If you attack another side they automatically declare war on you, no matter how small the conflict. Same with a cease fire. Now, many, many times in history two opposing sides have fought it out (sometimes with extreme brutality) without actually going to war. I am not necessarily talking about a Vietnam type situation, but more along the lines of the Soviet Union and China in the late sixties.

My question to all of you is, how would you like to see such a situation work?

What would be the benefits of one over the other?

The drawbacks?

How much of a conflict could you have before it descended into all out war? How would this differ between each nation? Would the opposing side see any benefit that might exist in keeping the situaion going? (a Wag the Dog, or Canadian Bacon scenario)

Would internal situations be considered wars or skirmishes? ie: a city revolts and forms a new nation, you take it back. Or to liberate a city an ally refuses to return after a war, etc.

But I disagree with Par4 in the way it should be done. Instead of basing it on a formula, which is unrealistic, more diplomatic states should be created.

An example of diplomatic states could be (* denotes uncommon):

No Contact

Hostile States:
No Diplomatic Relations
War
*Truce (ie don't fight for 2 turns)
Temporary Cease-Fire (don't fight for 16 turns like in civ2)
*Permanent Cease-Fire (eg Koreas)

Peaceful States:
Peace (eg US and Malaysia)
*Permanent Peace (as in US and say, Australia)
Alliance
*Full Alliance (must help each other, auto share techs, can use each other's cities, aiports, aircraft carriers, cannot be broken without huge loss of reputation). eg NATO, or the Commonwealth idea I mention in my colonies thread.

I think the most important and versatile one would be "no diplomatic relations". It would allow the "skirmish" state that DoctorGonzo was taling about.

As you can see, I'm heavily into imrpoving the diplomatic side of the game, and I think it is through improving this facet of the game that we can easily avoid a "civ 2.5", as some other guys have been talking about.

But you're right, border wars and skirmishes should really be implemented.

Perhaps anything outside the zones of city control could be considered a skirmish. Or if they occur directly at the border squares. So, anything within two square of the border would be considered a skirmish (but away from the cities), but each civ would have the option of declaring war. Hopefully the AI will be smart enough to assess the situation and make a good decision.

"You better not touch me or we nuke you, arg"
Black jack

I like Ultrasonix's system, it works

There's been a lot of new threads started lately, but I feel that the most important aspect of improvement in Civ3 is probably diplomacy (along with AI). If they can improve just these two things, that'll probably be enough.

Seconly: more honour and word-keeping. Repeated back-stabbing should be *much* more costly - not only in terms of reputation and final civ-score, but also; any trade-deals with disapproving civs should be gradually lesser and lesser profitable for the backstabber, and for the backstabber only.