Thus far the diplomacy is straight forward, your current status effects what you can do, but even then you can't always do things such as trade for certain materials. The influence is a good way to award players who plan and play well, but sometimes the effects of it can be negligable. So to add more options, players should have the options of making threats like a cold war type scenario. as an example, you should be able to threaten to declare war on a faction should demands not be met, like when borders are closed. the same could be done with trade agreements, as in the later game they can make a fair bit of dust, and losing them is terrible. but theres no option to get anything for not taking advantage of your power. So you could add the "threaten" option to the diplomacy screen.


This would lead to a need for stronger political standings and engagment in the game since certain aspects will now be based off of more than just how high your score is. When making a war threat against the A.i. it would be based more on your military strength vs theirs. if its to cancel trade routes, it would be based off how much dust science and luxury resources they will lose compared to what they give up.


This can be added to alliances as well, since alliances require you to help eachother you are expected to to be of service to the other empires, mainly for military and economic support. but now should one member of the alliance start acting out of line and hurt the group, such as by declaring war on a rival when your already at war, you dont jsut have the option to leave the alliance if u dont want it, but you can instead remove them from the alliance with the threaten option should they continue this war, so the alliance remains at peace and the fool is on their own.


This would fit well with the new "Espionage" faction coming out, if you were to capture an enemy spy for example, you could hold them for ransome for a maximum number of turns or return them if your payed