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.

Diplomacy feels really meaningful in this game - I especially enjoy how actions passively affects relations to other empires, such as claiming neighbouring territories.

Other things I've noted:

• The Avatar dialogue pacing really helped a lot!
• The notifications "X now feels differently about you" is not informative at all - it should tell exactly how they feel, or even the transition.
• "Foreign was declared" notifications should tell which cultures are involved, perhaps who declared it.
• I found it difficult to keep track of players due to the changing cultures. Hovering the mouse over the empire icons in the top left could have a tooltip. Showing player names would help as well.
• War support (or their trend) could be shown in the main HUD such that overlooked/forgotten demands don't let another player's war support increase indefinitely. I've had a few surprises there...
• War support increase per turn from outstanding demands could fade over time such that one demand cannot be used to fill the war support entirely.
  Alternatively, demands could offset the resting point for war support.

Overall the diplomacy looks good. There are still some concerns I have with this aspect though.

Vassalisation

It is possible for one player fight and won a defensive war in their homeland and then make the aggressor(s) into vassal. Personally, I do not like how this works. This is too easy, broken, and not fitting for contexts.

I would like to ask Devs to add in some requirements for turning someone into a vassal. Those could be things like capturing their capital and/or having taken control of over 50% of their territories in a war.


Diplomacy UI - Where is that land for claiming?

The other thing I would like is allowing players to see which pieces of land are up for grab when the winner force loser to surrender in a treaty for peace. We can see icons for places that we can get, but the main problem is we do not know where those locations are. It is possible for us to take the lands that we do not really want.

I mean there is already the zoom feature for seeing where certain resources are on the map. Why not do this for lands too?

It'd actually be cool too see a couple more various diplomatic options, it's a really good take on diplomacy but the possibility of for instance, sharing technology or civics as a trade item or a way of sweetening a deal or alliance offer. Maybe even limited alliance's with certain negators like not having to declare war on trade partner's or a rome total war style way of requesting ally support to a certain area. Maybe coalitions like trade coalition's and so on.

There's so many ways of expanding features and possibly adding on the framework for future mods to allow features that have hardcoded framework support in place.