idlih10 wrote:
This is a game where especially on pangea maps, free movement is vital to allow an alternative to war

Why?

Endless Legend already has a very large base movement on every unit than can be increased in so many ways. There isn´t even actual competition for ruins. It´s good that the game imposes choices, and they are too few already.

which would be the obvious result of almost any diplomatic action because you can't trade, move armies across neutral faction's ground to support an ally or search for ruins if blocked by closed borders etc. Not to mention the player cheap cheesing the AI early on by blocking off all expansion points through settler spam. For the sake of proper gameplay, open borders must remain the default.

Well, if borders were closes a priori, then getting them open by being a nice neighbor would be an alternative to war, instead of having them open a priori and then closed at slightest hint that you´re not a nice neighbor. I don´t really see how the human player could possibly settler spam over the AI, i´d have thought the opposite would be an issue.

Edit: To add, the principle above should also apply to freedom of pearl picking in neutral regions, even within the other faction's LOS short of taking pearls in their territory. Pearl picking on neutral ground is fair game and should not affect diplomatic standing in any way. It would also be rediculous to expect the player to try and navigate LOS on neutral ground to avoid "offending" the AI!

Why?? You only have to avoid offending the AI if you want to avoid offending the AI. It´s not like the first pearl you get within their sight they will declare war. You -have- options, you can either be a dick and deal with the consequences, or you can make do without 4 extra pearls in order to probably not have to worry about one of your neighbors. The game doesn´t force you to be nice. The game provides an incentive for you to be nice.

eXistenZ wrote:
Sorry for the bump, but is this still happening? I loaded up a savegame (to do some achievement farming), and immediatly a faction closed it borders

We are doing some work on the AI at the moment but it's not ready yet so was not included in 1.4.4 I'm afraid.

The AI is still too paranoid and closes its borders way too often. As Allayi, I "behaved myself" by choosing not to take pearls from other faction's provinces, not declaring war unprovoked and giving regular compliments on top of repeated negotiations for peace (another separate issue btw). Yet, the AI has a fetish for closing borders despite my diplomatic conduct. So far, roving clans understandably want a commercial agreement to the extent of honoring a peace treaty for the sake of it. But other clans refuse any chance of meaningful diplomacy from my experience so far. They ask for too much even for a commercial agreement and keep on closing their borders and breaking peace treaties without provocation. In fact, such paranoid behavior was what drove me to war in the first place! I understand that diplomatic relations will degrade over time if neglected but for the AI to have such a hostile reaction from initial contact and asking for extremely unbalanced deals in its favor unprovoked takes away any fun in diplomacy and only points to war in the long term. I do hope this aspect of diplomacy can be improved.



Edit: To add, the separate issue I mentioned earlier is the need for the UI to include an indicator to track relations. For example, Total War has a diplomatic point system where the AI is more likely to break trade and other agreements and declare war once the diplomatic score degrades below a certain level. There's no such system to track this degradation in Endless Legend although this is a critical feature. Please also include such an indicator so the player can have enough warning time to renew deals or maintain standing like say compliments will increase the diplomatic score for the next 20 turns to offset or slow down the diplomatic score degradation.

idlih10 wrote:
The AI is still too paranoid and closes its borders way too often. As Allayi, I "behaved myself" by choosing not to take pearls from other faction's provinces, not declaring war unprovoked and giving regular compliments on top of repeated negotiations for peace (another separate issue btw). Yet, the AI has a fetish for closing borders despite my diplomatic conduct. So far, roving clans understandably want a commercial agreement to the extent of honoring a peace treaty for the sake of it. But other clans refuse any chance of meaningful diplomacy from my experience so far. They ask for too much even for a commercial agreement and keep on closing their borders and breaking peace treaties without provocation. In fact, such paranoid behavior was what drove me to war in the first place! I understand that diplomatic relations will degrade over time if neglected but for the AI to have such a hostile reaction from initial contact and asking for extremely unbalanced deals in its favor unprovoked takes away any fun in diplomacy and only points to war in the long term. I do hope this aspect of diplomacy can be improved.

You behaved yourself as the Allayi? Whatever for? lol



No really, I don't think you're supposed to always behave as the Allayi. Quiet neighbors in the summer, war-mongering lunatics in the winter seems to work just fine!

Slashman wrote:
You behaved yourself as the Allayi? Whatever for? lol



No really, I don't think you're supposed to always behave as the Allayi. Quiet neighbors in the summer, war-mongering lunatics in the winter seems to work just fine!

That wasn't what I meant. I restrained my pearl picking behavior in other faction's territories to test if the AI will respond more favorably and it didn't.

idlih10 wrote:
That wasn't what I meant. I restrained my pearl picking behavior in other faction's territories to test if the AI will respond more favorably and it didn't.

Ah my bad. I get what you meant now.

idlih10 wrote:
That wasn't what I meant. I restrained my pearl picking behavior in other faction's territories to test if the AI will respond more favorably and it didn't.

I´ve noticed that the close borders thing has a lot more to do with your strategic movement around the AI´s vision than with their actual territories.



If you go into their borders and stay for a turn without being previously very friendly, they will close it. If you get a single pearl within their sight, even on neutral territory, they will tend to close it. If you keep moving inside a friend´s territories too close to pearls for some turns in a row, even without actually getting them, they will tend to close.



Things I´ve found that makes the AI like you are not restricting its movement near pearls, not stealing pearls within their sight, not restricting the movement of settlers, not engaging (obviously), not staying inside their territory during end turn even if you go in and out during the turn.



And to be very very honest, what should be a thing is "open borders", not close borders - those should be the default in the first place, so insta-closing makes sense. It would be vital that they weight correctly the factors that would lead to "open borders" though.

BPrado wrote:
I´ve noticed that the close borders thing has a lot more to do with your strategic movement around the AI´s vision than with their actual territories.



If you go into their borders and stay for a turn without being previously very friendly, they will close it. If you get a single pearl within their sight, even on neutral territory, they will tend to close it. If you keep moving inside a friend´s territories too close to pearls for some turns in a row, even without actually getting them, they will tend to close.



Things I´ve found that makes the AI like you are not restricting its movement near pearls, not stealing pearls within their sight, not restricting the movement of settlers, not engaging (obviously), not staying inside their territory during end turn even if you go in and out during the turn.



And to be very very honest, what should be a thing is "open borders", not close borders - those should be the default in the first place, so insta-closing makes sense. It would be vital that they weight correctly the factors that would lead to "open borders" though.

I disagree closed borders should be a default. This isn't a simulation of real life countries getting possessive over territories outside their borders they have no jurisdiction over like in the South China sea dispute. This is a game where especially on pangea maps, free movement is vital to allow an alternative to war which would be the obvious result of almost any diplomatic action because you can't trade, move armies across neutral faction's ground to support an ally or search for ruins if blocked by closed borders etc. Not to mention the player cheap cheesing the AI early on by blocking off all expansion points through settler spam. For the sake of proper gameplay, open borders must remain the default.



Edit: To add, the principle above should also apply to freedom of pearl picking in neutral regions, even within the other faction's LOS short of taking pearls in their territory. Pearl picking on neutral ground is fair game and should not affect diplomatic standing in any way. It would also be rediculous to expect the player to try and navigate LOS on neutral ground to avoid "offending" the AI!

If you like to move threw closed border areals, you should equip units with "ring of the boral" owl, what hides them for enemy. You always can find a solution, if you want/have to...

Groo wrote:
If you like to move threw closed border areals, you should equip units with "ring of the boral" owl, what hides them for enemy. You always can find a solution, if you want/have to...

Actually that is a good point and I often find myself neglecting stealth. Which is a good, non-aggressive way to avoid conflict.



I'm actually playing my first game with Roving Clans right now and it is a big adjustment for me. I do like Privateers though!

Groo wrote:
If you like to move threw closed border areals, you should equip units with "ring of the boral" owl, what hides them for enemy. You always can find a solution, if you want/have to...

I think that ring only works on forest tiles and you don't get access to such cool items immediately early on when pickings are the most useful compared to late game. As far as I know, I don't think there's any stealth item/trait that gives you unconditional, unlimited stealth unless you're the Forgotten. And even then, all it takes is for them to end up adjacent to an enemy unit to be discovered and there goes diplomacy. The point is not about working around it but why have pickings in neutral regions affect diplomacy at all when the AI is just as free to take those for themselves as well. Finders keepers and the early bird catches the worm.



If the AI is so anal about such things outside its borders, it stifles diplomacy big time. Closed borders should in principle be a result of clearly negative behavior and not due to overzealous AI paranoia that would only lead to war, which is by far the much cheaper option than trying to negotiate open borders repeatedly over the smallest slights on neutral ground. It doesn't make sense at all from a gameplay perspective.

wilbefast wrote:
Hmmm... well the AI does execute when the game is loaded, so while it can't move units it has already moved it will reconsider constructions, technologies and diplomacy, launch boosters and so on.



I'll check whether it updates the attitudes each time you load. There might be a potential exploit here if you can make the AI forget about a past affront by loading and saving a game 30 times in a row. I'm pretty sure this isn't the case though.

Sorry for the bump, but is this still happening? I loaded up a savegame (to do some achievement farming), and immediatly a faction closed it borders

@idlih10



I ckecked and you are right. Units are only invisible on forest tiles by equipping that lvl 1 dust ring.



P.S. Actually I play Forgotten, so you could be right about your hint, that only Forgotten can use the rings, too. I ckecked out, if I had to research a special tech before. I didn't have to.

BPrado wrote:
Why? Endless Legend already has a very large base movement on every unit than can be increased in so many ways. There isn´t even actual competition for ruins. It´s good that the game imposes choices, and they are too few already.

Not competition for ruins but competition for resources, which are not always evenly distributed. This is a bigger issue mid to late game where rich lands around your faction might be occupied by another faction and you need free movement to find an alternative province with the required resource even if it's not joined to your empire. On harder difficulties, the AI seems to adopt a "surround the human player" attitude early on to cut your faction's expansion off from all sides. That isn't a problem per se as I can still move my settler through open borders to colonize an area further away from my capital. But if borders were closed by default, gameplay would be heavily scripted towards military buildup from the start because you would likely lack enough resources to conclude an open borders, much less a commercial agreement. Having more choices is also not the same as supporting ridiculous AI expectations, which I would explain next.

BPrado wrote:
Well, if borders were closes a priori, then getting them open by being a nice neighbor would be an alternative to war, instead of having them open a priori and then closed at slightest hint that you´re not a nice neighbor. I don´t really see how the human player could possibly settler spam over the AI, i´d have thought the opposite would be an issue.

Well, if you play on the highest difficulties then yes, the AI will settler spam faster than you but I suspect the majority of players don't looking at the global achievements. What exactly do you mean by being a "nice neighbor"? You can't prove to the other faction to be "nice" by simply remaining peaceful as this seems to be greatly offset by the AI's anal expectations on neutral ground.



In fact, the AI's definition of being a "nice neighbor" from my experience and what you mentioned earlier is not so much about remaining peaceful but giving in to ridiculously unbalanced trades just for an open border agreement and pandering to the AI's anal expectations on neutral ground. Without open borders, there's no trade. Without trade, diplomacy will continue to deteriorate, leading to war. Even if you argue that open borders is too much to ask, the AI's unbalanced expectations of accepting a commercial agreement is fundamentally flawed. Yet you need to trade in order to get a diplomatic foothold, which is already problematic because it's not possible without open borders from what I understand. So you'll have to screw yourself twice, once to open borders and another time to get a trade agreement, with the hope that the AI does not break it. So yes, war is the most practical and cheaper option especially when borders are closed by default.



On the other hand, if borders are open by default, you can negotiate an (albeit over costly) commercial agreement without the double whammy of paying for unbalanced open borders AND commercial agreement deals, with the risk of the AI breaking the treaty. I understand the AI is far from perfect, but if it functions as intended, having a commercial agreement should logically keep relations much more positive, as seen from the roving clans honoring such an agreement (though I think faction trait influences diplomatic behavior as well) and consequently keeping their borders open. IF you want closed borders by default, then trade MUST BE IMMUNE to closed borders, able to be concluded even if borders are closed to allow a diplomatic foothold and the AI should not ask for unbalanced offerings during negotiations. Or at the very least, the AI's diplomatic expectations should only scale up with difficulty setting. Otherwise, there can only be war.



What this game also BADLY NEEDS is a UI indicator of diplomatic score for every opponent. If so many factors affect the AI's diplomatic view of the player, you need a clear indicator of the score with +ve and -ve factors determining whether the score will increase (up to a max limit) or decrease every turn. These factors should also appear when you for example mouse over the diplomatic score. Total War is a good example of such a system.

BPrado wrote:
Why?? You only have to avoid offending the AI if you want to avoid offending the AI. It´s not like the first pearl you get within their sight they will declare war. You -have- options, you can either be a dick and deal with the consequences, or you can make do without 4 extra pearls in order to probably not have to worry about one of your neighbors. The game doesn´t force you to be nice. The game provides an incentive for you to be nice.

No this is rediculous as I already explained in my earlier post. It's not about them declaring war immediately but being overzealous in closing borders over the most anal reasons. And no, this game doesn't give me an incentive to be nice but an incentive for war because it's so much cheaper, which I also explained earlier.

Groo wrote:
@idlih10



I ckecked and you are right. Units are only invisible on forest tiles by equipping that lvl 1 dust ring.



P.S. Actually I play Forgotten, so you could be right about your hint, that only Forgotten can use the rings, too. I ckecked out, if I had to research a special tech before. I didn't have to.

You did mention a great point though because I often neglect the stealth aspect. I might be wrong but if I remember, other factions besides Forgotten may have stealth items though these are rare and have to fulfill certain conditions to work. It's an area definitely worth exploring.

Still. it shouldnt happen that:



turn x: meet faction



turn x+1 faction closes borders



Its happening all the time to me, even on medium difficulties, and its really offputting. It makes diplomacy almost pointless

To me, Roving Clans are pretty much the only faction I that will try to keep open borders, in all games I played.

eXistenZ wrote:
Still. it shouldnt happen that:



turn x: meet faction



turn x+1 faction closes borders



Its happening all the time to me, even on medium difficulties, and its really offputting. It makes diplomacy almost pointless

I brought up this issue a few weeks ago, and the devs said that they'll address this. I agree that it's very annoying...

idlih10 wrote:
Not competition for ruins but competition for resources, which are not always evenly distributed. This is a bigger issue mid to late game where rich lands around your faction might be occupied by another faction and you need free movement to find an alternative province with the required resource even if it's not joined to your empire. On harder difficulties, the AI seems to adopt a "surround the human player" attitude early on to cut your faction's expansion off from all sides. That isn't a problem per se as I can still move my settler through open borders to colonize an area further away from my capital. But if borders were closed by default, gameplay would be heavily scripted towards military buildup from the start because you would likely lack enough resources to conclude an open borders, much less a commercial agreement. Having more choices is also not the same as supporting ridiculous AI expectations, which I would explain next.

So let me understand: are you saying that constantly open borders - being open by default and having permissive AIs - is important as an alternative to war, meaning bilateral behavior from both the AI and the player, or as an incentive for peaceful behavior from the player regardless of the diplomatic balance of the player´s actions (like stealing pearls)?



I don´t understand the part about the game being more militarized because borders are closed. Unless you´re playing much less than 40% landmass, there´s nothing inside one or two regions that can justify a war for open borders, access to a couple of regions doesn´t have enough value to be the determining factor that justifies the decision of an early war. Moreover, I don´t see how open borders are even significant as a diplomatic element for peace until at least the middle of era 2 when Right of Way comes into play, the same way I don´t see enough return from Research and Commercial Agreements to justify the investment on it before the middle of era 3, when you can support more cities and unlock more and better trade routes.



I don´t see how the AI´s expectations are ridiculous, it´s made to understand itself entitled to all it sees the same way a players does. Don´t you get mad when an AI gets pearls in front of you? Especially if this AI was supposed to be your friend? Why shouldn´t the same be valid to it?

Well, if you play on the highest difficulties then yes, the AI will settler spam faster than you but I suspect the majority of players don't looking at the global achievements. What exactly do you mean by being a "nice neighbor"? You can't prove to the other faction to be "nice" by simply remaining peaceful as this seems to be greatly offset by the AI's anal expectations on neutral ground.



In fact, the AI's definition of being a "nice neighbor" from my experience and what you mentioned earlier is not so much about remaining peaceful but giving in to ridiculously unbalanced trades just for an open border agreement and pandering to the AI's anal expectations on neutral ground. Without open borders, there's no trade. Without trade, diplomacy will continue to deteriorate, leading to war. Even if you argue that open borders is too much to ask, the AI's unbalanced expectations of accepting a commercial agreement is fundamentally flawed. Yet you need to trade in order to get a diplomatic foothold, which is already problematic because it's not possible without open borders from what I understand. So you'll have to screw yourself twice, once to open borders and another time to get a trade agreement, with the hope that the AI does not break it. So yes, war is the most practical and cheaper option especially when borders are closed by default.



On the other hand, if borders are open by default, you can negotiate an (albeit over costly) commercial agreement without the double whammy of paying for unbalanced open borders AND commercial agreement deals, with the risk of the AI breaking the treaty. I understand the AI is far from perfect, but if it functions as intended, having a commercial agreement should logically keep relations much more positive, as seen from the roving clans honoring such an agreement (though I think faction trait influences diplomatic behavior as well) and consequently keeping their borders open. IF you want closed borders by default, then trade MUST BE IMMUNE to closed borders, able to be concluded even if borders are closed to allow a diplomatic foothold and the AI should not ask for unbalanced offerings during negotiations. Or at the very least, the AI's diplomatic expectations should only scale up with difficulty setting. Otherwise, there can only be war.

I think I don´t disagree much with this part, except with your conclusion that default closed borders always leads to war and with "the AI's definition of being a "nice neighbor" from my experience and what you mentioned earlier is not so much about remaining peaceful but giving in to ridiculously unbalanced trades just for an open border agreement and pandering to the AI's anal expectations on neutral ground.".



I think the game works, more or less, the second way you described there. I don´t think it´s too much the AI expecting you not to get pearls in its territory and line of sight or not to keep units near their cities so that you could possibly plant spies. The price it sets on the Commercial and Research Agreements are valid because these things tend to represent much more to your economy than to theirs, not to mention when they already have other Agreements in place with other AIs or when they´re competing with you directly regardless of being officially friendly.

What this game also BADLY NEEDS is a UI indicator of diplomatic score for every opponent. If so many factors affect the AI's diplomatic view of the player, you need a clear indicator of the score with +ve and -ve factors determining whether the score will increase (up to a max limit) or decrease every turn. These factors should also appear when you for example mouse over the diplomatic score. Total War is a good example of such a system.

I think the fact is that the game, by design, is not meant for the player to delve into diplomacy. I find Total War´s indicator unnecessarily detailed, Civ5 has a much more complex and subtle diplomacy than EL or Total War and it doesn´t describe half the things that affects the AI - it´s still just as intuitive. You just can´t consider the AI as a filler you´re supposed to take advantage of, and should instead consider it´s another entity trying to win the game (which is not even totally true here).

No this is rediculous as I already explained in my earlier post. It's not about them declaring war immediately but being overzealous in closing borders over the most anal reasons. And no, this game doesn't give me an incentive to be nice but an incentive for war because it's so much cheaper, which I also explained earlier.

?



If the AI closes borders when you act selfishly, isn´t that an incentive for you to act selflessly in case you wish those border to remain open?

Alternatively - if the AI never closed their borders, ever, wouldn´t that be an incentive for you to get as many pearls in its territory as possible? Would this be an incentive for peace, if you´re able to deplete its resources, making it more prone to require war?



And...eh, war is cheaper in Endless Legend. It´s in the numbers. I think, maybe, that´s what you´re criticizing?



Because the only way Peace can make all the conquering not be worth it right now is through Tech Trading, which is incredibly difficult to "price" right. Between two human players, it´s a perfect free market with each one attributing the perceived valued according to the situation; but between a player and an AI that´s completely unable to perform behavioral mixed strategies, I suspect it´s extremely hard to write an algorithm that won´t be either very abusable or very restrict.



All the other elements from Peace need to be combined, and with some kickers like governors and luxuries, in order to "sort of" make up for the fact you´re not effectively doubling, tripling, quadrupling your outputs at the same time that you´d be removing opponents from the board.

BPrado wrote:
So let me understand: are you saying that constantly open borders - being open by default and having permissive AIs - is important as an alternative to war, meaning bilateral behavior from both the AI and the player, or as an incentive for peaceful behavior from the player regardless of the diplomatic balance of the player´s actions (like stealing pearls)?



I don´t understand the part about the game being more militarized because borders are closed. Unless you´re playing much less than 40% landmass, there´s nothing inside one or two regions that can justify a war for open borders, access to a couple of regions doesn´t have enough value to be the determining factor that justifies the decision of an early war. Moreover, I don´t see how open borders are even significant as a diplomatic element for peace until at least the middle of era 2 when Right of Way comes into play, the same way I don´t see enough return from Research and Commercial Agreements to justify the investment on it before the middle of era 3, when you can support more cities and unlock more and better trade routes.



I don´t see how the AI´s expectations are ridiculous, it´s made to understand itself entitled to all it sees the same way a players does. Don´t you get mad when an AI gets pearls in front of you? Especially if this AI was supposed to be your friend? Why shouldn´t the same be valid to it?

You misunderstood me big time. I never said I expected "permissive/friendly AIs", only for "balanced trade" and fair expectations on neutral ground. Now I understand if it's asking for an alliance or going to war against another faction, the diplomatic cost may be unbalanced because you need to incentivize the AI to deviate from it's own agenda which might not necessarily be immediate war. Here, all we're asking is a trade agreement. Why should the AI expectations for this be unbalanced?



And no, I do NOT get mad when the AI takes pearls from neutral ground because it's fair game, just as I also expect the same understanding from the AI.



I won't argue the point about landmass because I have not played every single possible land setting, only from my experience which is normal/large pangea map size and default settings with the number of opponents fully occupying the map capacity.

BPrado wrote:
I think I don´t disagree much with this part, except with your conclusion that default closed borders always leads to war and with "the AI's definition of being a "nice neighbor" from my experience and what you mentioned earlier is not so much about remaining peaceful but giving in to ridiculously unbalanced trades just for an open border agreement and pandering to the AI's anal expectations on neutral ground.".



I think the game works, more or less, the second way you described there. I don´t think it´s too much the AI expecting you not to get pearls in its territory and line of sight or not to keep units near their cities so that you could possibly plant spies. The price it sets on the Commercial and Research Agreements are valid because these things tend to represent much more to your economy than to theirs, not to mention when they already have other Agreements in place with other AIs or when they´re competing with you directly regardless of being officially friendly.

This doesn't make sense. Unless there's some hidden diplomatic modifier I'm not aware of, commercial and research agreements should benefit both sides equally. Or if it's scaled according to each faction's dust/research output relative to the other faction, then the relative expectations would have to be scaled accordingly. From my experience so far, the AI's expectations go beyond "relative".

BPrado wrote:
I think the fact is that the game, by design, is not meant for the player to delve into diplomacy. I find Total War´s indicator unnecessarily detailed, Civ5 has a much more complex and subtle diplomacy than EL or Total War and it doesn´t describe half the things that affects the AI - it´s still just as intuitive. You just can´t consider the AI as a filler you´re supposed to take advantage of, and should instead consider it´s another entity trying to win the game (which is not even totally true here).

I don't bother with Civ 5 because every faction plays too similar and diplomacy is almost meaningless when you can simply turtle or blitz the AI non-stop, which is why I stopped playing that game for a long time. Have you played Total War? If so, do you check the diplomatic screen every turn to see every single diplomatic modifier's status? Because I've got over 1000 hours of it and it has never been "unnecessarily detailed" for me, only a useful indicator to give me a rough idea how I should maintain the diplomatic relationship before it gets worse. This isn't treating the AI as a filler to be taken advantage of but to facilitate gameplay for the player because even if you know the diplomatic status, you still need to work by offering the right deal for the AI to accept. The TW diplomacy may not be perfect, but the indicator is still important as explained.

BPrado wrote:
If the AI closes borders when you act selfishly, isn´t that an incentive for you to act selflessly in case you wish those border to remain open?

Alternatively - if the AI never closed their borders, ever, wouldn´t that be an incentive for you to get as many pearls in its territory as possible? Would this be an incentive for peace, if you´re able to deplete its resources, making it more prone to require war?



And...eh, war is cheaper in Endless Legend. It´s in the numbers. I think, maybe, that´s what you´re criticizing?



Because the only way Peace can make all the conquering not be worth it right now is through Tech Trading, which is incredibly difficult to "price" right. Between two human players, it´s a perfect free market with each one attributing the perceived valued according to the situation; but between a player and an AI that´s completely unable to perform behavioral mixed strategies, I suspect it´s extremely hard to write an algorithm that won´t be either very abusable or very restrict.

I think I mentioned that even despite refraining from taking pearls in the AI's territory, it still acts anal because of what I understand to be "offenses" on neutral ground based on anal expectations. Again you missed my point completely, which I already explained above.



War in EL is not cheap per se. War is RELATIVELY cheaper in EL because the expectations of the AI is TOO UNBALANCED even for a simple trade agreement.



If the AI is able to "know" the perceived value of your trade/research worth, wouldn't it only be reasonable and fair that the human player has an indicator as well to show your worth relative to the AI when negotiating such agreements? I'm not talking about the green/red bar status but the relative worth in numbers of the deal to both sides shown in the diplomacy screen during negotiations.