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.