In the last Diplomatic Method dev journal, Yarlen walked you through all of our new Diplomatic stats like Patience, Trust, Rivals, and other racial and factional modifiers.
In the Diplomatic Agreement window you can see a breakdown of all of the factors going into a AI player’s willingness to accept deals. Each field has a tooltip that will tell you what’s contributing to those percentages or an explanation of what they are.
Patience, young grasshopper…
Under the new Diplomatic system, Patience is an important thing to keep in mind. You shouldn’t spam AI opponents with shoddy deals because you will exhaust their patience (until it recovers over time). However, Patience is a resource you can intelligently spend. It’s okay to roll the dice on a 50% acceptance offer when you’ve got 3 Patience, but probably risky if you’re down to 1 Patience and need the deal to go through.
At the start of the game, deals are harder to get because of the base Species and Factional relation values, but through your actions on the map you can move that needle by increasing Trust. Successful trades and agreements with the AI will gain you Trust, but bribes can work too. While gifting the AI will gain you Trust, the Patience stat will keep you from being able to “love bomb” a player and then get a favorable deal. A single large gift is better in the long run than several smaller gifts. Different factions value different resources more: One might guess that the TEC love credits the most, but the Vasari value metal more than credits given their alien motivations, while the Advent favor crystal.
The Rival of my Rival…
The AI opponent's Rival is the player who has the highest Hate score and is still alive; it can and will change over time. If you have a particularly large battle with an opponent or take their planet, you could become their Rival. If you’re trying to win someone over, it’s wise to limit the amount of conflict you have with them. However, attacking a player’s Rival will gain you Trust. So, if you’re looking to be diplomatic, being aware of who hates who is necessary, so you can plan your next moves.
The new Diplomatic system allows for Item and Influence trading now as well. You can trade Minor Faction items and Artifacts. Artifacts are valued highly by the AI opponent. We’ve had some internal test matches where being able to trade items bought through Influence came in clutch helping a teammate defend themselves from an aggressive AI.
Be a dealmaker, not a deal breaker…
Breaking alliances will incur a tough Trust penalty, reducing your Trust with all players. Everyone pays attention to untrustworthy actions, and it will become harder to secure new agreements the more you break them.
Finally, the AI will now reach out to you with deals as well, for resource trades, but also for ceasefire agreements and more! We hope you enjoy this update to Sins II’s Diplomacy system and have fun playing v1.50!