I've played 132.3 hours so far, but never seen AI allies join me any war, and if I send them demand to declear war against my enemy, they seem upset and after a while they turn out to be my another enemy. Any advice to be able to make allies helpful on war? Or this is one of the tons of problem this game has and just need to wait rework?

Whole alliance system needs a rework. Currently they can't even really help you in war, they can just make one on their own under guise of helping you, risking defeat in case you whip the other empire early and they'd not be on equal footing.

I still can't believe I'm thinking that, but I'd even have Alliances from ES2 make a return and that was a proper mess on its own. But I'd really prefer if alliances acted as cohesive organisations uniting multiple empires, rather than being an individual thing that makes everyone allied one way or another with each other.

Did you try to use the pin function in the bottom right corner?

In my experience, they sometimes react to this, just as they use it to communicate their intentions to you.

You can set a pin specifically for allies.

SudoPotato wrote:

Did you try to use the pin function in the bottom right corner?

In my experience, they sometimes react to this, just as they use it to communicate their intentions to you.

You can set a pin specifically for allies.

I've never thought of trying this pin function. It's worth experimenting; this may be one of those gazillion hidden treasures Humankind hid for players to descry and explore.

Hi folks,

Thank you for your feedbacks. I won't be able to give a clear explanation to everything you pointed out, but hopefully, I can clarify a few things.

In diplomacy, each AI maintains two scores with each of the other empires: one for how much they like them, one for how superior they feel compared to them. The combination of these scores give you an attitude (you can find it in the tooltip of the avatar in the diplomacy screen). That attitude defines with a couple of parameters, such as "Should I wage war against them?".

Now, if you're allied with an AI and at war with another empire, the situation will be taken into account by the AI (they'll like your opponent a lot less). But that doesn't necessarily mean that it will be enough for them to declare war against your enemy (maybe they like your enemy, maybe they feel way too weak...). That being said, I'm quite worried that it never happened to you after playing  that long, we'll take a look at that. If you have a save file showcasing a situation where you think the AI should help you in your war and does not, that would be really helpful.

About making a demand, this is perceived as a strong negative event by the AI (it is a sign that you're looking for a conflict). But I understand why you'd do that as the game is indeed lacking ways to "politely" request something from another empire. I'll talk to a designer about that.

Regarding the pings system, the AI should take them into account when picking a target (eg. city, district, armies) but it is not systematic (it will motivate the AI to pick this target, but it may still have a better target). I don't think it motivates it to wage war against an opponent but I need to double-check that.

I hope that helps,

Alex.

ZanAlex wrote:
Regarding the pings system, the AI should take them into account when picking a target (eg. city, district, armies) but it is not systematic (it will motivate the AI to pick this target, but it may still have a better target). I don't think it motivates it to wage war against an opponent but I need to double-check that.

Thank you, this indeed helps a lot to clarify underlying mechanics of ping system.