There's more to be lost than gained if the Alliance system was to be reworked. The 'Alliance council' idea is foolish and nonsensical. If I am the Empire and have as my allies Sophons and Unfallen, they would vote against me every time I wanted to declare war on a strong Nation, and because of their majority of votes frustrate my warmongerlike intentions everytime. Some have also put forward that the Alliance should vote when deciding on whether or not to accept a new member. Uhh, the galaxy is way too dangerous NOT to accept a new member. Suppose Dwayne Johnson wanted to fight you and you are weak with no martial arts experience but have the chance of allying with Manny Pacquiao to take him down. If you are sane and don't desire to die, you would take him up ten out of ten times. Likewise, Pacquiao, if he were injured, drunk enough or tired enough, would welcome your aid ten out of ten times.

Sublustris wrote:

Krogandoctor wrote:

If I am the Empire and have as my allies Sophons and Unfallen, they would vote against me every time I wanted to declare war on a strong Nation, and because of their majority of votes frustrate my warmongerlike intentions everytime.

Foolish and nonsensical is the fact you joined their alliance in the first place, having warmongerring attitude. Should have just stay in peace with them, then declare wars to your hearts content left and right.

Whole idea behind "alliance" state is to have unified diplomacy across few empires. In current iteration, even though diplomacy state is unified, treties and proposals are not.

Haha.Beat me to it.

Sublustris wrote:

Krogandoctor wrote:

If I am the Empire and have as my allies Sophons and Unfallen, they would vote against me every time I wanted to declare war on a strong Nation, and because of their majority of votes frustrate my warmongerlike intentions everytime.

Foolish and nonsensical is the fact you joined their alliance in the first place, having warmongerring attitude. Should have just stay in peace with them, then declare wars to your hearts content left and right.

Whole idea behind "alliance" state is to have unified diplomacy across few empires. In current iteration, even though diplomacy state is unified, treties and proposals are not.

So I should forgo allying with them altogether? WHO ARE YOU to tell me how to play?

Either way will face objection. While wars are so important matter in gameplay, there could be other reasons for forming an alliance.

So there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Someone will complain about constantly being dragged into unwanted wars. Others might feel irritated when one can't go into war just because it has alliance for stable economic cooperation.

Alliances should have their own Senate. Each Empire will be represented by the ideology of their main party (ies). That way, the Alliance can build agendas based on alliance influence gain.

For example, if you have Militarits and Pacifists in the same alliance:

Militarists will gain Alliance Militarist Influence for defending allied territories, killing pirates, expanding territories, making bigger fleets, completing objectives, etc. 

Meanwhile, the Pacifists will gain Alliance Pacifist Influence with trading and diplomacy.

In the end, the Faction that outperforms in its ideals will have the upperhand in Alliance Decisions. If the Militarists have more influence in the Alliance Senate, then the decisions will be more oriented towards war and domination.

One thing to make it clear is that Diplomatic decisions made by the Alliance outways any Diplomatic pacts made privatly by the Alliance Members.  

Krogandoctor wrote:

So I should forgo allying with them altogether? WHO ARE YOU to tell me how to play?

Make an argument, why peace wont suffice for you.

Sublustris wrote:

Krogandoctor wrote:

So I should forgo allying with them altogether? WHO ARE YOU to tell me how to play?

Make an argument, why peace wont suffice for you.

Thanks but no thanks

Thought so

Let's keep discussion productive. While how useful voting system is and current situation that alliance revamp being delayed are surely debatable, alliance rework demanding voting session or AI rework is unlikely to happen. So talking about something seems feasible would be a lot more helpful.

If we can't introduce new mechanics, which need to be teached to AIs, then we should use existing ones. Existing simulations that AIs naturally persues.

In that sense, I want to suggest adjusting the influence cost of diplomatic terms according to the diplomatic landscape.

• You have two other alliance members? Here's +400% increase in war declaration cost.
• You exert a strong diplomatic pressure on one of the alliance members? Then you'll get -25% reduction.
• Do you want to declare war but influence cost is too high? Go sign some cooperation agreement and get -50% reduction.
• You're worried that one of your alliance member might declare war? Turn off sharing vision or use Bureaucratic Imbroglio. They will increase the diplomatic cost of alliance-wide terms by 15% respectively.

I do know they are quite crude to be used and needs some adjustments. But I think it could handle the matter within the technical limitations. Because AIs already knows it needs influence at diplomacy and they can discern whether those conditions above is good or bad.

You'd also need to scale diplomatic costs made to alliance members. If you propose truce to whole allience, you should pay the cost as if you propose it to each of the member.

Same with inviting new members or requesting to join.

I like this idea. Might mitigate glaring flaws of the current system. Adjusting exact influence costs might get tricky, so that we didn't end up with same system but just more expansive. This would be especially bad for Endless difficulty, where AI has a lot more influence. Maybe costs should also scale to difficulty, or total galaxy influnce production?

MaximusBeautifier wrote:

That will only force Alliances to be passive most of the time, when we should be inducing the common interests that forged that Alliance in the first place.

I agree that having a vote system would require a change in the AI program from the scratch.

But if we avail the political system that already exists, and use those to create an Alliance Agenda, and then make our diplomatic costs based on that agenda, the AI wouldn't even need to be touched.

Even if they were to just change stats and costs, an update patch would be necessary. That is technically a minor rework effort being spent anyways. It would be worth it to add a simple subroutine and solve this issue. 

Sublustris wrote:

You'd also need to scale diplomatic costs made to alliance members. If you propose truce to whole allience, you should pay the cost as if you propose it to each of the member.

Same with inviting new members or requesting to join.

I like this idea. Might mitigate glaring flaws of the current system. Adjusting exact influence costs might get tricky, so that we didn't end up with same system but just more expansive. This would be especially bad for Endless difficulty, where AI has a lot more influence. Maybe costs should also scale to difficulty, or total galaxy influnce production?

Generally agreed on both. Adjusting diplomatic costs should be done with caution because it can really stagnate the pace of diplomacy. Also we have to keep AIs from dominating the alliance diplomacy with their influence bonus while not hurting the incentive to have strong influence output for players.

But not sure how alliance agenda would work. How would you link 6 parties to various diplomatic options?

That's an interesting twist to alliance diplomacy. I generally liked it just except for making militarists & pacifists more important than others.

Sublustris wrote:

Thought so

You arrogant dog. Ever read the Make Love not War law? Oh no wait! Dogs can't read can they

please keep this discussion productive. such quarrel definitely does not help alliance rework

PARAdoxiBLE wrote:

please keep this discussion productive. such quarrel definitely does not help alliance rework

Not to be rude but I was just defending myself.