Diplomacy should be interconnected with culture and war. In wars, there should be coalitions at times of certain countries against other countries, with factors such as country goals, government types, and feelings of each culture for the others being important in alliances.

A peace conference idea would be good to end wars. Either the human players or the computer players could ask for this conference. The civilizations on the winning side of the war would dominate the conference. Having the ability to draw borders or transfer cities is necessary for this. In the peace conference, in exchange for peace, the losing country may have to give up land and/or pay reparations.

In these conferences cultural differences should be addressed. For example, a country may not want a city which would be impossible to rule. It also may be a good idea to allow the victors to give independence to certain territories which neiter side wants.

At a peace conference, it may be possible for the victors to be unable to agree on a settlement. If this happens, it would be a good idea to allow each country to try to make peace with the loser and start a war with the side which it was unable to make an agreement with.

I don't know if any of these ideas are possible, but they would be interesting.

Thanks for the suggestions. I think they're all doable within the spirit of Clash. I had everything but the peace conference idea already on my mental list. However there aren't any implementation notes for these factors yet. The importance of factors like government type, culture, etc will also change over time. They are also less important in limited wars than in total ones IMO. The peace conference idea is a really kewl concept that I think we can and should do.

It occurred to me that I should say, in our defence, that we intentionally left the diplomatic system for last since its shape depends so much on what the other parts of the game look like. However, we've already put some thought into making the diplomatic AI Much better than what's in Civ-type games. Check out the "RealPolitik AI" link on the Clash main web page.

-Mark