OK, so I get the basics. You get points passively every turn, depending on your relationship to other empires. For each other empire, a state of cold war, war or truce gives 1 DP per turn, peace gives 2 DPpt and alliance gives 4 DPpt. You also get points every time you make a trade, or sign a treaty that improves your relationship to another empire, not including Drakken 'force' options.



However, the in-game tooltip states that compliments and warnings increase and decrease, respectively, the DP gain of yourself and the target. I have not been able to confirm this, compliments don't seem to affect either my passive DP gain or that gained by trades and treaties. Is this a bug?



I read in another thread that your influence output also affects DP gain, but in that case my DP graph (score screen) should have spikes coinciding with spikes in the influence output graph, which doesn't seem to be the case. Most of the time it's a smooth curve, even if my influence output fluctuates heavily (I mostly play pillar-heavy Ardent Mages). Is influence output intended to affect DP, or not?



Is there a set formula for DP gained by trade and treaties, and if so may we see it? Are there any more ways to gain DP that I don't know of?

Compliments aren't supposed to make DP anymore. It's probably a tooltip that's no longer true. This is to prevent compliment spam for the purposes of diplomatic victory.



Your influence output doesn't directly affect DP gain. But DP gained is proportional to influence spent.



If I remember correctly, I think that I read that 10 influence spent improving relations = 1 diplo point. But that can't be right. It's less than that. Somewhere between 5 and 10.



You can also gain DP by making diplomatic trades.

Yes the tooltip is wrong - we're on it

wilbefast wrote:
Yes the tooltip is wrong - we're on it

OK, thanks!

natev wrote:
If I remember correctly, I think that I read that 10 influence spent improving relations = 1 diplo point. But that can't be right. It's less than that. Somewhere between 5 and 10.

All right, I guess I'll just have to gather some data in my next game and try to figure it out.

All right, so now that I've collected some data I'll try to say something about diplomatic points. Note that all of the following is tested on a 4 player, normal speed map. Edit: 4 player, fast speed map gives the same numbers.



Data here, if any one is interested:

EL DP.pdf

Unexpected numbers marked in red. After turn 46 I realized I couldn't realistically keep track of all fractions of influence points, so I just went with the rounded numbers displayed on the control panel.



Diplomatic points are required to win a diplomatic victory, and can be earned in two ways. You can always see how many diplomatic points you have, and how many you need to win, on the score screen (F10).



You gain Diplomatic Points (DP) passively every turn, for every other empire. The amount depends on your relationship to each of them: cold war, war or truce provides 1 DP per turn, peace provides 2 DP per turn, and alliance provides 4 DP per turn. Your total amount of DP per turn is displayed on your Empire Screen (F1). It might say "+4 Diplomatic Points from peace on Empire" and "+1 Diplomatic Point from cold war on empire", for example. I shall refer to this DP gain as "passive" DP gain.



Passive DP gain seems bugged, at least in my test game. Some turns, but not all, while in one or more peaces or alliances, I would get one DP too many. I have reported this issue in this thread (link).



You also gain DP from some, but not all, diplomatic actions. That is, proposals and declarations on the diplomacy screen (F7). I will call this "active" DP gain. From what I can gather, every 5 influence points spent on a proposal of any and all of the following items will earn you 1 DP, if the other party accepts your offer:

[spoiler](Tab 1)

Going from war to truce

Going from cold war to peace

Going from cold war to alliance

Going from peace to alliance

Open borders

Map exchange

Vision exchange

Vision and map exchange

Commercial agreement

Research agreement

Market ban removal (Roving clans only)

(Tab 2)

Offering/receiving dust and other resources to/from the other party

(Tab 3)

Offering/receiving stockpiles to/from the other party

(Tab 4)

Offering/receiving cities to/from the other party

(Tab 5)

Offering/receiving techs to/from the other party[/spoiler]

Influence spent on one-way declarations DO NOT increase your DP. Interestingly, the declare war on third party item also seems to grant you no DP, even though it needs to be ratified by your trade partner and can be combined with other trade items. For completeness, here's a list of diplomatic actions that DO NOT increase your DP:

[spoiler](Tab 1)

Declaration of war

(Either side) Declare war on: (third party)

Going from peace to cold war

Going from alliance to cold war

Going from alliance to peace

Force truce (Drakken only)

Force peace (Drakken only)

Force alliance (Drakken only)

Close borders

Map embargo

Vision embargo

Vision and map embargo

Commercial embargo

Research embargo

Market ban (Roving clans only)

Compliment

Warning[/spoiler]

Things that need further testing:

[spoiler](Tab 1)

Nullify market ban (Only if the other empire is Roving clans, and has banned you)[/spoiler]

Please tell me if I missed anything. I will update this information after some more testing. Also note that you only receive DP when you spend influence on a diplomatic transaction, so you won't get them when you accept an offer from another empire, only if you propose a deal and the other empire accepts it.



And as a final note, even though they cost influence, empire plans and minor faction assimilation will NOT grant DP. I don't know yet about cultists conversion.

Tested a few things more:



Passive and active DP gain seem to follow the same formulas on fast speed.

Market ban does not grant DP. Market ban removal does.

Declare war on: (third party) grants no DP to proposer, regardless of which party the item is listed for.

edit: giving away cities also grant DP



Editing last post to reflect this.

Steam guide in progress: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=523798721

Updating this thread will probably be lower priority than working on the guide. Any feedback would be appreciated.