Affordable Alliance Diplomacy changes

Following the discussion started in this post: https://www.games2gether.com/amplitude-studios/endless-space-2/forums/65-general/threads/34270-alliance-rework?page=2 

I'd like to present some ideas that might be both executable and effective to solve some of the issues with the Alliance Diplomacy.

First I'd like to thank PARAdoxiBLE for contributing to this with his own ideas.

PARAdoxiBLE wrote:

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.

• 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.

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. 

PARAdoxiBLE wrote:

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

MaximusBeautifier wrote:

A simple combinatory tree should do the trick. Each combination of parties results in a single "Alliance Agenda Card" with preset costs of diplomacy, hence your idea comes into motion.

For example: Let's say you're in an alliace of 4.

2 militarist, 1 pacifist, 1 industrialist

That combination tells that half of your alliance is inclined to war and domination, and you have 1/4 inclined to peace and trade, 1/4 inclined to production.

Now that we have specific parameters for this specific alliance,  it's a matter of playing with numbers.

•  -50% costs of war
• +75% costs of peace and truce
• -25% influence costs for each trade agreements
• -25% influence costs for each active trade of strategic resources 

2 pacifist, 1 scientifc, 1 ecologist

• +100% costs of war
• -75% costs of peace and truce
• -25% influence costs for each active science agreement 
• -25% influence costs for each active trade of luxury resources

etc.

PARAdoxiBLE wrote:

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

MaximusBeautifier wrote:

PARAdoxiBLE wrote:

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

Yeah, generally they are more impactful when it comes to diplomatic decisions while the other ideologies are more reserved to research and development. However this can be mitigated with some extra-bonuses, like less costful research cooperations or temporary production bonuses each 5 rounds, etc. 

Share your thoughts in the subject.