I got into a situation lately, which got me thinking about an additional diplomatic option.



So, I just peacefully wander around the galaxy, minding my own business and expanding my already big territory, when I come into contact with another empire - while finding out that I share my borders with them because of one of my new colonies, which gives me a relations penalty. Because my military was also rather small (even though I could build more ships, I focused my big economy elsewhere), initial neutral relations went south real soon, leaving me wondering if the situation could not be resolved in any other way than through violence.



The idea is that that new system I had was not all that useful to me and I would easily just colonize another one, leaving this one to the other empire - if I had the option. However, trading of star systems is possible only after you have a peace treaty, which was impossible for me due to my neutral/suspicious relations with the contesting empire.



If you could grant star systems (or maybe other things you don't really need) to other empires in exchange for their love of your faction (which you really want), it would bring additional layer of complexity to the diplomacy. You would have to decide, whether or how much would that particular system/resource/whatever be useful to you in the future; or whether you want that particular empire to have it and war isn't the preferable option after all.



The exchange itself would also not be that simple. While a neutral and, with some penalties, suspicious or maybe even hateful empire would have the option to accept the gift, they would first look at your "hidden strength". If they would find out that you may be peaceful and don't wish to fight, but you are able to do so if they push you, they'll accept. But if they'll see your economy and empire as weak, unable to even have anything close to an army in near future, than they'll only come to conclusion that you want to buy yourself out of a certain destruction, maybe giving them even bigger incentive to attack you.



Also, the penalty for borders should be lower or even completely negated if one of the bordering systems is a gift from one empire to another one - after all they agreed to take that system from you peacefully, fully understanding that they'll have borders there with your empire in the future.





So, what do you think?

That would be great. Diplomatic gfts are a very nice tool to have when you need to manipu...I mean, negotiate with other players. It would certainly make the earlier stages of diplomacy a bit easier.

You have a great suggestion. If you want to add it to summary list (linked on my signature panel) then place summary post on on the discussion thread (also linked below) for the Dev Team to consider.

This has been added to summary list for Dev Teams consideration. This is under Game Play > General > Diplomacy > Diplomatic Gifts

What about a system that will be colonized but never allowed to grow a border, making it a buffer system. A system set to this should have basically no diplomatic impact.