Stargem wrote:
You might want to look at the Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron games by Paradox, they use a Cassius-belli system, agreements, and so forth to make it much more difficult for the player and AI to randomly attack each other. Maybe it could lend insight into making Endless Space stronger on the diplomatic front?

Dr_Mox wrote:
At the very least a simple Diplomacy "record card" of events/actions tallied up of the various diplomatic and in-part non-diplomatic activities the said faction has been involved in may be beneficial for information regardless of it having an impact on ai choices.

ElegantCaveman wrote:
That's part of it, yes. But basically, I'm asking for more. A lot more.

vaendryl wrote:
although I don't dislike the idea I feel there is already something similar built in in the form of extra pluspoints when you've been at peace for a while.

ElegantCaveman wrote:
[A]dd a "trusted/untrusted" meter. This would work hand-in-hand with your factional relationship to affect diplomacy as a whole, and would vary depending on various actions you take (or don't take). Every faction would start in the center of the scale, like the relationship meter, and would rise or fall depending on various things.



Relationships and trustworthiness would affect each other, but not be directly related. You could, for example, be trusted by a faction but have a negative relationship with them, or not be trusted but have a positive relationship.



Trustworthiness could be affected by a variety of factors, such as diplomatic interactions, world events, racial modifiers (Cravers, for example, would have a massive trust penalty) and possibly even infrastructure (a silly example: say you could build orphanages to make you look like more of a trustworthy nice guy).



Take having adjacent systems, for example: if you have a low trust rating, you would incur a relationship penalty with your neighbor because, well... you're untrustworthy. Conversely, with a high enough trust rating, you might get a relationship bonus instead, for being a "good neighbor".



Trust could be empire-specific (like relationship is right now), Empire-wide (more as a general gauge of how you are) or, ideally (though this would complicate things a fair bit more--but would add a fair bit of depth), both.

Galanthein wrote:
n a 4X game, information is resource number 1 [/QUOTE]



Exactly!



It doesn't necessarily have to be a meter. I'd just like it to be more than a tooltip (like "-10 trust" when you mouse-over the relationship meter).



For example, in the Approval tooltip now: "+50 from Empire, -10 from Empire". What does that even mean? It's a bit vague. Even relationship could do with more detail. All that will probably come in time, though.



Think of "relationship" and "trust" as two different axes of the same thing. Or, if you will, more like relationship as it is now would be "like/dislike" and the new meter would be "trust/distrust", and these two together would be two different axes of your overall relationship.



I agree with your idea of points for actions (or inactions), and this is basically the way relationship works now.



But the idea of having trust be a separate thing is that it would allow for things to affect both in different ways. If trust is merely a subset of relationship, then it can only go one way. Having them be separate, though... well, here are some examples:



1) Imagine three factions that have all "met" each other, all of roughly the same size. One is in the middle (Faction B), and share a border with the other two (Faction A, and you, Faction C), and the other two only share a border with the one in the middle. Faction A has a negative relationship with Faction B, because of border conflicts. Faction B has a bad relationship with everybody, because of border conflicts. You (Faction C) have a good relationship with Faction A, you have a peace treaty, and some trade routes.



You declare war on Faction B (in the middle). So now Faction A (your friend) gets a relationship boost with you because they're happy that you're declaring war on Faction B. But at the same time, you get a trust penalty with them because, hey, you started a war.



2) You have a neighbor. You share a border, both with direct system links and wormholes; you're both medium-sized empires. You're getting a relationship penalty over time because of this border tension, but you don't put any fleets to defend any of your systems which border your neighbor. So, at the same time, you're getting a trust boost for having a "de-militarized border".



Basically, having two separate things ("like/dislike" and "trust/distrust") allows for more variety in actions and reactions, instead of trust simply being a small part of relationships, in the background: it allows it to have a more direct impact on the consequences of your actions.



You could, I guess, just lump it all together... give bonuses and penalties at the same time to one "stat" (relationship), but I think that might get confusing, and would take away information from the player.



From a technical perspective, it comes out to the same thing, it's just a matter of how that information is presented.



I feel that having like/dislike and trust/distrust be separate stats would give the player a better understanding of their environment, and thus lead to better decision-making.



If you lump them together, you only end up with a bunch of confused players posting on the forum "I don't understand how relationship works!", giving up on diplomacy, and deciding that the simple answer is to just kill everything...



As for spies, it seems that it's something the devs would like to implement at some point, but after release (see here), so I'm just thinking/planning ahead.



(on that topic, I also wouldn't be surprised if advanced diplomacy would only be after release as well; I could definitely see some diplomacy, spy & goverments DLC: "Politics... in SPACE!")

Nosferatiel wrote:
If you can include AI players in multiplayer, then retaining the trust meter also in that part wouldn't be bad, in my opinion.

Snuggle together with an AI player and beat your opponent, amoeba style.

Of course, point being is that the trust meter would simply be absent from human players (as would the relationship meter, no doubt).