Hey everybody!

The Lucy OpenDev was the first time our players got to try the Diplomacy system of Humankind, and we received a lot of constructive feedback on it. While many of our players enjoyed the underlying systems we had created, most players felt that the interface and experience of diplomacy were difficult to understand or even confusing. So while we have made some changes to the balance and systems of diplomacy and trade, our focus since the Lucy OpenDev has been on the user interface and experience to improve clarity.

We've made the following improvements to Diplomacy since the Lucy OpenDev:

• Ribbon Notifications now include dynamic information (e.g. "The Nubians bought your Tea.")
• The Diplomacy screen can now display either incoming or outgoing trade routes with another empire
• Trade routes through neutral territories now generate a pin to mark the tile that can be ransacked
• Improved flow of Avatar dialogue by reducing pauses.
• Added text notification for AI reaction to proposals
• Cost of counterproposal is now dynamic based on related empire properties (e.g. number of resources for trade treaties)
• Fixed being able to eliminate other empires without enacting the required Civic.

• Resources may be wrongly unavailable for purchase in the Diplomacy screen
  • Workaround: Click directly on the resource extractor to purchase
• Naval trade routes do not show jetties or trade route pins to ransack
• Sometimes naval trade routes cannot be created for resources in multi-territory cities
• Clicking "Locate Event" on diplomatic notifications may show you interacting with yourself.
  • Workaround: Close the Diplomacy screen and open it through the top left icon.
• Receiving diplomatic offers from two AIs in the same turn may rarely leave you unable to proceed
• Some diplomatic badges may not trigger or apply their effects
• Making a Demand may remove other Grievances in the same territory
• Force Surrender may remain available even if the opponent regains war support
• "Refused Surrender" modifier may not be applied

I generated 3 grievances against a neighbor from them attacking me twice and claiming territory near me. I then went to war and conquered their only city. But them I'm confused/disappointed by the peace negotiation. 

- 1 grievance around territory, I'd since built an outpost and incorporated that territory into my city. Shouldn't this grievance have gone away? Or did I need to drop it somehow?

- all 3 grievances were mandatory checks on the negotiation screen. As mentioned, the first one no longer applied as that territory was now in my capitol. The other two were just 100 coin for attacking me.  I don't think you should be forced to include all your grievances in your negotiation

- My main frustration is that I had 149 power left after being forced to take the 3 grievances, and it was 150 to vassalize them. I was also unable to take the two territories (1 city) I'd conquered because it would eliminate them from the game as it was their only city. Shouldn't I be able to conquer/eliminate them?

In the end, all I could get was money for conquering their city. Money is fine (I'm Nubian), but I want the city or the vassal!

Everything looks more clear to me compared to the Lucy Opendev. Some numbers still could get better explanation (like way score), but overall I believe everything is improved. It's cool that vassals can not rebel against you, although I believe their liege is a bit restrained about how to keep them happy. 

One big problem I had in this department is in the War Resolution. I had no idea to see the names of the zones I was asking, so the only way I had to make the correct picks was the save back until I chose the correct ones. There must be an easier way to see the names of the zones or, ideally, a way to see in the map which zones you are selecting while you negotiate peace. 

elmusicote wrote:

Everything looks more clear to me compared to the Lucy Opendev. Some numbers still could get better explanation (like way score), but overall I believe everything is improved. It's cool that vassals can not rebel against you, although I believe their liege is a bit restrained about how to keep them happy. 

One big problem I had in this department is in the War Resolution. I had no idea to see the names of the zones I was asking, so the only way I had to make the correct picks was the save back until I chose the correct ones. There must be an easier way to see the names of the zones or, ideally, a way to see in the map which zones you are selecting while you negotiate peace. 

I had the same issue @elmusicote 

War resolution screen need improvement, I could not tell what I was taking without exiting and looking for the names. When you capture cities, they will likely be under enemy culture influence since culture influence between enemies is stopped, which will add a negative -1 per territory for 2 turns, meaning capturing a city can cost like 6 war support for you.

RyanAstoria83 wrote:

elmusicote wrote:

Everything looks more clear to me compared to the Lucy Opendev. Some numbers still could get better explanation (like way score), but overall I believe everything is improved. It's cool that vassals can not rebel against you, although I believe their liege is a bit restrained about how to keep them happy. 

One big problem I had in this department is in the War Resolution. I had no idea to see the names of the zones I was asking, so the only way I had to make the correct picks was the save back until I chose the correct ones. There must be an easier way to see the names of the zones or, ideally, a way to see in the map which zones you are selecting while you negotiate peace. 

I had the same issue @elmusicote 

Happened to me as well.

Regarding war, not being able to annex other empires feels quite awkward. The vassal system seems fine from what I can tell though so idk. Probably a reason behind it I'm currently missing. Province names need to also be more visible for peace deals, or you could implement an interactive map a la EU4 to just click what you want. Maybe allow non-main regions to be shifted between border cities so a city with multiple regions could lose some land without losing the whole city. Grievance system seems really good and more clear as to what's going on though, and the gradual tension increase seems good as well.

Regarding peace, it does feel a little easy to make tons of friends without much consequence. I hesitate to be too negative on that, since the main alternative is very backstabby anti-player AI that destroys immersion, but I do think it feels easier than ES2, which I thought had a reasonable balance. I was playing on standard difficulty but I also do that in ES2 so idk. That aside, the variety of peacetime options feels fairly good. I get the impression there could be more stuff in general, especially regarding large empires with much smaller neighbors in their sphere, but right now all the agreements are fairly impactful and pointless busywork treaties would be a definite downgrade so I don't think it should be forced.

Also agree on the war resolution screen: Please add a map. At least a minimap would help.

I also found myself in the situation that the AI settled their city direclty adjacent to me, so I attacked them and won. Kind of. Because I couldn't take their main city territory cause it was their city and I could not take their territories because I wasn't adjacent to them. And I couldn't even vassalize them, because the cost was too high and once I defeated them, war enthusiasm went down to zero on my side and since they didn't have any units/cities I had no option to gain more.

I know that generally you don't want to allow players to be taken out, but I feel like this could quickly become very annoying for a lot of players: You win a war and realize that there's nothing you can get for it... This might even be so annoying that they give up on this game, which'd be sad.

In my opinion, when you've got 100% of an enemy occupied you should be able to take one city, no matter what. If it's their only city, well then that's it for them. Please note that even now, players can loose at the early stage: An AI opponent was taken out by some rebels/mercenaries or whatever because he lost his only city to them. If that's possible, I should be able to take his city as well.

On the loosing side of a war, I was forced to surrender, but there was no notification about the terms (probably only gold). That's a bit weird.

Trading should be explained in the diplo screen somewhere.

Apart from that, I'd like to see the enemy strength not just displayed in a tooltip, but more prominently, maybe even without entering the diplo screen.

And in the diplo screen, please add the option to switch to the diplo screen of a different player without first closing the window. Kind of annoying.

There needs to be an easier way to buy resources because checking every nation individually for available resources every turn gets tedious very quick especially if you're playing with merchant cultures whose niche is duplicating luxury and strategic resources.

I had a strange issue where England, in the beginning of every turn would start spamming me demands.
It wasn't a "problem" just a nuisance. Especially since he had no ways of actually fight me in a war.
:/
The demands were specifically for territory, which i of course didn't agree upon.

The war demands after succesfully winning a war in battle is...weird to say the least. Maybe make it so, that the negotiations actually show the "current" names of regions instead of "geographic" names? Also...maybe make it clearer how the war support is influenced, or capped by defeats? After 4 wins in battle, each giving me 5 war support, the negotiation tab still showed 136....

It was really annoying not being able to vassalize my opponent as I had too many demands in play when we started a war.

Also, I had multiple identical demands that doubled their cost in resolution. Any duplicates should cost 0 at resolution after the first one.

It was also very hard to understand what each demand meant, as I don't know how to view territory names.

Number one pet peeve about the diplomacy - there absolutely NEEDS to be some sort of duplicate discouragement. Demands and treaties - if they get refused or countered and refused, the AI should have a huge negative malus to suggesting it again that takes at least ~10 turns to be reset to 0. I would say the vast majority of times I opened the diplomacy screen, it was for something that a.) I could tell in advance what it would be, b.) I had refused, or countered into refusal, last time and c.) I planned to do the same thing again. That's a lot of clicking for something objectively pointless!

On the plus side, the war desire system is really neat. It's a very nice and organic way to do defender advantage.

roger212 wrote:

A problem I encountered with the war resolution system is that when an AI was at war with me and another AI and the first AI surrendered to the second one, the first AI was able to transfer territoties to the AI they were surrendering to even if that territory was under my control (I assume the second AI was able to claim them because of a grievance). In other cases, after the AI I was fighting surrendered to the other AI, the territories I had occupied were automatically regained by the AI I was fighting, even if we hadn't settled the war. I think this might have to do with the code automatically restoring control over any territories that haven't been transferred in the peace treaty, but it is still weird to me because at the time I was the controler of that territory, not the AI that was surrendering, and it is schocking that the AI could regain control of that territory by surrendering to a third player and I had to conquer all the territories I had stolen from them again.

It also happened that when the AI surrendered to both me and another AI at the same turn, some of the territories I had asked for in the surrender treaty were instead given to the other AI (I assume because they asked for those territories too). In that case I had a claim over these territories becasue of a grievance, but they were controlled by the second AI.

I noticed something similar happen too, it's even more annoying when the AI nation who takes credit for everything during a war is your ally. I successfully captured every single enemy city and my ally halfway across the world who declared war on that same nation accepted the forced surrender deal and I got nothing. Even when I tried to race my ally to the punch and force surrender first by reloading the autosave, I managed to click "force surrender" my war desire was depleted and I still got nothing. I should also mention that when another nation steals the surrender terms your war desire doesn't disappear, which can get awkward when that same nation is now your ally's vassal.

Allying other nations is genuinely a detriment if you plan on going to war, you don't even get "victorious" on your cities when the war is over.

The bones of diplomacy system is very good, with a strong focus on trade and grievances. On the other hand, the game cannot handle multilateral diplomacy at this point. Everything involves more than 2 party is a mess.

For instance, I just had a game when Brown AI and Red AI were fighting each other. Brown AI brought a lot of things from me, while Red and I didn't have any trade. Several turns later Red defeated Brown and turned Brown her Vassal. As Liege, Red naturally inherited all the trade routes from Brown to me; at the same time, since Vassal's diplomacy is controlled by the Liege, and the Liege didn't have trade agreements with me, all the trade stopped. As a result Red now having tons of grievances against me, saying I broke the trade.

Allow Vassals and Lieges share different diplomacy would be a start.

I also think some more actions / treaties should be added, such as declaring war to someone, or denouncing a player (yes, I know, that's what CIV does...)

8roomsofelixir wrote:

The bones of diplomacy system is very good, with a strong focus on trade and grievances. On the other hand, the game cannot handle multilateral diplomacy at this point. Everything involves more than 2 party is a mess.

For instance, I just had a game when Brown AI and Red AI were fighting each other. Brown AI brought a lot of things from me, while Red and I didn't have any trade. Several turns later Red defeated Brown and turned Brown her Vassal. As Liege, Red naturally inherited all the trade routes from Brown to me; at the same time, since Vassal's diplomacy is controlled by the Liege, and the Liege didn't have trade agreements with me, all the trade stopped. As a result Red now having tons of grievances against me, saying I broke the trade.

Allow Vassals and Lieges share different diplomacy would be a start.

Honestly, up to the point where he blamed you for the broken deals it worked how I'd imagine it would.

You made a deal with Brown, but Red is in charge now, so no more deals. They should just end without any other effects. Maybe you could get an grievances against Red, as it feels like he screwed you here. But can't really think of a good name/description of the grievances.

Contrary to some previous posts:
- I don't think it's good that vassals can't rebel: in multiplayer it means the death of the empire, it's a pity: the vassalized player should be able to take advantage of his lord's power and eventually try to get out of it, especially in early or mid game by trying to play a colonization of unknown lands for example, or trying to undermine situation by seeking support outside the empire
- I think it's great that you can't annihilate a civ by force - it forces you to think about the negotiation and the development afterwards.
- on the contrary I think there should be a system of vassal absorption (like in Stellaris)
- If the vassal can't be erased, there should be more options overall to demand things from him - which could gradually lower his loyalty and lead him to rebel.

I love the grievance system and think it should be globally expanded and used as a currency, much like bartering, rather than just a global acceptance or rejection of claims or a table wipe.

Everything I write was experienced on Humankind difficulty.

Is it possible to eliminate an opponent at all?

Making them a vassal is just not the same. And being in war indefinitly and not having control over some of your cities is not pleasing either.

Either way, the grievances system is interesting, but if you want to go to war, you just suprise attack. You're not really punished for it.

Also in general I feel that Diplomacy is not really varied. You have 2 kinds of AI, aggressive ones and friendly ones. And the friendly ones are boring. Trade agreement-> share maps -> Non Agression pact -> Trade all -> Open Borders -> Alliance -> Alliance pacts. I had a game where I was allied with all but one of the AIs. They won't break the Alliance even if you're obviously winning and the only way for them to stop you would be bonding against you. So peace is pretty easy right now, while faring war brings you even further ahead without negative consequences. 

Treaties don't seem to have value. You're incentivised to enact all, since the AI does not react in a negative way if you trade with their enemies. So you don't have to think about your relations, just be friends with all of them and go for population/districts or better even: Money. The AI will support you either way, even a treaty is way more valuable for you than for them.

VargK wrote:
Is it possible to eliminate an opponent at all?

You need the Imperialism civic, which you get by settling the New World, I think.

I concur that it would be better to be able to see what territories you are winning in a war. Other than that, I might have liked a better understanding on how to earn badges, that seems like it has potential.

Many people have brought up great feedback and I concur. For the record, I REALLY like the approach to diplomacy in HK, especially the ware desire mechanic. A few points:

• While it's clear that a great deal of work has been put in showing more information on who did what diplomatically, some of it is still confusing. It needs some more work. I've had multiple times that an opponent made a demand and I didn't know how or what grievance I provoked. I've also had a few times where I made a demand for a territory and my opponent would reply... with a gold demand. When I payed, both demands disappeared and I just lost the gold. That was funny, but weird.
  Is it possible to link the demand from a grievance visually? Or that if you click on a demand, you can check which grievance it came from.
• As a player who mostly plays peaceful and tries to diplomatically avoid all out war, I despise the Surprise War button. I mean, you've this amazing system of war desire where you can defend yourself from a stronger opponent by not provoking them or giving in to their demands, and then they can completely avoid that with the click of a button. In return the warmonger gets a traitor badge, which doesn't matter at all if he's stronger than you are since he'll win most of the battles. Am I missing something here? Are there other disadvantages from declaring a surpise war? I do realize that starting a war with low war desire will not give you much requesting power when you bring your opponent to 0, but that really feels like a consolation prize.
• What I really would like is that you can switch between opponents in the other tabs of the diplomacy screen other than the relations tab. I played a trade heavy run and with 7 opponents I have to switch between the trade and relation tab a loooot to check what they have for sale every turn. Could the icons of the opponents just be put above the tabs? 
• Hearing Victor angrily decline a treaty he just proposed when he appears on both sides of the diplomacy screen is totally hilarious.
• I would like a way to sweeten a deal when proposing a treaty, e.g. with some gold. Right now it just feels like random kindness from the AI.
• More ways to get/avoid war desire buildup is always good. Seriously, that system rocks.

Scaesar wrote:

• As a player who mostly plays peaceful and tries to diplomatically avoid all out war, I despise the Surprise War button. I mean, you've this amazing system of war desire where you can defend yourself from a stronger opponent by not provoking them or giving in to their demands, and then they can completely avoid that with the click of a button. In return the warmonger gets a traitor badge, which doesn't matter at all if he's stronger than you are since he'll win most of the battles. Am I missing something here? Are there other disadvantages from declaring a surpise war? I do realize that starting a war with low war desire will not give you much requesting power when you bring your opponent to 0, but that really feels like a consolation prize.

I believe that the attacker's War Desire will erode more quickly during a Surprise War, so these are harder to win.

Mausklickmoerder wrote:

VargK wrote:
Is it possible to eliminate an opponent at all?

You need the Imperialism civic, which you get by settling the New World, I think.

Interesting, I did not notice that when I settled the New World (or at least what I think was the new world). But then again I did not focus on civics in that playthrough, since I basically had more than enough civics points and just ignored them, since they had no impact for me anymore.

1.When trading luxuries, it's quite difficult to distinguish the luxuries I already have from those I don't have and the exact amount I have. Every time I have to look for the icons one by one, which is very annoying. It would be great for some hints on the trading interface.

2.I can't see clearly which luxury effects can be stacked or not. Maybe you can add some colors to distinguish them?

3.I want to trade outposts with AI, just like the lumeries in ES2, so I dont have to declear war for every land I want.

I've played several games now and I really liked the interface and the ideas behind the diplomacy system but I think some work needs to be done to make it really great. The demands screen was fairly easy to understand and use but I think there needs to be slightly more wiggle room in negotiation. The trade screen also worked well for me though the functionality of trade is not intuitive for me. Overall I thought diplomatic options were good but slightly oversimplified and if just a little complexity was added back in it would be perfect.

Positive:

-Demands and war score are great systems. I like that anyone can essentially call your bluff if they don't think you can win a war. I also like that there is room to defuse demands and deescalate conflict. The only thing that I feel is missing from here is the ability to negotiate. It seems to me like I should be able to upgrade my demands if I have enough of them. For example, I had a situation where the AI stupidly attacked me 1 unit at a time something like 8 times. This generated 8 separate claims for 100 gold that when I cashed in after the war took 10 war score each for a measly 800 gold that I would have gotten in compensation anyway. I feel like I should have been able to consolidate those claims or spend those claims to force something greater like free trade rights for a number of turns demand. Similarly territory demands could stack into a vassalization demand. Or maybe grievances could operate on a point system with better demands being unlocked at higher war support. I feel like this would also take away some of the complaints about being forced to use war score on demands because the demands would be more useful.

-Trade is a great system that I had some trouble understanding. There are two kinds of luxury resources: single bonus resources and per unit resources. I would like the interface to make clear which kind of luxury I am trading for and whether or not I already have the luxury in my empire and how many. Also because there are so many different resources I would appreciate it if the trade route benefits of each luxury were displayed instead of having to mouse over each one for the tool-tip. Also there are buildings and districts that get extra benefits from trade but unlike endless legends there doesn't seem to be a button that will display trade information in the city screen. Trade gives you income but I can't seem to find in the diplomacy screen how much trade income I'm getting from that particular AI, in fact I can't find that information at all.

Negative:

-I seem to have received a negative tag marking me as cruel to the AI and effecting my relations but I don't know how I got that tag or how to get rid of it or any indication that it exists other than the relationship penalty I have with other empires.

-Honestly war score in general makes little sense. Why can I vassalize someone without holding a single one of their cities? I had 2 empires break their armies on the walls of my capital and then surrender and become my vassals for the rest of the game. I think that just like how you can't take a city in a peace deal without controlling it you should not be able to force vassalization without holding their capital. I would also like to see some extra peace options like forcing your cultural civics on them or being able to claim free trade routes.

-Vassals need to be improved. Since you cannot simply wipe out the AI, in the early game at least, the vassal system is a key mechanic and needs to be further fleshed out. I would love for vassal to have something like an independence score that is effected by your relative power and treatment of them. For example, a vassal has to give all trade goods to its overlord but what if granting them trading rights could be used to placate them. Similarly granting or removing territory from vassals could be used to control them. As it stands it seems kind of silly that an empire who has probably quadruple my current military power, and lost a war because I sneakily took his main camp while his army was busy slaughtering all of my citizens in a siege battle, should be working under me for the entire game.

While I have quite a few complaints I really do like the direction and the feel of diplomacy so far. The negotiation screen is well put together and I like all of the deals that exist in the game I just wish there was a little bit more. You guys are doing a great job on this so far so thank you for giving us the opportunity to give feedback.

One thing that I don't quite understand is how religion works when an empire is under vasallage. In one of my runs Purple, Green, Yellow and Brown were my vassals. Purple, Green and Yellow all followed my religion but Brown changed to Pink's religion after Pink triggered that civic grievance that forces, if accepted, an empire to follow the religion of the empire that aired the grievance. How is that possible? I think in theory pink shouldn't be able to air grievances against a vassal. And if they aired the grievance prior to me making Brown my vassal, why wasn't Brown following my religion, then? I don't know if maybe there is some mechanic that is not working as intended, but if everything is supposed to work that way, I would appreciate a more in-depth explanation because it was very confusing to me and I didn't get how it worked and what I could do to make Brown follow my religion.

A little suggestion on that vassalage issue (as in people finding it wrong that you can easily vassalize anyone): Have vassalization war desire costs scale with the number of unnocupied cities/territories the losing player has. This way, unless you're fighting a very small empire or you manage to occupy most of its land, the vassalization cost will be way over 200 and thus be impossible.

Due to limited time, I didn't get to interact with the diplomacy system that much, but I have made a few notes.

+ Overall, I like the approach. There are a series of useful agreements to be made to offer a peace dividend. I particularly like how actions translate the grievances and demands that can provide transparent reasons for war. I could follow the system's logic fairly well, but then I followed the game's development closely. I didn't get to a war resolution screen this time around, but I found it good enough previously. Can always be better of course.

- I was surprised that I started my ideological tolerance at 50% with other cultures in the beginning of the game. Assuming that everyone starts with all axes in the middle, that should essentially be 100%. It also didn't seem to vary very much. The most I saw was around 58% and I got to fairly pronounced values on at least two axes. To me, 100% should be complete overlap and 0% should be complete opposites i.e. at the exact other end of each of the scales. If all your values are at the middle, the worst you could get would be 50%. I'd then define the sensible thresholds for how this impacts game play.

- Speaking of which, I ideological proximity didn't seem to matter very much. Maybe that's related to the fact that it was consistently quite centrist, but it would seem a huge wasted opportunity for system animosity-driven diplomacy. Conflicting ideologies might even offer a grievance (if it's not already an option).

- Also related, but more the UI thread: I'd really like to see a window of ideology differences for other cultures, similar to what we see with Independent Peoples.

- I was confused that I had a negative war modifier due to "unjust war" despite declaring war at 100 war score and an active demand. If that's working as intended, what is needed for a "just" war without ongoing deductions?

- In that context, maybe a bonus to the attacked part of a surprise war, along with the malus or the attacker, could be interesting to put the onus on the aggressor to keep up the pressure.

- I wonder whether demands should give a one-time bonus to peace-time war score and lock that level in place. It seems odd that with one scout attacked, I'd eventually get an excuse for a full formal war. That way, different demands could offer different justifications for war. Attacking scouts in neutral territory with no loss is less than claiming adjacent land or destroying a few units.

- Again, a bit more of a UI point, but I really want to overview how different AIs see each other. It's so important for diplomatic play where you might have potential allies or enemies if you chose to attack someone. Or where a threatening alliance might arise in the forseeable future. Ideally, a view in one place.

Diplomacy always seems to be a hard mechanic in these types of games, but so far it seems to have a lot of promise.  I like the grievances and war support concepts, but it seemed too easy to exploit war support to force a nation to become your vassal.  In general, it seemed like if you had enough forces to conquer all of a group's cities, you could vassalize them (by quickly and regularly winning battle after battle).  Logically, this can make sense, but vassals can make a huge difference in terms of in-game strength.  I don't know if this just needs a rebalance (maybe where you must be able to afford all cities to vassalize), a special type of war (where vassalization is demanded outright), or some in-game npc interactions (immediate grievances when other empires take vassals/efforts to "free" vassals with rewards).  Maybe even if the vassals had a realistic path to independence through major bonuses while as a vassal.  I love that you can't seem to outright destroy an empire (which keeps the owner in the game), but I feel this should be reflected with an opportunity for the vassal to grow (keeping them invested for the long-game).

Separate from vassals, I don't feel like I ever understood trade routes.  They didn't seem to explain themselves to me, nor were they obvious to find.  As a result, I'm left wondering if I may have missed out on a lot of opportunities.  Despite this, war and domination seem far preferable to any degree of diplomacy so far.  This may not be unreasonable for the first few eras, but I'm hoping that as new eras are added these may become harder or have more penalties associated.  Something to provide a transition from constant war to cold war to pseudo peace.

Also, I really like the various tags that an empire can gain as an attitude, such as "solemn" or "jealous".  Right now, they feel more like flavor than anything of major note.  I'm hoping as AI is expanded, these attitudes become much clearer in their actions towards you (maybe going so far as to actively raid/terrorize your troops outside of war).  The badges seem interesting, but outside of "traitor" I don't think I knew how to trigger any of them.

In general I like the Diplomacy system, and I find it quite interesting! My main issues with it are UI clarity, the vassal system, and how elimination works. 

For UI, When signing war resolutions it needs to be more clear where the territories are. I'd like for the names to be shown on the map when viewing the war resolution screen, and maybe have the magnifying glass button to go to where it is on the map. For the trade screen when buying resources, I'd like for only the resources that can currently be bought to be auto filtered to the top of the screen, rather than having to go through every folder to check if they are affordable or if a trade route can be formed. Lastly while I'm happy that we can now see who is buying our resources and the trade routes and where the trading post are, I'd still like for a global trade view screen that shows all the trade routes across all empires.

In regards to vassals; First of all I like the vassal system for a few reasons. It allows you to have soft control over a region without having to use an administrator and potentially take a stability hit. I also like the amount of money paid in tribute, making vassalization worth it. I'd be nice for vassals to also have to give their luxury resources to their liege. While the British were not playable in this OpenDev, I was still able to view their abilities, and I'm definitely excited to do a British empire run with tons of vassals to synergize with their liege bonus. My main issue with vassalization is that it is too easy to do so in war resolutions. I find it particularly hilarious that I can easily vassalize an enemy player after winning a defensive war. perhaps the cost for vassalization should be higher? Maybe only allow vassalization when the player is the aggressor in the war? Lastly I have an issue with when vassals claim land that I was planning to take. I'd like an option to demand vassals give over land just like a diplomatic grievance, rather than having to go to war with my vassals again. One thing about vassals that I am unsure about is the fact that vassals seemingly can't betray their liege, or at least I haven't had a game where a vasal tried to betray me. On one hand I think i'd enjoy this for peaceful or defensive runs, because I won't have to constantly re fight wars or be paranoid that my neighbor will try to attack me again once they are a vassal. But on the other hand vassals being able to backstab their liege does create interesting scenarios, and not having that be a possibility is lost potential.

Finally in regards to how elimination works; From what I understand, it was stated during a stream that in order to eliminate an opponent it requires a civic that is located pretty late in the civics tree. In my time playing this OpenDev I never unlocked that civic, so I assume it is probably a very late game civic. Therefore elimination is not possible early game. The idea and game design of not being able to eliminate opponents at least early game is certainly intriguing to me and I'm open to this idea. However I have a few issues with it. There were situations where early game the enemy took a territory I wanted, but I was unable to take it because it would result in elimination. This was annoying to deal with, and I can see it being especially detrimental for early game rush down cultures like the Myceneans and Hittites. What I propose as a fix for this issue is to allow for the opponent to give over their last city, and instead of getting eliminated put them in exile. Give the loser an army of scouts or levies equal to the population and have them be moved elsewhere, similar to how in the neolithic era if you lose all your armies and your respawn point is occupied, you simply respawn elsewhere.

Keep up the great work! Overall this OpenDev was still a massive improvement!

Re: Vassals - I became vassalized by a country I declared war with (in order to cross their territory). After about 10 turns and two failed skirmishes with my scouts I was locked into servitude. Surprising, as my empire was twice as big as theirs. I love the idea of Grievances and War support - should make for depth in gameplay - but could be tweaked to recognize when an empire is clearly outmatch vs. one with low War Support as its only weakness.

The only thing that bothers me in diplomacy is - vassal management. 

1) When you take over a culture you should have ultimate power over it, but in reality you get less power than if you'd allied them. 

a) Your vassal can settle whenever he wants without generating grievances against you 

b) You can't demand territories from them based on religious or influential expansion. 

c) You can't forbid them from setting outposts on resources that you need. 

2) Vassal is a risk free strategy.

a) In the Europa Universalis 4 the stronger your vassal the more they want to break free, and if you have multiple vassals they realize that they can unite against you. In Victor Open dev your vassals are always ok with your rule even if they have more power.

b) No one seems to care that you've just vassalized someone even if they have moral or strategic reasons to deny you that.

3) There is barely any interaction between suzerain and a subject

a) You should be able to regulate: their ability to trade with others, their money tax, their military obligations, their settling privilege(freely/by asking permission/forbidden), 

b) You should be able to help them grow by increasing their technology output or investment in cities/shared projects/resources.

c) The more you help them the more they should be docile. The more you demand from them the more they should want freedom.

P.S. While I was writing this I realized that current relationship meter is too ambiguous. In my opinion it should also show number value. Also when you propose a treaty you should get at least approximate acceptance chance and what influences it.

Hello there, some feedback on the diplomacy:
I encountered the bug where multiple diplomatic offer receiving caused me become unable to proceed - this was of little consequence as I was 1 turn from endgame.
Very early on I became vassalised by a civ; later on this civ became vassalised by another civ. I feel that at this point there should be some sort of action to grant me my independence other than declaring civil war; if my liege-lord becomes vassalised this is not always just a given that their vassals become the new lords vassals, if anything I should remain civ1's vassal rather than civ2's direct vassal.

zayebeast wrote:

The only thing that bothers me in diplomacy is - vassal management. 

1) When you take over a culture you should have ultimate power over it, but in reality you get less power than if you'd allied them. 

a) Your vassal can settle whenever he wants without generating grievances against you 

b) You can't demand territories from them based on religious or influential expansion. 

c) You can't forbid them from setting outposts on resources that you need. 

2) Vassal is a risk free strategy.

a) In the Europa Universalis 4 the stronger your vassal the more they want to break free, and if you have multiple vassals they realize that they can unite against you. In Victor Open dev your vassals are always ok with your rule even if they have more power.

b) No one seems to care that you've just vassalized someone even if they have moral or strategic reasons to deny you that.

3) There is barely any interaction between suzerain and a subject

a) You should be able to regulate: their ability to trade with others, their money tax, their military obligations, their settling privilege(freely/by asking permission/forbidden), 

b) You should be able to help them grow by increasing their technology output or investment in cities/shared projects/resources.

c) The more you help them the more they should be docile. The more you demand from them the more they should want freedom.

P.S. While I was writing this I realized that current relationship meter is too ambiguous. In my opinion it should also show number value. Also when you propose a treaty you should get at least approximate acceptance chance and what influences it.

Don't forget that anything the vassal does it attributed to you, so if they start fighting people you can't tell them to stop and you might soon end up in a war.

Actually it's worse than that, because the vassal you took over is most likely weaker than the average AI (due to you conquering them) These skirmishes will most likely result in them losing, and YOU'LL lose war desire. It is pretty obvious that this isn't a good thing right now.

Diplomacy is already well developed and has the potential to become a really great system. In that spirit, here are my observations :

• minor UI issue : please let us switch the empire we are contacting from every tab of diplomacy
• when making demands it should be possible to select options to graduate the strength of the demand
• it should be possible (both player and AI) to counter once a demand with an offer, which in turn can be accepted or rejected (reinstating the original terms of the demand)
• there should be more diverse terms in demands and war reparations (e.g. exclusive trade, access to a resource, release a vassal, drop influence, accept religion, etc.)
• more asymmetrical relationships should be possible beside vassal : exclusive commercial partner, one-way only trade, tributary, etc.

However, those and more could be the subject of an expansion that makes Diplomacy a way to win the game with diplomatic goals, techs and buildings, furthering the use of Influence as a weapon, etc.

For my actual feedback on diplomacy in general, it's probably important to note that I am a warmonger in games like this. I've never played Civ, but have a lot of Total War under my belt, so when I come to a game like this, I'm looking to start some fights. Even in my "peaceful" playthrough, because I was giving being a Merchant a shot, I still went to war twice, and actually wound up in some good engagements with Independent People on the "unclaimed" continent during the latter part of the game.

Here's my feedback though:

WARFARE & GRIEVANCES

1. Going to war in Victor was much more enjoyable in Lucy. As I mentioned in my previous post, my first playthrough had the most dynamic engagements, but even in my other playthroughs the AI was far better at maintaining enough of a population to field sizable and I had a number of large battles that were a lot of fun. That said, the AI was still pretty bad at keeping up in tech and was bad at using their armies effectively so I rarely ever felt like a stood a serious chance of using a battle. For instance, at one point I was fighting Green, and he kept sending Hunnic Hordes at me 2 by 2, when he had about a dozen Hunnic Hordes sitting in transports off the coast that would have absolutely wrecked me if he brought them ashore and attacked with them all at once (which is also a bit of commentary on the Hunnic/Mongol Hordes being a bit OP, but that is feedback for another thread).
2. War Support didn't feel like it was all there one moment and disappeared all together as quickly as in Lucy, but it was still really easy to beat back. I think the malus for retreating and losing a battle should be somewhat proportional to the number of units involved in that engagement. For example, if I bring a full stack and attack a single Scout that's in my way, we each gain or lose 1 or possibly 0 War Support, because a single Scout fleeing a superior force is kind of their job. However, when the folks back home hear that their glorious army of Warriors, Archers, and Chariots has fled the field or lost the battle, that should have more serious ramifications. The way it is now, I'd often go to war with another Empire and they'd lose all their War Support before we even had a real battle.
3. Unfortunately, even supposedly aggressive Empires rarely had the gumption to attack me, which may have to do with the fact that I was almost always stronger than everyone, and they made the correct decision to not enter a war they couldn't possibly win. Which, fair, but the AI definitely needs to be able to pose a greater threat to the player.
4. I am glad that Crisis Defusal was replaced by just being able to refuse and withdraw demands. That has made the grievance system a lot clearer.
5. Naming territories so that we can identify which ones we are asking for when making demands for grievances or during War Resolution is a great idea, but needs to be improved on. On problem was that when a city center occupies a territory there is no way to see that territory's name. I think the best solution would be to just have the city name replace the territory name on the War Resolution screen. Additionally though, it needs to be far easier to identify a territory from the diplomacy screen when making demands on it. It would also be nice if attached territories were indented beneath their respective cities.
6. I ran into a problem once where I wanted a single territory from an AI, so I went to war with them and captured their city so that I could stake a claim on that territory during War Resolution, and it kept saying that I couldn't take it because it would remove them from the game, despite the fact they had two other territories, and the territory I wanted wasn't even their city center!

1. I am grouping vassals and allies together, despite the power relations being very different, because my problems with them are fundamentally the same. Once you achieve either it feels like your interactions with that empire basically come to an end, especially with vassals. We need far more diplomatic options with either, I like many of @zayebeast's suggestions, but we also need to be able to make demands and requests of our Allies and Vassals beyond the simple treaty option. For instance, an Empire should be able to exert more pressure on an Ally to join them in a war, or ask for a loan, which has to be paid back after a certain number of turns. For Vassals, you could demand an increase in tribute or have them send a full stack of troops to one of your territories, which then acts like a mercenary purchased from an IP. Naturally, making too many demands will strain your relationship with either, ending in a severed alliance or a rebellious vassal for using them harshly, but a generous Ally or magnanimous Liege is likely to command greater loyalty and they can freely make requests and demands of you the same as you can them.
2. I really want Vassals and Allies to be able to join me in battle and vice versa, that way we can provide and receive meaningful support from them. It becomes especially frustrating when the AI attacks one of my vassals that is hanging out around my stack of Knights and they run away, leading to a loss in War Support. As their Liege, protecting my vassals is really the least I should be able to do.
3. Vassalizing an AI is too easy right now, as others have observed, the AI can lose all their war support without you ever setting foot in their territory and then be force to become your vassal. It doesn't make a lot of sense. Having to fulfill some other requirement, such as only being able to vassalize an enemy if you occupy their capital city would make much more sense than the way it currently stands.
4. Vassals supply seemingly too much gold. Even when their empire is less than half the size of my own, I'm usually getting more gold from them than my own cities. It makes me wonder where all that money is coming from or if they even have any left to themselves?

1. Something I think would be really cool, and that kinda falls under diplomacy, but neither of my subjects above, would the ability to hire out your armies to another empire on a mercenary contract. Maybe it's a special ability of the Militarist affinity even? You would still control that army, but they can enter their employer's territories and can fight their employer's enemies without a war declaration. All of their victories would grant their employer War Support (though perhaps at a reduced rate) and any territory the capture is claimed in the name of their employer's Empire. Their contract ends either after a set number of turns or when their employer is no longer at war with anyone, and then you receive gold based on how well they did! This would just be another idea that allows for more dynamic diplomatic interactions with other Empires though.

I would say that war-style diplomacy is generally pretty exciting (although certainly in need of some key fixes). That said, I've noticed that trying to go a full peaceful diplomatic route is nearly impossible in the Victor Opendev. While this may have been done on purpose to try and encourage use of naval military units, it was rather frustrating and I really hope the full game makes peaceful diplomacy more of an option (especially for expansionist and merchant civs).

Throughout quite a few playthroughs, I never once managed more than 2 allies in a single game despite trying a range of tactics from ignoring AIs to agreeing to all of their demands. This meant that any ally bonuses were simply not worth it compared to isolationist style ones. Additionally, it meant there was no real benefit to having allies (since they would never agree to free trade unless they were merchants and you had almost no trade income) and instead they were more of a detriment due to the additional grievances caused due to shared vision. It seems insane to me that the ultimate peaceful diplomacy run in the Victor Opendev was just getting open trade and non-agression pacts where possible, while avoiding any other diplomacy like the plague.

If we aren't allowed to exterminate AIs and aren't allowed to become their allies either, it really heavily limits the amount of diplomatic and cultural opportunities that are both available and viable.

noblubber wrote:

That said, I've noticed that trying to go a full peaceful diplomatic route is nearly impossible in the Victor Opendev. 

This wasn't my experience at all.  I played a number of full pacifist games in the Victor OpenDev, including one where I never built a single military unit the entire game and still maintained friendly relations with all other empires.  In discussions with others, I know that I wasn't the only one.  Some people have postulated that the AI was too passive in Victor.  So I would say there may be variations depending on who your neighbours are and how each particular game unfolds.

Many of the key issues I experienced with the diplomacy system of the Victor Open-dev have been discussed above, but the below is a quick summary of the items I noted, in the order I would rank them.  #1 being the most significant issue:

1) UI & knowledge level of other civilizations. There is just a lot of things to fix in this category that tie directly into the diplomacy system.
2) Ally Communication/Knowledge needs more advancement and development. (Applies to Vassals as well. Call that 1b.)
3) War Resolution / Grievance system - great concept, but really needs some better implementation. (This is partially UI issues.) But could benefit from some higher level of the 'degree' of control on the
4) War Support. Seems like a nice mechanic - but...
5) Influance mechanic. What does this really do?
6) Independent peoples. There needs to be some work performed on dealing with them. At least to some degree.
7) Trade. I really do like how this is set up, but it needs a tweak or two.
8) Transcendence or change of a culture for the different eras. While only loosely related to the diplomicy system, I think it does belong on this list also.

1) UI & Knowledge Issues:
Multiple comments have already explained some of these issues above, so I will only briefly touch on them -
A) Demand/Renounce Grievance, unable to renounce during war? Bug?
I am not 100% certain if this is a bug, or an issue: but during a war, I was unable to figure out how to renounce a grievance that I had already demanded. It seems like the UI had a space where the option to do this was supposed to actually be situated, but was not present for me to use. In any case - I could not get rid of a grievance I had already demanded. I should be able to do this.
As a side-note on this: I don't think the grievances, should only be limited to these two options. I believe I should be able to 'save-for-later' also. Given the current make-up of the war system to be based on population support and the manner grievances play into that system - being able to put one aside for now (but not 'forgive' the AI/player for it just yet, seems a very good option in my mind. Perhaps this is just as simple as putting a 50-70 turn 'hold' on it.

B) Labels for leaders (traitorous, extrovert, etc.) and how they play into how they feel about you/me.
The current methodology of learning about another civ is only ok. The pop-up/fly-out info available for what some of these terms mean is actually nice - but it is very time consuming to have to hover over all these disparate items on the screen and is not completely helpful.
It would be far better to be able to select the leader or to otherwise have all of that information collected in a single screen for presentation. Placing the information in that manner would be much simpler to gain a good understand of how all these different 'attitude' settings are working together and in how they will be expected to deal with my civilization. Show me how they, these different titles and attributes are 'adding' up, just like the stability function of a city.

C) Being able to view the map properly during war resolution.
This has been touched on multiple times above. I'll leave it at that. (But I will say: it is a big pain in the you know what.)

D) Map Labels for the territories/provinces.
The information about what are the names and labels for the territories on the map is not well presented. It is extremely difficult to determine which outpost or territory is which. Luckily there is a simple fix: first, give me a setting on the dashed division lines for the territory - some of the colors are extremely hard to see and when you connect it to a city, they are being dimmed down too much. Second, when I zoom all the way out to see the country around my point of focus on the map, just put the name of the territory on the map for each of them. Also, instead of labeling the outposts with the civilization name, let the color of the outpost be the civilization and put the name of the territory on the outpost label. Simple.

E) Overuse of the word "district".
Currently, many of the pop-up info screens are confusing the word 'district'. Some clearly mean to say, "territory" or "province".
Some clearly mean 'district' in regards to a city feature. Some are not clear at all.
Please, take some time & clean these up. Use 'district' for a city feature, use something else for a 'territory' feature. This actually will help make the diplomacy communications more understandable.

F) Map rotation / Snap-back & Zoom.
This is not really a diplomacy issue, but is certainly a UI issue I had - so I'll leave it here as a side-note.
Please, just let me rotate the map freely. I don't want it to automatically snap-back. Just give me a 'reset-north' button and call it done.

2) Ally & Vassal Communication
Both Ally & Vassal's need more information presented than what is currently on the diplomacy screen. Multiple suggestions and comments are presented previously - so I will only offer a few notes here:
I should be able to have more direct understanding of an Ally or Vassal intended actions of war and we should have an agreement to do so together, or they should not be able to hold a major grievance against me. The same goes for war resolution, if we are in a war together. There needs to be some sort of 'war progression' or 'war prosecution' screen that improves coordination with Allies. Vassals should be more of a direct "allowance" by me. And if I want to jump into their war and take over their city production and prosecution of the war with their units - I should be able to do so.

3) War Resolution / Grievance system
This is a really good concept, I do like it. But it needs some help. Grievances should be a bit more nuanced. I should be able to hold on to some of them instead of just forgiving it (renounced). Also, I should be able to have a drop-down list of grievances to call at will. There are things I would like to call a minor grievance about other civs that never came up automatically. I should be able to open a dialog with that civ and just say, hey-I-don't-like-that. But it does not mean war. And should only be a minor inconvenience to our relationship.
War resolution - needs some help too. There needs to be additional nuance in its implementation. I'll touch on this more in the war-support item below.
An Ally (nor any other war participant) should not be able to claim or renounce a territory that I hold and control. Mine. Get your greedy resolution treaty out of my war.
If I fully control another territory during the war and have troops/units there to enforce that control - it should be my option to keep that territory regardless of any war support equation model. Additionally, I should be able to force a city in that territory I control to comply with my wishes/demands. I should have full operational control of it - moreover, if that territory is mostly under my civilizations influence, say >80% influence by my civ - they should be supporting my troops unless I ransacked some of that territories features or otherwise did something to degrade my influence in that territory. In short, the territory allegiance and control should be more independent from the overall war-support of, or between the major civilizations.
Further, the current dependence on War-support for and end of hostilities is not well implemented. The combatants should be able to issue/negotiate an white-peace at any time really. It should be more adequately based on military strength - if they are unable to prosecute an attack they should accept a 10 turn end of hostilities and we keep what we hold. Then the grievance system can be used to build up a means of creating another war later if we cannot negotiate a better peace between us during that time.
Peace negotiation is really sort of under-valued by some AI's. Even with a war-support of 20-40, those "hate-filled" leaders should be able to see a benefit by just stopping the current war - the current tactics they are using is a losing one.
Lastly, the gold equivalency costs for grievances in the war resolution system is really not adequate. Territory adjacent to mine is worth far more than what is currently offered, and it should be something that I can use as a negotiating item in the resolution, not a here-is-what-I-calculated value.

4) War support
The war support mechanic should not really play into the war resolution at all. At least not in as direct manner as it is currently. War-support by the populace IMO should only be a measure of output capability of the cities/outposts and territories. when war support is high - output of military units and offensive capability is high and vise-versa. When their support is low, and I cannot maintain the production of additional army units - That should be how I know the end-is-nigh. But it should not play into how I negotiate the end of the war. Let the influence and grievance mechanics play that game.

5) The influence mechanic is probably the one item that I was the most aware of, but understood the very least. Of the 4 games I started, I always understood what it was for every city and territory. It took quite a bit of fuddling around to understand how to manage it effectively - but I never understood how it really plays into the mechanics of the game. Not really, in any case. Low = bad. Got it. But that is about it. Hopefully the encyclopedia, when implemented - will help with this.
I thought that it would help independent people and other territories join my civ - nope. Not that.

6) Independent people's: you would think that I could at least pay them off to leave my trade routes alone. I mean really, at the very least, you think they would like some gold, right?
I don't know, I like the concept - I wish I could do a little bit more interaction with them, not full blown they are another civ interaction - but more simplistic. Trade-focused, don't attack me and I'll leave you alone. Hey, I influence every aspect of your life and we follow the same religion - would you like to join us?
Sort of stuff.

7) Trade.
Really do like how this is established. Only thing I would change is the information I get when a trade-route is destroyed or impacted by violence.
I mean really, no survivors at all to tell a story? None?
The outpost monitoring the trade route in that territory where it happened, knows nothing? Can't send word?
They need to be fired.
I should be able to get more information on the who/what/where/how. Where do I send troops? How do I keep it from happening again? Can't I negotiate with somebody about it?

8) Transcendence or change of a culture for the different eras.
I'll leave this as a note here for now - and see if I can find a better forum to put it in later.
I don't get the logic of not letting units upgrade when you transcend a culture. Really, I did not learn anything new at all? This does seem to impact diplomacy - military strength does seem to play into the mechanic somehow. Anyway... I'll dig into this deeper somewhere else.

That is my 2 cents, at least.

Overall, I liked some things about the current diplomacy system, but I think you do not really have to make choices, because most of it is just beneficial if you do not want to go to war.

There are no negatives to have open border with everyone (except having AI armies in your own borders, but I never foud it impactful, actually not sure if AI armies went through my territory at all), so why do not take it? It will improve your relations with the AI at no cost. One way to fix this would be to add a lot of different demands to have different treaties with someone you hate. The exact demand would be to break the treaty or something. However, if "someone I hate" makes sense for the AI, it seems difficult to let the player pick the ones they hate without risking some exploits. Some workarounds: make this deman available if the AI the first AI made a treaty with hate the player: it has some chances to be mutual. Another way would be to make this available if the player and the AI are at war, but this is too restrictive and would not really be an incitation to not be friend with everyone. Maybe add the possibility to declare that someone is your rival /ennemy, making this kind of demands available but deteriorating your relations with the empire you declared as ennemy?

None of this seems perfect actually, but I really think you need to add something so that it is less easy to be friend with everyone and to make you choose the guys you make treaties with wisely.

The trade feels good: I like the fact the trading is something you want to do most of the time, just like in real life. However, maybe trade is too powerful, mainly because the ressources themselves are veery powerful. 5 stability per ressource for all cities rapidly leads you to completely ignore stability, without even taking into account the other effects of ressources. The worse about this is that you only need one trade license for the entire game, and they are very cheap once you really start making money. I think nerfing ressources a bit (maybe 5 stability per ressource for one city, which goes to the one with lowest stability?) woul be a good thing. Maybe also add a time limit to the trade deals, so that you have to pay more to keep the ressource?

The interface is clear but there are a lot of things that are not given to the player that should be given. For example: "you do not have enough gold", "you do not have enough war score". How many? I can't plan if I don't know that, and in real life you must know the price before knowing you don't have enough. Also, some notifications woul gain from being clearer: "foreign war" between who? "Violence stopped trade" what violence? "They feel differently" How do they feel now? "You can make a demand" To which empire, for what? (Those last two at least can be checked by going to the diplomacy screen, but I feel these are pointless clicks)  

Last but not least: the war support system: I love the concept, but now some things feel strange or too easily exploitable, both before and after declaring war:

Before declaring war: the system is supposed to represent tensions increasing gradually up to a boiling point where you go to war. However, with only one scout skirmish, you can max your war score, you just have to wait a little. This seems very silly, and the whole idea of your war support increasing forever when you have more demands than your opponent have too. Maybe remove this augmentation and make demands only have a one time effect. To avoid the war support to go back to 50 each time, you could make the decay of war support stop if either side have an unresolved demand. This would make things gradually heat up and avoid the cases where I can declare whenever I want to another AI just because they dared attacking me once in the ancient era.

Also a nice touch would be to add a soft maximum to war support: if it goes above a certain threshold, your citizens hate the empire so much that they need blood to avenge their pride, and you lose stability for not declaring war on the other empire.

About the demand "You attacked me", does the gold varies with the scale of the fight and the number of troops killed? If not, it could be a good idea to make it so.

Finally, sometimes if you refuse a demand of the AI (nice feature by the way), it can make the exact same demand the following turn, gaining 20 war support a turn (it was something about influence or religion, I don't remember). A 10 turns cooldown is needed.

About the in-war effects or war support, I have two main complaints:

First, the war support you lose from retreating or losing a battle does not scale with the size of the battle nor the casualties you suffered. This seems unnatural: A single scout retreating should not bother your citizens as much as an entire army, and losing a battle because of timeout is not the same as losing your entire army. Maybe something like a flat loss (like 2 for retreats, 3 for defeat) plus a factor that is a fonction of the military power of your army at the beginning of the battle divided by the total military power you have in all your armies, and maybe add another factor that takes into account the military strength you lost as well as the military strength the ennemy lost (so that if you lose but you make a beautiful final stand where your ennemy loses a lot more than you do, the deeds of your army inspires your people)?

The other main complaint I have is that the war score you get after winning a war should be clarified. Right now, it is unclear how to improve your score after being able to force surrender. Crushing the remaining armies of the ennemy should improve this, but it does not.

I agree with the idea of making vassalization cost scale with the size of the empire so that big empire must lose some territory before being vassalizable.

It might also be a good idea to extend the number of things you can ask for during the peace deal, because right now either you take some territories, either you gain only gold, there is not a lot of choices. Some ideas:

- Immediately research a technology of your choice your opponent has

- Your opponent pays a tribute in gold/science/food/production and a fixed amount of the appropriate they produce is shared between your cities for 10 turns

- Force your oppoonent to give you a ressource: you gain access to the ressource, but you do not pay the price and your opponent receives no money.

- Force your opponent to reveal its map/open its border for X turns: basically normal treaties, but one-sided

- Force your opponent to adopt your religion as its state religion

- Maybe make killing off your opponent more easy to do? I now know there is a civic that enable to do that, but I never got to it. I do like the idea of being more difficult to delete an opponent, but I would rather see tied to other, more controlable conditions. For example, make this impossible to o if your opponent had more than one city at the beginning of the war (so that you need a couple of war to be able to destroy another empire past the very biginning of the game) and/or gives this ability as a buff to militaristic cultures.

- Later in the game (maybe tie this to a technology or a civic): demilitarize. Your opponent cannot have more armies/units than a fixed amount (or maybe than the average of other players)

Finally, I would like to say that three-way diplomacy must definitely be improved. Right now, some strange things happen when somebody you are at war with is vassalized. If possible, it would be nice that the result depends on the relation with the one that vassalized the other player (for example, if friendly, the war stops and all your demands are given to you by the vassal, you also keep occupied territory. If neutral, you could keep occupied territory but all the other demands are refused. If hostile, the liege refuses to let you have this territory and declare on you). Either way, it is not a good idea that occupied territory turns into free territory just like that. It is both unrealistic and frustrating.

A few late thoughts:

- Should there be "permanent" grievances, in the sense that they remain available even if you do not activate them within the ten turns? I'm thinking of things like strong ideological differences or being best in alliance with an enemy. You may not want to escalate things yet, but if that state persists in 20-30 turns, it might be nice to have the option to.