I've been doing a lot of thinking about the Diplomacy mechanisms in Elemental of late.  Whilst they are functional and works, it could in my opinion use a little work.  Now I know that Brad and Stardock have their hands full with the AI for 1.1, so this is more along the lines of feedback and suggestions. I have no idea how hard it would be to code in, or even if it were possible to do with Elemental's game engine.  What I'm try to say (clumsly) is that this isn't a demand, more of a suggestion/wish . If it can be implemented great, if not, then oh well, Elemental's still a lot of fun for me to play .

A couple of days back, I picked up a copy of the Elemental Limited Edition. One of the items within that particular version of the game is the printed Hiergamenon (which as other's have said is completely different from the Website 'Tech Tree' Hiergamenon).  This Hiergamenon provided in the Limited Edition , provides a lot of background information on the world.  It was a great read. But something on page 96 made me laugh.  The point of view character is Relias, and he's talking about the primary difference between the Kingdom (his facton) and the Empire (the other guys.") To summerise Relias states that primary difference is that the Kingdom do not 'kill or incite to kill their fellow men', whereas with the Empire 'it is the strong who rule and the weak who suffer'.

What makes me laugh is that every game I've played where Relias has been one of the opposing AI's, he's has always been the first AI to declare war on me if my military might doesn't match his, regardless of whether or not I've had peacefull 'trade' dealing with him in the past.  In fact eventually all the AIs will declare war on you or bully you into paying them to prevent war, regardless of which faction they belong to.

This got me thinking about Gal Civ 1, (not Gal Civ 2, because for some reason I couldn't really get into Gal Civ 2). One of things I loved about that game was that each of AI's had different personallities, and you could use your knowledge of their personallites to help negoiate with them if you were playing the Diplomatic game.  Whereas in Elemental, provided you have a bigger militry force then the AI, and enough Gildar and diplomatic capital, you can keep the AI off your game, and their personalities don't really come into it.  Which is a shame, because in the background material for the game, each Sovereign had their own personality.

So the feature I am requesting is for the  each AI's to be given their own personalities and for those personalities to be part of the method of achieving a Diplomatic player victory. From searching the forums, I've found a thread making similar suggestions here https://forums.elementalgame.com/364900 .  I just thought I'd throw this out there for the community to discuss, maybe get some feedback from Brad as to the practicalities, pro's/con's etc, but mainly to bounce the idea around.

Thanks for reading through my rather long and rambling post .

Raven