There is something weird I got : fighting the hittites and crushing them and then suddently I just lost 2 outposts to them without warning or anything, just went to the ennemy... An explaination would have been nice, if not a warning something was wrong...

Very often the AI declares a war on me and loses just because of low war support. Although I do not attack him, do not ransack him, do not take his cities. He loses just because of 2 ongoing stats for war support:

-1 from proximity state as attacker

-2 from declaring unjust war

So my suggestion:

Make these stats instant instead of ongoing (for example -10 or - 20 instant war support).

Grathocke wrote:

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

Same to me I think it might have to do with you having vassals and these vassals doing things that make you lose war support. But it is strange because if an ally attacks your vassal you should get a grievance.

I really enjoyed playing and I can see the improvements that have been made since the last open dev. Like other people who have posted I was irritated by not being able to refuse a peace negotiation. Potentially continuing a war when the other side have thrown the towel in should have increasing penalties to your war support (this could be balanced against your nations hate/love or ideology of the nation being attacked) making it less likely that you can keep all the territory you have taken as you won’t have enough points to spend. Onto to independent people again agreed with people’s comments about the difficultly of being over city cap due to the number of them, cost of merging them, technology being available. In essence it felt like they locked out a territory for the rest of the game. Potential solutions, possibly less independent people but that seems a shame as If there was suitable mechanics for dealing with them it would be ok. Potentially assimilation has a merge with city option which takes x number of turns. When you attack a city you have the option to destroy the city, with ruins have to be cleared before building. Potentially these ruins could then give science later in the game? Finally I enjoyed the battles, ranged seamed less overpowered and part of an overall solution. 

Diplomacy right now seems like the most underdeveloped part of the game. It's very simplified. The only real mechanic in here is the war support. Everything seems to point towards war support, and the only thing that at least is visible to alleviate and lower it is trade. With also can generate war support if it's blocked or destroyed by neighbours waging their own wars. The treaties have almost no consequences in reality, because you either have a strong army, and your neighbours fear you, so they are nice to you. Or you don't have a strong army, so the neighbours try to exploit and crush you. There is just no other way here to play right now, there is no mechanic that would support relations other than war. It becomes a war management game instead of a civilisation or culture management. There is no actual trade (you just buy out resources you need, similar to buying out units), there are no agreements you can have with someone that are meaningful. I know for the base game it's too late to introduce new mechanics but I would assume that should be the main focus of an expansion or something.

The game needs reasons to have relations with your neighbours other than only managing war. The trade routes are a start, and a very good one actually. Yeas, because of wars they are unreliable for income, but buying resources from AI and vice versa is a really good reason not to go to war with them and lose that. I really like the luxury resources and trade here in that aspect. But the game needs more of that. Something that is an incentive to prolong good relation. Like a treaty that actually means something, because right now the only treaty that's meaningful here is the luxury resource treaty. What even is the point of non-aggression pact, when you can break it whenever you want without penalties to anything. Yeah it will give war support, but you already want to attack so what does that even matter? Alliances are the same. Also Alliances have little to no value without shared victory system unless they actively give something. The treaties in alliances give something but their descriptions are unclear other than the resource trading one, and again can be broken without any real consequences. Parties loose a bonus, most of the time that is whatever, especially when trade is one-time buy instead of a recurring cost. You can do alliance, get the trade treaty, buy out all the resources, drop the alliance and those trades stay until war destroys them.

Also there are no deals. Resource trade is a static cost. While I can understand transport cost , I don't understand base value at all. Why marble base cost at one point in the game cost 120 and the other moment 2000 gold? Why my resource cost the amount it costs when AI buys it? Writing about trade all the time, because this really is the only non-war oriented diplomacy mechanic in the game right now.

The influence and religion game also suffer from this because all it does is generating reasons for you to go to war. Everything in the game besides trade needs war support, army. Why would I care about any grievances or demands if I have the better army? Why would my neighbour care about my grievances, influences, demands, religion if they have the better army? The game needs mechanics that revolve more about non-combat means. And if you cannot support those things with an army, they don't matter at all. I can have 100% influence over every city in the game, it literaly doesn't do ANYTHING unless I have the army to basically extort it from my neighbours. Same with religion, and this is why religion seems meaningless, a buyproduct that is in there somewhere. Those mechanics need to have some other non-war oriented features. Maybe instead of it being a trait, people just migrate to my cities from cities of my neighbours that I have most of the influence over (over time to balance it out). Something similar with religion. That would bring something that can be addressed without combat. Right now it doesn't need to be addressed at all.

Don't get me wrong, I like combat in the game, but it is too much of a focus.

PS: In Endless Legend you had a diplomacy system that was working nicely. I understand that is its own game, also that game focuses on one-time deals mostly. To change that maybe you could (in an expansion probably) introduce more long term deals. The trade routes are already working that way and I really like it. I didn't like the trade system at first because it felt out of control, but after some time I came to appreciate it. I had an idea around a system you could maybe borrow a technology? Or let someone borrow a technology? But for that the game needs to have deals. It could be a great thing if I could have like technologically advanced nation, and share a technology for it to build oil resource extractors (don't remember how they are called right now) for as long as I allow them have it or as long as that treaty is valid. Then I could buy that Oil from them even if they are way behind in technology to have that. And if we break up the treaty/alliance then they lose that technology unless in the meantime they researched it on their own? That's an example, maybe it could be restricted to certain technologies or certain aspect of technologies. But that could be a great mechanic to at least consider trying to have good relations with your neighbours. And would give more room to the technology tree, which right now have many must haves especially early on (but that is someting to discuss elsewhere I believe).

Hope it helps :)

War support during wars is a very nice mechanic. The way you obtain it though doesn't feel right. Winning battles ,or even make enemies retreat without fighting, gives you more war support than occuping an enemy city (smaller city or capital doesn't make a difference). It is much more rewarding repeling enemy armies while sitting on your border than invading enemy land and conquer cities.

In my opinion, if winning a battle gives you +5  WS(or +8 i can't remember now), occuping enemy capital should give you +10/+20 ongoing.

Vasalization also has problems. It always costs 150 WS. It doesn't matter how big or populated is the empire you want to subjugate: some empires should be too big to be vassals. And you can force it on enemies even without occuping any of their territories. You can vassalize empires by just playing defensively (it happend to twice, at difficulty 5 and 6). I suggest that vassalization is only available when enemy capital, or at least half of enemy cities, is being occupied.

Peace menu is unclear, I can't really understand which territory i'm demanding, I have to open the menu and check the map a couple of times to get the names right. Also territories with cities on them appear on the map with the city name, in the peace menu with the territory name.

War is fine, I dare to say is the best aspect of the game, is peace that needs fixing.

Asce_099 wrote:
So diplomacy is a very interesting concept. However, since they keep repeating the same offer despite providing a counteroffer it just gets irritating.

This is indeed very annoying. Either don't keep spamming the same offer, or accept the counteroffer. Also it's pretty sad you can't make a custom counteroffer.

It also seems you don't have so much control over diplomacy and trade. The choices are often very binary. You either trade all your luxuries, or none. You either trade all your strategic resources, or none.

Not sure if this belongs in a bug report list:
1) I parked a mercenary army on my city.  Army was 'in decline' and could not be rehired.

2) I queued military units, archer and Sabu Sa.

3) as the units were built, they were added to the mercenary army.

4) When the contract expired, the army wandered off with my units.

Please tell me that isn't how that was intended to work.  Suggest when building units in a city with a mercenary army stationed, the build time should be come infinite, similar to when the stationed army is full or is a nomadic unit, to prevent this kind of issue.

Diplomacy:
- Counter proposition seems a bit limited with only a fix coin amount. Maybe we could negotiate with other treaty or more money, or territories, or influence. ( a bit like in endless space 2 )
Independant people: 
- Just here too populate the map, I didn't feel they add too much to the game, except for war when we use mercenaries.
War :
- Like the war support system
- War resolution is a bit hard for the loosing side. This could use some negotiation .  Price" of each territory coulb be set by the loosing side (with points limit). It would be a bit more realistic too i believe.
Vassalage: 
- Maybe  need more optipns to interact with vassals/ (buying military units/population maybe)
Alliance: 

- OK
Bugs: 
- An AI declared a surprise war on me just after the end of another war,  so my war support was to zero, and before i could do anything, the AI reclaimed all city i took + some of my territories. Very frustrating. Even with the possibilty of one battle it is impossible to counter.
This may be ok but then put heavy warnings on the surrender terms that depelting all the war support may be very dangerous.

Diplomacy
Makes no sense that initial demands have to be always included in peace deals. A "causus bellis" it's just a public justification of the war, shouldn't be an enforced objective of the wars, although it should be chepear to obtain than new ones (as it is for now). If my neighbour tresspased my borders 10 times and I demand him a compensation and he doesn't, it makes no sense that in the peace deal I'm forced to demand him money for each one of those 10 tresspases and spend 100 war support points on them, specially if he doesn't have the money to even pay for the full amount of one of those trespasses. <

War
AI seems more competent raising big armies that in previous builds. 

Damage calculation between units should be better explained, the "strenght" is well detailed, but not how it's then translated into the range of possible damage. 

Independent Peoples aren’t prominent enough to really matter. (I can’t imagine ever taking the Mauryan for their legacy trait, it’s weak) 

They’re not like Minor Factions from your other games in the sense that they give no unique or interesting bonuses worth competing for. And they’re easy to simply stamp out and take over.

Good evening :). I'm Kevin. I like your games.
I play on a Omen 15-dh1076ng. Intel Core i7-10750H. 32GB ram. GeForce RTX 2070. It is a mid gaming laptop.

- One Avatar (I can't remember his name, but is male and polite) goes to T-pose sometimes.

- "War is not the answer, is the question, and the answer is yes". Everyone is mad at you, always, no matter how you approach the game or what difficulty you choose.

- Are independent people intended to attack you even if you have the relasionship bar full w/ them, or is a bug?

Thanks :)

I like the war support system in general, but it can lead to total BS.

I recently won a long war against the Aztecs. I got a bunch of land from it, and I was going to focus on my other on going to war. Then a couple turns after they declare war, forcing me to start with 4 war support, ransack a couple places and they take back a bunch of land they ceded to me in the last war. How is that fair? There is no way to counter it, unless I happen to be positoned in a way to take out their troops immeadately.

If an AI declares war right after I just finished fighting them, I shouldn't be forced to lose it.

War Score.  It wasn't at all clear.  My assumption remains that it's tied to the meter at the top of the screen (War desire?), but that only goes up to 100.  Somehow, though, I was able to vassalize someone with a 150 war score requirement.  Still not sure how I got what I needed for that.

Another thing I noticed was an enemy had a embarked troop, and I brought in some cogs to attack it.  Said troop happened to be in ocean, and I couldn't manage to initiate the fight no matter what I did.