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I'm wondering if there's any authoritative literature out there on diplomacy systems. I'm at the very beginning of my research, for instance I just found out through gamedev, that the term diplomacy describes what I'm looking for.

Before that, I was looking for alliance systems without much success.

1) Could someone point me in the right direction for further research into the topic?

Initiailly, I was looking for something like in eve online, where people are organized into individuals, fleets, alliances, all of which can, as far as I know, declare war or peace on each other.

2) Is there open source code I can study on the subject?

and finally:

3) What are some considerations when comparing diplomacy systems?

I mentioned Eve Online, but at this point, I'm open to inspiration from all genres. What are some interesting ones out there?

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This sounds more like a design decision than a real problem. I think the question is what kind of diplomacy do you want to implement? Figure that out and then just do it! – ToddersLegrande Feb 27 at 22:55
@ToddersLegrande: It is rather vague, isn't it. Basically, I want to model real world diplomacy, and was hoping to get inspiration from games. I'm not looking for a specific implementation, just an overview of topics to cover after more research. – lowerkey Feb 27 at 23:18
I wonder if something like this might be a better fit for the Arqade or Board and Card Games stack exchanges if you're looking for examples where diplomacy mechanics are implemented rather than how to implement said mechanics. If you have questions on the implementation of a specific model once you figure out how you'd like it to behave, here would be a great place for those, such as "How can I make players easily see other players in their current group?" or whatever. – Lunin Feb 28 at 0:48
First I was thinking you were referring to the negotiations with AI opponents like it happens in 4X games, but then you mentioned Eve Online which is a multiplayer game. Could you be a bit more specific what you are talking about? – Philipp Feb 28 at 10:52
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The civillisation series of games had an interesting diplomacy system, aside from declaring peace, players could exchange knowledge, gift units/cities and some more. There's freeciv, an open source clone of civ, but I don't know how freecivs diplomacy system differs. – sarahm Feb 28 at 17:07
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1 Answer

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I'd strongly suggest picking up a copy of the board game Diplomacy; there are freeware versions around, as well as paper copies:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplomacy_(game)

It's been very good at using diplomacy as its gameplay element for over fifty years. But don't take my word for it:

In its catalog, Avalon Hill advertised Diplomacy as John F. Kennedy's[5] and Henry Kissinger's favorite game. Kissinger described it as his favorite in an interview published in a games magazine.[6] American broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite was also reported to be a fan of the game.[7]

I feel like Henry Kissinger and John F. Kennedy probably know a thing or two about this sort of thing.

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