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Hello Everyone!
I’m Thom and part of the gameplay programming team at Triumph where I’m usually the person working on Player vs Player Diplomacy. Today I would like to discuss and show you some of the biggest changes we have made to the Diplomacy systems. All of these changes will be part of a free patch that we’ll give out on the 26th of May, along with the Invasions expansion. That’s in less than a week from now!
Diplomacy has been one of those ever evolving systems in the game just like the economy and AI systems. A lot of you have been discussing diplomacy here on the forums and have been sending us lots and lots of feedback which has been such a great help in guiding the changes that we make to the game! It’s really great to see so much love and insight about the game!
A couple of important aspects about diplomacy that we wanted to address in the free patch are that AI controlled commanders would often feel the same and lack depth and flavor. At the same time diplomacy has largely been a closed system which would make the AI’s behavior unpredictable or unreadable at times. That is why we have worked hard on addressing these issues and came up with the following big changes for diplomacy:
AI Personalities
AI controlled players now have a personality, which introduces a whole new way of interacting with them and gives you more agency in steering the relationship you have with them. These personalities consist of two traits:
AI players will speak out about their likes and dislikes which can reveal their personality.
However, you don’t know the personality of the AI players right from the start! Luckily there are multiple ways to discover them; Both can be discovered through infiltrating the other player or by sharing an intelligence sharing pact with them. However, you also discover the Preference trait by simply interacting with the other player by trading, complementing (or insulting) or denouncing them. You also discover the trait once you trigger one of their likes and dislikes if you like a bit of a gamble.
Once discovered, the traits will show you how they influence the AI and what things trigger this like or dislike. We wanted each AI to feel like a different person, who had to be treated in a different way in order to be befriended. Rather than playing against a group of identical puppets, you now feel like you're playing against a group of individuals who need to be understood and dealt with separately. You can still influence their opinion through the regular means but it’s always good to know the person you are dealing with!
Nyla doesn’t seem all that impressed with us at the moment.
Diplomacy Cleanup
You’ve likely seen this trade response before: “Unfortunately, I must decline your proposal as it does not align with my plans.”
No matter how much energy you would throw at the AI player, the numerous compliments you sent, they simply do not want to agree to that defensive pact. That is really annoying! Previously AI players would have their own agenda and would evaluate each player based on a number of factors (a lot of them invisible to the player), but only one of those factors was their opinion of the player. This would essentially close off a lot of the system and as such the player would not always know why the AI behaves the way they do or how to influence that behavior.
A thousand energy and still nothing! Argh!
That is why we reworked the AI planning system and have exposed all of these internal hidden factors as part of their opinion. Additionally, we have also made sure that this AI “plan” is much more reflective of the current situation by updating it more frequently and basing it almost entirely on their opinion of the player. The AI planning budget has also been reworked to be more flexible and more accurate towards the player. With these changes we want to make diplomacy more transparent and give the player more feedback on how they can influence the opinion of the AI player and eventually also the diplomatic state you share with them. The AI may still show you this message, but now, you know that it means they don’t like you enough to agree to a better diplomatic state.
Even though I ignored their claims, they are in need of another ally
and we share a common friend in Kleopesia which are now visible modifiers in the breakdown.
There is still hope for the relationship!
The Diplomacy Feedback System
Many of the issues in diplomacy came from readability of the system and from a lack of player agency. With this expansion we strive to solve these problems as best we can and another solution for this is the new feedback system. Sometimes the AI would send you messages to inform you about a situation or to express their diplomatic intent. However flavorful these messages could be, they would sometimes only give you a vague idea of their actual meaning.
That is why we’ve slightly altered some of the messages but we’ve also introduced a new system which will now add an extra bit of text to these messages to show their meaning or how you can deal with the situation. It will also notify you of any relation modifiers or casus belli being given to either you or the opposing player. For example, an AI would send you an insult because they are just that type of personality, it also gives you a Casus Belli for having been insulted, the new system will now tell you about that!
At least now we know we got 3 Casus Belli points out of it.
The Neglect System
With their newly gained personalities, AI players will want to stay in contact with players they like. If neither side of the relation has started interactions in a while and the relationship is quite positive, they will start to feel neglected. This starts off very minor at first but will grow over time. Completing a successful trade, achieving a new diplomatic state or sending a compliment will negate the neglect. We’ve introduced this system to engage players more in active diplomacy, similar to NPC factions giving quests and the occasional demand to keep the relationship up.
Minor Features and changes
Of course we’ve also been hard at work to address a lot of small issues, bugs and hilarious exploits in the system to improve the diplomatic experience and stability of the system. Your feedback and reports have been an enormous help in making these changes! There’s still a couple of more small but exciting changes however:
There is still more to come but you can discover all those diplomacy changes and more when the free patch launches next week on the 26th of May along with the new expansion!
I’m Thom and part of the gameplay programming team at Triumph where I’m usually the person working on Player vs Player Diplomacy. Today I would like to discuss and show you some of the biggest changes we have made to the Diplomacy systems. All of these changes will be part of a free patch that we’ll give out on the 26th of May, along with the Invasions expansion. That’s in less than a week from now!
Diplomacy has been one of those ever evolving systems in the game just like the economy and AI systems. A lot of you have been discussing diplomacy here on the forums and have been sending us lots and lots of feedback which has been such a great help in guiding the changes that we make to the game! It’s really great to see so much love and insight about the game!
A couple of important aspects about diplomacy that we wanted to address in the free patch are that AI controlled commanders would often feel the same and lack depth and flavor. At the same time diplomacy has largely been a closed system which would make the AI’s behavior unpredictable or unreadable at times. That is why we have worked hard on addressing these issues and came up with the following big changes for diplomacy:
AI Personalities
AI controlled players now have a personality, which introduces a whole new way of interacting with them and gives you more agency in steering the relationship you have with them. These personalities consist of two traits:
- The Strategy Trait
- The Preference Trait
AI players will speak out about their likes and dislikes which can reveal their personality.
However, you don’t know the personality of the AI players right from the start! Luckily there are multiple ways to discover them; Both can be discovered through infiltrating the other player or by sharing an intelligence sharing pact with them. However, you also discover the Preference trait by simply interacting with the other player by trading, complementing (or insulting) or denouncing them. You also discover the trait once you trigger one of their likes and dislikes if you like a bit of a gamble.
Once discovered, the traits will show you how they influence the AI and what things trigger this like or dislike. We wanted each AI to feel like a different person, who had to be treated in a different way in order to be befriended. Rather than playing against a group of identical puppets, you now feel like you're playing against a group of individuals who need to be understood and dealt with separately. You can still influence their opinion through the regular means but it’s always good to know the person you are dealing with!
Nyla doesn’t seem all that impressed with us at the moment.
Diplomacy Cleanup
You’ve likely seen this trade response before: “Unfortunately, I must decline your proposal as it does not align with my plans.”
No matter how much energy you would throw at the AI player, the numerous compliments you sent, they simply do not want to agree to that defensive pact. That is really annoying! Previously AI players would have their own agenda and would evaluate each player based on a number of factors (a lot of them invisible to the player), but only one of those factors was their opinion of the player. This would essentially close off a lot of the system and as such the player would not always know why the AI behaves the way they do or how to influence that behavior.
A thousand energy and still nothing! Argh!
That is why we reworked the AI planning system and have exposed all of these internal hidden factors as part of their opinion. Additionally, we have also made sure that this AI “plan” is much more reflective of the current situation by updating it more frequently and basing it almost entirely on their opinion of the player. The AI planning budget has also been reworked to be more flexible and more accurate towards the player. With these changes we want to make diplomacy more transparent and give the player more feedback on how they can influence the opinion of the AI player and eventually also the diplomatic state you share with them. The AI may still show you this message, but now, you know that it means they don’t like you enough to agree to a better diplomatic state.
Even though I ignored their claims, they are in need of another ally
and we share a common friend in Kleopesia which are now visible modifiers in the breakdown.
There is still hope for the relationship!
The Diplomacy Feedback System
Many of the issues in diplomacy came from readability of the system and from a lack of player agency. With this expansion we strive to solve these problems as best we can and another solution for this is the new feedback system. Sometimes the AI would send you messages to inform you about a situation or to express their diplomatic intent. However flavorful these messages could be, they would sometimes only give you a vague idea of their actual meaning.
That is why we’ve slightly altered some of the messages but we’ve also introduced a new system which will now add an extra bit of text to these messages to show their meaning or how you can deal with the situation. It will also notify you of any relation modifiers or casus belli being given to either you or the opposing player. For example, an AI would send you an insult because they are just that type of personality, it also gives you a Casus Belli for having been insulted, the new system will now tell you about that!
At least now we know we got 3 Casus Belli points out of it.
The Neglect System
With their newly gained personalities, AI players will want to stay in contact with players they like. If neither side of the relation has started interactions in a while and the relationship is quite positive, they will start to feel neglected. This starts off very minor at first but will grow over time. Completing a successful trade, achieving a new diplomatic state or sending a compliment will negate the neglect. We’ve introduced this system to engage players more in active diplomacy, similar to NPC factions giving quests and the occasional demand to keep the relationship up.
Minor Features and changes
Of course we’ve also been hard at work to address a lot of small issues, bugs and hilarious exploits in the system to improve the diplomatic experience and stability of the system. Your feedback and reports have been an enormous help in making these changes! There’s still a couple of more small but exciting changes however:
- Since the opinion of a human player does not have any direct gameplay consequences these are no longer visible in order to streamline the diplomatic interfaces.
- You can now also trade equipment from your Arsenal in negotiations.
- During team games and vassalized relations you can now trade treaties and resources per turn.
- You can now exceed the max influence (200) during your turn so you still have a chance to spend it before it is lost at the end of your turn. You’ve likely had it happen where you completed a quest but you had no storage for the influence reward, now you can still use that influence!
- When a vassalage is formed, all occupied structures will go to the overlord in the relationship to prevent players getting new sectors or colonies by surrendering as vassal after occupying these.
- AI players will now only threaten about war and declare war if they can actually launch an attack. This also includes a distance check as AIs may not be able to guarantee an attack if they are too far away.
There is still more to come but you can discover all those diplomacy changes and more when the free patch launches next week on the 26th of May along with the new expansion!
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