AI Diplomacy

[Mutmer]

I had an idea that perhaps the staff can allow the creation of alliances with ai nations and other things it could be based on irl diplomacy for example if Russia and AI Ukraine wished to do a trade deal to do this action the russian player would be forced to either A. Increase relationships through external means this could take many irl months to do or B. Preform Covert action to forcibly put a favourable political party in charge to increase relations. this could make the world much more immersive and make the server feel as if the ai matters because right now the ai does not matter unless they are invaded

 

[Naio90]

While I love the idea and the opportunities it would give, truth is that there is no such thing as an "IA". At this moment, like you mentioned, the only case when an NPC country "activates" is during a military action involving them. That means a human player would be asked to roleplay for them, and that actually would not be an IA but a "real intelligente/human player".

It would be too much work for staff and other players to actively have to play multiple countries and alliances around the globe at the same time. Unless.... Jamie invests in the development of a complex IA software that can realistically play as any nation on MN, pulling real information from the internet and from older psots in the forum for context. (which obviously would ultimately result in all active players being conquered and destroyed by that IA).

 

[Jamie]

My response is based on two separate ideas, is the development of AI software to role play and for players to control NPCs:

AI software, as amazing as I think that would be, realistically would take years of development and cost... well, a pretty penny. Financially it wouldn't be possible and whether it'd be practical (as Naio90 mentioned) getting real information that can play realistically and respond to other people. I don't think anything like that has been done in this type of context. On a game is one thing but with this been paragraph role play, and very dynamic/not scripted, I don't even know/think it'd even be a workable option. A lot of variance.

In relation to other players controlling other countries, the reason this is something we've long been against are:
- It means players are splitting up their time between multiple countries long-term.
- It could potentially cause discrepancies and issues for new players who may join a country that has been impacted, badly, by NPC roleplay. It's easier to justify if it was an actual player who did it, as opposed to someone else who already has a country.
- It's open to (un)conscious bias. I could say x country would ally with me instantly.
This then opens the doors to a lot of disputes, abuse in war, etc.

In terms of NPC control, an example been Nathan with Haiti, is that we allow it for specific events to generate role play providing there's a benefit to multiple roleplayers, if not the whole forum. Although we'd definitely look into any requests for NPC control but this would need doing through a support ticket, detailing your intent.
The reason for this is because an action in-game is everlasting. For example, if you merged x and y country then left the forum after a week, that's impacted the entire world with very little purpose or gain for RP purposes.

We had a player who controlled South Korea who was on the forum for a very long time and always had an intent to unify the North & South. This happened in the end (so it's 100% possible) but it does fall down to the RP benefit it offers & duration on the forum.

Hope this makes sense!