Right now there's very little going for peaceful gameplay, since only one player wins in the end and there are actually no penalties for declaring war. It's viable only because of AI behaviour. I feel like relations between races should have a stronger impact on gameplay. These are very basic ideas, but that's what I think it can be like on high level:



-There should be an approval penalty for all negative diplomatic actions (like declaring a war), depending on how good relationships with the race are.

-There should be more positive diplomatic effects.

-There should be more ways to influence relationships with the race (both improving and worsening to prepare for war).

-There should be an embargo diplomatic option, without actually declaring war.

-There should be a war score (based on ships lost/destroyed and systems conquered/lost). If you reject a cease fire treaty when losing significally you get an aproval penalty.

That changes absolutly nothing to your original problem, it doesn't reward peaceful play anymore or less, all it does is slightly change AI behaviour more.

I think it does, it gives the aggressor an approval penalty if declaring a war on a friendly race, so at least he is somewhat punished for doing so. Plus, if you are winning a war, you can either make your opponent sign a cease fire treaty or ruin his economy by approval decrease if he refuses.

Ok I'm confused here. Are you talking about improving diplomacy with the AI, or are you talking about making diplomacy more viable for PvP matches? Because if it's the latter I'm not sure that forcing diplomacy on people is really a good thing. People will always accept ceasefire treaties if they're losing, thing is the person who's winning the war would rather exterminate the other player than let him live and become a potential threat, because as you said, there can only be one winner. If you then argue that you could basically declare your terms and force him to accept something very profitable for the winning party or else suffer approval penalties, well I can see how that could be very easily abused.



Also, naive trait, trading and perfect negotiations not good enough for you?

I'm talking about limiting player aggression, either vs AI or vs other players. Limiting AI aggression with some real mechanics instead of just relying on the way it plays as well. As for peace treaties, a trade empire potentially can benefit more from enforcing pease with an opponent and getting revenue from trade rather than conquering a lot of systems and getting low empire approval.



I see a possibility of attacking a trade empire in good relationships with everyone with no penalties unfair. This gives an advantage to militaristic empires. Right now expansion + science or expansion + military are always better than diplomatic playstyle, since diplomatic empire loses all benefits when attacked. I just think there should be some compensation mechanism.



I also feel like trade has been nerfed too much with all the changes, but maybe its just me. Perfect negotiations come too late and are not that uber.

errrm, how about the compensation being the fact that the trading empire is on good terms with everyone? So as soon as someone attacks them all your friends decide it would be a good idea to destroy him for you, and earning themselves a nice tidy profit in terms of systems he used to own. I find it hard to believe you can force dplomacy, a thing which is by defination people communicating with each other, into a formulaic thing for player vs player interactions. There was however a thing (forgot the name) in Civilisation where people would become unhappy if you started wars, which is what you want, but it cannot be too severe. It must be a fixed thing instead of based on ratings or 'diplomacy score', perhaps make each empire at war with at the same time cost 10 happiness or something.



Also, what sort of 'playstyle' are you exactly talking about? Against the AI a diplomatic playstyle can be achieved, I do it all the time, but against real people diplomacy is merely part of war, something made of smoke and mirrors that has no concrete value, and thus cannot be considered a winning strategy all on it's own.

MANoob wrote:
I'm talking about limiting player aggression, either vs AI or vs other players. Limiting AI aggression with some real mechanics instead of just relying on the way it plays as well. As for peace treaties, a trade empire potentially can benefit more from enforcing pease with an opponent and getting revenue from trade rather than conquering a lot of systems and getting low empire approval.



I see a possibility of attacking a trade empire in good relationships with everyone with no penalties unfair. This gives an advantage to militaristic empires. Right now expansion + science or expansion + military are always better than diplomatic playstyle, since diplomatic empire loses all benefits when attacked. I just think there should be some compensation mechanism.



I also feel like trade has been nerfed too much with all the changes, but maybe its just me. Perfect negotiations come too late and are not that uber.

on the contrary the AI can become complacent and "too friendly". in my last co-op multiplayer game vs some AI my buddy and I had to betray the AI because they would try to re-ally us every turn until war broke out. We were able to turtle for as long as we wanted gobbling up huge trade bonuses