So, as many of us might know, there are a number of us who play diplomacy in warlight, and we probably know the rules of it. However, I believe that the current game mechanisms do not work well in diplomacy game mode, for the following:

1. The attacking of "allies". This is a problem considering that your ally and yourself can be contesting an enemy territory in the same turn, and this results in you attacking your ally.
2. People who attack another person by accident due to the lack of knowledge on diplomatic ties ect. Well, this is a problem. There are just some people who don't read chat to know the complete diplomatic situation ect. And these people tend to attack certain people whom they think they have no pact with or get attacked by people who think that they have a pact with. And these people become "PE" and this is extremely annoying. It basically means everyone ganging up on one dude and these neighboring players just get large and overpowered and then destroy the whole world.

So what I am suggesting, is for there to be a diplomacy game mode. So, there will be two game modes, classic (the current game) and diplomacy. In diplomacy, hopefully custom scenario will be unlocked for all for free as that's pretty much what's needed for many diplomacy games. Also, new features can exist, such as pacts, alliances, and war. This can be placed on a clickable diplomacy screen, which is an overlay. The war button is pretty much what it says, to declare war. Host can select at what time before turn ends that button has to be clicked (usually 2 min) to declare war, and wars must be declared for an attack to be executed, else it will not fall through. The alliance button allows you to send alliance offers to others, and when others accept, you become allies, and all can view this on the diplomacy overlay. Once allies, you will be notified if your allies are being attacked, and if so, you can choose to declare war on his enemy. And lastly, the pact button. With a pact, troops from both sides can move through each others territory. If you want to declare war on each other, you must break this pact. Any side can break the pact. All troops are given 5 turns (or something like that) to leave the territory of the player you no longer have a pact with, and if they do not leave in 5 turns, they will be disbanded. During those turns, neither side can declare war or renew the pact.

So, these are just some preliminary ideas I have for improved diplomacy gameplay, to reduce the number of "PE's" and annoying events like attacking of allies and stuff like that. This is also just a very basic outline, as I have also been thinking about claims, such as when 2 nations claim a neutral territory. Perhaps other players can side with one party, and use it as a way to justify war and send troops to fight the other party. And perhaps the donation of troops can happen, where an ally transfer troops to his temporary ally or airlift to him. Anyways, these ideas are not really developed and do not represent warlight or fizzer in any way, just a thought that maybe fizzer may make happen as to improve diplomacy play. If anyone has any thoughts about this, please feel free to reply below.

PS: Hope Fizzer reads this.

PE's betrayal and other such things are a part of Diplo games and Diplomacy in real life. If you take them out then you may as well have started a Team game or played with friends.

New features on the other hand could do well. Such as a "Peace card" where you play the card and the other person has to accept the terms/time.

This has been discussed to death. Diplomacy games are BETTER without solid alliances, unbreakable pacts, and similar options. They limit strategy and are ultimately self-defeating, as well as leading to boring, uneventful, and ludicrous games (where, as you relate, people spend all their time chasing down "PE" players and so on, instead of actually playing a strategy game).

The way to fix diplomacy games is not more complicated rules, but a better understanding of how they work and players getting on the same page about how to play them. Just like the way diplomacy works in the real world - surprises, betrayals, misunderstandings, and so forth are what make the diplomacy mode interesting in the first place. Make those impossible and you're playing with dolls instead of a vibrant and challenging game where an infinite number of strategies are possible.

Besides, the options you are suggesting are very complex and liable to cause problems and broken games - you'll have all the same problems and complaints even if they are developed (and that would take an inordinate amount of effort).

What would really improve Diplomacy games? Try these simple things:

1. Allow players to change their display name during a game. This could be something each user can do (change your own name when the game starts), or something a game creator does, by naming each slot (e.g. "FRANCE").

So, in the game, instead of being Player123, you can show up as "FRANCE (Player123)".

You could also easily use this to declare alliances. Change your name to "FRANCE - ALLIES (Player123)" and then, later in the game, you can change sides simply by changing it again to "FRANCE - AXIS (Player123)".

2. A more flexible messaging system. (A relatively complicated thing to change, possibly.) If it was possible to set up a group chat for a "team" in the middle of the game, that would help things a lot.

3. Another chat window which allows each player to list some kind of status. "Player123 - Allied with Barbarians", or "Player123 - Looking for allies against Germany", and things like that. Any time during the game, you can open up this window to see who is active, who has special status (I'm playing a game now where some players are "necromancers" and therefore follow different rules, but it's impossible to track unless someone repeatedly posts in the chat about current players' status), and so on.

It would just look like a table, with players across the left side, and a box for each one to note their current status.

4. Allow players to create password-protected open games. To join, you need to enter a password.

Now you can host a diplomacy with your friends (give them the password), or include the password in the text of the rules of the game, so that only people who have read the text will be able to "agree to the rules" and join the game.

...

I'm sure a clever person could think of more, but that's where I would start if I wanted to make Warlight more friendly to Diplomacy games.


(Interested readers can check out some of these earlier threads on the subject:

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/103883-diplomacy-game-mod?Offset=0

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/101473-prime-example-diplo-game-overrun-pes?Offset=0

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/92041-diplomancy

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/84552-opinions-diplo?Offset=20)

Edited 9/4/2015 17:42:40

+1 Poireau, I'd actually love that, but Fizzer is ignoring diplomacy as for now.

True, but I suspect that's largely because Diplomacy players are asking for really complex and involved changes to the game (which would be a massive headache to implement, and, in my opinion, would just bring about new problems).

Something like being able to change your name or to include a "status" along with your name in-game would be relatively easy to do, however. I can imagine Fizzer going for something like that.

A full new diplomacy mode and things like enforced peace treaties will only make diplo games better, however I agree with Poireau on his points.

Also allowing lower-level players to make scenario's probaly isn't something fizzer will do, the level system is there for a reason and otherwise players could just go into diplomacy mode and make a pure-strategy game with a scenario.

"A full new diplomacy mode and things like enforced peace treaties will only make diplo games better, however I agree with Poireau on his points."

For the record, I disagree with this very strongly. (And I've explained some of why in the threads I linked.)

The short version is: people in Diplomacy games get annoyed that other people aren't following the rules. The problem here isn't the people... it's that the rules are stupid. If they were good rules, people would have an easier time following them.

But I'll lay off in this thread, since I've already talked about it a lot in the others - go ahead and read there, if you want to get a different perspective on this. I don't want to distract too much from my points in this thread here and now.