Diplomacy domino effect

With respect to diplomacy, you get a +1 influence if you have a treaty established with a faction. However, if the faction that you have a treaty with is at war with another faction (lets say Altar), there is no penalty between you and Altar.

Altar should be miffed that I have a treaty on the go with a faction they are at war with. There should be at least a -1 influence hit. But currently, Altar is indifferent to it.

I'm still a bit new at the game, so maybe these penalties emerge as I unlock more meaningful types of alliances? Or does diplomacy operate within bubbles that only have two-way exchanges - and no domino effects?

 

8,013 views 3 replies
Reply #1 Top

Diplomacy operates on a bare minimum of functionality, so you are right when you are saying that it is a two-way-exchange bubble. And even within that bubble there is a lot of erratic behaviour on the AI's side, which makes an alliance victory a chore rather than a meaningful option. The only real hard-coded algorithm seems to be that everyone will eventually declare war on you when you have a weaker military rating, regardless of any reasoning behind it or whether they can actually send some armies to attack you.

The thing is that diplomacy hasn't really been touched on since the inception of the game, because there were other rather big issues in the actual game design that had to be adressed. The developers have already acknowledged the poor state of the diplomacy system and it will (hopefully) be the main working point in the 1.5 update, as stated here: https://forums.elementalgame.com/447256/page/1/

Reply #2 Top

Thanks for the info. That link you shared was a great read. So refreshing to see a dev team act with transparency on their vision.

Reply #3 Top

Diplomacy is basic, but it's a bit harsh to say an alliance victory is not a meaningful option. I've quite recently chosen to get an alliance victory; if you've stayed friendly with one or two AI factions and have treaties with them, then it's fairly straightforward to become allies with them. Depending on the strength of their empire it may be quicker (not to say nicer) to ally with fri9endly factions to win rather than double-crossing them. I did this quite recently in my game, I was some distance off being able to complete one of the other victories but was able to get alliances with the one or two remaining AI factions.