Yeah, if anything there needs to be more of a reason not to go to war.

hm yes I learnt quite quickly after selecting endless war



Does the penalty for breaking apply in all scenarios? like in the bit quoted, I would only suffer the -10 per deal if I'm the one who initiates breaking the deal? so that if the AI (or player) decides to randomly cancel deals I don't get penalized? I'm more than happy to honor deals I make, its just everyone else in the universe I don't trust 3

Hello, Amo



Well it's not the same diplomatic dynamic:



Endless War implies that you won't be able to use diplomacy at all, whereas Sheredyn Integrity forces the player to carefully select the deal she is going to accept. Sheredyn Integrity forces loyalty. It's certainly not the most profitable trait for a multiplayer custom faction, but it's something interesting regarding roleplay (which is something important for some of our players).





Cheers,

Meedoc wrote:
Actually, thanks to the different thread we identify a bug which make the trait unplayable:



The deal broken because of a war declaration are considered as broken by the person who proposed them. We'll provide a fix which will say: the person who declare the war is responsible of the broken deal. So, Sheredyn Integrity won't suffer anymore from war declaration.



Sorry for the inconvenience!



And only deals with an attitude penalty give an approval malus, so you can freely break a deal after 20 turns (normal speed)

I'm not sure if its changed since this post, but sheredyns -10 penalty should only apply for the length of the original deal, since you can freely break a deal after 20 turns, if you break one before 20 turns is up you should get the -10 approval for the remaining turns only.



otherwise, why not just take endless war?

this does seem linked to you getting a diplomacy hit when other races break deals with you when you dont have the trait ive found which makes no sense why you should be penalized for another race being an idiot.

Give up on it until it gets patched.

Put this in my first custom race and now at around turn 80 in a pretty fun game.. I got war declared on me and a -30 approval accross all my systems. At first I was like.. ok fine, i'll deal with it.. until I found out it does not go down over time either. Got several on going deals with other AIs and no doubt I'll take another huge hit in the future so I might as well forget about this playthrough.



Went looking for a mod or some sort that fixes or makes it less worse to no avail. Thought about mayhaps trying my hand at messing in files and change it, but this particular trait does not even seem to show up in the main FactionTrait.xml file?



Any way I could go about negating this effect somehow? Or should I just give up on it? :P

You mouse over the diplomacy menu button.



And I believe the economic victory is where you gain so much control over dust, you can effectively detonate opposing economy's by turning their dust off.

A bit tangential, but where do you see the diplomacy victory bar anyway?



But I agree. I tend to conquer everyone or achieve some other victory long before I get a diplomacy victory. It is such a chore to keep everyone happy. A process that seems rather opaque and haphazard. Why not just get rid of diplomatic victory and have only expansion, supremacy, and wonders as the victory conditions? (I think economic victory is sort of a joke as well. Nobody quits trying to conquer the galaxy just because you have more money than everyone else.) Or perhaps have some galactic alliance treaty that is unbreakable that you have to convince everyone to sign? (You can always kill the ones who don't.)

I have gotten a diplo victory as the Hissho, but that was during a dark age.



To me, the diplo victory is currently just an extended time limit victory.

Igncom1 wrote:
Yeah, if anything there needs to be more of a reason not to go to war.

How about making diplomatic victory a reaonable goal? Because as-is it's basically unattinable. I can get Wonder Victory with vanilla sowers in 160 turns. In the same settings with a DIPLOMATIC race I (amoeba) I researched every single tech and achieved wonder victory 250 turns in (because I REALLY wanted diplo victory) with only a 55% progress to diplo.



Obviously there's a tuning issue there

These was a previous post that looked into the problem of this ''Trait'' that occurs when other's break their deal with you. I have found this to be annoying myself but I find an even greater problem with the simply ''entirety of the game aspect'' of this trait. It is a hands off approach to Diplomacy and should either be worth a lot more than (-5) on the board for trait implementation, or should simply be reworked with the craver's ''Endless War'' trait as I see no point in taking this (-5) instead of the (-10). As well considering I like to play my game passive and build my science up very quickly and have recently bought the game, created a custom race played through several games to about 50 turns, and had finally felt comfortable moving beyond that to where I am at about 100 turns and am doing well enough but losing out because I have to keep my tax low and I still lose efficiency on my systems all to this trait, I feel I can't even continue this game on forward. I am at 10 tax -70 from random enemies removing themselves from my trades and so on, I build large sustainable planets and such and my technology keeps them that way but in a system where I can't raise taxes, I can't keep my people happy, can't farm dust well enough because I buy all the expensive approval increases, I am constantly on the back foot of other empires despite being leagues ahead in research. My enemies are many but I am only ''LUCKY'' because they have bigger wars to deal with... I have no fleet as all of my production goes away with approval and all of my ships can't be built because I need to build more approval infrastructure and better overall ''FIDS'' so that I can still get my 50% out of them.



There is a main concern I have with this trait and the endless war trait and that is, the loss of potential gains in trade and research/alliance agreements is simply a (-5 and -10) trait reduction decrease when customising traits. If endless war was meant to be all game long which I understand it should be, it should be greater trait point reduction [perhapsonlyonlargersystems] - something such as (-10) on trait but in game in huge galaxies it gives a special trade pillaging affect, etc. and it reduces in amount per the galaxy size. Because endless war feels lost to me, Sheredyn integrity has a lot of the same problems, it is all game long and it requires you to never really ally... there is only one situation where I could see this working as a trait... firstly a late game scenario where 3 or 4 factions are amongst themselves at war and each faction is to no great extent weaker than the others, when one faction allies with another to finish off a third this may be acceptable and while it gives -30 approval (which is gigantic) late game to break that eventual alliance it is not as important as early on this tactic is still only very marginally useful. This trait gives nothing that the endless war doesn't give (well in fact both don't really offer much) and the Sheredyn Integrity seems only to be a worse counterpart to Endless War.



Finally one thing I have to ask is why if others are allowed to cancel deals does the person with the Sheredyn trait get the -10 approval reduction does the in game AI when the Sheredyn allow just as easily trades like others. I mean forcing new member's of your alliance let us say 2 to go to war with your enemies the Sheredyn could potentially cause a PERMANENT -40 approval rating on them leaving your alliance with a massively gigantic edge. I am using this example as a potential 2 vs 3/4 alliance where the one with 4 could cause previous trades and treaties to cause massive disapproval infringements on any sheredyn.



For the most part I love this game, focuses on things that other games do not and have liked that. While there are always bugs and certain game coding pathways (trade cheats, and so on) that I feel take away from a game, and that this game includes some I feel I have steered for the most part clear of them. However, the fact remains for me that these two traits are not bugs nor coding problems but simply something that has not been analysed fully yet. I hope something is going to be done about them, but I guess for now I will need to restart another map and simply play using some of the bugs and cheats which I absolutely hate, but that seems to maybe be the only way to stay afloat when it was not perfectly expressed the ''absolute nature'' of certain traits and Empire Modifiers.

Endless War is a throwaway grab for free points when you intend to use the custom for military victories. Why would you need to trade when you can just take their systems? It isn't a roleplaying trait (unless you want to use it to roleplay) and it isn't a huge downside, it removes an aspect of play that you aren't going to be using effectively on the race anyway.



Sheredyn integrity needs to be fixed though.

Two questions:

1) If someone declares war on me, are any deals I have with them considered broken?

2a) If I declare war on someone, are any deals I have with them considered broken?

2b) Does this mean that I should declare war on someone to break deals?



Because when you declare war, I am pretty sure all deals are off the table. xD



But yeah, they should rename it "Integrity" and make it -10 Disapproval whenever the player breaks a deal.

It is permanent and as far as I can see also not capped! I had to cede to the empire because I had to keep my taxes low and hence could not spam fleets the way he did. Due to the unstable situation I got a whooping great penalty of -110 Approval. Oh dear. and I wasn't like going around selling stuff.

FirroSeranel wrote:
trade routes

Blockade Breakers.



The faction point system is already incredibly poorly balanced and adding a bigger point drain to something like Eternal War would only make that worse. If anything the -10 is far too generous.

This is actually right suggestion, I think.



And I have question, which lead me to forums - is that debuff permanent? If that, its horrible passive!

I was disappointed to see that Sheredyn Integrity also applied to when AI opponents were the ones who broke deals with me. Especially since AI opponents do this all the time. Luckily I'm good at keeping my Empire Ecstatic.



I also think that both Eternal War and Sheredyn Integrity should have a bigger negative trait point impact.

Will the fix remove invalid penalties in existing games? I had a pretty good game going with the Sheredyn until a UE faction reneged on a number of trades in order to declare war, tanking my approval.

Actually, thanks to the different thread we identify a bug which make the trait unplayable:



The deal broken because of a war declaration are considered as broken by the person who proposed them. We'll provide a fix which will say: the person who declare the war is responsible of the broken deal. So, Sheredyn Integrity won't suffer anymore from war declaration.



Sorry for the inconvenience!



And only deals with an attitude penalty give an approval malus, so you can freely break a deal after 20 turns (normal speed)

Also... I just considered that it may have been designed as it was to make it not a free -5 point trait with no effect, but... there is a reason why a player would want to break deals.



1: To get back a resource that they previously traded away. Say I have 2 Dust Water. I trade one of them to another empire, to get a monopoly on, say, Void Crystals. But then I acquire one more of each. So now, all I have to do to have two monopolies instead of one, is cancel that previous trade! But since I'm Sheredyn, I have to balance that semi-permanent monopoly buff, against the fully permanent -10 morale debuff. Not such an easy choice, and definitely worth that -5 trait points.



2: The obvious. The Empire needs to expand. An ally is in the way of that expansion, and is by far the easiest target for invasion, with the other enemies far too strong to risk invading yet. Do I break the alliance to take my small, weak ally's systems? Or do I suck it up and remain friendly to not get that morale hit?



Those seem like -5 trait point decisions to me...



But then, it might simply have been because the code was easier to do for the version that exists now. But as I said, all that has to be done, is to trigger the -10 penalty to the actual button push to end an agreement, instead of the fact that an agreement has ended.

I second this. Endless War to me is a roleplaying trait. It's a lot to give up, never to be able to use trade routes, or trade for resources, but if you build the rest of your species right (hint: don't take this as garbage 'throwaway' points. It isn't!), it isn't completely crippling.



As it exists now though, the Sheredyn Integrity is much, much worse. The AI is far, far too fickle for Sheredyn empires to get permanent approval debuffs because of another empire breaking their deals, or worse yet, an ally declaring war on another ally. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is absolutely no way to counter or even predict that. Other 4x games have diplomacy options in which you can demand that an ally sign treaties with other races, but this does not. Even with the Dysharmony upgrades, the diplomacy still seems arbitrary and capricious.



I'm of the opinion that players should not be punished for things that are completely out of their control.



Plus, it's just unrealistic. Think of Sheredyn Integrity as, say, the Yakuza. If a Yakuza breaks the terms of an honorable agreement, or fails to do their duty, they are in dishonor, and are ashamed, and possibly even punished. However, if someone else who they've been dealing with turns out to be dishonorable, the shame and punishment goes the -other- way, I.E., the Yakuza go kick their butts! If anything, their morale probably goes up because of that!



I agree, as it is, since it produces permanent debuffs, it should be worth a lot more than -5 points. Consider it like this: shouldn't the point value of a negative trait be equivalent to the point value of a positive trait? Or, actually it seems that they're worth about 5 points less than the positive counterparts.



So Optimism, which gives just a +10 morale boost, is 15 points. Pessimism, which gives just a -10 morale penalty, is -10 points. But Sheredyn Integrity, which gives a stacking negative boost that can easily hit -50 or more by mid-game, and can be simply game-breakingly crippling by end-game, is -5? That doesn't work for me.



Plus, from a role-playing aspect, it doesn't make any sense at all...



The mood of Sheredyn Integrity is just that -- Integrity. They're honorable. They don't beak agreements. If they say they're going to do something, they do it. But that's not how this plays out. The cumulative -10 penalties are so crippling, that to play this trait effectively and competitively, there is actually zero difference between it and Endless War. So instead of honorable, they're isolationist and xenophobic, because heaven forbid an alien entity lie... their people panic for freaking ever from each lie an alien told.



It either needs to be worth a -lot- more points (probably -25 for this, and -15 for Endless War), or else that -10 penalty needs to FADE WITH TIME. Maybe even a non-linear fade. Something like... a -10% per turn effect, but with a floor of -1 morale per triggering event? That'd be worth -10.



Or better yet... just make it do what it says it does. Only give the penalty if the Sheredyn player clicks the "Break deal" button. That's even better, because it leads to deliciously underhanded (and Sheredyn-feeling) tactics, like deliberately pissing off an ally in order to get them to break the alliance, so you don't have to and look clean and honorable. Much better!



But one way or the other, this trait is deeply broken, completely unbalanced to its point cost, doesn't do what it says it does from a roleplaying standpoint, and makes absolutely no sense from an immersion standpoint.