Diplomacy, Multiplayer Asymmetry and Design Philosophy

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Diplomatic opinions should also be reflected on warfare: people are willing to suffer more to strike at their hated enemy than their dearest friend but get really angry at being betrayed, so declaring war gets you the negative of your opinion towards you enemy as a bonus to your maximum war exhaustion while being attacked gets you its magnitude if negative or twice it if positive. Unrest should get similar bonuses/maluses.

Considering that Purifier types get -1000 opinion with practically everyone, this makes it rather difficult to limit the duration of wars with them.

I like the idea of working with the opinion system and giving it mechanical teeth, but I don't know about this one.
 
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Considering that Purifier types get -1000 opinion with practically everyone, this makes it rather difficult to limit the duration of wars with them.

I like the idea of working with the opinion system and giving it mechanical teeth, but I don't know about this one.

Could use something like a sigmoid function to convert opinion to war exhaustion? Or something of that sort?
 
that's as clear an exmaple of "gaming the system" as I ever seen, and should be an example of how not to design games so things like this would be necesary.
On the contrary - if this resource-trading takes time (as it would under @Alblaka's system) then what you have is entirely RP-worthy: Joe and Bill are doing a sort of Nixon-to-China thing where the leaders have a personal understanding but need their 'gamey' resource-trading to build trust between their bureaucracies, diplomatic corps, generals, and so on. Of course, if you have factions (and I mean actual active agents in your empire, not the current push-button influence dispensers - see here) who vehemently oppose this sort of thing, it could get more complicated...
 
One of the things I find weird, is that given the systems already in place, and some of the systems in previous games (like Europa Universalis series), is the complete lack of need to pay attention to the opinion of your population. This got somewhat remedied with the addition of 'political factions' in Stellaris, but population opinion of actions taken is still far too under-develeoped.

Imagine if the majority of your empire really liked that other empire because the 2 of you have always been best buddies with people traveling freely between the empires and settling amongst each other. You're about to do your ultimate backstab just so you can conquer some more systems, and your advisor tells you: "Um... You're sure you want to do that? You realize our population will have a hard time understanding why we suddenly start murdering people from the other empire..."
You wave the advisor away and order your fleets to jump into the undefended system and strike at their soft rear while their armies and fleets are tied up in defensive positions on the far side of the galaxy.
But something goes wrong...
Your income plummets, suddenly, as people are taking to the streets to voice their dissatisfaction with the war.
Several of your ships and ground forces seemingly dissapear (while pirate activity in nearby systems suddenly seem to get an influx of additional forces).
Some of your sector or planet governors openly oppose you and rebellious cries are suddenly heard.
Lead scientists suddenly dissapear from their labs (and re-appear at another empires science division).
Before you know it, the 'grand backstab' ended up hitting yourself and the cost of your decision turns out to be not merely some loss of lives and material in the forces lost to combat, but also an infrastructure you need to rebuild.

Of course, the above is more effectfull on some governments than on others, but regardless of government type, there should be effects that was due to reactions on your decisions.

As the old saying goes: Every action causes a reaction.

Strong agree to this! Internal politics needs a lot more depth. There's tons of potential. Between factions, sectors, leaders, ethics and government, there's lots of opportunity for exciting internal politicking. It just... doesn't happen. Personally, I ignore factions pretty much entirely and have never noticed any consequences.

But yes. A deeper, more impactful internal politics system could work very well in tandem with diplomacy. Wars get harder to declare against an empire your people love, deals get harder to make with an empire your people hate, and vice versa.
 
And, conversely, it could be made hard to stay out of wars with empires your people hate.

How would you people feel about an empire with democratic authority being outright forced into war without or even despite player input? I'd like it, but I'm not sure it'd be popular.
 
And, conversely, it could be made hard to stay out of wars with empires your people hate.

How would you people feel about an empire with democratic authority being outright forced into war without or even despite player input? I'd like it, but I'm not sure it'd be popular.

I think this is where the more complicated internal politics really become important. There are definitely times and places for hard caps and restrictions, but a lot of diplomacy should be about soft consequences. The game won't force you into a war, but the more your people hate the attacker and love the victim the harder it will get to govern your empire while staying neutral. Similarly, you can declare war on anyone, but your people will get steadily more ungovernable the longer you force them to fight a former friend and ally.

Honestly, this is imho one of the areas where Stellaris both disappoints and confuses me the most. They have all the basic pieces in place to do grand internal politicking. With sectors and leaders alone they have two space opera essentials. Larger than life heroes are a staple of the genre, as are cultural differences across a far-flung empire.

Leaders could and should have strong personalities that make a difference. Governors, fleet commanders, scientists, hopefully spies, all of them should bring their own stories to the table, with both story and strategic consequences. They should affect your options and change the state of play.

Same with sectors. The player should get to make real choices that shape both their strategic and cultural roles. It should feel like the difference between Core Worlds and Rim Worlds, with different sectors occupying different roles in your empire and economy, and with all of the potential tensions and conflicts that come from that.

Instead what we get are minor stat bumps here and there. This leader gives +5%, this faction gives +0.4 influence. The rest gets handled through pop-up events, but Stellaris often relies on events to paper over gameplay. A little window announcing that a political crisis isn't the same as discovering the Praxis Sector has rebelled and will join the current war against me, or trying to manage an empire where one sector is industrial and xenophobic and another is a bunch of peace loving hippies.
 
i don't know which planet you are coming from but to be honest in all games i played in stellaris (lately) there are only two multiplayer scenarios:

a ) the other empires are friendly. in this case, it is a chore to keep up the 30 years agreements, since you usually plan to be friends all game anyway. there is no microing in diplomatic tensions, something that even the old civ sometimes did better, with city states and resource trading, since resources were useful for expansion. in these cases i just whish diplomacy would make it possible - without forcing you to go the federation way - to just have a good friendly relationship with lots of trust, and agreements which have a minimum time and keep running until one side cancels it, and a bit of intrigue, cloak and dagger.

b) the other empire is not friendly, and its a pvp game. in this case, diplomacy is a joke in the other extreme: research agreements are the only thing you sometimes get. there is no upside for an empire to see another empire as an ally. except of course with premade teams, which shift everything into the unfair. there is simply no lucrative way to play an empire, that becomes more useful as a friend, with some mutual benefits, and some more color, the only way to play is to grow huge, and hope to be the biggest, completely rendering anything but a mineral income oriented no-diplomatic race to be viable.
you cant even ask another empire to open borders via trade either, which would be nice if such logical things would not need you to chat.

imho this is the biggest design problem atm. - in the initial stellaris releases, games were much more chaotic, federations often got formed out of need, guarantees and similar often led to huge complex wars, and being a tall empire focusing on a niche resource or technology income made you good friends with others. even when traditions arrived, they were a choice to be rushed, or just used as anyone would.
if i whish something changing with diplomacy and similar is exactly this, a changing ecosphere, where not every war is about killing the other empire completely, and there are more interesting things to do. even the trade deals have become boring!
 
imho this is the biggest design problem atm. - in the initial stellaris releases, games were much more chaotic, federations often got formed out of need, guarantees and similar often led to huge complex wars, and being a tall empire focusing on a niche resource or technology income made you good friends with others. even when traditions arrived, they were a choice to be rushed, or just used as anyone would.
if i whish something changing with diplomacy and similar is exactly this, a changing ecosphere, where not every war is about killing the other empire completely, and there are more interesting things to do. even the trade deals have become boring!

2.X has focused on incenting more limited wars and PDX has done good work in this direction.

As for shifting alliances of convenience, that's an easy fix. Alliances of convenience are based on mutual rivalry toward an enemy rather than mutual love. So, create a new type of Defensive Pact that has a lower "cost to acquire" but members will only be drawn into wars in each other's defense against enemies they mutually rival. Maybe it could just be directed against a single enemy, with the only condition being rivalry. We'll call these "Coalitions" in honor of EU4.

The other drawback to Coalitions is that they don't grant any trust gain, as a normal Defensive Pact or Federation does. And members would still be able to attack (and even rival) each other.

There's a lot more potential for enemies to exploit these with intrigue than with normal Pacts or Federations: getting neutral outsiders to attack and weaken members individually because the pact won't come to their aid in those circumstances, pushing members into war with each other at the right time etc.

@Alblaka envisioned something similar with "Defensive Coalitions", only this was a federation type rather than a new diplomatic agreement. In that case alliances would shift as the status of different "potential coalition foes" shifted with respect to coalition members (ie they would auto-target the 3 greatest threats to the majority of members). Members could still declare war on each other within the coalition, but it would hurt federal integrity (the factor that players must work to maintain in this system, rather than opinion).

Either suggestion offers better granularity than Federations and Defensive Pacts in their past and present state.
 
2.X has focused on incenting more limited wars and PDX has done good work in this direction.
actually, offensive play is now way stronger than it was; rushes dont put you back as much as they did in the past, and defensive play is now almost exclusive to offensive one. planets scale way more up so bigger the better, with some races having absolutely no drawbacks for that. some techs can already early put the favor to a specific empire, and early mineral income can heavily shift power, so most builds wont even have a chance.

you do not pay increasing upkeep, so a better economy and larger fleetsize will just as much faceroll as it did in the past, with the larger differences in technologies even carrying a larger weight.

there are no small border wars at all anymore. the blitzkrieg tactic of liberating a few planets from the 1.x series is gone, almost all wars - in pvp - are fought to the death. the surrender button is usually used a lot from people leaving a game, which can heavily shift power to an aggressive empire, which without surrender would not have gotten what they get. there are exceptions, where a defense actually succeeds and you can force peace, or even sometimes your defense can hold the storm, but usually those wars dont happen as much.

so yes, they say, they did a lot in that direction, and i agree that they tried. i actually hope the hyperlane revamp will actually increase options for defense. but ultimately the game is atm. if played with random people, just a knockoff griefing fest, where wars are just fought to make as many players leave as possible until victory for one player is predictable.

also since upkeep is expensive, if there is border tension, one spends even more time checking the fleet size of the enemy, and the lack of need to explore or gain diplomatic view of your empire makes strategic attacks again easier.

stations are way worse than shipyards were in early game defense, and in later game, an enemy can even use them to replenish their fleets before winning the war, so offense has become totally cheap.
 
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With exactly 11 MP games under my belt since 2.0.1, that has not been my experience at all. Border wars for a few systems have been more common than wars of total annihilation, except where Purifier types are involved. Attackers that don't have the strength to take core worlds generally just scrape the border worlds and sit until WE climbs, and defenders accept Status Quo rather than waste time. But I have also seen in several cases weaker defenders do exactly what the new system intended; repeatedly fight in favorable conditions and retreat to drive up WE for the other side, and make full conquest not worth the trouble.

Human players generally recognize futility better than the AI and peace out for earlier. And human players are also much, much more likely to jump someone else when they're already at war, particularly a stronger opponent they know they could not take otherwise. This necessitates splitting your forces more than when fighting AI, which in turn makes total conquests harder to pull off even against weaker opponents.

If anything normal conquest wars are the most balanced and granular ones there are; it's the other types that have issues.

Plain ole rival wars for Humiliation were unattainable until the war goal cost was eventually reduced. Now they are more or less fine.

Liberation and Vassalization wars are still broken all-or-nothing affairs, but the Dev diaries have indicated plans to make them more granular. Specifically allowing you to do partial liberations/vassalizations and create breakaway states, which sounds a lot like the old Liberate Planet war demand in practice.
 
Border wars for a few systems have been more common than wars of total annihilation, except where Purifier types are involved. Attackers that don't have the strength to take core worlds generally just scrape the border worlds and sit until WE climbs, and defenders accept Status Quo rather than waste time. But I have also seen in several cases weaker defenders do exactly what the new system intended; repeatedly fight in favorable conditions and retreat to drive up WE for the other side, and make full conquest not worth the trouble.

I've seen this, too.

I'm also less willing to send fleets and armies to their doom in attrition fights than I used to be. I had to learn the hard way that sometimes you need to withdraw your fleets and armies and rearm/repair if you don't think you can keep pushing.

The defender doesn't gain WE for losing starbases, but attacker gain WE for losing ships to starbases. You actually have to pay attention now, rather than just flinging more ships at the problem and accepting the deaths of ships and armies currently in the field.
 
I've seen this, too.

I'm also less willing to send fleets and armies to their doom in attrition fights than I used to be. I had to learn the hard way that sometimes you need to withdraw your fleets and armies and rearm/repair if you don't think you can keep pushing.

The defender doesn't gain WE for losing starbases, but attacker gain WE for losing ships to starbases. You actually have to pay attention now, rather than just flinging more ships at the problem and accepting the deaths of ships and armies currently in the field.

There's one other advantage that human players know how to take better advantage of than the AI, though it's kind of an exploit.

As an invader, you presently cannot set your fleets to homebase at occupied starports. Which means that while you can repair at any occupied starbase, you cannot upgrade your ships to counter enemy builds. The defender meanwhile probably retains control of at least one starport near their core. Thus if they lose the initial engagements they can quickly refit to perfectly counter what you brought. You as the invader can't do that unless you pull back to your home territory, likely forfeiting some of the ground you've gained.

I have seen this go down in the most amazing fashion. Someone fighting a larger empire with an applied fleet power of 15k vs their 10k, and tier 4 shields vs tier 3 for the defender. The attacker's build was heavy on shields, lighter on armor and point defense. First engagement was a predicable loss for the defender. The attacker steamrolled four systems and tried to camp, then the defender reappeared sporting a full-on missile and disruptor build. Totally dominated the dojo and pushed them back to their initial borders. Six months later the war ended in a stalemate.

AI doesn't understand how to do this, but players do. Anyone expecting war and that is already at their fleet cap keeps some minerals in the bank precisely to take advantage of this flexibility. Even the conservative scrape-n-camp to grab a few border systems isn't immune to this, because your fleet has to sit there away from your starports in full sensor range of the enemy while they refit a perfect counter out of sight.

I don't know if this was an intentional consequence of the 2.0 reforms, but it works. It really creates a sense of defenders falling back on internal lines while attackers risk overextension. I actually think they should take this further and eliminate repairing at occupied starbases altogether, or at least vastly reduce the speed. It would give an actual reason to take Regenerative Hull Plating, which right now is underpowered.
 
I actually think they should take this further and eliminate repairing at occupied starbases altogether, or at least vastly reduce the speed. It would give an actual reason to take Regenerative Hull Plating, which right now is underpowered.

I've considered this as well.

The only reason I'm not sure it would work is that I can imagine all the complaints we'd see about how the game can't be won with offensive wars anymore. :rolleyes:
 
With exactly 11 MP games under my belt since 2.0.1, that has not been my experience at all.
11 games is hardly much, i probably have at least 40 games since 2.0.1 behind me, as most games i play are played on fastest, and that's not even much, some in the WSC play 3-4 games per day.

true, the first few games of 2.x series felt like you describe. but that was probably because many played with old meta ideas in mind. it shifted quickly.
and since game design is one of my life long passions, it actually isn't much of a mystery imho, at all, if i look at the mechanics and dynamics. many things have just become a lot more linear, even if new mechanics were introduced, that should counter those.
true, if playing with mixed players, casuals, who play on fast, and build up less minmaxy, mostly you can still encounter smaller wars.

additionally, i am known as a friendly player, who usually won't make offensive wars of total destruction, and likes to experiment around with new ideas, not that i do not sometimes participate however, but play mostly reactive. i am all up for a small skirmish, or a war around an area that is "disputed". an honest war for some sector of space. but i know, attacking someone will usually end in gore and never-ending fights until one dies, because usually if i am at war with a human, his playstyle is aggressive, and he comes for one thing only at me.
i try to be sportive, and not take a player out completely, however many players enjoy making other players leave, it's just how they tick.

i am also quite strong in countering because i constantly try defensive playstyles with extremely aggressive players, so yes, if you survive the first 50 years, and gain enough territory to lay back you can survive a war or two, maybe, by enforcing a status quo, but usually, if the enemy knows what he is doing, he will attack and steamroll, when the time is right.
You have to constantly manually watch his fleet strength, simply because it becomes a game of resource income, and starting your queues too late can be dangerous, which makes it easy to dictate the right time for war.

things like capturing stations to destroy energy income, using wormholes to your advantage, etc. can occasionally be very fun, so i am not saying, 2.x is just generally worse, it isn't.

Attackers that don't have the strength to take core worlds generally just scrape the border worlds and sit until WE climbs, and defenders accept Status Quo rather than waste time.
which is why non diplomatic races have a great affinity. swarms, exterminators, purifiers and assimilators lately (which i find a bit sad, since i liked the ambiguity of assimilators), only followed up by any kind of slaver, since all these races can create huge amounts of resources, claim systems faster and cheaper, and wage war without using the claims aswell. once you have a critical mass of ships, you can roll over another empire easy.
not that a fully upgraded bastion citadel cannot be useful, usually all the resources spent on it will usually leave you vulnerable to an enemy attack.

materialists usually can have a comeback in later games, but they need to survive to there, which is basicly only possible with luck. staying small just isnt an option in a game where reaching +1k mineral income is something normal for a swarm owning large enough space.

finally a lot of players have the habit of pressing surrender nowadays, which just insta-doubles the strength of those races. since most of them actually have to do little to nothing to keep revolts in check, and just purge away millions of people without a fuzz - with the occasional but inconsequential uprising of a planet.
(imho the surrender mechanic is broken)

i did at least expect occupying new planets to get harder for the "evil races", but actually, they are even better in that area. it makes it pretty predictable imho, who will win a match.

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I do agree what you say about the AI - but that is mostly since many things the AI does make no sense anymore, and a lot of finesse it had in the past seems to need an overhaul. AI is able to react to your ship builds, but usually does not have the right idea about economy, still spending too much and relying on its cheat income. Many evil things AI could do in 1.9.x series are also out of fashion, like building a claim post close to your space. you can see that AI even usually built colony central buildings on food tiles when 2.x arrived, that it could need a major overhaul in general.

As an invader, you presently cannot set your fleets to homebase at occupied starports

i saw 2.0.4 will introduce this finally. however if you ask me, the ability to build ships in an occupied station, before the war is even over, is a broken mechanic aswell. it yet again plays into why i say, offensive is too easy, and not really challenging enough, especially, an offensive buildup is better in defense, than a defensive one. i have no problems with repair, and still find, occupied stations should get a debuff, until the war is over.
 
which is why non diplomatic races have a great affinity. swarms, exterminators, purifiers and assimilators lately (which i find a bit sad, since i liked the ambiguity of assimilators), only followed up by any kind of slaver, since all these races can create huge amounts of resources, claim systems faster and cheaper, and wage war without using the claims aswell. once you have a critical mass of ships, you can roll over another empire easy.

I think this is one of the reasons why an economic overhaul is going to be an essential part of any diplomatic overhaul.

You need a way to get rich and powerful by making friends. There needs to be a reason why I might benefit from talking to this empire instead of invading them, and a way for The Federation to become a vast and powerful nation through trade and outreach.

Right now... not so much. A peaceful empire can't change the status quo on the board, the best they can hope to do is enforce it through a military alliance. They don't get wealthier, and the only calculation to make before invading is whether I think the war will succeed.
 
@g4borg what would you suggest as solutions to actually make diplomacy meaningful then? That is the whole point of this thread.

I mean let me just jump to the extremes and ask about a few concretes:

  • Forcing someone to stop a war through diplomatic power alone, without an implicit threat of war?
  • Forcing someone to relinquish systems through diplomatic power alone, without an implicit threat of war?
  • Federations, Pacts etc that have bonuses beyond just the status itself, balanced by obligations?
  • Opinion or some other in-game metric providing hard or soft caps on what your empire can and cannot do diplomatically, regardless of what the players at the helms want?
 
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I think this is one of the reasons why an economic overhaul is going to be an essential part of any diplomatic overhaul.

You need a way to get rich and powerful by making friends. There needs to be a reason why I might benefit from talking to this empire instead of invading them, and a way for The Federation to become a vast and powerful nation through trade and outreach.

Absolutely right.

Best trade ideas I've seen: Some suggestions for long-term goals on Trade and Planets

The thread on federation tenets is also going again with some talk in Trade Leagues/Economic Unions.
 
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