Yes. I really hope that this idea will have a better ending than the Epic Story Generator in GC2 which was cool on the paper but horrible to implement. It has ended as an event logger (which is useful to remember what has been done)

Flipping awesome...great post! Given Stardocks track record for post-release love, I'm sure such a foundation is going to yield great goodness in the long run.

having a wide variety of things to be said that relate to the situation at hand is something I really  enjoy.   Both as a player and somebody who wants to create such text (this is all going to be in python right?)

I am glad you have it set out here.  I might want to throw in a tid-bit.   Here you have "military might" being compared, but might you also want magical might compared?  Or possibly relating to the strategy choosen by the AI?  (Focusing on heroes vs. focusing on armies vs. focusing on super-channeler)

I can imagine a leader saying something like "I grow tired of the tension at our boarders.  Prepare to taste the cold steel of my army"   but that would not make much sense if they were 'going-gandalf' and were basically charging in with just their channeler and a few heroes or a dragon.   The dragon might make the military might higher than an army would, but certainly there is no cold steel here.   I would not expect you to have specific dialog refering to rare fantastic creatures, but the AI player was specifically building his economy (or at least essence distribution) based around "powerful channeler + heroes" mentality.  So it would be more fitting to say something like "I have grown tired of the tension at our boarders.  You will soon fall before my <insert most offensive powerful>"

(of course one could have better dialogue than what is above, but its just examples)

you know what assuming does...   But a 2 way conversation is a bunch of 1 way messages.   Just because the code is setup as "faction sending message" and "faction(s) hearing message"  doesn't mean the listening faction(s) can't respond.  Instant messaging is setup very similarly to what is above, but people hold conversations through the "1 person sends, other person receives" format.  I guess you could say "If both parties are talking at the same time, nobody would be listened"

I put "(s)" on the end of faction just  because I would like to have 'wizard council' type diplomacy able to occur.   In Civ4, there was the UN.  And GalCiv2 had the  things you had to vote on from time to time.   But it wouldn't fire up a real discussion about it.

In theory there should be something similar to a 'group chat' where the factions put in a message or request that is sent to several people at once, and they can respond to anything put there.   So if there is agreed that a wizard council should be  formed to dictate the rules of Elemental, and all war declarations then must be done through the magical equivelant to the United Nations,   then the responces to such actions should be put straight into the council room, rather than told to you later in a barrage of "you declare war on my friend, me smash you" messages. 

Also then as a group, factions could decide how things result.   So lets say faction A declares war on faction B...    Factions C would start a council with factions D, and E saying "I am going to join A, but only if you both agree to join faction A's side as well.   Then faction D could respond "I will if I get money" and faction E could agree with C and decide to pay D's request so they are all on the side with A against B.

I guess then you wouldn't just have 

<SpeakingFaction> 
<ListeningFaction>

you might also need something like <TargetFaction> to specify to which faction the statement is referring, while still allowing for the "listening factions" to hear the conversation. 

(perhaps this would be better for an "idea" thread, but it seemed related to the topic enough for me, AND came up in discussion)

I like this -- "soul" goes a long way!

Have you also considered having <RULES> for diplomatic breakthroughs such as (advanced, supreme, etc.) language skill as well as <RULES> for language barriers that may exist between Fallen / Human or Humans and other creatures in the world (e.g. trolls, dragons, etc.)? For the latter, you could imagine that things might get lost in translation (unless you have purchased the applicable diplomatic breakthroughs), so that the flavor text is suboptimal, e.g.

"We thanks you very muchly. My fondness four your kindship has grown to horse-size proportions. May I have a bite of your gold pieces? The consequences are thought."

So not quite "my hovercraft is full of eels", but not great either.

For the first aspect I mentioned, that would simply include better versions of flavor text choices depending on your and your AI opponent's level of Diplo skill. Low levels might give you the choice, based on the <RULES>, "Here is the treaty," but higher levels might allow you to say, "Your Lordship's signature has never looked more majestic than on this seal." or something like that.

The talk with AI is nice idea. However bartering in GCII was great. You can see the stance of the other civilisation without the need of clicking on some button again and again. I hope the barter will be similar.

Boogie,

This looks really cool, thanks for sharing.  However, so that I don't exceed my gratitude quota, two questions:

1) "Cool, eh? And all data driven!"

Oh yea?

"

- Race of Men -
0 - A Kingdom speaking
1 - A Kingdom speaking to another Kingdom
2 - A Kingdom speaking to a Fallen nation

- Fallen Race -
10 - A Fallen race speaking
11 - A Fallen race speaking to another Fallen Race
12 - A Fallen Race speaking to a Kingdom nation

"

So what if another base race is modded in?  Do you have rule numbers for "Other Base Race 1", "Other Base Race 2", etc?  Or a custom rule that takes the name of a base race or such?  Will the modder have to pick one of the "base base races" to put it under?  That would work as long as no mod wanted more than 2 base categories like that, but 3 or more would be a problem.

2) I hope to be much less of a jerk on point number 2, though perhaps invoking even more coder pain: what do you think about adding a rule type that takes as a parameter the name of a python method to call that returns true/false depending on whether the rule is met?  That would allow a much higher degree of flexibility for us insane modders out here.

Many thanks, even if you just totally ignore what I just said it should be great

Just as a suggestion, a flavor adder for this might be insulting haiku's.  Once during a comment thread fued with a deeply irritating person, I concocted a series of dog insult haiku's to describe the individual and it just drove him bonkers.  While this isn't for everybody, and you might need to put a "no insulting haiku" buttion in the diplomacy options, this could provide a lot of interesting alternatives and opportunities for the community to contribute. 

For referance, I am including some possibilities. 

dog wants to open door
he lacks opposable thumbs
and licks his own butt

your fleets mass nearby
this alliance is in peril
grasping ankles now

cockatrices come 
resistant to flaming bolts
pity they can't swim

your army is huge
your economy in ruins
out of towns to loot

all your friends marching
alongside you to battle
so you came alone

I'm sure there are many more that could add flavor to a variety of situations.

While were on the subject, I want to give my biggest pet peave with game diplomacy. Every game I've ever played has this problem.

Real life diplomacy is a very complex thing. Countries make requests of one another according to their interests, which they may or may not want everyone to know. There are also intangible things like national pride thrown into the mix. When you are making a diplomatic system in a game, you can only approximate the innumerable variables governing foreign relations, and you can choose any of them to emphasize arbitrarily. Depending on what diplomatic factors are modeled, and which ones are ignored for simpliciites sake, the expected results of the same situation can be very different.

In real diplomacy, the participants often keep their cards close to the vest as they say, and they don't always give honest reasons for their replies. This is very often the case in games as well, as replies to diplomatic requests are often completely unfathomable to the player. This is the problem I am trying to point out! This is one area where real life and games ought to be different.

In real life, it is possible to investigate and make educated guesses regarding how a certain mysterious communication might serve a countries interests. We are all humans with similar needs after all. In a game, you have no idea how carefully the diplomatic AI is modeled, and you end up having to read the developers mind to guess what is willful deception and what is just a bug in the AI.

I would like to see a game where the AI wears it's heart on it's sleeve for the most part so I have a chance to understand how the system works. I'm not saying that the AI can't bluff or deceive, but I want a plausable explanation for every response so I can get a feel for what factors are important to the AI.

I've actually played games where anytime I come up with a proposal that is even remotely fair, the diplomatic answer is always and forever 'no'. I want reasons, and I don't want the reason to be that the AI is sacrificing its own interests to present a challenge to the player.

"Ok, I have a huge army and you are down to one territory and a handful of defenders who could be wiped out next turn, I offer you peace with no strings attached. What is your reply?"

"No."

No? Is there a reason for this or are you just a bugged AI??

The system proposed in the OP seems like a great step in the right direction.

advisor and heroes should be taking parts of the discussion too.

Just a random thought.  It wouldn't be too terribly complicated to have certain words be replaced with more nuanced words in the flavor text.

So for ex, for a greeting to Friendly Nation, you could have "Hello [friend]. Do you want to discuss our treaties?" 

and then depending on the exact level of Friendliness the [friend] could be replaced with 'fellow emperor' ,'friend', 'neighbor', 'good buddy', 'my BFF,' 'you super sock puppet master and future ruler of my world'. 

It just seems that it would let you have an even more granular level of detail in the text.

I guess you could accomplish this with the aforementioned system, you'd just have to add a bunch more conditions and would have a bunch of nearly identical sentences, which kinda seems inefficient.

I would like to strongly second this. As currently described the set of rules is all hard coded, so while the system is more extensible than before it is still not as flexible as I would like. Allowing some method for modders to create custom rules would allow for much richer interactions.

Such custom rules would allow for a basic question multiple response RPG like dialog system. The second question could check a custom rule for a saved value from the first response. This would allow actual branching dialog.

Oh and what is with the prejudice BoogieBac? We are not fallen, that is just kindom propoganda. We are Empire! In all seriousness I agree with keithLamothe on this point as well, I would try to avoid hard coding names of anything into these rules if you can.

who are the writers anyway?   I know you've got us a book in the works.   But are the people who are writing the book also going to be making game text?  (obviously one is based on the other, but that doesn't mean they are the same people making and organizing it)

It would be done so that it wouldn't give away intelligence on your enemy for free, right?

it'd be kinda cool if you could make a permanent alliance once every 10 turns ... although it uses up alot of prestige. however making a new Perm Alliance breaks the former one. you could call these "Ultimate Alliances" ... and then it would be possible to form a true "Permanent Alliance" if you have shared an Ultimate Alliance for ~30 turns or so.

That way a country could be your "ex" .... a previous Ultimate Alliance partner, and now just a Friendly Ally.

Friendly Ally is practically like a rival, just like normal "friendly" always is, however Ultimate alliance would act like a Permanent Alliance ... share technology and line of sight ... only that its not guaranteed to be permanent. I think you should only get the chance to form a new Ultimate Alliance once every 10 turns after the first one ... and you can't simply break your Ultimate alliance, you have to form a new one. This way you can't simply revoke such an alliance any time you please ... every 10 years you would have to decide if you wish to renew the contract or not. Making it so that you cannot simply break up with the country ... but requiring you to form a new alliance ... makes it so that people don't drop out of the race and try to retreat into neutrality. Once your part of the game, you can't get out. (although it might eventually be decided that you simply choose to "renew" every 10  years, so on an aniversary divisable by 10 you can break the alliance if its truly your wish)

Anyways ... I just think it would be fun to create dialogue for a country you have Allied and then not-renewed the alliance (broke up with them) ... it would be interesting special dialogue only for Ex-Allies.

Can Dragons level up? For one, that would be incredibly awesome, and two .. Ive always wanted to fight against a much, much stronger Mundane empire with only a dragon usign Guerilla warfare. Sure it might not be the best strategy for "victory" ... but fighting impossible battle after impossible battle with my elite battle-hardened dragon, and then retreating to the nearest castle or cave ... that just seems really, really cool.