In my experience with multiplayer strategy games diplomatic actions are near useless because the returns for a brute militaristic approach are extremely high. The diplomatic systems just feel like a way to control the AI in single player games. After playing 30 or so hours of Endless Space (against AI of course) I don't see how it will be any different for this game. I really hope that isn't true because there is a lot of enjoyment in diplomatic interactions instead of just out producing and out fleeting the opponent. It's understandable because of the benefits involved with increasing your power at the expense of an opponent and this is why I believe extra measures must be included to make diplomacy rewarding.



I'm bringing all this up because I haven't noticed any neutrality or war weariness systems in the game and want to know where the game might be going for multiplayer and what other players might want from diplomacy. Besides the systems I mentioned already I've seen a great deal done with various game settings that may enforce peace or alliances until certain conditions, perhaps only social conditions, are met. I also noticed that there are benefits to trading but I haven't really been able to work out how trading works and seems to be completely automated with little transparency which doesn't really help my assessment.



I'd love to hear what other players are hoping for in terms of multiplayer diplomacy and where you think the game might be now and where it might go.

I can think of one situation diplomacy would be good in... Say you're in the middle of a spiral galaxy arm, with players on both sides of you. Let's call em Bob and John. Now John is towards the middle, Bob at the end. Bob has a dilemma. He needs to go through you to get out his little hole. Due to this fact, he's probably gonna go to war with you. Now, you could accept this, except John is on your other side. He may decide to also go to war with you. Now the chances of beating 2 other players in a war are pretty slim. Solution? Ally John or Bob (or at least declare peace/cold war while at war with the other). If you ally John, you could focus all your efforts on Bob until Bob is dead (assuming you win of course, no guarantee). Maybe even get John to help you kill Bob, either by resources or ships. Or you could go to peace with Bob, give him a system or two maybe, possibly even open borders. He might even help you kill John and you could split the rewards.



Now, of course both players could just be a dick, have none of it and kill you. Or even worse, ally with each other, and split your land. Ah the joys of politics.

liq3 wrote:
I can think of one situation diplomacy would be good in... Say you're in the middle of a spiral galaxy arm, with players on both sides of you. Let's call em Bob and John. Now John is towards the middle, Bob at the end. Bob has a dilemma. He needs to go through you to get out his little hole. Due to this fact, he's probably gonna go to war with you. Now, you could accept this, except John is on your other side. He may decide to also go to war with you. Now the chances of beating 2 other players in a war are pretty slim. Solution? Ally John or Bob (or at least declare peace/cold war while at war with the other). If you ally John, you could focus all your efforts on Bob until Bob is dead (assuming you win of course, no guarantee). Maybe even get John to help you kill Bob, either by resources or ships. Or you could go to peace with Bob, give him a system or two maybe, possibly even open borders. He might even help you kill John and you could split the rewards.



Now, of course both players could just be a dick, have none of it and kill you. Or even worse, ally with each other, and split your land. Ah the joys of politics.

This is EXACTLY the problem. Why would Bob or John ally you when they could just take what you have. Unless you have an incredibly superior force to John or Bob which simply will not be the case early game. In both cases it is usually more profitable for bob or john to attack you regardless. It's not about being a dick its just that there are enormous rewards for conquering another player and there are not usually sufficient rewards for diplomatic interactions with them instead.

That's not usually the case for 4x games, but some Grand Strategy implement penalties for wars with no casus belli and long wars, like "war exhaustion". If the devs would implement this in-game it would be great! The fact that you would need a good justification to wage war on someone rather than "well... because I can!", or be penalized for war with no cause. And, if there is nothing similar already (didn't play that much yet...), a weariness towards prolonged conflicts. Making your colonies less productive and more rebellious as the war drags on.... I love to deal with those implications :P

You have a trade bonus for being allied as well as being able to move through boarders. The diplomacy aspect would become more viable the more players are in a game. Less players, less diplomacy.



More is needed, yes... but saying there is no incentive is an incorrect statement as well.

Dhanun wrote:
That's not usually the case for 4x games, but some Grand Strategy implement penalties for wars with no casus belli and long wars, like "war exhaustion". If the devs would implement this in-game it would be great! The fact that you would need a good justification to wage war on someone rather than "well... because I can!", or be penalized for war with no cause. And, if there is nothing similar already (didn't play that much yet...), a weariness towards prolonged conflicts. Making your colonies less productive and more rebellious as the war drags on.... I love to deal with those implications :P

So im guessing that the cravers would work in the opposite way?

IMO, Diplomacy SUCKS. They just get mad and then when they dislike me enough they jump to all out war. I don't know why they get mad, I cant see their space yet and they just say screw you die. (The other thing is, I am pretty far behind in rating no matter what I build or research and no matter if I expand at a massive rate or not, even upping my fleet seems to not help like it should) Anyways, the ratings go up but its like they just accelerate ahead so quick that I cant do much when they bring in the ships to take everything.

Mortiferus_Rosa wrote:
You have a trade bonus for being allied as well as being able to move through boarders. The diplomacy aspect would become more viable the more players are in a game. Less players, less diplomacy.



More is needed, yes... but saying there is no incentive is an incorrect statement as well.

I know there is a trade bonus but it seems rather small and it isn't transparent enough for me to figure out what is going on. In my own experiences in this game I have no incentive not to be at war at all times with at least one other empire. In multiplayer this will likely be even more extreme since it isn't as simple as just manipulating AI into peace. Without some sort of disincentive for war or better incentives for diplomacy multiplayer will be less than stellar in my taste.

Dhanun wrote:
That's not usually the case for 4x games, but some Grand Strategy implement penalties for wars with no casus belli and long wars, like "war exhaustion". If the devs would implement this in-game it would be great! The fact that you would need a good justification to wage war on someone rather than "well... because I can!", or be penalized for war with no cause. And, if there is nothing similar already (didn't play that much yet...), a weariness towards prolonged conflicts. Making your colonies less productive and more rebellious as the war drags on.... I love to deal with those implications :P

This is what I mean, I have no reason not to be at war at all times with at least one opponent. This is likely to be even more a problem in multiplayer where peace isn't something you can use to just manipulate the AI.



Another interesting option would be to include some sort of 'shared victory' system in which an alliance can win as a group. This may already be the case but I'm not aware of it.

ArrowLance wrote:
This is what I mean, I have no reason not to be at war at all times with at least one opponent. This is likely to be even more a problem in multiplayer where peace isn't something you can use to just manipulate the AI.



Another interesting option would be to include some sort of 'shared victory' system in which an alliance can win as a group. This may already be the case but I'm not aware of it.

Yes, that would be even easier to implement if the war itself has some kind of objective to be accomplished. One thing doesn't make much sense in 4x games is the fact that, a lot of wars you are waging (or the AI) are wars for extinction: There are no objectives to be met other than the total annihilation of the other species. Since you're winning a war, there is no real advantage in stopping it (or penalty for keep waring). A good system with "war goals" would be really awesome! Like claiming a star system, or establishing a demilitarized zone between your empire and the other, giving you war justification against him if he violates the DMZ... Really something for the devs to consider. Don't think it would be easy to make, though. And I believe it depends a lot on the game engine to work...

I don't really get the Diplomacy in Singleplayer either. In my first game I was superior in all aspects, still the AI said I had "weak military force" when I wanted to initiate peace. I had 1 fleet of 3 dreadnoughts in my chokepoint and the AI kept sending little fleets that got owned hard so I don't know why the AI kept saying they have a better military force. I think it would be better if the AI could take into action the overall lost battles during war and not just their power of all combined fleets. Sure they may had more attack power overall with all fleets together but the choke point made it very easy for me to hold them back with my 3 big dreadnoughts that had superior weapon and defense technology. Also, the AI should take into account the possible military output if all worlds focus on military, if I had sent all my worlds to pure military production I could kill them in a blink of an eye so they should have begged me to stay in peace or else I would crush them. (Which I did because he was pissing me off with his ridiculous statements of weak military power)



Regarding Mulitplayer Diplomacy: I think there should be an option for people that want more diplomacy instead of just war on and on. Making bigger benefits when you are at peace or even alliance is one solution. Another could be that you get war weariness after like 30 turns of straight war and all your FIDS output gets a -10% and so on.

Dhanun wrote:
Yes, that would be even easier to implement if the war itself has some kind of objective to be accomplished. One thing doesn't make much sense in 4x games is the fact that, a lot of wars you are waging (or the AI) are wars for extinction: There are no objectives to be met other than the total annihilation of the other species. Since you're winning a war, there is no real advantage in stopping it (or penalty for keep waring). A good system with "war goals" would be really awesome! Like claiming a star system, or establishing a demilitarized zone between your empire and the other, giving you war justification against him if he violates the DMZ... Really something for the devs to consider. Don't think it would be easy to make, though. And I believe it depends a lot on the game engine to work...

Indeed, although a lot of my drive for war in this game is to achieve resource monopolies.

Yes, definitely, if war had an objective other than just to wipe them out and a real reason vs oh your in our way, KILL! Since right now the AI seems to just determine if your in their way they go to war with you. Anyways It would be nice to understand why they were pissed at you. It would be pretty cool though, add bonuses for war and against it, would be something I haven't seen in a game. I would like to see better diplomacy as well. That aspect seems to be lacking. The DMZ could go hand in hand with cease fire, anywhere you border them a section would appear and if you cross it it would restart the war (with a popup for real players confirming that's what you want to do), I would say bonus for whichever player didn't cross and a penalty to the one that did.

DarkStarr wrote:
Yes, definitely, if war had an objective other than just to wipe them out and a real reason vs oh your in our way, KILL! Since right now the AI seems to just determine if your in their way they go to war with you. Anyways It would be nice to understand why they were pissed at you. It would be pretty cool though, add bonuses for war and against it, would be something I haven't seen in a game. I would like to see better diplomacy as well. That aspect seems to be lacking. The DMZ could go hand in hand with cease fire, anywhere you border them a section would appear and if you cross it it would restart the war (with a popup for real players confirming that's what you want to do), I would say bonus for whichever player didn't cross and a penalty to the one that did.

DMZ's are sort of interesting but since I'm mostly concerned with the implications for multiplayer I think they could be handled in communications rather than game form.

I'm sure diplomacy will look a lot different in the final product than what we have now, as right now it really doesn't work as soon as you share a border. War exhaustion would be an awesome mechanic to have and that could be something which some Empires suffer from less than others, for example the Cravers wouldn't have it. Make it affect aggressors more than defenders, losses in foreign territory make it rise much more dramatically than losses at home, defending.