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Victoria 3 - Dev Diary #19 - Relations and Infamy

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Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 dev diary! This one is going to be a little bit broad, as we want to go through the fundamental mechanics of Diplomacy before moving on to more specific topics. Today, the mechanics we’ll be going over are Relations, Infamy and Interests, so let’s get to them one at a time, shall we?

Starting out with Relations, this is a value on a scale between -100 and +100 that determines the overall diplomatic standing between two countries, similar to relations/opinion in games such as Europa Universalis and Stellaris. The key difference between Relations here and in those games is that in Victoria 3 relations are bilateral, meaning that while in Europa Universalis France can have a relations of -100 with Prussia while Prussia has a relations of +100 with France, in Victoria 3 these two countries will always have the same Relations score towards each other.

There’s a few reasons for this change, such as making it more clear exactly where two countries stand with each other, but the most important is that we want Relations to be a mechanic with significance and mechanical effects not just for AI countries but also for the player, and even in multiplayer. Your relation number will translate into a relations level, and the different relations levels are as follows (from highest to lowest): Warm (80-100), Amiable (50-79), Cordial (20-49), Neutral (-19 to 19), Poor (-20 to -49), Cold (-50 to -79), Hostile (-80 to -100).

Your relationship with the Great Powers will be especially important, as they are the ones with the global reach to potentially affect you no matter where your country is located
Country List.png

All of these have an impact on the AI’s decision-making in terms of which diplomatic proposals it will accept, which side it will want to join in diplomatic plays, and so on, but besides that there are also limitations on what actions you can take against another country based on your mutual Relations. For example, a relations level of Cordial or above acts as a non-aggression pact: It isn’t possible to start most Diplomatic Plays against a country with which you have that relation level without first acting to reduce said relations. On the flip side, signing and maintaining a Customs Union with a country requires you to be at or above Cordial relations, and there are other actions that cannot be taken unless relations are at other certain negative or positive thresholds.

So, how do you raise and lower relations? The primary way is through the Improve Relations and Damage Relations ongoing diplomatic actions (more on those next week), but there’s many other ways in which relations can be increased or decreased, including various events, Diplomatic Incidents (see the section on Infamy below) and the Expel Diplomats diplomatic action (which we’ll also go over in detail next week), which is a way in which one country can act to prevent another from cozying up to them relations-wise, though at the cost of gaining Infamy.

Here, France finds itself with few friends in Europe - the only other Great Power they have decent relations with is Austria, and it seems like it may not stay that way...
Diplomatic Relations Map Alt.png

That covers Relations, so let’s move on to Infamy. This is a system we have previously talked about a little under the name of Threat, implying that it works similarly to Aggressive Expansion in Europa Universalis, but is actually something we have since redesigned following tester feedback, as the very localized effects of Threat/Aggressive Expansion did not feel appropriate to the far more globalized Victorian era. The result is something that could be described as a hybrid between older Infamy (or ‘Badboy’ as those of you who have been around Paradox GSGs for a long time might recall) systems and the newer, more localized systems.

In Victoria 3, a country has an Infamy value that starts at 0 and can increase to… well, anything, as there’s no upper cap on it. As a country’s Infamy increases, other countries will become more wary, resulting in various diplomatic penalties for the infamous country.If Infamy exceeds the Pariah threshold (which is currently set to 100) the country becomes a potential target for a special Contain Threat diplomatic play where the Great Powers step in to ‘restore order’. Infamy decays slowly over time, and its rate of decay can be increased if the country has a large amount of unallocated Influence capacity, representing that capacity being put to use trying to salvage the country’s global reputation instead.

After making some aggressive moves against its neighbors, Bolivia’s infamy has increased to the point where they will start feeling some diplomatic effects - though it’s not yet too bad
Bolivia Infamy.png

So far this should probably sound very familiar to anyone who has played Victoria 2, but the key difference between Victoria 3 and its predecessor here is the Diplomatic Incident mechanic tied to Infamy. In the vast majority of cases, any action a country takes (for example demanding land in a Diplomatic Play or violating a neutral country’s sovereignty during war) that increases Infamy will also create a Diplomatic Incident localized at a particular Strategic Region (more on that below) on the map.

For example, starting a Diplomatic Play to demand a colony in West Africa will result in a Diplomatic Incident occurring there. Whenever a Diplomatic Incident happens, the country that caused it immediately suffers a penalty to their relations with all countries that have an Interest in the region, with the amount of Relations lost based on the amount of Infamy attached to the Incident in question.

Infamy in itself should be understood as a measure of how concerned the Great Powers are about a country, and as such, country Rank has an effect on how much Infamy a country gets when it commits a diplomatic transgression against another. Generally speaking, the lower the rank of the two countries involved, the less Infamy will be generated, as the Great Powers care a lot more about actions taken by and against other Great Powers than they do over two Minor Powers being engaged in a local squabble.

The Sikh Empire’s ambitions on India are not going to go unnoticed by countries with an Interest there
2021_10_07_3.png

Ultimately, what this means is that Infamy doesn’t just have a global effect, and where you’re accruing it matters. If you keep taking actions that destabilize a particular Strategic Region, you can expect to quickly become very unpopular with both the locals and any outside powers that have taken an Interest in it.

By now, I’ve said the word Interest a whole bunch of times, so it’s probably time to finally explain what they are. To do that though, I first have to explain the concept of Strategic Regions. A Strategic Region is a large predetermined geographic area consisting of a number of State Regions, with the 715 State Regions of the current internal build divided into a total of 49 Strategic Regions.

A look at the Strategic Regions of Europe - do note that as with all parts of the map, this may not be how it looks on release!
Strategic Regions.png

Interests is, put simply, a mechanic that determines whether or not a country has a stake in a particular Strategic Region and plays into numerous different mechanics such as Diplomatic Plays, Colonization and the aforementioned Diplomatic Incidents. A country can gain an Interest in a region in one of two ways: either automatically by having a geographical presence there (owning land or controlling subject nations in the region) or by using a Declared Interest.

A Declared Interest is a country quite simply saying that, regardless of their lack of a geographic presence, a Strategic Region is still of importance to them, perhaps because they plan to colonize it, or because they want to prevent a hated rival from expanding into it. A country can Declare an Interest in any region that is either adjacent to a region where they already have an Interest, or which they can reach through the support of their naval supply network (more on that later!). The number of Declared Interests that is available to a country depends on their Rank - a Great Power can choose to have its fingers in a great many pies, while an Insignificant Power is limited to acting only in regions where they already have land.

You might want to declare an Interest in Persia for numerous reasons, such as checking Russian or British aggression in the region… or as a precursor to seizing colonies there for yourself
Declare Interest.png

Interests do not provide any inherent benefit to a country besides the ability to throw their weight around in a Strategic Region, and can actually be a bit of a double-edged sword in that a country with Interests all over the world may get dragged into a lot of local conflicts. Ultimately, Interests are our attempt to simulate such historical occurrences as why certain parts of the world simply got a lot more attention from the Great Powers than others at particular points during the century that Victoria 3 covers, and to make nations act and care about things in a way that makes sense according to their national self-interest.

Right then, that’s all for today! Join me again next week as I continue to write lots of words about diplomatic things, this time on the topic of Diplomatic Actions!
 
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This comment is reserved by the Community Team for gathering Dev Responses in, for ease of reading.

blobmaneatsme said:
what is attitude and how does it differ from relations?
Relations measures the two countries' official diplomatic stance towards one another. You can actively change this through diplomatic actions, event options, etcetera and it affects what actions you can take towards a country, whether AI or human.
Attitude on the other hand is specifically about the AI and signals broadly how you might expect it to act towards you. It's based on a large number of factors, including Relations, but only impacts what decisions the AI makes in cases where it has a choice.

Revolution 11 said:
1. Does Prestige affect how fast Infamy burns away?
2. Does Great Power rank (or any of the nation ranks for that matter) affect Infamy gain and passive loss?
Power ranking of the countries involved in the incident affect how much Infamy you gain. The Infamy decay rate is based on excess Influence.

More information on Infamy when we discuss Diplomatic Plays!

.Del said:
Wouldn't it make more sense to have 'Warm' be where 'Amicable' is in the 50 to 79 region and have the 80 to 100 region be 'Friendly' instead since 'Cold' is used for the -50 to -79 region on the other end of the spectrum?
Labels aren't final by any means, and probably will change before release.

blobmaneatsme said:
what is attitude and how does it differ from relations?
Attitude is how the AI views another country and will be the subject of a later dev diary.

Panthera_Tigris said:
2021_10_07_3.png



Sigh, there go any dreams of ever liberating India :_( I think colonial states should generate far far less infamy. 62 infamy is what you would probably get for taking London lol.
Click to expand...

As always, non final numbers are non final and you probably shouldn't draw any conclusions of what is and is not possible from numbers shown at the current stage of development.

MohawkWolfo98 said:
Could you elaborate further on this portion please? How can we violate a neutral nation's sovereignty during war? That seems rather interesting.
This is something we'll get more into when we talk about war.

Kanaric said:
If it was similar to the old system but doing bad actions against minors and demanding smaller states gave less infamy it's fine.

I hope it's not the same infamy generation for a state in russia that has 5 million people to a state that has 400k. Value should be important
Of course, a flat penalty is archaic :)

peterson72 said:
When is the next monthly up date video?
Very soon! ;)
 
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It's great that you're trying to model the closer attention to the specificity of Great Power interests. I must ask, why is France split into two Strategic Regions? Are there any countries in Northern France that could pose a threat?

I think top level of positive relations should be renamed: warm doesn't really convey the image of close relations as well as "Cordial" and "Friendly" did in Vic2
 
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Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 dev diary! This one is going to be a little bit broad, as we want to go through the fundamental mechanics of Diplomacy before moving on to more specific topics. Today, the mechanics we’ll be going over are Relations, Infamy and Interests, so let’s get to them one at a time, shall we?

Starting out with Relations, this is a value on a scale between -100 and +100 that determines the overall diplomatic standing between two countries, similar to relations/opinion in games such as Europa Universalis and Stellaris. The key difference between Relations here and in those games is that in Victoria 3 relations are bilateral, meaning that while in Europa Universalis France can have a relations of -100 with Prussia while Prussia has a relations of +100 with France, in Victoria 3 these two countries will always have the same Relations score towards each other.

There’s a few reasons for this change, such as making it more clear exactly where two countries stand with each other, but the most important is that we want Relations to be a mechanic with significance and mechanical effects not just for AI countries but also for the player, and even in multiplayer. Your relation number will translate into a relations level, and the different relations levels are as follows (from highest to lowest): Warm (80-100), Amiable (50-79), Cordial (20-49), Neutral (-19 to 19), Poor (-20 to -49), Cold (-50 to -79), Hostile (-80 to -100).

Your relationship with the Great Powers will be especially important, as they are the ones with the global reach to potentially affect you no matter where your country is located
View attachment 764788

All of these have an impact on the AI’s decision-making in terms of which diplomatic proposals it will accept, which side it will want to join in diplomatic plays, and so on, but besides that there are also limitations on what actions you can take against another country based on your mutual Relations. For example, a relations level of Cordial or above acts as a non-aggression pact: It isn’t possible to start most Diplomatic Plays against a country with which you have that relation level without first acting to reduce said relations. On the flip side, signing and maintaining a Customs Union with a country requires you to be at or above Cordial relations, and there are other actions that cannot be taken unless relations are at other certain negative or positive thresholds.

So, how do you raise and lower relations? The primary way is through the Improve Relations and Damage Relations ongoing diplomatic actions (more on those next week), but there’s many other ways in which relations can be increased or decreased, including various events, Diplomatic Incidents (see the section on Infamy below) and the Expel Diplomats diplomatic action (which we’ll also go over in detail next week), which is a way in which one country can act to prevent another from cozying up to them relations-wise, though at the cost of gaining Infamy.

Here, France finds itself with few friends in Europe - the only other Great Power they have decent relations with is Austria, and it seems like it may not stay that way...
View attachment 764789

That covers Relations, so let’s move on to Infamy. This is a system we have previously talked about a little under the name of Threat, implying that it works similarly to Aggressive Expansion in Europa Universalis, but is actually something we have since redesigned following tester feedback, as the very localized effects of Threat/Aggressive Expansion did not feel appropriate to the far more globalized Victorian era. The result is something that could be described as a hybrid between older Infamy (or ‘Badboy’ as those of you who have been around Paradox GSGs for a long time might recall) systems and the newer, more localized systems.

In Victoria 3, a country has an Infamy value that starts at 0 and can increase to… well, anything, as there’s no upper cap on it. As a country’s Infamy increases, other countries will become more wary, resulting in various diplomatic penalties for the infamous country.If Infamy exceeds the Pariah threshold (which is currently set to 100) the country becomes a potential target for a special Contain Threat diplomatic play where the Great Powers step in to ‘restore order’. Infamy decays slowly over time, and its rate of decay can be increased if the country has a large amount of unallocated Influence capacity, representing that capacity being put to use trying to salvage the country’s global reputation instead.

After making some aggressive moves against its neighbors, Bolivia’s infamy has increased to the point where they will start feeling some diplomatic effects - though it’s not yet too bad
View attachment 764790
So far this should probably sound very familiar to anyone who has played Victoria 2, but the key difference between Victoria 3 and its predecessor here is the Diplomatic Incident mechanic tied to Infamy. In the vast majority of cases, any action a country takes (for example demanding land in a Diplomatic Play or violating a neutral country’s sovereignty during war) that increases Infamy will also create a Diplomatic Incident localized at a particular Strategic Region (more on that below) on the map.

For example, starting a Diplomatic Play to demand a colony in West Africa will result in a Diplomatic Incident occurring there. Whenever a Diplomatic Incident happens, the country that caused it immediately suffers a penalty to their relations with all countries that have an Interest in the region, with the amount of Relations lost based on the amount of Infamy attached to the Incident in question.

Infamy in itself should be understood as a measure of how concerned the Great Powers are about a country, and as such, country Rank has an effect on how much Infamy a country gets when it commits a diplomatic transgression against another. Generally speaking, the lower the rank of the two countries involved, the less Infamy will be generated, as the Great Powers care a lot more about actions taken by and against other Great Powers than they do over two Minor Powers being engaged in a local squabble.

The Sikh Empire’s ambitions on India are not going to go unnoticed by countries with an Interest there
View attachment 764791
Ultimately, what this means is that Infamy doesn’t just have a global effect, and where you’re accruing it matters. If you keep taking actions that destabilize a particular Strategic Region, you can expect to quickly become very unpopular with both the locals and any outside powers that have taken an Interest in it.

By now, I’ve said the word Interest a whole bunch of times, so it’s probably time to finally explain what they are. To do that though, I first have to explain the concept of Strategic Regions. A Strategic Region is a large predetermined geographic area consisting of a number of State Regions, with the 715 State Regions of the current internal build divided into a total of 49 Strategic Regions.

A look at the Strategic Regions of Europe - do note that as with all parts of the map, this may not be how it looks on release!
View attachment 764792

Interests is, put simply, a mechanic that determines whether or not a country has a stake in a particular Strategic Region and plays into numerous different mechanics such as Diplomatic Plays, Colonization and the aforementioned Diplomatic Incidents. A country can gain an Interest in a region in one of two ways: either automatically by having a geographical presence there (owning land or controlling subject nations in the region) or by using a Declared Interest.

A Declared Interest is a country quite simply saying that, regardless of their lack of a geographic presence, a Strategic Region is still of importance to them, perhaps because they plan to colonize it, or because they want to prevent a hated rival from expanding into it. A country can Declare an Interest in any region that is either adjacent to a region where they already have an Interest, or which they can reach through the support of their naval supply network (more on that later!). The number of Declared Interests that is available to a country depends on their Rank - a Great Power can choose to have its fingers in a great many pies, while an Insignificant Power is limited to acting only in regions where they already have land.

You might want to declare an Interest in Persia for numerous reasons, such as checking Russian or British aggression in the region… or as a precursor to seizing colonies there for yourself
View attachment 764794
Interests do not provide any inherent benefit to a country besides the ability to throw their weight around in a Strategic Region, and can actually be a bit of a double-edged sword in that a country with Interests all over the world may get dragged into a lot of local conflicts. Ultimately, Interests are our attempt to simulate such historical occurrences as why certain parts of the world simply got a lot more attention from the Great Powers than others at particular points during the century that Victoria 3 covers, and to make nations act and care about things in a way that makes sense according to their national self-interest.

Right then, that’s all for today! Join me again next week as I continue to write lots of words about diplomatic things, this time on the topic of Diplomatic Actions!

This is all wonderful and I really hope you will keep going this path. Truly immersive, dynamic, historical world.

A question about dyplomatic incident: are Great Powers able to react to any diplomatic incident that happens within their Interests? What does this incident do apart from lowering relations?

Also, relations having actual significance is a great step. I am dying to know what are the material consequences of other levels of relations (like cordial equals non aggression, what is the consequence of cold etc.)
 
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This was a lovely Dev Diary, however some region names feel a bit weird, like the Baltic covers Finland and Scandinavia as well, or how the name for the region in Hungary and Romania is Danubia, it feel weird, I understand these names will likely change, but it just feels weird.
If I were to change any other ones, the borders between North and South France (which could be renamed to Occitania) and North and South Russia (which could be renamed to Ruthenia) are a bit off-looking.
 
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oh, there are already testers ? big_eyes*
 
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Your relation number will translate into a relations level, and the different relations levels are as follows (from highest to lowest): Warm (80-100), Amiable (50-79), Cordial (20-49), Neutral (-19 to 19), Poor (-20 to -49), Cold (-50 to -79), Hostile (-80 to -100).​
If "warm" is the highest positive, shouldn't "cold" be the lowest negative? Personally I feel like "amiable" and "warm" should switch place.

On another note, "cordial" and "amiable" are tricky words to quantify, especially for someone who isn't a native English speaker, so perhaps "Fantastic" and "Good" could replace them? "Good" feels like a fitting antonym to "Poor", and "Fantastic" is undoubtedly as good as it gets.

Anyhow, interesting stuff in this DD!
 
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Hello and welcome to another Victoria 3 dev diary! This one is going to be a little bit broad, as we want to go through the fundamental mechanics of Diplomacy before moving on to more specific topics. Today, the mechanics we’ll be going over are Relations, Infamy and Interests, so let’s get to them one at a time, shall we?

Starting out with Relations, this is a value on a scale between -100 and +100 that determines the overall diplomatic standing between two countries, similar to relations/opinion in games such as Europa Universalis and Stellaris. The key difference between Relations here and in those games is that in Victoria 3 relations are bilateral, meaning that while in Europa Universalis France can have a relations of -100 with Prussia while Prussia has a relations of +100 with France, in Victoria 3 these two countries will always have the same Relations score towards each other.

There’s a few reasons for this change, such as making it more clear exactly where two countries stand with each other, but the most important is that we want Relations to be a mechanic with significance and mechanical effects not just for AI countries but also for the player, and even in multiplayer. Your relation number will translate into a relations level, and the different relations levels are as follows (from highest to lowest): Warm (80-100), Amiable (50-79), Cordial (20-49), Neutral (-19 to 19), Poor (-20 to -49), Cold (-50 to -79), Hostile (-80 to -100).

Your relationship with the Great Powers will be especially important, as they are the ones with the global reach to potentially affect you no matter where your country is located
View attachment 764788

All of these have an impact on the AI’s decision-making in terms of which diplomatic proposals it will accept, which side it will want to join in diplomatic plays, and so on, but besides that there are also limitations on what actions you can take against another country based on your mutual Relations. For example, a relations level of Cordial or above acts as a non-aggression pact: It isn’t possible to start most Diplomatic Plays against a country with which you have that relation level without first acting to reduce said relations. On the flip side, signing and maintaining a Customs Union with a country requires you to be at or above Cordial relations, and there are other actions that cannot be taken unless relations are at other certain negative or positive thresholds.

So, how do you raise and lower relations? The primary way is through the Improve Relations and Damage Relations ongoing diplomatic actions (more on those next week), but there’s many other ways in which relations can be increased or decreased, including various events, Diplomatic Incidents (see the section on Infamy below) and the Expel Diplomats diplomatic action (which we’ll also go over in detail next week), which is a way in which one country can act to prevent another from cozying up to them relations-wise, though at the cost of gaining Infamy.

Here, France finds itself with few friends in Europe - the only other Great Power they have decent relations with is Austria, and it seems like it may not stay that way...
View attachment 764789

That covers Relations, so let’s move on to Infamy. This is a system we have previously talked about a little under the name of Threat, implying that it works similarly to Aggressive Expansion in Europa Universalis, but is actually something we have since redesigned following tester feedback, as the very localized effects of Threat/Aggressive Expansion did not feel appropriate to the far more globalized Victorian era. The result is something that could be described as a hybrid between older Infamy (or ‘Badboy’ as those of you who have been around Paradox GSGs for a long time might recall) systems and the newer, more localized systems.

In Victoria 3, a country has an Infamy value that starts at 0 and can increase to… well, anything, as there’s no upper cap on it. As a country’s Infamy increases, other countries will become more wary, resulting in various diplomatic penalties for the infamous country.If Infamy exceeds the Pariah threshold (which is currently set to 100) the country becomes a potential target for a special Contain Threat diplomatic play where the Great Powers step in to ‘restore order’. Infamy decays slowly over time, and its rate of decay can be increased if the country has a large amount of unallocated Influence capacity, representing that capacity being put to use trying to salvage the country’s global reputation instead.

After making some aggressive moves against its neighbors, Bolivia’s infamy has increased to the point where they will start feeling some diplomatic effects - though it’s not yet too bad
View attachment 764790
So far this should probably sound very familiar to anyone who has played Victoria 2, but the key difference between Victoria 3 and its predecessor here is the Diplomatic Incident mechanic tied to Infamy. In the vast majority of cases, any action a country takes (for example demanding land in a Diplomatic Play or violating a neutral country’s sovereignty during war) that increases Infamy will also create a Diplomatic Incident localized at a particular Strategic Region (more on that below) on the map.

For example, starting a Diplomatic Play to demand a colony in West Africa will result in a Diplomatic Incident occurring there. Whenever a Diplomatic Incident happens, the country that caused it immediately suffers a penalty to their relations with all countries that have an Interest in the region, with the amount of Relations lost based on the amount of Infamy attached to the Incident in question.

Infamy in itself should be understood as a measure of how concerned the Great Powers are about a country, and as such, country Rank has an effect on how much Infamy a country gets when it commits a diplomatic transgression against another. Generally speaking, the lower the rank of the two countries involved, the less Infamy will be generated, as the Great Powers care a lot more about actions taken by and against other Great Powers than they do over two Minor Powers being engaged in a local squabble.

The Sikh Empire’s ambitions on India are not going to go unnoticed by countries with an Interest there
View attachment 764791
Ultimately, what this means is that Infamy doesn’t just have a global effect, and where you’re accruing it matters. If you keep taking actions that destabilize a particular Strategic Region, you can expect to quickly become very unpopular with both the locals and any outside powers that have taken an Interest in it.

By now, I’ve said the word Interest a whole bunch of times, so it’s probably time to finally explain what they are. To do that though, I first have to explain the concept of Strategic Regions. A Strategic Region is a large predetermined geographic area consisting of a number of State Regions, with the 715 State Regions of the current internal build divided into a total of 49 Strategic Regions.

A look at the Strategic Regions of Europe - do note that as with all parts of the map, this may not be how it looks on release!
View attachment 764792

Interests is, put simply, a mechanic that determines whether or not a country has a stake in a particular Strategic Region and plays into numerous different mechanics such as Diplomatic Plays, Colonization and the aforementioned Diplomatic Incidents. A country can gain an Interest in a region in one of two ways: either automatically by having a geographical presence there (owning land or controlling subject nations in the region) or by using a Declared Interest.

A Declared Interest is a country quite simply saying that, regardless of their lack of a geographic presence, a Strategic Region is still of importance to them, perhaps because they plan to colonize it, or because they want to prevent a hated rival from expanding into it. A country can Declare an Interest in any region that is either adjacent to a region where they already have an Interest, or which they can reach through the support of their naval supply network (more on that later!). The number of Declared Interests that is available to a country depends on their Rank - a Great Power can choose to have its fingers in a great many pies, while an Insignificant Power is limited to acting only in regions where they already have land.

You might want to declare an Interest in Persia for numerous reasons, such as checking Russian or British aggression in the region… or as a precursor to seizing colonies there for yourself
View attachment 764794
Interests do not provide any inherent benefit to a country besides the ability to throw their weight around in a Strategic Region, and can actually be a bit of a double-edged sword in that a country with Interests all over the world may get dragged into a lot of local conflicts. Ultimately, Interests are our attempt to simulate such historical occurrences as why certain parts of the world simply got a lot more attention from the Great Powers than others at particular points during the century that Victoria 3 covers, and to make nations act and care about things in a way that makes sense according to their national self-interest.

Right then, that’s all for today! Join me again next week as I continue to write lots of words about diplomatic things, this time on the topic of Diplomatic Actions!
This is just AWESOME. IMO best dev diary so far. Just one question: how is declaring interest related to ambition to colonize region that You mention? If I declare interest in the unrecognized country, is it the first step to puppet it?
 
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The interests system looks very... uhhh... interesting.

I'll see myself out...
 
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Is enemy of an enemy stuff taken into account? If someone does something that accrues infamy by acting against a rival of mine, do I have the option to support/legitimize those actions even if I'm not involved with that specific incident? Or maybe infamy increases but I receive a bonus to relations with that nation for "moving toward mutual goals"?
 
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One small nitpick I might have is the names of the Strategic Regions. I'd avoid political names wherever possible and focus on geographical ones.
Replace Poland to "European Great Plains" or "Central Europe", etc.
 
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Bolivia%20Infamy.png



Good stuff!!! Although, I would prefer showing the numerical value of the relation in place of or in addition to general terms like cold, antagonistic, amiable etc. Because I don't want to remember whether poor is better than cold etc. So maybe it could show: Cold (-11) without having to mouse over?
 
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