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Stellaris Dev Diary #22 - Alliances and Federations

Greetings fellow gamers!

The topic for today is “Alliances and Federations”. Now, we have modelled alliances quite differently in most of our games. In Crusader Kings II, for example, alliances are bilateral, and allies are (since the last patch) automatically dragged into wars with no option of opting out and breaking the alliance. In Europa Universalis IV, alliances are also bilateral, but you can decline a “Call to Arms” at the cost of Prestige. In Stellaris, alliances are multilateral (they can have any number of members, not just two), and are thus more like NATO and less like the complex web of mutual agreements that existed at the outbreak of the Great War. This means that members of an alliance need a greater say in matters that concern the entire alliance, notable declarations of war (and some things are simply not allowed if you are an alliance member, such as guarantees of independence.)

If I am a member of an alliance in Stellaris and I want to declare a war, all the other members of the alliance need to approve. This ties back to what I talked about in the dev diary two weeks ago; if the goals I declare with the war are only beneficial to myself, my allies are of course less likely to approve. Therefore, I will likely have to dicker with the war goals in order to satisfy all of my allies (depending on their opinions and strategic concerns, naturally.) Of course, members can always just leave an alliance (while at peace) if it won’t permit them to achieve their goals.

stellaris_dev_diary_22_01_20160222_allience_opinion_of_war.jpg


If an alliance works well, however, the members can instead choose to deepen their cooperation and form a Federation. There are pros and cons to this choice. Alliances can be paralyzed by vetoes from the member states, but a Federation is governed by a single President who has the power to act with impunity. On the other hand, the presidency rotates between the member states, so for long periods members will have little control over their foreign policy. Federation members also share victory, which might be a problem for certain types of players…

Another interesting feature of Federations is that they have a special joint space navy in addition to the forces of the separate member empires. The Federation president gets to design these ship templates using all the best technologies of all the member empires. The president also gets to control these fleets, of course. As a rule of thumb, several fairly equally matched empires might want to form a Federation, especially in the face of aggressive, significantly larger neighbors, but it might not be the best idea for empires who are dominant in their own right. Of course, there is also an element of role-playing to the choice…

stellaris_dev_diary_22_02_20160222_federation.jpg


That’s all for now. Next week’s topic is Multiplayer!
 
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Looks like it is an interesting system!
 
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Will there only the be the option of rotating presidencies, or are other more interactive systems of selecting the next presidents in federations possible?
 
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Will there only the be the option of rotating presidencies, or are other more interactive systems of selecting the next presidents in federations possible?

For release, it will most likely be rotation only.
 
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Interesting development from EU4. Does this mean that an alliance or federation member cannot declare an offensive war on their own without breaking the alliance first? What happens in defensive ways, do all members have to agree on the defensive side about war goals if it wins? Can't you opt out once the alliance is under attack?

Seems like a big commitment.
 
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I'm going to backstabbing these stupid aliens so bad! Traitorous mushrooms in space!
 
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This sounds awesome providing the AI won't do suicidal things as a federation leader. Also will the federation leader swap during wartime and if so do they become war leader or does the nation who declared as federation leader stay as the war leader?
 
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This looks cool.

When in a federation, if one member state grows sufficiently powerful is it possible to seize permanent contol and "inherit" the other states (kind of like how PUs work in EUIV, but a bit less passive)?
 
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"If I am a member of an alliance in Stellaris and I want to declare a war, all the other members of the alliance need to approve."

Then it's not like NATO. The US invades all sorts of countries without having to have support from every NATO member. For example, many European countries opposed the Iraq War. It seems wrong to me that such a limiting and unrealistic restriction should be in place.

Also I think that not even giving us the option to break our word and not help our ally - at a huge diplomatic cost, of course - is a bad thing. I didn't realise that CKII has now had such a silly rule introduced. It seems like a backwards step.
 
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Is there a limit to the siza of an alliance? Or could all species join one alliance or a federation even to usher an age of peace a win jointly?
 
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I noticed that there is an option to leave the federation you belong to in one of the screenshots. What would happen if, say, the presidential faction does this? Would it retain control of the federation's ships in a fait accompli? Or would control automatically revert to the federation's new president?

Would each faction in a federation get the highest techs from each of the members, or would those techs be temporary and limited to the federation president designing ships?
 
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Could xenophobic and imperialist races form a Federation and apply to presidency?

The presidency does not sounds like a democratic position, nor are federations democratic by default. Only a third of nations will be democracies, so certainly other types must be able to mix and match... Strange thing, the space Yeti Pope leading with the Octopusman Prime General-elect.
 
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