Some ideas for other places favours could be used in the game.

[Pancakelord]

Favours are interesting, but they don't really tie in to a lot of game systems. Here are some ideas of where else they could be integrated into:

1. Remove non-hostile AI claims against your territory - friendly AIs just never relinquish their claims on you. Favours could get them to wipe out some claims.
   • 1 favour for 1 claim
   • Either the AI picks which ones it wants to remove (e.g. oldest first),
   • or let players specify (this could work against enemies too, so if you and an Ally both have claims on a 3rd nation's system, you could get them to clear their claims for a favour, instead of you adding another claim on top)
2. Postpone integration as a vassal ("Agreement of Self Governance")
   • 1 favour postpones an in-progress integration by X years
     • (or is used to sign an agreement with your liege that they wont integrate you for X years, scaling with number of favours used)
     • E.g. 1 favour = 1-2 years postponed integration.
3. Convince 3rd parties to join/vote against wars for favours. Right now AIs cant be persuaded to join a war at all, either they're all in, or they are not.
   • This could be applicable to both federation war votes and votes outside of federations.
4. Convince a war leader to white peace. Sometimes you get dragged in to a war and cannot get out of it, locking you out of other diplomatic choices.
   • Add a vote system for white peacing when there are multiple factions on a side.
     • So all war participants on your side can vote Yes or No to white peacing out, when the enemy would accept it. With yes/no scaling with diplomatic weight.
     • Favours can then be used to bias AIs towards agreeing to /rejecting making a white peace offer.
5. Let us (And AIs) not honour defensive pacts/independence guarantees. BUT at the same time, if you choose to honour a defensive pact/independence guarantee/support independence (e.g. for protectorates), you will gain favours from the nation you supported.
   • They will owe you for honouring an agreement, rather than forcing you to always honour agreements.
   • Breaking a defensive pact/independence guarantee would add a "Dishonourable" national modifier making militarist pops angry.
6. Fallen empires that like you (e.g. due to events) could "gift" you favours,
   • These FE favours could exclusively be traded back to them for resources, effectively turning them in to coupons for "good" behaviour.
7. For loyal vassals that we have envoys with, we could use favours to "obligate" them to change their internal policies. e.g. banning slavery for X coupons.
8. Tell a megacorp to found branch offices on planet X within Y years for Z favours ("Foreign direct investment deal"). Sometimes AI MCs just will not put branch offices down, a deal like this could make a BO a priority/ make the AI set aside a special EC reserve for founding the branch office.
   • (provided you have a commercial pact / pop count on planet X is high enough to permit it)
   • Your favours are only awarded to them once they found the branch office, not on signing the deal.
9. Convince AIs to abstain from an on-going vote in the GC for X favours
   • provided that if that vote passed, it would not leave them in-breach, if it would, they'd always reject your favour/abstain offer.
10. Convince AIs to retract their proposal from the GC queue for X favours
    • provided it isn't already in the, say, top 3 positions of the queue already.

Thoughts?

 

[SomeGuyWhoIsNew]

Good idea. There needs to be a way to get the Hiveminded ally you've been a friend with all game and been in a defensive pact with for 120 years to join your war when a different ally of your's has been attacked by then endgame crisis. You sit there dying as your "ally" sits on their thumbs, I realize its designed this way to prevent WW1 style galactic war starting fiascos, however, like ww1 there ought to be a war to pull someone in, especailly if they hate the enemy you are fighting, Risen Xenophobic fallen empires for instance.

 

[Pancakelord]

Hiveminded ally you've been a friend with all game and been in a defensive pact with for 120 years to join your war when a different ally of your's has been attacked by then endgame crisis.

You're in defensive pacts with two other empires? They aren't multilateral. If you have a DP with empire 1 & another DP with empire 2, when empire 1 is attacked you will have to help them, but empire 2 won't care as it doesn't relate to them (because defensive pacts are bilateral - i.e. exist just between you and the other party)

The only way to do what you're saying currently is to have them both in a federation, be the fed present to control the fed fleet and do it yourself lol.

I think federation leaders need a special ping command to prioritise things, e.g. Attack system X, Defend System Y, invade Z, retreat to here etc.

With each AI member calling out what it's doing (so players know what they're upto) and the federal presidents ping would be a higher priority objective (we've seen in a past Dev diary that the WarAI assigns values to systems[see the small 4500 in the tooltip to the left of Fleet power] + some context, adding a ping could let us work with that by over/undervaluing a system to the WarAIs algorithm, each ping could add a value of 3000 to the system for example, prioritising the AI to move against that one as soon as it's ready to).

Favours could also be used more liberally against vassals/subjects/hegemon underlings to force them to change their diplomatic stance, military stance or even economy type (e.g. we'll give you 5 favours if you force-switch your economy to militarised), or give the AI mini-quests - similar to democratic mandates, like "Build 5 anchorages and we'll give you 5 favours" which might further have some benefit in letting us control their fighting ability.

A special 'treaty' to run "joint training exercises" (JTEs) with allies - of any type - would also be a good way to level up your own and AI admirals/generals (to actually give them a fighting chance when/if they ever make it to the battlefield lol). Essentially the treaty would just grant all admirals a passive XP income whilst it's active but maybe double admiral/general upkeep if a JTE treaty is active (and dont make it stackable, so having four JTE treaties wouldn't increase admiral costs by 16x, they'd still only be 2x).

 

[mammonmachine]

Favours definitely need more uses, and I like most of these ideas.

Let us (And AIs) not honour defensive pacts/independence guarantees. BUT at the same time, if you choose to honour a defensive pact/independence guarantee/support independence (e.g. for protectorates), you will gain favours from the nation you supported.

• They will owe you for honouring an agreement, rather than forcing you to always honour agreements.
• Breaking a defensive pact/independence guarantee would add a "Dishonourable" national modifier making militarist pops angry

I like the idea of gaining favours for honouring agreements. However, I think the reward/penalties for being in breach here are far too minor - they make agreements cheap and pretty meaningless. I would go:

• One time influence cost (e.g. 250 influence) to get you off the hook.
• Militarist faction unhappy, but also any faction (bar xenophobe) for the governing ethics of the empire you betrayed.
• Substantial relations penalty with empire you let down. If they owed you any favours, they are nullified.
• Small relations penalty with everyone but the attackers. Significant penalties for 'honour-bound warriors' type empire.

I do like the idea of their being a softer form of agreement, called e.g. Defense Co-operation, which gives you the option of coming to aid for favours, but doesn't obligate you to do so. Kind of like the Entente Cordial between Britain and France in the early 20th century.

 

[Venix Firiurx]

Having more actions for favours is good, i agree with most of this stuff.

 

[guiskj]

# 3 & 4 are the most important to me. But all of your suggestions are worth the implementation.

 

[HFY]

or let players specify (this could work against enemies too, so if you and an Ally both have claims on a 3rd nation's system, you could get them to clear their claims for a favour, instead of you adding another claim on top)

YES.

Postpone integration as a vassal ("Agreement of Self Governance")

This would make being a vassal much less horrible.

Let us (And AIs) not honour defensive pacts/independence guarantees. BUT at the same time, if you choose to honour a defensive pact/independence guarantee/support independence (e.g. for protectorates), you will gain favours from the nation you supported.

This is great. Leaning on a guarantee of independence makes the empire ... more dependent.

Fallen empires that like you (e.g. due to events) could "gift" you favours,

• These FE favours could exclusively be traded back to them for resources, effectively turning them in to coupons for "good" behaviour.

I'd like to be able to sell those to my fellow plebs.

They ought to be useful to resist FE demands like the inoculation or the "give us a pop" thing.

For loyal vassals that we have envoys with, we could use favours to "obligate" them to change their internal policies. e.g. banning slavery for X coupons.

The flip side should also be available: for X coupons, give us Y pops (as slaves or free citizens).

 

[BrokenSky]

I feel like if they did add this sort of feature-integration with favours, it would make sense to raise the maximum cap you can have with people (possibly based on trust? That might be a cool mechanic)

 

[Tamwin5]

I feel like if they did add this sort of feature-integration with favours, it would make sense to raise the maximum cap you can have with people (possibly based on trust? That might be a cool mechanic)

Having trust allow more favors is fantastic. I love it.

 

[Pancakelord]

I feel like if they did add this sort of feature-integration with favours, it would make sense to raise the maximum cap you can have with people (possibly based on trust? That might be a cool mechanic)

That probably wouldn't be hard for them to do - when Federations came out I and several others pointed out that favours were unlimited, and this came with several problems, a patch added (or fixed, I forget) the 10-favour limit. So it should be easy for them to raise or lower it conditionally.

One thing I'd definitely like to see is trust influencing the trade value of a favour.

Why, when I've just met an alien society, are they willing to take me at face value? (this will be worse in nemesis, and I've not seen favour changes mentioned, when we literally know nothing about the other party on first contact).​

Someone that doesn't trust you should value your favours much closer to zero than they currently do... because they dont know you'll honour them (admittedly there is no way to not honour them right now).​

This would also severely curtail early-game AI cheesing by trading favours for "free" resources.​

 

[Tamwin5]

That probably wouldn't be hard for them to do - when Federations came out I and several others pointed out that favours were unlimited, and this came with several problems, a patch added (or fixed, I forget) the 10-favour limit. So it should be easy for them to raise or lower it conditionally.

One thing I'd definitely like to see is trust influencing the trade value of a favour.

Why, when I've just met an alien society, are they willing to take me at face value? (this will be worse in nemesis, and I've not seen favour changes mentioned, when we literally know nothing about the other party on first contact).​

Someone that doesn't trust you should value your favours much closer to zero than they currently do... because they dont know you'll honour them (admittedly there is no way to not honour them right now).​

This would also severely curtail early-game AI cheesing by trading favours for "free" resources.​

It should also make their favors more expensive for you to buy, for the same reason.

I also think it would make sense if favors were scaled to some amount by the economy or Diplo weight of an empire. That might be a mechanic already and I just don't know though.

 

[GOLANX]

I think vassilation wargoal should impose your ideology on the new vassal, maybe there is a policy to turn this off but I think it should be on by default. All vassals will gain significant ethics attraction to their overlord.
Vassals should be able to trade favors for their freedom, personally It should take 10.

Vassals automatically protect overlords, overlords automatically protect tributaries, overlords do not automatically protect vassals. Overlords get favors for doing so, if they don't the vassal gets major negative opinion modifiers, kind of like what mammon was suggesting. If it's a humiliation war, maybe it's not worth it to you to protect your vassal.

 

[hart30]

For me it would be enough, if u could bribe ur fedpartners with favors to change the fed type. I dont know why this is the only vote inside a federation, where u currently cannot use favors and the ai likes the boring standard galactic union way too much, so u most times have to found ur own fed.

 

[Freyby_D]

Hi. what about tribal factions? I mean like Central Asia States or Syberian. Can Paradox add Silk road on map? For the CC3 historical period it was very important trade way. and also I think need to change landscape conditions for Zhetysu region? I think desert it's not correct type because IRL in history it was very populous land. Most medieval states in Kazakhstan founded in this land. So I think need to chage to steppes or plains. So my offer change in next view: Zhetysu - steppes or plains, territory above Zhetysu - steppes, in Southern Kazakhstan - desert. I think it will be more correct.

 

[Pancakelord]

Hi. what about tribal factions? I mean like Central Asia States or Syberian. Can Paradox add Silk road on map? For the CC3 historical period it was very important trade way. and also I think need to change landscape conditions for Zhetysu region? I think desert it's not correct type because IRL in history it was very populous land. Most medieval states in Kazakhstan founded in this land. So I think need to chage to steppes or plains. So my offer change in next view: Zhetysu - steppes or plains, territory above Zhetysu - steppes, in Southern Kazakhstan - desert. I think it will be more correct.

I have a feeling you are a few millennia ... and one forum out of place lol.

 

[BrokenSky]

I was thinking about this again recently and one thing I thought might be interesting would be the ability to trade favors with a third party (I.e., Empire A owes Empire B a favor, B trades it with Empire C for something up-front, Now Empire A owes Empire C a favor).

I'm not sure how well this would work in terms of the AI valuing it (though I don't really see why they couldn't evaluate it as if they were getting a favor directly), but I think it might be an interesting concept (although I'd probably gate it between either a tech-and-policy on having your favors be transferable, which would increase their value, or else behind a GC resolution)

 

[GOLANX]

I was thinking about this again recently and one thing I thought might be interesting would be the ability to trade favors with a third party (I.e., Empire A owes Empire B a favor, B trades it with Empire C for something up-front, Now Empire A owes Empire C a favor).

I'm not sure how well this would work in terms of the AI valuing it (though I don't really see why they couldn't evaluate it as if they were getting a favor directly), but I think it might be an interesting concept (although I'd probably gate it between either a tech-and-policy on having your favors be transferable, which would increase their value, or else behind a GC resolution)

This seems like it would be abusable, empire B is a Human, uplifted empire A from a primitive civilization, sell to empire C pocket the profit. In fact empire A could be a vassal of empire B and the same problem would exist.

 

[hart30]

The main issue is, that favor trading with the ai for ressources is currently massively abused. I believe first it should be changed, so u can buy favors from the ai for ressources, but the ai always should reject selling resources for favors, similar like it rejects selling systems. After that is implemented i have nothing against more ways to use favors as players wont be able to exploit this feature anymore.

 

[GOLANX]

The main issue is, that favor trading with the ai for ressources is currently massively abused. I believe first it should be changed, so u can buy favors from the ai for ressources, but the ai always should reject selling resources for favors, similar like it rejects selling systems. After that is implemented i have nothing against more ways to use favors as players wont be able to exploit this feature anymore.

AIs aren't smart enough to collect on their debts owed, if AIs could propose trade deals with you or use favors on diplo deals/war/GC resolutions as long as the AI is trying to dump them ASAP, which even still if the AI could do that reliably it still sounds exploity, favors should also certainly count against you if buying favors eg if you owe 10 favors you must buy 20 to get 10 favors

 

[Freyby_D]

I have a feeling you are a few millennia ... and one forum out of place lol.

Sorry, but I didn't found correct forum, that's why wrote to there.