Hello everyone!

Today we thought wed talk about some of the smaller changes coming to diplomacy with the free 2.6 update. Although the Galactic Community and the reworked federations are sure to have a large impact on galactic diplomacy, it's also important to talk about the smaller things!

Envoys
One of the more important things weve added are the Envoys. Envoys function very similar to Diplomats in EU4, and they are required for certain diplomatic actions such as:

Improve / Harm Relations it is now possible to send an Envoy to improve or harm relations which can affect Opinion by up to (-400 / +400 ). More on Opinion and Relations later.
Assigned to Federation (to increase monthly Cohesion by +1)
Assigned to Galactic Community (to increase Diplomatic Weight)

Improve Relations


In Federation


Galactic Community


Although Envoys are characters, they do not currently have any character-mechanics such as traits. We didnt think it would be fun to have to micromanage and switch Envoys around to better fit certain jobs depending on their traits.

Diplomacy Interface Updates
Weve finally gotten around to give a bunch of diplomacy-related interfaces a facelift! First up, lets talk a little about the general diplomacy screen.

You are now able to more clearly see things such as Civics, Origins, Relative Power breakdowns, your ongoing diplomatic agreements, and also the new diplomatic stances!


This Hegemonic subordinate was kind enough to act as a model for the new diplo screen!


Declaring rivalry never looked so appealing.



The diplomatic offers are now a bit more clear on what is going on (not final text). A downside, however, is that it's now much harder to fool colleagues into becoming your vassal in our internal multiplayer sessions.

Diplomatic Stances
Sometimes we like concept that our colleagues have put into some of our other games, and the diplomatic stances from Imperator: Rome were a good example. Although not exactly the same, we like the general idea. We wanted empires to be able to set a diplomatic stance that dictates their behaviour towards other empires on a galactic stage.



Diplomatic Stances are Policies and can be changed once every 10 years. There are a bunch of different stances, and some may also be unique to certain empire types (e.g. Isolationist is called Mercantile for Megacorporations).



Stances are designed to be quite different, and to facilitate different playstyles. Perceptive readers might notice that the Belligerent stance seems very similar to Supremacist, and that is true, except that Supremacist stance is designed for all empires that want to be a big player. Supremacist empires will dislike other empires with the same stance, so it is almost like a soft rivalry of sorts.

Stances also have some effect on internal politics, as some of your factions may have certain preferences when it comes to your foreign policy.

Relations and Opinion
We wanted an easier way to measure how the diplomatic relations between two empires is doing, so weve added a new aggregate value called Relations. Relations exists in different levels ranging:

Terrible <- Tense <- Neutral -> Positive -> Excellent

They do have an effect on which type of diplomatic actions that are available.

We want diplomacy to be less fickle, and more mechanical. Players should now have more ability to influence what other empires opinions are of them. Overall diplomacy should feel less static and more prone to evolving over time.

Form Federation requires Excellent Relations, and pacts like Migrations, Research or Commercial require Positive Relations. Similarly, Rivalries require Terrible Relations. This is also the case in player-to-player diplomacy, so its important to maintain a good standing.

Some of these restrictions can be bypassed by having an Envoy to harm or improve relations.



Favors
Finally we want to talk about Favors. Although Favors were primarily added to give players agency within the Galactic Community, they can also be used to influence the AIs likelihood of accepting certain diplomatic agreements.



Favors is a new mechanic that allows you to increase your Diplomatic Weight for certain votes or proposals in the Galactic Community. An empire can owe another empire up to 10 Favors, and each Favor will increase Diplomatic Weight by 10%.

For example Empire B owes 10 Favors to Empire A. Empire A spends influence to call in all 10 Favors and adds 100% of the Diplomatic Weight that Empire B has. Empire A will add the Diplomatic Weight from Empire B, for a specific vote, without Empire B losing their Diplomatic Weight.

In effect, Favors allows an empire to manipulate vote results towards their point of view. It is not possible to Call in Favors when an empire is already voting the same way as you are. Multiple empires can call in favors from the same empire, and it's designed in this way to reduce the complexity of having to figure out which favors should have priority, or which favors should matter more.


Pretty please. You owe me.

In addition to the Galactic Community, Favors can also be called in to increase acceptance chance by +5 when offering certain diplomatic deals.

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That is all for this week! Next week well be back with some more details on the Juggernaut and the Mega Shipyard.

Remember, you can always read this Dev Diary and comment directly on our forums.