1.5 Diplomacy weirdness

from Elemental Forums

EDIT: Illauna has explained that the Foreign Relations listed modifiers show how your relations are changing over time, not what your current relations are. So in other words If they sum to -2 then that adjustment will be applied to your current relations with the faction. Fair enough, I can see how that makes sense. However, I still think there's something weird going on. If I load the save game below and keep hitting End Turn, this is what I get:

Season 86: meet Capitar, Neutral. Modifiers are +2. Season 87: meet Magnar, neutral. Capitar is now Warm towards me, although their modifiers have now changed to -2. Magnar modifiers are +1.

Modifiers now don't change till Season 100, i.e. it's +1 each season for Magnar, -2 each season for Capitar. Magnar goes to Warm after one turn, fair enough. Capitar went to Warm after one season of +2. Their modifiers immediately change to -2, so in other words in one season they should be back where they started and turning negative. However it takes them nine seasons of -2 till they go back to Neutral. I don't understand why this is.

Modifiers change on season 100. Capitar goes to -6, Magnar goes to -2. Magnar has had 12 seasons of +1, so it should take six seasons of -2 to get back to where we started. In fact they don't go Neutral for nine turns, when the cumulative modifier should be -9. Interestingly this is the same number of turns it took Capitar to go to Neutral from Warm, even though in theory Capitar had twice as bad modifiers each turn (-2 as opposed to -1).

With modifiers having been -2 and modifiers now showing -6 since season 100, I'm expecting things to go bad with Capitar pretty quickly. However they don't actually change to Cool till Season 107. Interestingly this is 10 seasons after their last change (from Warm to Neutral). So what seems to be happening is that if relations change for any reason, they will not change again for nine or ten seasons after that. This means that the "first impression" an AI has of you is quite important, as if it's positive then they're unlikely to go to war with you for twenty seasons. On the other hand if their initial impression of you is negative they may go to war with you almost immediately.

Is this working as designed? I guess it makes sense that you don't want relations changing too fast. It is a bit weird though that even if modifiers immediately change direction so you "get back where you started" you don't go back to your original relations. It is also a bit weird that it doesn't seem to make a great deal of difference how much an AI likes or dislikes you; if they dislike you by -2 or -6, relations will probably get one step worse every ten turns.

Original post follows:

I may be the only person who actually looks at the Foreign Relations screen. However! I like it. It used to tell me why enemy factions liked me or didn't like me. Since 1.5, this is no longer true. I think the most likely reason for this is that the screen does not show all the new influence modifiers. There are other possibilities (like the Foreign Relations screen is a random number generator, or there are massive bugs in the new diplomacy AI). But at the moment I suspect that the Foreign Relations screen does not show the new modifiers.

Examples (all taken from a game started in the 1.5 beta as the Dead and using Primal Savage's AI mod, all AIs were Ridiculous). In each case, I've summed the reported influences and compared to the reported feelings that faction has for me:

Capitar is -2 and Warm?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/o806pndae3zx0em/2013-11-27_00002.jpg

 Magnar is -4 and Friendly???

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ba5plu58o8vloyb/2013-11-27_00003.jpg

Magnar is -4 and Neutral?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/18cotc7fhu8olbm/2013-11-27_00005.jpg

Capitar is -6 and Neutral???

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mvmpzck3kk2rtk0/2013-11-27_00008.jpg?m=

A save game: (I've noticed before that Foreign Relations influence modifiers are not visible when you load a save game, however in each case you can hit End Turn before checking the Foreign Relations screen. In this save game you can keep hitting End Turn for a while before significant events intervene. I don't understand the reported diplomatic relations.)

Season 99:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zrnju8zxgsc07yu/106.EleSav

This is one of the reasons I've asked for a bug fix only patch next. There are also the problems with Beastlord and multiple strategic units occupying the same tile.

On diplomacy, I also had Yithril ask for a Trade Treaty with me one turn and then Declare War on me the next turn; I've also had relations (as reported by the Foreign Relations screen) go from +2 with Magnar in Season 101 to -4 in Season 102, which seems a pretty dramatic swing. It would be great if this could be sorted out.

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Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

The attitude position is like the level of water in a bucket and the -6 is more like a trend - whether the water is rising, falling, or staying at level.  Therefore yes, you can be friendly but at -6: where the friendly signifies a current high watermark and the -6 signifies there is a significant leak in the bucket.

 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

And this is explained where, exactly?

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Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting merlinme, reply 2

And this is explained where, exactly?
End of merlinme's quote

A better question would be, where would you like this to be explained? The reason I ask is because it would help Stardock to know where to include such information. If it were up to me I'd say toss it into the Hiergamenon under game concepts. However, I personally like discovering mechanics instead of having them all spelled out for me. Some people prefer to remain ignorant of the mechanics so the game can keep it's magic forever others want all the nitty gritty details to power game the system. To each their own I guess. 

Mqpiffle is right the number you see is not the current state but the growth per turn towards better relations. If it's -2 they liked you for a while but they are slowly liking you less. 

*wow spelling fails galore*

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Hmm, fair enough. I'm still not convinced that it explains 100% of what I saw, but it does help somewhat. Thank you. My previous reply came out rather sharply, I was just a bit miffed that I'd spent several hours trying to explain my problem in detail and then discover that it's another badly understood game mechanic. I still don't like how important parts of the game (e.g. how do you stop someone casting the Spell of Making?) are explained nowhere at all that I can find.

The Hiergamenon is probably the place to explain them, as then it can be easily updated if details change.

I'll run through the save games again, assuming that I'm starting at a neutral relationship of 100 and then applying the modifiers each turn, and see if that makes more sense. I'm not 100% sure it does though, as I'm fairly sure I've seen different diplomatic relations for particular turns on different run-throughs.

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

When your looking at the numbers be aware that many attributes in this game are floating point and then rounded to integer values in the UI. 

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

Thanks. I'll take it as a compliment that you expected me to understand that! As it happens floating point number to integer conversions are a significant part of my day job.   B)

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

I've edited my original post based on what Illauna said (i.e. the modifiers are applied each turn they don't actually show your current relations).

What seems to be happening is that after changing relationship status (or changing sign of the modifiers) relations will not change for nine or ten turns. Presumably this is to stop relations changing too quickly, but it does have slightly odd effects, like for example it doesn't seem to matter if an AI dislikes you by -6 a turn or -2, relations will get worse after nine or ten turns in both cases; and their "first impression" of you won't change for ten turns, even if their modifiers immediately reverse their sign.

Is this working as intended? Do people like/dislike fixing relations like this for ten turns?