gravity well.  They will leave only when every enemy or every friendly unit has vacated the planet (ie, the battle is over).  This ability costs credits to activate.

Steal Planetary Defense Codes:  For the next 90 seconds, all static defenses in the affected gravity well go offline and will not operate (strike craft produced by hangers continue to fight, but the hangers themselves will not produce new strike craft).  Starbases are unaffected.

Brokered Truce:  No one can commit hostile actions in the target gravity well for the next 300 seconds.  If anyone breaks the truce, their ships are stunned for 10 seconds.

Defection:  All enemy frigates and cruisers in the current gravity well disband.  This ability cannot be used if an enemy capital ship is present in the gravity well, and has a long activation time.

Industrial Saboutage:  Disables all logistical structures in the target gravity well for the duration of the ability. 

For civic tech tree, as Vassari i wouldn't mind an option where your allies, regardless of race (or possibly someone who pays you in resources etc) can use your phase inhibitators to travel to other gravity wells with phase inhibitors - or if you could ally with other Vassari player and can do the same - so you can use eachothers phase lanes.

Perhaps you could also have a civic tree where someone elses own defence/ships (or even starbases) could turn on their own ships and structures for a limited amount of time? - Or maby you could control them for a set amount of time with some ability - so that you could attack an enemy with them? Maby it could be an "upgrade" to the big superweapon canons? as it would do the same function just a different or added result?

Perhaps the civic tree could have some "interference/hijacked communications" which forces other players to not be able to use pacts, such as cease fire, for like 10 minutes? with an added option of disabling their militarys for that time in neutral wells/hostile wells? It could break up large "armadas" when they start destroying themselfs - as allied players auto attack eachother (with perhaps damage amplifiers to eachother - as a drawback) and could make it riskier to ally with people due to that they are now consiquences (and it would be not an assured victory with say 5vs1 (as they may destroy eachother). With the more allies/cease fires you have the bigger chance of it happening and the greater damage amplification.

Just throwing random ideas around. But i do like the phase gate one in my first paragraph.

I think that a ship black market would be a way for a player with less military tech to keep up against a military powerful foe.

Another thing is the idea of a galactic council, which would fit well in the diplomacy theme. Since all races are tired with the war, and want to get along more, the would correspondingly arbitrate a middle-ground where they can talk to understand each other.

With the idea of this overseer, a player could invest on his civic tree to quickly attain a resercheable tech: 'Associate of the Galactic Council' - or a less silly name.

This would grant the associate several benefits, and some restrictions as well. Association to the Council could cost a contribution fee (a % of the income), but would also boost trade effect, especially if the faction has a a trade port at the star to jump to distant systems. So, while initially it could reduce income, strong trade routes would offset thedifference. A researcheble tech would further reduce the cntribution to the federation and improve the trade bonus. 

Each player would also have a standing with the council, and could receive missions from the council. the mission would likely be in the lines of 'stop trading with X', 'stop attacking Y', or 'help faction Z to defend from enemy'.

Fulfilling Council missions would improve the standing, which would make it easier to make requests to the Council.

One of the actions could be embargo another player. A player could convince the council (which would probably cost resources) to embargo a player. An embargo would be a strong pressure for other races to cancel pacts with the offender. Those who do not comply would have taxes raised and could even face military action.

A civilian protection directive would give relationship penalties against all races for attacking trade/refinery ships and diplomacy ships as well and even trade ports and refineries, as it would be seen as a war crime. For this to work better, there should be an option to have the ships attack military targets only on fleets attack stances. 

Players with the best standing could even request temporary protection of a specific gravwell - a fleet would jump in to the star and move to the specified gravwell. An extreme option would be convincing the Council to help 'liberating' a planet, but it must have been previously owned. 

If a faction repeatedly ignores the council directives and defies it, the council could even pick a planet of the offender  to occupy. The offender would get no income on that planet and all military structures would be destroyed. A series of requests would be placed by the council to give back the planet. if the player fails or refuses to fulfill them, the planet will be razed and re-colonized by the council and would be a permanet base of operations in the system. 

A player in good standing with the council would also be able to purchase ships from it, thereby having 2 connections with external organizations which may provide military services, under different cimrcumstances, for them: pirates and the council. The council would also provide a strong way to influence other empires, and the pirates would provide the black market and ships for hire.

One of the best RTS ever was Age of Empires, we could borrow from this dated great.  There are several standard methods to achieve victory:

- defeat all opponents

- build a Wonder (vastly expensive, at finish a timer started- if it still stood at the end you won)

- Relics victory (collect all 5 relics and hold them in your churches until a timer expired)

- timed victory (highest score)

- score victory (achieve required score)

and also regicide (kill opponent king) 

How could this translate into Sins?  There's already a timer on the replays, it might be simple to move this in-game?  Then you have two new types of game easy, the timed and score games- how about score based on maximum population for a civic win?  You might also want more late-tec planet upgrades, no bad concept in itself.

Regicide is simple to translate to Sins, just loss of home planet=defeat, though it would work better with some reduction in the cost of early defensive upgrades, again no bad concept in itself.  The capital upgrade could be reworked as sub-capital, I'm not sure why you would lose capital infrastructure on another planet unless it was destroyed.  Then any planet with a sub-capital upgrade could also be counted as your home planet.  Or it could be left as is, as most of your personnel would come from a home planet whether it was the capital or not. 

Sins has artifacts but they are under-used, generally only a player who is winning already can afford to explore.  You might have to stipulate a minimum number of artifacts in a game of a given size for it to work, but Sins could easily have the equivalent of a relic victory.. if a player can hold all the discovered artifacts for long enough they win.  The alternatives to defeat would be to find your own, or to deny control of the planet with the artifact(s).

The equivalent of a wonder victory would take some new graphics work on three new objects, but the concept is simple enough- once you have all labs of both types you can advance to research and build a supra-tech object that wins the game if it is not destroyed before a timer runs out- a Dimensional Cascade perhaps, or a Phase Gravity Nexus.  Both thoroughly lethal, my researchers have assured me. 

Culture is yet a further underused element in the game.  It might be useful to have either culture or allegiance affect research speeds?  The combat bonuses are slightly all or nothing, I'd like to have it so that there were further levels of bonus for higher levels of culture advantage.  Why do Advent have no Crusade/Jihad style technology for extra 'free' fleets, created at fanatic planets- there's another possible use for deliverance?  With a restored returning fleets tech and another style of insurrection tech where the rebellious fleets joined the TEC faction that created them, there would then be a civic tech advantage? 

Though Vasari already had a civic labs strategy, before it was ruined...  

Agree wholeheartedly. Culture is definitely not used to its potential and, if the developers could find some additional benfits to building culture structures, would prove to be more beneficial in 1 vs 1 games where diplomacy is not an option.

The various victory conditions are a must, as well. Again, I don't feel the need to do any Machiavellian scheming or backstabbing if I can't benefit from it in the long run. There definitely has to be some more features to make diplomacy feasable than what is currently being offered.

I think planetary exploration could be deeply expanded on as a civic tech. Artifacts and planetary bonuses could be greatly expanded, as could techs that improve the planets explored and the process of their exploration. Artfacts could also have additional powerful active abilities that apply to the system as a whole, for both civic and military purposes, making them planets to be sought, which could be further improved via civic techs. And planetary bonuses seriously need to be expanded, diversified, and made more powerful. Perhaps then a civic tech to explore planets? And to enable additional chances for exploration deep into the planet?

What about research that gives bonuses only in gravity wells you control(I know some mods do this by giving researchable passive abilities to planets)?  For example:
Hull and shield regeneration for everything in a gravity well you control:  The bonus would be halved if there are enemies in the gravity well and totally negated for everything that is under attack.
Strikecraft build speed increase and anti-matter cost reduction:  Would only work when there are no enemies in the gravity well, but would provide a large bonus otherwise.  Say a 5% cost reduction and a 10% build speed bonus per level of research with techs for it every other lab.
Anti-matter cost reduction:  Cost of anti-matter for abilities of units/structures/starbases is reduced as long as there are no enemy units in the gravity well.
Both of those could be explained as local forces prviding emergency supplies to military forces. 

Range boost:  Provides a range boost to all units/defense structures/starbases in your gravity wells.
Speed boost:  Provides a speed boost to all units in your gravity wells.
Both explained a using existing civilian sensor/communication networks to help coordinate military forces.

Capital Experience:  All your capital ships gain increased experience when fighting in a gravity well you control.


If Ironclad's plan to let players give pirates missions stays, then there could be several technologies that modify it.  Such as:
Pirate relations: The amount of forces pirates send on missions you give them increases and they ammount of forces sent against you on missions for other players decreases.  The cost of giving missions to the pirates is also decreased.
There could also be research to let the player give pirates a defense mission.  There would be a certain amount of pirate ships defending a gravity well the player controls with more comming to replace those destroyed.  However, the resource income of the gravity well defended would be reduced by a percentage.  The amount of pirates defending and the percentage cost could be modified by the pirate relations idea above.

Another idea is having research that decreases the cost of capital ships and starbases.  This would reduce the cost to build capital ships and the cost to use the starbase construction ability in gravity wells the player controls.  It could be explained as hiring civilian experts that have knowledge of constructing very large scale projects.

I agree that artifacts should get a boost.  Maybe a technology that lets you share benefits with your allies.  It could also require both players to research it to get the full benefits.  Such as if only one player researches it, they get 50% of the bonuses of every artifact their allies control and their allies get 50% of the artifact bonuses that the player has.  However, if one of the allies also researches the technology, both would share 100% of the bonuses provided by artifacts they control.
The artifact tree could also get an overhall by giving artifacts levels that must be researched.  Artifacts could start out at half their current power, but be improved so they are 2 or even 3 times their original power.  Artifact upgrades could be at 2/4/6/8 civic labs.

HUH?dun tell me u never researched Insurgency?I would prefer using Insurgency rather than spamming Novaliths like crazy in 4 on 4 or 5 on 5 pug.

lets see this darwin, a passive civic tech that randomly sends a bunch of militia every 5 minutes targeting on random 4-5 enemy planets in 8/10 players map, sounds exponentially DANGEROUS than those vas phase stabilizers right?WINK WINK

1. To make the diplomacy system more robust in my opinion the alliances and pacts you make need to be more binding. Alliances at the moment are to easily put to an end and there is no consiqueces for ending one other than you may loose a bit of trade money and ship vission etc. Stuff that was the case beforehand, pre diplomacy. When you ally with someone a friendship bond forms between the people of the allied cultures. The longer an alliance exist the stronger these bonds become to the point that they almost are one new culture part of the family. It would be good to have some sort of effect like this with alliances/pacts etc. For example if you have had an aliance for X amount of time and you are the one to break it, then X amount of research, ships etc. is lost to the ally betrayed. Y amount of time, then Y amount of research/ships, resource and population. Maybee even a planet or 2.

2. Some new reseach could be made that could tie in with point 1. For example, a reseach could be done like "under mine ally". An espionage ability once you have allows you to back stab that ally without loosing any research/ships etc. Perhaps there could be another research to be done that would counter this, making the desicion to betray a risky one.

The problem I have with insurgency is that you can counter it by putting a hangar on every planet, and it also feeds the enemy experience for their capital ships.  That double-edged nature makes me shy away from it.  In any case, unless the enemy has a huge empire it's not particularly useful.

Phase stabilizers are game winners.  Insurgency is, at best, a nuisance.  A phase stabilizer turns what would otherwise be a vast trip across the solar system into a single jump.  This is the different between arriving promptly to support a starbase, or arriving so late that the enemy has already conquered the planet and built their own defenses there.  Phase stabilizers are deadly, I pick them up as soon as it's feasible as Vasari.  I almost never research insurgency.

I think the problem is the opposite; there is never any reason to betray someone at all.  So what if you can do it, why would you want to?  You lose income and you have an enemy where there used to be an ally.

I would have to agree, there is no reason, other than to win the game when there is only 1 opponant left, or even just because they are the biggest threat at the time. Unless the victory conditions are changed and a cultural / allied victory is brought in. But what would cause you to betray someone? Suspecting that they were underming your standing perhaps, or maybee just because they have something you want/need of great value.

I guess, seems that its a game of stratagy, tactical advantage is the thing that comes to mind, however that may be achived. Maybee a way to achive this without making the sacrifice of trade is needed. Perhaps there needs to be away to insist trade is ceased between factions. For example opponant 1 has a tade treaty with you. Opponant 2 wants to but insist you stop trading with 1 first, 2 is more lucrative so you are very tempted to end it with 1.  Then 2 could insist you break all treaties with 1 to continue relations and so on.

This is incorrect: you don't have to kill them to win.  If they are your allies and no one else is left, you both win.  This is what I'm talking about.  You can make an alliance between seven players and kill the remaining three, and then the seven of you win.  This is why unlocked teams needs to be completely reworked.

But why would they be undermining an ally?  Just as you have no reason to ever betray them, they have no reason to ever betray you!  Similarly, even if they do have something valuable, they're still an ally using it in the favour of your team.  Because they never have any reason to betray you, can be sure that asset will always be working in your favour, even if it doesn't BELONG to you.

What I'm trying to say, I believe, was an elaboration of your statment above. Which I totally agree with by the way. My suggestion may not be exactly what you had in mind, and I may be wrong in that you ment that an "opponant's strategic position" as in enemy. And yes it apears that I am wrong also with victory conditions. To be honest the games I have played allies seem to go as easily as they come. I have had an opponant want to become an ally straight after I bombed his planet.  A little odd I thought.

So to undermine an enemy diplomaticly, would pretending to be an ally then undermining them be more of what you had in mind.