I gave a basic overview of what I think we need in my post of Dec. 27th 11:18 and the following post. Obviously you can't make everything perfect in the first shot. We also need some way for the player to provide overall diplomatic objectives on the overall screen. My take on the big picture is for you to put together some semblance of the overall diplomatic interface, and have a single second-level interface for negotiating deals. I'd say at this point we should limit the deals to changes of diplomatic status. The diplomatic status negotiations should include the ability to give or take money either in a single amount, or a continuous stream.

Here is a cut version of my points.

We could split territroy status into the following, we could have claimed territory, treaty territory, settled territory and defended territory.

Claimed territory is what your explorers basically do, they run around planting a few flags. These have no real effect except that they can lead to treaty territory, where two civs can decide on a mutual border within shared claimed territory.

Treaty teeritory and borders is a border between two civs, but there is nothing there exploitation or settlement wise. This is still not a very "strong" border. It would be possible to have border disputes over these treaty borders. (IE demand a resurveying of the border in diplomacy and If you have become more powerful the other civ may look the otherway when the border changes slightly in your favour. Not accepting a change could be a war excuse that circumvents parliament or the senate in pathetic democracies etc.)

Settled territory forms a more firm border as the populated area has feelings of belonging to the Civ and do not share resources. Borders can not be adjusted through settled territory.

Defended territory is where you have actually stationed defences/guards on a border that is or is not settled. This sort of border can only be changed by military action. Note we could have a border post as a improvement that costs a gold a turn to maintain. You could eventually allow your border posts to just be abandoned but this would be an invitation for someone else to come and make a claim on your territory.

1) Claimed Territory: All the tiles in the Clash world are populated, not empty ala Civ2. So planting flags isn't going to be enough to subdue the local culture. You have to either conquer them or ally with them.

2) Treaty Territory: I suspect you're talking about something like the Treaty of Tordesillas which basically gave Brazil to Portugal and the rest of the New World to Spain. I think this would be very difficult to model in Clash. How would the AI know which tiles NOT to claim? Or what's to stop them from "claiming" the whole world? And what about the cultures and civs occupying the "claimed" tiles? It may be realistic, but it sure sounds messy.

As far as I can see, this model can't make it to demo5 in its present state.