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 Updated GDD n°10 - Diplomacy

 Summary of Early Access status at the end of this message

 Enjoy!

Rationale

Firstly, Diplomacy is one of the systems of Endless Space 2 that is getting the biggest set of changes from our previous games. There are a couple of large reasons that were the cause of these changes:

• Diplomacy should be a mandatory system. Player should not be able to ignore it
• The Diplomatic system should limit the effectiveness of wars
• Players should have a real sense of teamplay through the diplomatic system
• Diplomacy should reinforce positive relations between empires, but it should also be possible to use this as an offense
• Diplomacy should be equally important to warfare
  
  

The result of this rationale means that we are moving towards ‘gamifying’ Diplomacy a lot more than in our previous titles, which implies more rules and systems for the player to interact with, while still being simple enough to understand!

Diplomatic Relations

Each empire will have a diplomatic status with other empires. This should be familiar with the players experienced with our previous games.

• Unknown: Empires are not aware of each other’s existence
• War: The empires are actively fighting
• Cold War: Default state, empires will defend themselves and fight in neutral territory
• Peace: Will no longer attack each other. Can also sign treaties and trade resources
• Alliance: Will join the empires together in a team that will share relationships with outside empires
  
  

These diplomatic states will be moved between using diplomatic treaties and declarations. Usually players can always declare war at each other, but going to peace or alliance will require certain technologies.

Reputation System

Another thing we wish to emphasize in the game system is how certain diplomatic actions has natural ‘reactions’. For example, being allied and being called in to assist in a war and then declining is a breach of trust.

The reputation system's goal is to take these ‘natural reactions’ and represent as badges that people earn (both positive and negative) that will affect some parameters of Diplomacy. For example, a badge ‘Untrustworthy’ could double the cost of peace and alliance treaties. Or ‘Warmonger’ generally increases the cost of all diplomatic actions.

These will then also be related to how an AI will react to empires.

Alliances

Alliances will function similar to the original Endless Space, whereby signing an Alliance will put the empires into shared relationships with other empires. This time around, the Alliance will be namable and will show up in declarations.

Any member of the Alliance can enact a treaty or declaration that will change the Alliance relations, but each member is free to decline that treaty/declaration and leave the Alliance if they are unhappy with the decision made. If several empires decline, they will automatically form a separate Alliance.

To reduce the ‘conflicts’ generated upon anyone being able to enact any treaty/declaration: Each member can define a sort of ‘VETO’ beforehand. The VETO is setting an ‘Attitude’ toward a non-alliance empire, such as ‘Aggressive’ which will restrict the option of going to peace/alliance with that member or conversely ‘Friendly’ which will restrict going to war with the empire in question.

We hope this will also encourage social play if there are opposing opinions in the Alliance, such as asking people to change their VETO or leaving due to the Alliance restricting their options.

War Exhaustion & Diplomatic Pressure

War Exhaustion and Diplomatic Pressure are two new systems that are closely related. The goal of these systems are to define who is ‘exerting diplomatic pressure’ on the other side at any given time and put that into a game system that allows the player in game terms to apply that pressure by making ‘demands’.

In short this means each pair of empires have a single bar between each other other that goes from -100 to 100, whereby the winning side will be able to exert demands that cannot be directly refused.

Both of these systems function as trends. That is, through either winning battles or through influence, each empire generates a value, this value is subtracted from each other empire’s value. This generates the trend that computes the the bar position at the end of each turn.

War Exhaustion

A ‘War Exhaustion’ system has been implemented to restrict the length and scope of wars. In terms of lore, this should be considered the populations desire to leave or stay in long wars.

The system works by winning battles and taking systems will push a ‘war exhaustion’ bar that exists between the two empires. On each side of the bar, certain ‘truce thresholds’ exist at which both the winning or losing empire can use ‘demands’ to force truce by either demanding or giving up resources depending on whether the empire is winning or losing.

This system includes the Alliance system, such that all members are considered in a single war exhaustion bar, as well as the resources gained from winning will be split according to each empires contribution to the war.

In short, both sides of the conflict always has an ‘out’ to avoid being completely eliminated in a single war. Several wars will be required for elimination of an empire, which is the desired outcome.

Diplomatic Pressure

Diplomatic system fills the role of the ‘War Exhaustion’ system, but while two empires are not at war. Generating Influence is transformed into ‘Diplomatic Pressure’. This Diplomatic Pressure will push the ‘Pressure bar’ between each pair of empires, whereby the winning side can ‘make demands’.

Note that any ‘accepted treaty’ between two empires will push the bar back towards 0. This is to incentivize players cooperating and making deals as opposed to letting the demands go through. This also naturally means that the empire generating the most pressure naturally has more ‘bargaining power’.

A demand in simple terms is a diplomatic deal initiated by the "winner" of the influence power-play where they ask resources or other things of the ‘losing player’ in exchange of "pressure reduction", which reset the Diplomatic Pressure between the two Empires. The "losing player" can either accept this deal or decline which automatically declares war against the demanding empire.

The ‘Pressure’ value will be modified by relationships (such as having active peace treaties and allies will increase an empires ‘Pressure’ output) and treaties. But overall it will be an ‘expression’ of Influence generation.

Note that Influence is tied to the happiness of populations as well. Being unhappy will stop influence generation by a large margin.

Premade Teams

So after 2 games of asking for this, we’ve committed to including the premade team feature in the release of the game. Premade teams in general terms is a forced alliance between a group of empires that are allied from the start of the game and cannot break that Alliance. The general treaties involved in Alliance, such as vision sharing and such is also a part of this.

This is a ‘new game’ setting, so it is not a treaty that can be enacted in the middle of a game.

These will have shared victory conditions as well, which will be scaled versions of existing victory conditions. No new ones will be added for this.

We also plan to have a number of additional options to support the feature such as:

• Possibility of sharing the tech tree
• Single empire elimination eliminates entire premade team
• Have home system positions take teams into account
  
  

Hopefully this is what was meant when people asked for premade teams!

That’s it for the Diplomacy. We’re looking forward to hear you feedback. We are aware that we are stepping in the direction of ‘gamifying’ Diplomacy a little more, which can cause immersion issues, but we hope that the system will generate sufficiently interesting gameplay that will make it entirely worth it.

To address the person who will say ‘How will the AI deal with this?’. The fact is, that the more ‘game systems’ are involved, the easier it is to find ‘optimal strategies’ as opposed to 'acting like a human'. We believe that these systems will assist us in making the AI take predictable, non-stupid decisions and not make it worse.

HOW'S THE EARLY ACCESS VERSION ON THIS ASPECT?

Reputation system

• The early Access version of the game doesn't feature a reputation system

Alliances

• Alliances and positive diplomacy in general isn't in the Early Access version of the game

Premade teams

• In the Early Access version of the game, there is no premade teams feature

adelahaye wrote:

War Exhaustion and Diplomatic Pressure are two new systems that are closely related.... In terms of lore, this should be considered the populations desire to leave or stay in long wars.

I think that's the fundamental mistake that has given rise to all the problems with force truce. War exhaustion is not a diplomatic problem. It is not a result of external pressures, it is generated internally within a society as resources are expended and populations lose the will to fight. When one side is exhausted they may sue for peace (if losing) or offer to accept a conditional surrender (if winning). If neither side has the upper hand then a ceasefire or armistice may be mutually agreed. In all cases, an agreement may be refused and the war continues to its bitter end: an unconditional surrender by the loser.

If one considers diplomacy an appeal to reason, then war is an appeal to physics. That is, all your words are meaningless compared to the kinetic energy of my bullets. A forced truce is therefore, perhaps, an appeal to god? In the absence of a galactic UN then it's either god or Jedi who enforce the forced truce. A population sufficiently roused by propaganda or natural inclination may prefer to fight to the last man (or hungry insectoid) rather than give up because their opponent said, "Pretty please?"

The populations desire to end the war has to be approached in a different way. Increased disapproval, reduced output, diminished combat effectiveness. A few simple debuffs instead, and this whole problem goes away.

Several wars will be required for elimination of an empire, which is the desired outcome.

This is not in itself a bad thing, it may make games more interesting in the long term. However, there are definitely pitfalls. On the one hand we have the typical 4X with the snowball effect and unstoppable late game wars. On the other hand we have the new genre of "space grind strategy" as invented by Stellaris, where wars repeat over and over again until empires succumb to death by a thousand nibbles. Please ensure Endless Space 2 makes the right choice :)

Most of the time in 4x games diplomacy seems to be the weakest mechanic.... why would you spend time with it when ultimately defeating everybody is so much easier. 

Or you can go the Gal civ route and make it so that the most boring and easy to get victory is a diplomatic on.. since the low amount of races in every given game will eventually bow down to the massive power of your alliance. 

I have to admit that Stellaris is the first game where I actually pay diplomacy just a little bit of notice rather than the normal "take over everything". There are several mechanics in place which makes the game interesting. Like how if you just keep taking land eventually you will have so huge a negative relations modifier that everybody is bound to hate you. But also more interesting ones like forces from outside the galaxy that invade, and bring positive relations modifiers to bring people together in alliances. 

Like stated above.. the problem with alliances in strategy games with low amounts of players is that either

A: The alliance becomes so strong really early, that you effectively already won the game... there is no point in going to end game, because you already won either way. 

B: Alliances are so hard to come by since required modifiers are so steep that it almost only ever happen if you ally with weak players who are useless. 

My hopes for ES2 is that we will get some more interesting minor faction relations... perhaps even akin to what the civilization games are doing. There the minor factions are a critical part of the game, and it is not per se best to always take them over. 

It would also be nice to see the political system being mixed with the diplomatic.... so once your empire grows it will be harder to prevent separatists from making their own splinter empires when they do not get their way in the senate. 

But I guess we will have to see what they come up with. At the very least I just hope for a system where you cant just ignore the enemy for most of the game... and where interaction actually matters (none of that annoying stuff where making deals with the AI always means you get prices that are just plain stealing)

Rather than having the Pressure mechanic reduce to an asset-grab, please consider coupling it to the Political system instead.  Let the winner of the Influence power-play publicly or secretly affect the politics (and thus policies) of the losing empire.

A good proposal! I guess it will be implemented as a faction trait though. But Diplomatic pressure needs some amendments anyway.

Thanks for the answer, so right now, what can I do about it? Is there no mechanics implemented yet?

PandaInSpace wrote:

Thanks for the answer, so right now, what can I do about it? Is there no mechanics implemented yet?

Well at the moment you do not get to decide if you want to accept the truce or not. As soon as a party of the war is winning or loosing by sufficiently much they get the option to force a truce on there opponent without the opponent being able to do anything about it. The AI always uses this option when available as it is the only way it can end wars in the current implementation of the game. 

You cannot really avoid it but you can see when it is about to be triggered. In the diplomacy screen there is a bar between you and the different other factions in game. If you are at war with one it fills up. Red means you are loosing, blue means you are winning. If either is filled up the opponent (AI) or you can use the forced truce option.

You cannot declare war when the truce was forced upon you, so it is not possible to break it.

I think I read somewhere on the forum that the one forcing the truce will be able to declare war again though or at least that the AI can. Meaning if you make the AI declare war on you again by making some ludicrous demands the war will commence. Have not tried that myself though.

Ok, thanks for the answers mate :)

Rationale

Firstly, Diplomacy is one of the systems of Endless Space 2 that is getting the biggest set of changes from our previous games. There are a couple of large reasons that were the cause of these changes:

• Diplomacy should be a mandatory system. Player should not be able to ignore it
• The Diplomatic system should limit the effectiveness of wars
• Players should have a real sense of teamplay through the diplomatic system
• Diplomacy should reinforce positive relations between empires, but it should also be possible to use this as an offense
• Diplomacy should be equally important to warfare 

It's great you're trying to make diplomacy more important in the game, but I'm afraid that it's currently locked behind too many technologies, especially in Era 2. Also, minor factions tend to get assimilated very quickly during the game, which limits the kind of gameplay you expect from a diplomat race.

Are there other features besides setting up trade routes that will encourage players to be at peace without necessarily make frequent use of advanced treaties to build relations? According to your post, one should be able to participate in diplomacy (or at least not be incapable of participating) without researching treaties.

Will there be more incentive to make peace and collaborate with other empires, besides trades routes (as these require many techs to be profitable)? For example, special nodes (like asteroid fields) one could share with a partner, be it a deep-space trading port that acts as a Trading Company Subsidiary or an ancient Endless observatory granting research bonus to faction with access to it. A current example would be sharing the info provided by owning the Academy.

Are there future plans to make minor civilizations more resilient to permanent assimilation? Maybe make them useful in a different fashion when they're allied to your empire rather than assimilated or by allowing them to keep an semi-independent status at first (like Civ VI city-states).

Why is my empire, with 80% Militarist representatives, taking a -20 happiness hit for ignoring a truce?  This makes zero sense at all.  The pacifists are only 5%.  We should be eager for more war, not eager for a cease fire.