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...)