Having played around more with diplomacy, I find that basing everything except the treaties (which I like) around grievances feels clunky. How they are turned into warscore is also unclear. Example: I am at war, and my ally is at peace with them. That creates an "At peace with my enemy" grievance. I push it, but they refuse. All this does is change our warscores towards eachoter a bit. I can always break the alliance if ot does not work out, but that makes me the villian for backing out of an alliance that does not work out.

Some observations:

1. The best way I found to generate warscore against someone is to push grievances, and then withdraw them. I tend to generate enough grievances through "Oppressing our people" or "Hindering the Faithful" to make this worthwhile compared to letting them simmer.
2. If I do decide to sit on a demand for a while, I found myself withdrawing them all just before declaring war, just so I don't have a stack of war reperation demands weighing me down in peace negotiations.
3. The "All or Nothing" part of withdrawing demands is not fun. Just because I decide to give up a grudge for trespassing ages ago does not mean I forgive them for settling on my border. I suppose this does mean you canæt just push frivolous grievances, but I don't want which grievances I push to be based on what I have "in the oven" already.

1. I was at war with a player, who then lost a war to someone else. The player I was fighting became vassalized, and because I was at peace with the new master, I peaced out with the vassalized player too. However, I could still take his cities. They were stuck in an occupied state, and everyone inside died to starvation or low stability.
2. I had a situation where I was at war with two players, who themselves were independent and at peace. At one point, I conquered the city of the first player, but the second player could just take it for free on the same turn. Since my stack was "spent" for the turn, I could't move it in to defend the city, and they were not available as reinforcments. The exact same happend on the next turn, and the one after that.

My 2 cents:

All four of my neighboring AIs declared war at a very similar time. Mainly due to religious grievances I believe.
The issue I've had is that It took a colossal effort to defeat most of them - which I eventually had to do as surrendering isn't an option that seems viable and I've yet to have a mutual 'propose peace offering' work. Long story short 3 of them became my vassals.

About 15 turns later - vassals have open boarders and they walk around and do things such as ransacking. Then one of them just began attacking me. I am under more threat from my vassals than other enemies with 100 war support as the vassals have open borders and I cannot do anything to close borders again?

Also I have never experienced a vassal aiding in any battle or fight when we are both at war with another enemy.

I think some cool ideas for vassalization:

If they're war support goes to zero you can force surrender.

Currently it costs 150 to vassalize and if you have a lot of prior demands (totaling to more than 50 once they surrender) you can't deselect those and it means it's impossible to make them a vassal as you can only have a maximum war support difference or what ever that score is of 200.

I think if you choose to, you should be able to continue fighting them and taking territories and gaining more war support even after they've reached zero war support and the cap of 100 should be extended. 

This way if you've properly dominated them and completely decimated every army and territory you can acquire more points to spend when forcing their surrender.
Making them a vassal could perhaps cost 250+ so that it means you have properly dominated them before they become your vassal.
Then once they are your vassal you should be able to do actions to improve relations and essentially control the treaties without their input. So you can decide if you want open borders or share knowledge etc. There should also be a way to encourage them to back you up and vice versa when it comes to battling other enemies. Also an ability to give them resources or do something to improve relationships

Basically,

1) Getting their war support down to zero is sometimes very easy and you can vassalise easily. Othertimes it's hard and if you have prior demands it makes it literally impossible to vassalise.

2) You war support from taking territories and winning battles should increase above the 100 limit so that you can get more from that war if you occupy more at the end of the war.

3) Cost of vassal more expensive so that you can't just fight one territory and have a couple battles where they retreat and then you can vassalize their whole civilization. You should have to get 250+ war support meaning take over many territories etc.

4) Once you are a liege you should be able to offer resources or help to maintain relationships and change treaties such as borders to make the vassal/liege aspect more than just - they pay me gold and we see each others maps - eventually they get upset and there's nothing I can do but set them free and wait to fight them again.

I could just be super noob but that was my experience.
Thoroughly enjoying the game though :D 
 

A major problem is that the names of the provicnes that show up in the diplomacy screen are not shown anywhere else, so you end up with no idea of knowing which territories you are claiming in peace deals.  Maybe have some sort of minimap for this purpse, or just draw the names of the provinces on the main map, or just rename the provinces after the main cities.

Independent states have a strange role in the game. They're all of the same grey anonymous colour, and in the cases they don't possess any resources they really are just chaff. They feel like DLC fodder in a way that almost no other aspect of the game does.

Making a direct comparison to Endless Space 2, in that game there are plenty of reasons, quite apart from eventual assimilation, that you might want to get on good terms with minor factions. They give you Dust and Science (and yes, luxury resources if they possess any), and give you an opportunity to use a special ability, such as taking on mercenary fleets. There are reasons to keep them around, past the immediate point of being able to assimilate them.

In Humankind this is not the case, and I think it's to the game's detriment. Maybe, much like you can claim wonders, you should be able to give Independent Cities your patronage, barring (if only temporarily) anyone else from colonizing them. And if you do they'll give you a portion of their resources. With eight-ten players the limit on Humankind's maps, I feel like these single city-states would make the world feel more inhabited. Parallel with this, it'd be a welcome change if these Independent Peoples receiced some diversity in their art, too. As mentioned, the grey badges, with a different icon depending on their peaceful/warlike outlook, makes them feel very artificial.

 Probably way too late in the dev cycle for any major systemic changes to be implemented, but I hope they'll get some attention in future DLC. 

In the Diplomacy i think it will better when we Purchase Resources (luxury or strategic) to have a Cost Per Turn and not paid once and we have it. maybe paid 10 gold per turn for iron or something like that.

roger212 wrote:

I don't know if it is intended or a bug, but I thinl the AI shouldn't be able to offer surrender every turn without any kind of cooldown. I was on a war against Black and they kept offering surrender when their war support dropped to 3. I refused, they got 10 war support or something and then when I won another battle next turn and, with the ongoing war support they were losing, they were at 3 war support again and offered surrender one more time. Of course I refused and they got 10 war support. I have been stuck in this loop for 5 turns now. I am not sure this was intended, maybe it is part of the "the AI keeps offering the same treaty" thing. Also had a problem in the same game where that was clearly a bug where the black AI immediately captured my city when I clicked the manual combat option when they initiated a siege. I didn't have instant resolution on and I had an army several times bigger than theirs. When I reloaded and clicked instant resolution I won the battle with no losses and kept the city. It has only happened once, though.

SAME! I was at war with Vlad and he kept offering me surrender over and over again, which resulted in the infinite war support. 

ritchiaro wrote:

Aggressive IP seem a bit over-powered in the early game. It is really hard to deal with the first wave of them. Maybe let them start with weaker units. If I see aggressive IP I can't run away since they will chase me, and I can't engage in battle since they are waaaay stronger than scouts and I won't have anything else researched to replace scouts with. Also, make letting them stick closer to their home would be good. Sometimes its weird to see them travel to the other side of the continent.

What difficulty were you playing on? If you were on Humankind difficulty, then it should be really hard to deal with them. If you were on Hamlet difficulty though, then it's definitely a problem.

Dmman33 wrote:

A major problem is that the names of the provicnes that show up in the diplomacy screen are not shown anywhere else, so you end up with no idea of knowing which territories you are claiming in peace deals.  Maybe have some sort of minimap for this purpse, or just draw the names of the provinces on the main map, or just rename the provinces after the main cities.

All you have to do is click on the magnifying glass next to the item, it quite easy to see where they are.

FinalFreak16 wrote:

Based on these two points:

GRasputin wrote:

1) Echoing when several other people have said, please either make the influence cost of diplomacy clear or remove it. It took me a while to realize that I was wasting influence on diplomacy.

2) Rather than the current counter system for a fixed price, it would be helpful if the game showed the likelihood of the AI accepting a treaty, and then you can add additional offers (e.g., gold, other treaties) to reach acceptance. This would be a significant improvement over just hoping they'll accept and having no idea why they won't.

How about, instead of influence being spent on simply proposing treaties. Why not show the likelihood of the AI accepting a treaty with the option to pump influence points into the proposal to push the likelihood in your favour? So for example: "Propose Open Borders: [Unlikely to Accept]", we can spend 30 influence to change the odds to "Propose Open Borders: [May Accept]" or 100 influence to Propose Open Borders: [Likely to Accept] etc. The amount of influence required could depend on your relationship with the AI and current Era, or maybe even your total banked influence vs theirs? There is some RNG to this though which some players might save scum.

Maybe the AI can also try to bully you to accept treaties too and you'd have to spend some influence of your own to prevent it. Or to prevent getting steamrolled by an AI with high influence you can still not accept it but it would generate a grievance with them. Going to war over denying trade was something that happened in history. I realise at this point it kind of turns into a demand system. Since you're throwing your influence around to bully other civs to do what you want. I think it could work though.

That would make diplomacy AI-oriented. Right now you interact with the AI the same way as a you would with a human player, having acceptance chance meters and adding Influence towards acceptance would break that. Honestly they should just go b ack to no Influence cost for diplomacy, they probably only added the cost to stick in another way to spend Influence.

I occupied one city and one outpost of playerA, he almost lost all of the war support, and I can force him to surrender in the next turn.  so I pressed the next turn button. However in the next turn I became in peace with him, so he in possession of his city again. I dont know what happend. 

It seems in that turn, playerA becomes the vassal of playerB, and I am alliance with playerB. so I cannot have diplomacy with playerA.

this is ridiculous. I beat playerA so hard but gain nothing in the end.

I read some of the comments here, and I was kind of surprised at how some players had a very different experience compared to me.

Mainly over three points : "My game was pretty peaceful", "With diplomacy you can be BFF", "IP are too strong/annoying"...

So I played in Nation difficulty, the first 15-20 turns were pretty standard and then, Green declare war... Followed by Purple and later Yellow. Fortunately I manage an alliance with Orange, but the raging war of me vs 3 nation takes a lot of time and resources. I eventually won, Purple is vassalized, Green and Yellow pushed back.

Then after more than 80 turns of peaceful alliance with Orange, he demand one of my territory (an IP I had just assimilated), I refuse, in the following 5 turns he breaks all the treaties and alliance we had, and soon after war it is... Again... And obvioulsy Green and Yellow join the fray too and once again in the 100th something turn... There is only War !

I come out on top once again, vassalize Orange, push back Green and Yellow once again, and it was only then that I had a bit of respite in my game...

In the end, I won the game at the 180th turn. I didn't even understood why I won, I had 20 turns left, was it fame ? was it because I reached a certain age ? I was in the middle of a war (again) and then : BAM You won ! And over the 180 turn of the game I played, I had maybe 30 or 40 turns without a war going on... I spent so much time at war, I had no time to get to a new continent, I barely had one ship anyway, my tech was pitiful (best one was black powder discovery) and I just felt like "What the heck ?!?"

So yeah, bottom line :

- My AI were way too much agressive, going to war non stop even when they had no hope of winning (I mean Green had Hoplites when I was starting musketeers)

- The Diplomacy was just non-existant. Long term alliances just crumble in a couple of turns, Non agression pacts are removed like nothing and a war soon breaks out just after

- I don't know why you have issue with IP (and not other "players") when they are often passive or not that threatening (at least at Nation level)

The vassal system seems to be still filled with problems:

When another empire becomes liege of another, their treaty statuses with the player remain in place, even though in the diplomacy screen they are locked to the treaty conditions the player has to the vassal. As a result these treaties can no longer be changed and a player that is forced by his vassal to only share capital locations with you still benefits from map-sharing (e.g. also receiving fame for natural wonders you discover.

In general several of the statuses enforced upon the liege do not seem to actually change in the game code, leading to misrepresentations in the UI and inabilities to use diplomacy as intended.

The result is a rather boring, uninteresting and arbitrary experience.

I hope you manage to improve on it as the feature does not seem ready yet (That's why it is a beta i know)

OK, here's a weird one. I am allied with the Assyrians and I just got notified that I'm on the verge of losing a war against them.

Ming Turn 105.ctr

Apparently, Independent Cities that are In Decline can be assimilated by anybody, regardless of distance and influence over the city. This is obviously not ok.

Diplomacy: First of all, as others mentioned already, it would be really nice to see how much influence diplomacy actions will cost, especially in early game, when influence is very valuable. Other than that, I am quite happy how diplomacy evolved through the open devs. For example, some AI players had a lot of grievance against me but never made a demand, because we were trading. But as soon as I made a demand, the AI made some of its demand and then proposed a refusal, which felt quite realistic. On the other hand, i never managed to propose a refusal by myself, the AI never accepted, which might be a bug/AI balance issue. But all together i am quite happy in which direction the diplomacy is heading.

War Declaration: On Humankind difficulty the AI was very aggressive and managed to overrun me in the early game. So, my other 2 playthroughs I played on Empire difficulty. I was very happy on the AI behaviour regarding war declaration. On time an AI player gathered its army at my border and i was sure that it would declare a war on me soon. So i purchased/build walls, garrisons and troops in my border cities, which seemed to increase my power enough, so the AI didn`t declared a war on me, so i am quite happy that my decisions (increasing my power) really had an effect on the AIs behaviour. In addition to that, in the end of the game a fame weak Ai declared war on the first place and even managed to vassal him, which felt really nice, because with this action the fame weak AI was able to catch up again.

Interactions with independent people: I think that independent people are a great addition to the game. In mid game i was able to generate a lot of fame through independent people, by killing there armies. Also, i managed to assimilate them, which was nice, because i got a city with existing infrastructure. The only point i didn`t like about independent people, as others mentioned already, is that you have to keep a city you took from independent people, bringing you over your city cap. It would be nice if there was the option to turn than in an outpost instead.

MorshuHimself wrote:

Apparently, Independent Cities that are In Decline can be assimilated by anybody, regardless of distance and influence over the city. This is obviously not ok.

Personally, I think the IPs are just a way for the Devs to move the AIs closer to your nation. All their AIs do is try to forward settle. It's annoying. There is no diplomacy in this game. It's just these (often under prepared) AIs invading and forward settling you. The IPs add nothing to the game, and you should be able to turn them off.