Diplomacy? :)

[Poryg]

Hi, I have some questions about the diplomacy in the game. Disclaimer: This is the most wicked diplomatic system I have ever encountered (not in a bad way though, it looks like fun )
Is it good to be peaceful? And how do you keep the peace?
Because... (A long story is about to come out, if you want to skip to further questions, feel free to )
I was just minding my own business and peacefully ran out of titanium (will need to work out titanium management, because this seems to be the only resource that gets scarce in later game - maybe you can lack duranium as well, but that proved to be okay for me so far)
But then suddenly Heyoun tried to bribe one of my member minor races. No success, but I still pre-emptively built the communication stuff that increases bribe resistance to 4000.
Well, I finished the building in time, but not that it matters. Several turns passed and... Only one more try (or two? I don't know now) made them decrease relations and cancel the membership (feels so unfair considering that I couldn't bribe his races even though I tried 20 times). Since then, I couldn't give metals to the minor race as a gift... Only credits. And what is worse, I couldn't even bribe them. Well, in the end they not only declined my second membership offer, but they also joined Heyoun instead! :'(

So I began to say, screw the peace, and began mobilizing battle fleets. My upkeep costs flew sky high immediately, from 3600 they went to 4900 and even went red for a turn (I don't know why, since my income was still 7000 credits per turn).
But well... Something weird happened. Truth is, Heyoun had been powered by the fusion with the Omega Alliance. But...
My military power was way above the average.
I had three Alliances (all except Rotharian - cooperation - and Omega) against Heyouns' two (Khaoron and me)
I was allies with Heyoun, so their sudden betrayal really boiled my blood
And last but not least, they couldn't even get to my toes...
But the Heyouns issued a demand on me! They asked me to give them 1350 credits or else...
Well, that was enough.
I decided to declare war at them. So I issued a war pact with Khaorons and with Cartare. What is the result?



Well, it turned out to be a completely unexpected result. I am used to the diplomacy of GalCiv and Master of Orion. If you have an alliance in those two, your allies give you the option. Either declare war or break the Alliance. In this game the Alliance is the union of Trade, Cooperation and Defence pact (which is quite funny, because you don't need as much of a relationship for the mentioned union as you need for the Alliance itself), which means that you automatically declare war when someone declares war to the ally.
And we had this interesting scheme.
Me: Ally with all except Rotharian
Heyoun: Ally with me and Khaoron
Rotharian and Cartare: Defense pact.
And this is where it gets interesting.

So Khaorons declared war to Heyoun as a result of the war pact.
Then they declared war to me as a result of the Alliance.
Then I declared war to the Heyouns, but the Alliance is still active for now
Cartare declared war on the Heyoun as a result of the war pact
Then to me as a result of the Alliance
The war between Heyoun and Rotharian occured due to the defence pact between Rotharian and Cartare
Same happened between me and Rotharian
Due to the Alliance between me and Cartare a war between Cartare and Rotharian occured.
And last but not least, the Khaorons declared the war to them as a result of the alliance with me.

To make a long story short, everyone is in war with everyone on a whim, from being all happy together.
Overall relationships decimation, only Cartare dropped from Enthusiastic to Neutral, the rest is hostile now.

As is written on the pic, I gained 10 morale for war with Khaorons and lost 12 morale due to the war with Heyoun, even though both were my allies.
But why there were no other morale effects for war declarations?
Are there any chances of saving the world peace by being all diplomatic? Or will the opposing empires go on rampage sooner or later?
Do the enemy empires seek peace or do they just fight if the wars are long? Somehow they seem to try to save themselves from extinction by offering last minute treaties, but that's about it...
Is there any way to cancel the war apart from closing other treaties?

[blotunga]

I don't know of any other means than to get them to accept some other treaty. Maybe some of the veterans know.

[Poryg]

It looks like it's true.
Because even though I closed alliance with Heyoun, I still was at war with membership races.
Then, slightly off topic, Heyoun lost nearly all systems due to morale issues, but I couldn't take them, because humans gain -4 morale for violent subjugation.
It kind of makes me wonder how should I wage warfare as humans... In terms of subjugating systems, they get very limited by morale and since the freshliest conquered systems had as low morale as 25, famines struck fast and in the end it led to one minor race breaking free, which gave another -15 morale... You probably need to be slow as humans (their hate for humans is the reason why I hate them and I hate Heyoun for being all sneaky, underhanded... Yet extremely weak)

[blotunga]

Humans are a bit difficult to play, but I think a Research victory is easiest with them.

[Poryg]

Indeed, considering their research advantages it should be easier. With their military it seems that you can also go for Conquest, especially due to the shield regeneration. Perhaps it's not the best solution, but humans' ships aren't really bad.
I believe Heyoun are the hardest to play though. They don't have any real advantages except for espionage and food production... And they live on having good relations due to trade. Neither their ships nor their military forces are suitable for combat... And they don't even have research advantages to compensate for it.

[Malle]

They only need the luck to get a suitable minor with powerful torpedo weapons. Then ship design does the rest

[Poryg]

Minors are nice, especially the militant ones... But still, I just hate to say that the AI handles diplomacy better than I do in my recent game I had to subjugate all the minor races... And to prevent other great races from gaining too much power, I decline every contract better than friendship

[Poryg]

The diplomacy of this game strikes again!
I have turned on the option that if races feel they are too weak, they can join forces (set it up to 3)... Somehow even though the Heyoun are the weakest in my recent game (and will become my target soon enough), the Omega Alliance were the ones that joined forces with Humans (so humans have finally exceeded my military power, but no worries, their destruction is on the ToDo list 3:) once my economy recovers from the tech advance... ).
But what worries me is the fact that even though there doesn't seem to be a way that humans and Heyoun could have met, they are actually allies. Which is quite unpleasant, considering the fact that I tried my best to separate left and right half so badly that I even declined any greater deals than friendship
OK, I checked now... The humans are friends with Heyoun and friends with cartare. How did the first one happen? I don't know... The second one is weirder though, because I am in a war conflict with Cartare and destroy any ships at sight.
The fact that Cartare and Heyoun are cooperating couldn't make humans and Cartare meet... Because I keep a close eye on their ships and make sure that any Cartare ship that invades my territory is peacefully destroyed.
But nevermind that, there is one really weird thing... Due to the cooperation between Heyoun and Cartare and due to the friendship between Heyoun and me I am able to see every Cartarian planet's location. This seems weird to me though, because the Cartare wouldn't be able to see my planets if we were both humans...

Also, why do the major races build so many Intel stations when they don't use them?

[blotunga]

The diplomacy of this game strikes again!
I have turned on the option that if races feel they are too weak, they can join forces (set it up to 3)... Somehow even though the Heyoun are the weakest in my recent game (and will become my target soon enough), the Omega Alliance were the ones that joined forces with Humans (so humans have finally exceeded my military power, but no worries, their destruction is on the ToDo list 3:) once my economy recovers from the tech advance... ).
But what worries me is the fact that even though there doesn't seem to be a way that humans and Heyoun could have met, they are actually allies. Which is quite unpleasant, considering the fact that I tried my best to separate left and right half so badly that I even declined any greater deals than friendship
OK, I checked now... The humans are friends with Heyoun and friends with cartare. How did the first one happen? I don't know... The second one is weirder though, because I am in a war conflict with Cartare and destroy any ships at sight.
The fact that Cartare and Heyoun are cooperating couldn't make humans and Cartare meet... Because I keep a close eye on their ships and make sure that any Cartare ship that invades my territory is peacefully destroyed.
But nevermind that, there is one really weird thing... Due to the cooperation between Heyoun and Cartare and due to the friendship between Heyoun and me I am able to see every Cartarian planet's location. This seems weird to me though, because the Cartare wouldn't be able to see my planets if we were both humans...

Also, why do the major races build so many Intel stations when they don't use them?

They must've met somehow . And major joining works differently, it's not a simple alliance, but the actual merging of two empires. As for cooperation, the races share all that they know. Probably it's similar how the two you suspect that haven't met, found out about eachother.

As for intel, the AI does use it pretty effectively, just read the reviews on Google Play

[Poryg]

I know that it's an actual merging... But still, it's quite weird that even though I have set it to 3, so far the only ones that have merged were Omega (with Humans)...
The game continues as a blood festival, when I declared war on Heyoun, I got caught in a war with Humans due to defense pact. But that doesn't really matter, because my military power is overwhelming.
I have crushed Heyoun... They have 3 systems left due to colonization of systems out of my reach. But they won't merge with anyone, even though they can... They will just continue that struggle. It would be interesting if Cartare or Rotharians joined Humans, but Cartare just lets me take their systems one by one and Rotharians mind their own business...

As for the AI and Intel...
The AI uses Intel quite efficiently. But only when they can land a hit on you. When they can't, they stop bothering... Ever since I managed to stop the Intel attacks for good, my reserve has never been damaged. Even though I am at war with every major race (except for rotharians, but they hate me), my Security point reserve doesn't take damage... And it's not even that huge (8000 points, with 3000 coming every turn), so I am quite surprised (when I was Omegan, I struck my enemies with 15,000 IP turning their military power to zero very soon).

It's quite amazing though that smaller ships can easily overcome bigger ships due to their abilities and armament... Will have to take a look at them

[Poryg]

I wonder, is there something like a row in the turn? Like Humans move first, Heyoun second,... Just an example. Because now something nasty happened to me.
For the diplomatic achievement I have chosen the dreadful Heyoun and to not have it too difficult I decreased the difficulty to easy. I have taken a brand new look on Heyoun thanks to that, but nevermind that now.
I have noticed that Humans are, on the lower difficulty, the race which is the strongest among the Ai. No other race is so expansive and so diplomatically active. And in spite of easy difficulty, the humans are on par with me planet system-wise.
However, that's not the problem.
There is this minor race. We are diplomatically fighting over it, me always bribing them. It happened again that I bribed them and they canceled their membership.
Now normally when I am beaten by bribing, before I do anything, I have to overbribe the opponents, which takes a turn. And if I succeed, then they will listen to me.
However, this doesn't seem to be the case of the AI. I succeeded with my bribe on turn 188 and the minor race said farewell to humans. So I immediately sent them a membership request, receiving one from them in the very next turn (so turn 189) and of course I accepted it. But on turn 190 it turned out to be pointless... Because even though I accepted their membership request, they weren't my members. They were allies with humans who somehow overcame my bribe without bribing them.

[blotunga]

Yes, the race's are looped in order, humans first, Heyoun second etc. This is also the possible cause for the Omega/Cartare have somtimes a really lousy starting positions. I could in theory randomize the order, but I have no idea how it would affect the balance.

[Darkness]

Would be better if the requests of two majors in the same round Either cancel each other or are valued by Different parameters than simply Major 2 comes before Major 4.

[blotunga]

Would be better if the requests of two majors in the same round Either cancel each other or are valued by Different parameters than simply Major 2 comes before Major 4.

It would make sense... if they both could be accepted, then maybe both should be cancelled.

[Wo he hiv]

Vorausgesetzt ich habe den Text richtig verstanden, geht es darum, dass falls die Angebote von zwei Majors angenommen würden, diese stattdessen beide abgelehnt werden. Dies würde aber neue Probleme schaffen, das Erste ist, dass jedes Mal wenn ein Minor ein Angebot ablehnt die diplomatische Beziehung etwas leidet. Was in dem Fall ein ungewollter Effekt ist. Das zweite Problem, was wenn über unzählige Runden immer zwei Angebote angenommen würden ? Dann könnte doch niemand mehr einen Vertrag mit der Minorrasse schliessen.
Sorry, i don't write this text in English, because I don't know how to write it in English.