I feel like diplomacy options (peace, alliance, vassal) and independent peoples both are missing something with synergy to your empire.
The main idea I had would be bridging it into other game mechanics that could use more depth.

1. Civics, have one or more civics that become influenced by who you alliance with, by the fact you have a vassal and their own civics, and when you interact or adopt an independent culture into your empire. Right now, civics mainly just give discounts on these interactions. Do more with this; it will give these interactions another level of influence on player choice, along with another level of depth of choice to civics and what they provide. Make adopting independent nations that align well with your civics a boon to certain bonuses provided by civics, and make adopting those out of alignment nerf some bonuses but perhaps change certain others (such as providing stronger benefits to the slavery civic choices).
2. Influence and independency of influence and religion. Add a civic where you choose be open or not with other cultures and religion or try to spread your own even to those in your alliance. Maintaining control should remain its own benefits but should also give a small benefit to yourself and your alliance, while allowing alliance to be independent of your influence if they desire to would give you a benefit such as stronger effects per each state not of the same religion. Influencing another empire doesn't seem to do much, make it have consequences for the other empire - penalize for differences in civics for example, or war support, or even they offer a % of a resource to you in taxes. 
3. Trade, feels very click and forget. Make trade be possible with money or influence, and have actions with influence such as history of demands and war affect pricing negatively while base prices are reduced. Bring over the concept of forcing peace, but in a way that's basically just control over treaties at the cost of diminished demands value.
4. Quests and events, these can be cooperative instead of solo. Have neighbors work together to overcome tragedy, or explore new land, or deal with foreign intrigue. Promote empire to empire interaction and make the following experience allow for diplomatic options.

Although I have not played enough to provide complete feedback on diplomacy, I like it how diplomacy is more elaborate than it is in Civ games.

It is very important to make sure that the game cannot be exploited through diplomacy.

For example, in Civ 6, it was possible to achieve extremely unfair deals through a bug in diplomacy whereby you propose something ridiculous, the AI refuses and then you ask "What will it take?" and they would accept whatever you proposed.

While I haven't seen any such exploits in Humankind during my play, early on in the game, when I just met a new AI player, I proposed them a trade treaty which they refused. The next turn they proposed me the exact same thing. It's not a big deal, but sometimes things like this makes you think that something in diplomacy mechanics is a little broken.

Had really a blast playing through the beta and really saw imporvments to the victor dev.

However, some really strange situations still happened in diplomacy.

I went to war with an opponent which had a vassal. Both were therfore at war with me. I first took over and occupied a city of said vassal, then turned around to crush the liege. While I was bussy with the liege, his vassal got freed or freed himself, suddently being at peace with me. The issue was I was still occupying his city and could not ask for ownership nor give it back anymore !  The city stability went down and was just pumping out rebels (of my technological era not even of the previous opponen'ts era) into the world without me being able to do anything. The only solution was to gather enough war support (took a while) to declare war and immediatly declare white peace......

This was in the Victor dev so I don't know if it has been corrected: Attacked a nation and forced it into vasselage, however my vassal kept "stealing" population from my surrounding border cities. My vassal cripiling my economy ! The only desperate way to solve it was to release him and declare war to eradicate him this time....

I really like the diplomacy but those "soft lock" situations are very frustrating and should be looked at.

Thanks for your amazing work and I hope you can translate all the feedback into this awesome game by august without too much crunch

I think that culture effect on diplomacy is great but i think there can be inclusion of more thinks which effect relation and force the opposition be allied or crushed like

Gun boat diplomacy: In it player naval army size and trespassing the naval water cause scare to the AI and AI can accept the demand but can massproduce naval units for future face off.

Military Diplomacy: same as gunboat diplomacy

Nuke Diplomacy: in it if player make nuke the demand of player of player can easily accepted but can cause arms race and nuclear procurement by AI.

Soft power Diplomacy: using culture influence to get edge on demand if demand not accepted can cause  instability in parts of AI empire where our influence is but can cause AI try to counter our influence or alliance with other major empire to counter influence.

Religion Diplomacy: the empire as founder of a religion get leverage on treaty and demand if denied the area of empire with founder empire religion influence will face decrease in instability.

What’s the reason behind the mandatory peace when the AI runs out of war support? Why do i have to follow along? And why can’t I help build a resource extractor in my vassals?

deathstarinrobes wrote:

What’s the reason behind the mandatory peace when the AI runs out of war support? Why do i have to follow along? And why can’t I help build a resource extractor in my vassals?

Only merchants are able to build extractors in other players territories, which is probably how it should be as if anything vassals feels too powerful right now, especially with the fact the moeny they give you count towards your merchant stars.

Here's my two cents on diplomacy, war and AI (some of which I already said on the UI thread):

• Notifications like "Phoenicians feel different about you" are more confusing than informative. Different how? Even clicking on the link to the Diplomacy screen doesn't clarify what changed;

• Negotiating with multiple civs is frustrating if I have to exit diplomacy screen to talk to another leader. A way to switch between civs while in that screen would be best;

• Relationship detail text is not always clear. Stuff like "They feel we're failing our duties as their liege" doesn't help as said duties were never clear to me;

• In the turn I met the Mayans with my bireme, they immediately demanded 400 gold for trespassing. A refusal triggered an instant declaration, with no former war support. That seemed a bit rash for me, and they took some 6-8 turns to even send units;

• As I attacked embarked troops with my biremes, an archer inland joined as a reinforcement. Even though all their boats were sunk, I couldn't win the battle as there was no way to kill the unit on the shore and I was supposed to hold their flag which was on an Ocean tile. Doesn't make sense, if I sunk the original units that's not a defeat. Maybe victory conditions could be tweaked on battles started by sea units;

• Immediately after ending a war, my former opponent had an "Attacked me" grievance against me from 3 turns prior. That attack was during a war THEY started. How is that a valid grievance?

• A grievance was shown to me because someone "Claimed a territory on our border" but that territory was not even near my border;

Independent people need to keep up with technology somehow. My experience with the Closed Beta was that the Ancient/Classical era IPs stuck around for a very long time, meaning newer ones with more modern units did not have time to establish themselves and become a feature in the world.

Also, Independent People seemed to start spawning on island/the other continent only when those lands were discovered. That seems a little strange to me - is it just me misreading something, or is this how it works under the hood? It would be really cool to have the experience of finding a developed people on foreign lands and either conquering them, or making friends and trading (both options giving a headstart in colonizing those lands in one way or another.)

One thing i would like to point out is how annoying it is when treaties can just be cancelled at will. I would like to see a timer(20-30 turns), especially if you are paying.  Diplomatic treaties should require some commitment right?

Overall, there is the basis for a lot of great stuff in these systems, so I am very interested to see how they grow!

Diplomacy: Messy and confusing. The amounts demanded were huge and unpayable. It was very hard to understand what was influencing attitudes from the AI and what would happen. I got the impression there were a lot of hidden systems going on, but I also did not feel they were fully tuned. Lots of potential here though, so I really look forward to this area improving!

War: Going to simple war was very easy, and I felt that it was difficult to have a justifiable reason - but then is war ever justified? ;-) However, how Wars finished was weird and confusing.

The interface made it always feel like I was doing something wrong when spending 'war points' to lay claim to things, then what those things were was hard to identify as the naming never seemed to align. I am hoping the naming thing was deliberate, as it would be a fun way to expose that different nations may call different areas their own thing? More likely it was just buggy, but could be fun to have the name thing.

When a War was going to end and how it would end was hard to understand or influence. I like the concept that War will only be tolerated for so long by the populace, but need more information to be able to understand the factors.

Independent people: These seemed pretty good. They established good cities without being unbeatable, would defend their territory and make occasional raids if you got too close. Very nice. Would be nice to have a system, or make it clearer what the system is, to peacefully influence or buy them into your nation too. Satellite states would be interesting too.

PS I had trouble sending in my survey, so I am adding posts here instead. Keep up the great work and I am really looking forward to playing more!