Diplomacy Preliminary

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eleazar
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#76 Post by eleazar »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:I really don't think non-stockpile-able resources should be tradable in any situation. It defeats part of the purpose of making them non-stockpile-able.
How so...?
...
I don't see a reason to not trade industry... An empire could find a niche selling access to its massive industrial capacity, without worrying about other empires stockpiling (as with minerals) and thereby eliminating their dependence on bought resources.
"Defeats the purpose" was a poor choice of words. And now i remember that we have disagreed about how best to explain the current process of minerals becoming useful stuff. The advisability of trading "industry" is bound up with other issues such as how we show/explain the industrial focus after minerals are exhausted, and how diplomatic action is sequenced with the turns. In other words, i'd rather leave the question until we've established more diplomatic groundwork.

Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:I also don't like the idea of treaties needing frequent and unpredictable "re-negotiations."
Which specific suggestion is this referring to?
It just a general reaction to the frequency that kriktone, (and other's i think) have suggested "automatically initiated renegotiating" as the response to a certain kind of situation. I'm not necessarily saying that treaties should never be renegotiated, but that i consider it a non-desirable solution which we should try to avoid.

krikkitone wrote:I don't expect the Average FO player to be as stupid as the average home buyer, nor to I expect the Treaties to be as complicated as the average mortgage.

"Less complicated than the average mortgage," is not quite a stunning endorsement. ;) Because after all, few people read mortgages for fun.

krikkitone wrote:If a Player manages their economy at the bare edge of expectations, then they should be forced to constantly renegotiate Treaties involving that Economy. But Most Players would probably maintain some type of a cushion.
Most players would try to maintain a cushion... but it's a tough, and changing universe out there. There will be powerful empires bent on the player's destruction. The best laid plans will frequently go awry.



Duration of Treaties
The duration of treaties has been mentioned. It's important to have a clear concept of how long a treaty should last if we are going to have the concept of "treaty breaking." I'm actually not convinced that AIs need this concept, with it's converse, "trustworthiness," because it could lead to an AI that can be unfairly manipulated, like the classic "diplomacy" pic does... but that's another questions.

I'm going to try to comprehensively lay out the options. I won't consider pure "trade" treaties where players make a one-time exchange of maps/resources/planets/techs/etc.
It's quite possible that we'll use a combination of these approaches either automatically bound to certain kinds of treaty clauses, and/or chosen as an option in treaty formation.

Forever:
The treaty is in effect indefinitely, until one party breaks it, and thus ends it.

Mutual Consent:
The treaty is in effect only as long as both parties want it. Either party may announce their withdrawal at any time. The treaty ends a set number of turns later, but is not considered "broken" unless it is violated without the proper withdrawal announcement.

Time Limited:
The treaty is in effect an automatic or diplomatically chosen number of turns.

Conditional:
The treaty is in effect until a specified condition is met. IMHO overcomplicated.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#77 Post by Krikkitone »

eleazar wrote:
Geoff the Medio wrote:
eleazar wrote:I also don't like the idea of treaties needing frequent and unpredictable "re-negotiations."
Which specific suggestion is this referring to?
It just a general reaction to the frequency that kriktone, (and other's i think) have suggested "automatically initiated renegotiating" as the response to a certain kind of situation. I'm not necessarily saying that treaties should never be renegotiated, but that i consider it a non-desirable solution which we should try to avoid.
krikkitone wrote:If a Player manages their economy at the bare edge of expectations, then they should be forced to constantly renegotiate Treaties involving that Economy. But Most Players would probably maintain some type of a cushion.
Most players would try to maintain a cushion... but it's a tough, and changing universe out there. There will be powerful empires bent on the player's destruction. The best laid plans will frequently go awry..
True, the point is that it is Those circumstances that Should force Treaty renegotiation rather than Breaking (If the other side agrees)

eleazar wrote:

Duration of Treaties
The duration of treaties has been mentioned. It's important to have a clear concept of how long a treaty should last if we are going to have the concept of "treaty breaking." I'm actually not convinced that AIs need this concept, with it's converse, "trustworthiness," because it could lead to an AI that can be unfairly manipulated, like the classic "diplomacy" pic does... but that's another questions.

I'm going to try to comprehensively lay out the options. I won't consider pure "trade" treaties where players make a one-time exchange of maps/resources/planets/techs/etc.
It's quite possible that we'll use a combination of these approaches either automatically bound to certain kinds of treaty clauses, and/or chosen as an option in treaty formation.

Forever:
The treaty is in effect indefinitely, until one party breaks it, and thus ends it.

Mutual Consent:
The treaty is in effect only as long as both parties want it. Either party may announce their withdrawal at any time. The treaty ends a set number of turns later, but is not considered "broken" unless it is violated without the proper withdrawal announcement.

Time Limited:
The treaty is in effect an automatic or diplomatically chosen number of turns.

Conditional:
The treaty is in effect until a specified condition is met. IMHO overcomplicated.

Well a few Thoughts, "Trustworthiness" is necessary unless all Treaties are Mutual consent (or fixed)
I would make "Trustworthiness" both an AI setting and a Seperate 'Citizen diplomacy' setting. Any Human Player is going to make a guess about how likely their friend is to break that agreement he made with them, so should an AI (although the AI only knows from the game.. so it probably won't trust anyone much farther than it can bomb them.)

Mutual Consent... really only works for Treaties that are Purely Turn/Turn... no one-time component

Conditional.. agree (good to include for completeness though)


Forever v. Turn Length... while it is possible to have both, I think a Pure Turn length (with maximum) is better for two reasons
1. "Forever" is harder to evaluate...
2. because it probably isn't true (unless Treaties are unbreakable)... because you probably will want some way to break it, because the situation will change.

Turn Length allows for the fact that the game will change, but it can still give some relative security (a 40-50 turn Peace Treaty is reasonable security...once it starts dropping and they won't extend it, then you have problems)

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eleazar
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#78 Post by eleazar »

Krikkitone wrote:I would make "Trustworthiness" both an AI setting and a Seperate 'Citizen diplomacy' setting. Any Human Player is going to make a guess about how likely their friend is to break that agreement he made with them, so should an AI (although the AI only knows from the game.. so it probably won't trust anyone much farther than it can bomb them.)
It's certainly reasonable for citizens to evaluate empires on weather they are trustworthy or not... though depending on their ethos, they may actually cheer for the untrustworthy, or simply not care.

But if AI are expected to judge each other on "trustworthiness" the question is "what are they measuring?" Either
1) the AI has no real preference for treaty breaking or keeping, but his actions are simply what he judged as most convenient at the time, so measuring it has little predictive value, or
2) the AI is programmed with a bias towards (un)trustworthy acts, and therefore is roleplaying rather than only trying to win. This is bad.

And you don't think (nor do i) that the AI is going to be able to effectively guess a human's real "trustworthiness"... So why are we measuring "trustworthiness"?

Krikkitone wrote:Conditional.. agree (good to include for completeness though)
Unless you mean, "its good to include for the completeness of the list," I disagree.
If something is indeed "overcomplicated" than it should not be included.. and "for completeness" is a lousy reason to overcomplicate.

Edit by Geoff: Fixed broken quote

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#79 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:But if AI are expected to judge each other on "trustworthiness" the question is "what are they measuring?" Either
1) the AI has no real preference for treaty breaking or keeping, but his actions are simply what he judged as most convenient at the time, so measuring it has little predictive value, or
2) the AI is programmed with a bias towards (un)trustworthy acts, and therefore is roleplaying rather than only trying to win. This is bad.

And you don't think (nor do i) that the AI is going to be able to effectively guess a human's real "trustworthiness"... So why are we measuring "trustworthiness"?
As long as we have things set up so that two empires that cooperate are collectively better off than if they don't, and one empire breaking a treating is very good for that empire but very bad for the other, we've got something like the iterated prisoner's dilemma. Notably, it's been concluded for that game that tit-for-tat - where you betray your partner if you were betrayed on the previous round, and don't betray if you weren't betrayed - is the nearly-optimal long-term strategy. It's a bit different situation with treaty breaking in a 4X game, but I think there are parallels...

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Krikkitone
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#80 Post by Krikkitone »

Re: Prisoner's dilemma

one of the key issues with that is the duration
If the PD game has an end (as FO does) and the end is somewhat predictable (as in FO) you need stong reasons to cooperate

A key thing about the diplomatic system would be getting it to the point where diplomatic relations could develop to the point where betraying a loyal partner isn't much better (for me individually) than betraying a traitorous partner.
(This goes into the Merger idea where your chances of winning, ie Empires, are basically merged)


As for Trustworthiness... it would mostly be a way to enforce the tit-for tat (on the AI end) [and allow Me/AI to 'tit' when Another Player was 'tat'ed, ie you broke a treaty with someone else so I'm going to punish you to help maintain an honest system]

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eleazar
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#81 Post by eleazar »

Krikkitone wrote:As for Trustworthiness... it would mostly be a way to enforce the tit-for tat (on the AI end) [and allow Me/AI to 'tit' when Another Player was 'tat'ed, ie you broke a treaty with someone else so I'm going to punish you to help maintain an honest system]
Why should we want "tit for tat" enforced? Why would a player or an AI, necessarily want to maintain an "honest system"? The primary purpose of the AI is to win, not find a way to live at peace with everyone. Maybe the closest it can get to winning is to live at peace under and honest system... but it certainly shouldn't be biased towards that goal over complete victory.

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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#82 Post by Krikkitone »

eleazar wrote:
Krikkitone wrote:As for Trustworthiness... it would mostly be a way to enforce the tit-for tat (on the AI end) [and allow Me/AI to 'tit' when Another Player was 'tat'ed, ie you broke a treaty with someone else so I'm going to punish you to help maintain an honest system]
Why should we want "tit for tat" enforced? Why would a player or an AI, necessarily want to maintain an "honest system"? The primary purpose of the AI is to win, not find a way to live at peace with everyone. Maybe the closest it can get to winning is to live at peace under and honest system... but it certainly shouldn't be biased towards that goal over complete victory.

What is the conflict between living at peace under an honest system and complete victory?
I assume there will be a victory condition other than total defeat of everyone?
It is also quite possible to have Total defeat of everyone happen honestly as well, especially if all Treaties have a time limit... You just let your peace treaty with player N-1 go to 0 turns and Then you finish them off. (the other players don;t mind... yeah he should have seen it coming... (although if you are getting powerful that indicates that you are open to military conquest and might be a threat to them...)

The AI should go for complete victory, and one of the "things" it needs to manage is the other Players... If I am Afraid of cheating the AI because I know there will be 10x revenge, then That would be a good game. If I can only start cheating other players when I am capable of taking on the entire galaxy.

Essentially the AI Player needs to be able to control Human Players as well as Human Players control AI Players (yeah its not going to happen, but that is the Point of a "Diplomacy System" on the Player level.. We can all do things to help or hurt each other.)


PS "completeness of the things we COULD include in FO" not "completeness of things we WILL put in FO" I agree with you there

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#83 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmorning all;


Firstly, I HIGHLY support the limited warfare, where wars have stated reasons, and stated limits of engagement , surpassing those limits would raise even heavier eyebrows in the inter empire forums(worse side effects).

Secondly,

Regarding the frequency of trade renegotiations, My original idea was that trades would be ~10 turns in 'duration' (with the exception of peace). And the amount you give/receive would be fixed for those ~10 turns. after those ~10 turns the treaty would be re-evaluated and the amount of resources you lock into for the next ~10 turns may change, (reflecting your consumption changes). IE the amount desided to trade would be decided by how much of the resources in question you have which you don't use, and how varried your supply was over the past ~10 turns. If you know your going to be building something, or expanding, you would intervene as a player, and lower the priority, offer something else, add a trade cap. . .
This would mean that generally, the duration is short enough that you can plan ahead, and still long enough that you can rely on it.

I believe it was Kirtkitone {but i can't find the quote} who said if they make a treaty it's because they want it to be that way. I'm saying the same thing, I want to be able to rely on treaty income. [If I made a trade for up to 10 food/turn of their excess, I can't RELY on that 10 food ALWAYS being there, they might drop food excess to 0, by changing their planets, effectively annulling the deal, without annulling it, and putting me up a certain creek, without a paddle.] The short repeating duration treaty, I hope, archives a balance between being locked into a amount you can no longer supply happily vs being able to trust that your trade partner will actually provide what you need. [or face consequences.]


Re the Tit For Tat question.

It wouldn't be vary hard for the comp to measure how much it stands to gain from breaking an agreement, and to a lesser extent how much you would stand to gain from breaking one.

You can then set up a threshold system, "If i stand to gain more then X, I'd break a treaty to do so" where x is dependent on government, people, what have you, and 'Gain' also takes into account, in a general way, the fact that all other governments will probably respond poorly to your dis-honest behavior.

When a human breaks a treaty, it calculates the 'gain' and that's the limit used in further calculations, (or an approximation of it by other empires).

Then, you would have each empires *break treaty threshold*. so to induce a Tit for Tat, all you would have to do is say. If Empire B has broken a treaty recently, you either lower the threshold for breaking a treaty with them for all other empires, or reduce the consequences of breaking treaties with them, esentually raising what everybody else has to gain by breaking a treaty with them.

IE, Empire B has treaty with C, and D. B stands to gain X when breaking a treaty with C, which is over B's threshold for treaty breaking. B breaks treaty with C.
Now D sees that B has broken a treaty, so re-evaluates. Before the treaty was broken it could have gained Y by breaking it's treaty, but Y was less then the Threshold, so it didn't.
Now it stands to gain (Y or Z) with (a lower or static threshold)[depending how we model it]{'or's are mathematical, ie And/OR } because B broke the treaty, D may now break it's treaty.

In D you would have threshold for breaking *a* treaty, and threshold for breaking a treaty with B, in the case of dynamic thresholds which may become a bit silly to code. The simpler case would be When B breaks treaty, everybody else is partially immune to negative effects of breaking treaties with B. So empire D doesn't have to worry(as much) about loss of street-cred (with empires A, C, and E)so it stands more to gain.

To prevent run-away treaty breaking, empire B would have to have understood that it was highly likely that empire D would break it's word, when it broke it's word with C, but still have decided to do it anyway. Therefor the more treaties you are in, the less likely your are to break [an important]one, because you stand to loose more from your other treaty partners taking advantage of the get out off treaty mostly free card. [of course the more you appear to have gained by the breaking of the treaty the more the other empires are permitted to break a treaty with you. Breaking un-important or small treaties wouldn't likely cause any other empires to break a treaty with you, since they are not justified in doing so, while breaking a large treaty could possibly get you friendless.]

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eleazar
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#84 Post by eleazar »

In considering the galaxy map display i've come to the conclusion that making treaty distinctions between civilian and military ships would make the display too confusing.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#85 Post by Geoff the Medio »

eleazar wrote:
Krikkitone wrote:As for Trustworthiness... it would mostly be a way to enforce the tit-for tat (on the AI end) [and allow Me/AI to 'tit' when Another Player was 'tat'ed, ie you broke a treaty with someone else so I'm going to punish you to help maintain an honest system]
Why should we want "tit for tat" enforced? Why would a player or an AI, necessarily want to maintain an "honest system"? The primary purpose of the AI is to win, not find a way to live at peace with everyone.
The point of the tit-for-tat strategy is that it is inherently optimal for the iterated prisoner's dilemma. We don't need to "enforce" anything as long as the game mechanics make cooperating once ok for both, never cooperating bad for both, and breaking an agreement best for the breaker and worst for the other (breakee?) player; it should naturally be a good strategy to cooperate most of the time, and to not sign agreements that make one's own empire vulnerable again after being tricked once, at least until the empire that broke the agreement makes reparations. This all applies to bilateral relations.

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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#86 Post by Tortanick »

eleazar wrote:In considering the galaxy map display i've come to the conclusion that making treaty distinctions between civilian and military ships would make the display too confusing.
What would civilian ships be anyway? Apart from the invisible supply ships that don't actually appear on the map. The only thing I can think of is colony ships and personally I'd regard sending your colony ships into my space as being just as bad as sending a couple of dreadnoughts.

Geoff, I see your point and in most cases staying true to a deal is the best course of action, but if there is a larger benefit for the prisoner who betrays his partner and equally important, a penalty for the partner who he may want to hurt; I think that ideally the AI should be smart enough to betray a deal if it thinks doing so is in its interest.

E.G. Alice is in a mutually beneficial trading relationship with Bob. Bob is at war with Eve, the war goes badly and Eve is tearing through Bob's systems. Seeing weakness Alice decides that since Bob can't do anything to retaliate its safe to take Bob's money and run. :twisted: (Alice probably invades too since Bob doesn't have a navy left)

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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#87 Post by Krikkitone »

^ Well the above assumes that Alice's only friend is Bob.
However, if Alcie is also friends with Chrissie and Dave then when she betrays Bob, they will know Alice can't be trusted and so MAY (not necessarily will) yank the treaties they are giving Alice.

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eleazar
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#88 Post by eleazar »

Tortanick wrote:
eleazar wrote:In considering the galaxy map display i've come to the conclusion that making treaty distinctions between civilian and military ships would make the display too confusing.
What would civilian ships be anyway? Apart from the invisible supply ships that don't actually appear on the map. The only thing I can think of is colony ships and personally I'd regard sending your colony ships into my space as being just as bad as sending a couple of dreadnoughts.
Sorry, "civilian" was a poor choice of words. I meant "unarmed" or "non-military" ships, of which we currently have 2 kinds: scouts and colony ships

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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#89 Post by Krikkitone »

Although "Civilian ships" does make sense with those Invisible supply ships. Those are Very important in a military sense

Because allowing civilian ships through would mean ('' indicating an invisible ship)
'supply ships'
'resource carrying' ships (ie otherwise blockade)
colony ships
scout ships
'diplomatic ships'
'spy ships' [not explicitly but disguised as a 'diplomatic', 'supply', or 'resource' ship]

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Tortanick
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Re: Diplomacy Preliminary

#90 Post by Tortanick »

While that is true, I see no reason why allowing free passage to invisible supply ships shouldn't be a separate diplomatic option to allowing passage to military ships.

For simplicities sake though I would regard both scout and colony ships as military for diplomatic purposes, not to mention the fact that you don't want either in your territory

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