Rethinking Diplomacy

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Seravy's mention of the Subversion spell being useless before, but now possibly useful with the better diplomacy system made me think that diplomacy really should have some more thought.  If the number of opponents is going to be much higher, then the system designed for 4 may not be adequate.  If you're going to have a dozen or more AIs, there's a lot of potential for really interesting strategic decisions.  Having one or more solid allies might be critical for surviving.  I'm imagining a system wherein the human player faces many real decisions about assisting a potential ally, such as: 

  Requests for help in defending cities (or nodes)
  Requests for attacks on another AI
  Requests for resources, spells, units (the AI lacks ranged troops, so offers to swap some wolf riders for bowmen)
  Agreements for trading territory or lair access (race A gets a bonus from desert tiles, so would benefit from the desert area your scouts found, while you'd like that mountain area they dislike)
  Overland spells (you cast Heavenly Light on their city, they cast Resist Elements on several of your units, or maybe they pay you mana to cast Ice Storm on the enemy units threatening their city)
  Use of special resources (mithril, nightshade) within limits, so as not to trivialize the value of such special tiles



The benefits of good relations would include:

  Trade bonuses
  Access to otherwise unavailable resources, spells, units
  Military assistance
  Information
  Turning your potential worst enemy into an ally


This expanded diplomatic system would allow opportunities for new spells, units, resources, etc.  It would allow for winning by diplomacy.  It would allow for really liking one AI leader, and really, really detesting another.  It would allow for getting potential enemies to fight each other (so satisfying!).  It would also allow for bigger threats (enemy federation).


I expect that some of these possibilities would be too difficult to program, but maybe some are more reasonable.  It would need to avoid stupid requests, such as asking for help in a battle that you can't possibly get your troops to in time.  Penalties for refusing a request might have to be small or even zero, since the AI can't understand your very valid reasons for being unable to fulfil the request at this time, and the benefits for fulfilling requests should be really worthwhile.  Chances for gaining diplomatic points should be something to look forward to.  I think it has a lot of potential for making the game more interesting.

I expect that these suggestions are too much to expect from COM at this time.  This is more of a suggestion to think about it for future expansions or new game development.

[Seravy]

Certainly this is something better left for a future addition but here are my thoughts :

The AI allies can already request you to declare war on their enemies. While that's not very specific, it is your best interest to eliminate that enemy beyond that point as they will also target you. I don't think specific attack requests or defend requests are particularly necessary and as the AI does not plan ahead, attack requests would be pretty much random and not follow any plan beyond "this stack is too strong for me so let's ask the human player for help". Another problem is that these would be one-way. The human player cannot ask the same from the AI because the AI already attacks anything they are strong enough to fight, and is forbidden from attacking this it loses to. So such requests would either make the AI waste their troops and fail to destroy the target, or would get ignored. The only case that would be relevant is asking the AI to change their main action continent, which will bring the AI's troops in range of a potential enemy otherwise considered unreachable by the system. 
Trading territory doesn't fit because territory isn't even a concept in the game plus there are shared tiles and seriously, how to you trade a mountain? You can't pick it up and move it to the other player's town and this isn't civilization with railroads and modern transportation either. More importantly, the game already has trading in the form of road bonus, so I think the system should connect that with diplomacy - for example, don't add the road bonus if the connected city isn't your ally.
Trading normal units might be okay but how do you explain why the troops suddenly teleported to each other's location on the map? Unless you both have Earth Gate and both are cities, this cannot normally happen. Obviously leaving the units where they are isn't an option, as that results in two players on the same tile and while the units could be pushed in theory, we really don't want to do that (if there is no room the units will die, and this is super easy to abuse by intentionally positioning the offered troops on a blocked piece of land).
Casting spells on each other was considered but I already gave up on that idea. The main concept of the game is that you can't use spells you don't have the books for.
Trading information doesn't work because the AI doesn't scout the map in the first place.