Questions about Diplomacy game mechanics

The AI sees you at +10 to start mostly for envoy purposes. The AI isn't really capable of raising relations with you like you are with it, so it gets a head start and can start sending envoys earlier.

Relations from missions are now capped. You can have a max of +3, or -1.5. Your current bonus is the outcome of the previous mission. So if you succeed on one, you get +3. If you fail the next, your relations are set to -1.5 (so you lose 4.5 relations). The reject button is now used for missions you don't want to do, and you suffer only a small but cumulative penalty for rejecting missions, unless you're at 0. So if you have 0 and you reject, your relations don't worsen. If you're at +3 and you reject, you take small hits each time you reject.

Game takes your total positive relations with all players and your total negative. If your positive is greater than the negative, points go up. Else, they go down. The bigger the difference, the faster the rate of increase.

As far as I know it's the same thing as 1, the starting bonus the AI gets from a human player. That, or it's the bonus between the AIs.

Thanks, these are much clearer.

However I think this system must calculate my relation to AI rivals, too, as calculates relations between two AI players as well. So the AI can raise my relation to itself, too, as I do it in the opposite direction. For example if I give it a mission and it absolves that, my relation should increase towards it, allowing the AI rival to step a bit forward to diplomacy victory.

That would be the only meaning the report of an AI relations on the diplomacy screen, when this AI is in the center and I can see a number under my portrait showing my relation from AI's viewpoint.

I may be wrong. I offered a mission to an AI who failed it, but the Mission factor in the relation to me remained 0. However it would be reasonable that the same relation rules work between any of two players in the game.

And I noticed that this "AI relation bonus" increase slowly to 10 at the beginning of the game.

Man, the AI relation bonus is way too big a factor in deciding Diplomatic Victory. My friend and I tried to do a 2v2 with Cruel AIs and even though we were beating them back in fleet battles they were still getting diplomacy points at a rate three times ours. They were able to get diplomatic victory in about an hour just as we were starting to get into the swing of the game. It felt like a very lame loss with nothing we could do about it. It just doesn't make sense that they should get such a large diplomatic bonus from players they're actively at war with. 

Also, a nice feature to have would be charts for the diplomacy statistics at the end of the game screen. Overall relation, DP points, DP income rate, envoy cruiser count, relation from envoys, number of active pacts, and other things I may be forgetting. This would help to better understand the diplomatic system.

Diplomatic victory really doesn't work on locked teams because locked teams minimizes all diplomatic factors. It's meant to be played in FFA, where the goal is not to fight AIs, but, you know, to win a diplomatic victory.

I'm wondering if it should be disabled completely in locked teams.

I'm not sure there's a way for diplomatic victory to play well in locked teams. The way it's designed is to get the player to continually strive to improve relations with all other players to maximize the victory point gain and beat the other players to it. In locked teams everyone starts at the same "level" and most diplomacy is disabled, but the various bonuses and penalties are still in effect without you being able to do much about them, which will mostly-randomly affect rates of gain.

There might be someone somewhere that can find use for turning it on in locked teams, perhaps 2v2v2v2v2 all-human game in a LAN or something, which would essentially turn into "keep your envoys safe while trying to destroy your enemy's". I'm not sure how much fun that would be, though.

In the end, however, I don't know if it should just be forced off. You never know, maybe someone will like it. And it's easy enough to turn off, especially since settings save between games so people who always play locked should have to toggle it at most once, and I think it's off by default anyway. It's not broken in locked team games, just less functional.

Absolutely love the diplomatic victory condition. Thanks for adding it after our suggestions for something like it.

Fair enough. As long as people realize it might not be the optimal experience in a game with very few sides (e.g 2v2, 3v3 etc)

They will. At the moment everyone's just trying their first couple games and turning it on before figuring out how it works.

So, I don't understand exactly the meaning of "AI relation bonus" yet, but it doesn't matter.

However it worths reading your discussions about the diplomacy system, it is becoming clear for me step by step. Thanks for your posts.

Some more questions.

5. What is the difference between relation rate with and without envoys? By the former the max is 10 while a value of 20 belongs to the latter.

6. I researched trade and metal pacts, I have a rival who I have a 9.24 relation with but I can offer none of these pacts because I should have a higher relation rate. So, what's the minimum for a pact?

7. Why does not get the AI any plus or minus for a mission offered by a human player after the success or fail of that?

Don't worry about the AI relation bonus. It's just a helper bonus for AIs only to work with the new relationship system.

Yes, without envoys you can only have a max of 10. Envoys allow you to go beyond that to 20.

Each pact has its own, and you can see it on the pacts screen when hovering over the pact. Generally they go in 1.5 increments, so you will need 11.50 for the first one, then 13.0, 14.5, 16.0, 17.5.

Why should it? I can't think of a good enough reason to do this. Do you really want to lose 3-4 pacts with an AI because it fails your mission?

Thanks your help.

So, if I have an envoy ship is the system relative to 20 otherwise to 10? For example: a pact that requires 11.5 with envoys may be available at 9.24 without envoys?

Yes, I thought that it would be useful thinking of missions carefully because of relation changing, but you're right, I reject this idea.

I played only two matches, but I'm wondering whether the AI rivals give missions each other. Or how they use relations with each other (envoys, helps, gifts, pacts etc.).

Blair... just hire Annatar11 already.

Something what I have recently noticed while watching some recorded games to learn from my faults is that AI players can not offer missions each other. If I move the mouse cursor over the disabled Offer Mission button, the hint window says: "Player cannot complete any mission".

If it is true that AI players can not use this ability with each other, I have some questions.

1. What's the use of the tech which grants the ability to offer missions by AI players? They can offer missions to human players from the beginning of the game. However some of AI rivals researched the appropriate techs while they can't use it by no one but me as human.

2. What about that AI can manipulate the game through missions? Does it mean that through human players only?

i dont really understand the entirety of how the diplomatic points system works yet. how does it make sense that a player recieve/accrue diplomacy points from someone they are not allied with or someone who is not doing their missions or them not doing someone elses missions? or rather, why should they accrue points when nobody gives F about them?

Well to receive diplomacy points you need to be in higher positive relations overall than negative, and positive relations typically means you have cease fires/alliances with players. The higher the positive difference, the faster you gain them so you're encouraged to develop as many alliances as you can.

After playing a few games with diplomatic victory, i have a question:

Is it possible to set the winning limit higher? (I would like a feature to set the amount of points in the game options)

 I ask this because i tend to win the game before i destroyed the guy right next to me. Playing mostly hummans + 4-5 AIs 2vs2vs2vs2 unlocked teams.

And why do my allies lose the game when  reach that point?

As you can see there is an "Your relationship with them" factor, so it's not a problem. I don't think we can auto-break pact if our relation is too low. It can be useful because it's prevent allies from getting diplomatic points, but on the other hand it is really easy to send impossible mission so it's like cheating.

As I experienced it's not working like that
If you succeed, you get a bonus, if you fail you get a minus. You can have a max of +4,5 (at least it's the max I had).

End of quote

Yes, that's how it works and how I described it. If a mission gives +3 on completion and -1.5 on failure, if you complete it your mission relation will be set to +3. If you fail it will be set to -1.5. Therefore if you have +3 from a previous mission, and you fail the current, you will go from +3 to -1.5, instead of subtracting 1.5 from 3 and ending up at +1.5.

Pacts only need one-way relations. If they fail your mission, their relationship with you will drop, and yes you do auto-break pacts as soon as your relations fall below the minimum requirement. If you want to test that, just move your envoys out of his planets once you establish a pact. The envoy-provided relations will drop and the pact will auto-break.