I know you posted that a known bug is that the "AI may keep offering the same treaty after it has been refused." However, I'm not sure that the issue I'm having with war/diplomacy is exactly the same thing. Twice now, I've been at war with an AI and doing well. In each case, the AI offers to surrender, and the cancel button is greyed out so that I cannot refuse their surrender. The game is forcing me to accept a surrender when I'm not done doing battle, and it kinda feels like the game is playing for me. Apologies if this is the same issue to which you were referring in the known bugs post.

Diplomacy: A lot weaker than expected. AI with expansionist trait does not seem to know how to use it and they keep repeating the cycle of Offering treaty (e.g. non-aggression pack), breaking it after a few turns, then ask for the same treaty again. Also "closed border" means nothing when enemy units can just keep running around with separate Auto Explore AI (grievances are ok and all, but still weird and getting 900 gold for an army passing through a closed border seems like an exploit/bug to me).

War: Enemy AI keeps sending armies one after another through the same main road ("Nation" level AI), and has a tendency to try to bypass any invading army if they have a mobility advantage, and get easily destroyed one by one. It is also strange that their AI uses my railroad system, run halfway across the map in 1 turn, and then run all the way back to their territory like a confused headless chicken. Seems like the AI does not have a concept of an overall strategy for multiple armies.

Independent people: always aggressive, behave like barbarians in Civ, but at least not generating an infinite number of units (limited by their economy). Quite a bad annoyance at the first few eras. I don't mind the feature, but there should be an option to turn them off.

It's a little weird that the AI will propose a treaty for trading luxury goods when neither I nor the AI seem to have any.

I would like to see how much influence costs any action of diplomacy, not only when I don't have the influence, but when I have it too.

I ended up surrounded by a bunch of independent cities all appearing in rapid succession and within one or two territories of each other. Three of the nearest four were peaceful and I managed to assimilate them pretty easily thanks to my influence, but the hostile one managed to kill two of my EU javelin throwers and ransack an outpost before I could afford to make them stop attacking me. I don't mind the challenge the hostile city presented on its own (I actually enjoyed it). The problem stemmed almost entirely from the sudden and concentrated appearance of the independent cities more than the cities themselves. Before I could expand into that territory myself (I had a unit at the border, one turn away from settling an outpost), suddenly the whole northeast was claimed by these independent cities and the only way to get that territory was to assimilate the cities and take the penalty for being over my city cap, rather than adding outposts onto my existing cities as I had planned.

whartanto wrote:

Independent people: always aggressive, behave like barbarians in Civ, but at least not generating an infinite number of units (limited by their economy). Quite a bad annoyance at the first few eras. I don't mind the feature, but there should be an option to turn them off.

I agree with whartanto that it would be nice to turn off the independent cities, or maybe control the amount of them that will exist at any one time.

In my playthrough there are is some weird stuff going on with regards to alliances and war. When and other player declares war on your ally, you don't have an option to join the war in any way. They can only demand of you that you declare war on their Ally. But in my playthrough they immediately renounced that demand so I had no option to go to defend my Ally than to declare a surprise war. Next to that they gained grievances against me for not helping them in the war. And when they vassalized another player the vassal of my ally begane attacking me.

It would be great if another player declares war on your ally you get an option to join the war. Or betraying your ally resulting in worse relations.

The most annoying thing was that a grievance demanding one of my vassals' territories seemed to be able to be demanded by the AI every single turn for 10 turns, even when I refused it (and they kept backing down). I assume this is a bug.

Make vassals much harder to get and keep. Currently and throughout the previous Opendevs vassals have been far to easy to achieve, instead you should only be able to vassalise an empire if you've managed to occupy a majority of their core empire, or their capital. Maybe add a rule preventing players from vassalising empires that are equivalent or stronger than them. 

Also vassals should begin to rebel and cause internal problems such as rebels if they've managed to create an army equivalent or larger then the lieges. Equally if the empire is earning more money or fame the vassalised empire should be more persistent on wanting independence.

Currently vassals are incredibly powerful with very little downsides, and instantly hyper boost the empire in money and resources, which just isn't fun.

Diplomacy:

1. Feels a little like a one-way street. Once you reach a certain level then you're friends forever.
2. AI opinions of the player: I checked a couple of times when I got the notification but never saw that it had any real gameplay impact (or a clear reasons why it happened)
3. Maybe the Ai's opinion could be matched to the civics? (is it already like that?), something like two player having the same exact civics should be more friendly if they don't have other source of conflict like border frictions?.
4. "They are oppressing our people": It sounds like something that would be important in a story but I never really understood what it meant or had any reason to act upon it other than for roleplay purposes. I'm not sure why it happens and I would care more if it had some negative impact in my empire, like causing some form of unhappiness or reducing stability?

1. I mostly had to deal with friendly ones and the main thing that could be improved is that they're too easy to assimilate.
2. It could be interesting to have an option to protect them from being assimilated by another player without having to assimilate them ourselves.
3. Like religion it's a system that feels like it's mostly on autopilot. In all my games (from Victor Open Dev to this one) I was given the opportunity to assimilate some of them without having anything particular to do. During the Victor Open Dev I spent influence once to gain some favour with a neighbour but most of the time it just happened.

Regarding Diplomacy:

Having gotten used to how it works, I feel that it is a bit too easy to stay friends with someone after you get through the first hurdle of your relationship. Once or twice they would cancel their deals with me, but they were willing to resign everything the next turn.

My relationship with my neighbours also felt a lot like a series of one-way streets, rather than a complex web. This may be because in my (one) game that I finished, most everyone around me was vassalized by one of my friends, but even then the remaining free players never gave the feeling of an "international community" that responded to mine and eachoters actions. Perhaps this is more noticable for a more aggressive playstyle, but I mostly stuck to being peaceful.

Finally, I like the way you can push demands and potentially start a war over them. However, the penalty for simply ignoring demands is just a change in warscore, so I never really felt the need to respond and risk starting a war. Or, I could wait until I had my army at their border (which I built only after the demand came) and then respond. They would usually back down then.

Independent People:

The independtents definitively feel like a part of the world that needs to be faced one way or another. My biggest issue with them is that it is a bit of a luck factor wheter they spawn next to you or not, and if they are aggressive or peaceful.

I will echo the feeling that interacting with them is mostly just a money/infuence sink while you watch your patronage bar fill up. I did find hiring mercenaries helped win wars in the early game however.

My one major dislike with the independents is that they force you to take their city (as a city) if it spawns in a region you would prefer to simple have as an outpost or attached territory. The alternative is waiting for them to dissapear, which takes forever. Since the city cap is low early on, this significantly hinders expansion. The absorbtion tech comes later on to alliviate this, but I would have liked the option to simply integrate their lands into an existing city instead of taking it as a full city itself.

I had 2 issues/bugs.

First one, the expansionist "capture the outpost" did not work. After the 5 turn timer, nothing happened. Had to reload a few times.

Second, I was sieging the last city, then I capture it, all the enemy's regions become blue. Next turn, the regions turn back to yellow and they had become a vassal of another AI.

Overall, capturing a city was a bit confusing, I don't know what is possible or not.

I have two points and since the first is a bug, i'll go with the second: 

Where can I find infos about other players? I mean, I go on the diplomacy screen and I find "Ideological tollerance". Great, but...where exactly are we different? Where may I see this if it's possible or may it be implemented?

I'd also love to see something about the cultures he chose. but maybe this will be written in the culture feedback 

I really like increased independent people spam, as a result now it does make sense to befriend them, hire mercenaries etc.

The only issue I have how is I can't raise their sites as a result there are too many sites with barbarians and if I take them one way or another I go over the limit of the cities, if they could be wiped out this issue would be resolved.

So my take is they should be either toned down a bit or you can destroy their sites otherwise they simply block growth.

MumbaUmba wrote:

I really like increased independent people spam, as a result now it does make sense to befriend them, hire mercenaries etc.

The only issue I have how is I can't raise their sites as a result there are too many sites with barbarians and if I take them one way or another I go over the limit of the cities, if they could be wiped out this issue would be resolved.

So my take is they should be either toned down a bit or you can destroy their sites otherwise they simply block growth.

Or even just let us choose, when we assimilate an independent people, if we want to assimilate them as a city or as an outpost that we can then attach to a city if we want. They're in decline already, so there shouldn't be any immersion-breaking issues with turning their city into an outpost upon assimilation.

like i cant even continu the game

Light_Spectrum wrote:

I would like to see how much influence costs any action of diplomacy, not only when I don't have the influence, but when I have it too.

This, please, absolutely. I didn't even notice diplomacy cost influence until I read this.