Diplomacy compared to DW: Universe?

[PaulAllen1982]

Hi all,
I revisited Distant Worlds Universe again recently and I'd forgotten how much the other empires Interact with the player.
e.g asking you to lift your trade sanctions on their friends, asking you to remove military forces from their system, asking for help when they're under attack and so on.
They also send fleets to assist you when at war if I recall correctly.

I just wondered what people's experience of Distant Worlds 2 is like in terms of the above, does the AI do this sort of thing?

i.e the other empires interacting with you in this way and helping you when at war.

[OrnluWolfjarl]

To me it FEELS like the Diplomacy AI of DW2 is a bit lackluster compared to DWU. I have never been asked to do something that affects a 3rd party for example, and to answer your question.

Most of the interactions I get are "We declare war on you". And even then, they just declare war on me because they hate me, regardless if they can actually beat me or not. If I play a non-aggressive species/government, this can actually work as an exploit. I make the other empire hate me, they declare war, and I suffer very little war weariness and reputation hits, since I'm technically the defender. Then I just conquer them.

On the other hand the recently-added vassalization improvements are something that DWU lacked, and the alliances are also a lot more consistent with the dependability rating of each empire.

I think there's a lot of room for improvement, but the system is sufficient enough for now. I expect the Shakturi update to have more improvements on diplomacy to handle the whole intergalactic war.

[maggiecow]

I expect the Shakturi update to have more improvements on diplomacy to handle the whole intergalactic war.

Really good point!

[Gertjan]

Thank you bringing this up and I very much support it. These were very cool interactions in DW:U and it would be great if they were implemented in the same way in DW2. I hope we can some kind of confirmation of the devs that they intend to do so further down the road.

[ncc1701e]

Does the new DLC improve things?

[EpicD4ve]

The new DLC is definitely a nice addition, but I've not seen a massive improvement in terms of diplomacy tbh. I could be wrong (and sadly wasn't invited to test before release grr) but the multi-empire alliance seems to be locked behind in Game events. Meaning alliances pretty much act like they did before until later in the game. Which i found disappointing.

Personally, I used to play a heavily modded DWU. Retreat's mods were just so life giving to the game in my opinion, and I'm not entirely sure now how much they changed diplomacy. But one of my constant bugbears in dw2 is the lack of empire interaction.

I wonder if they should remove the race research tech that improves relations - researching this does seem to help a lot, but it feels rubbish to take time to research this and you have to do it for each race. Also, not sure if ai ever research these - very very rarely does the ai seems to court player especially for alliance or defensive pact. Also, sending/not sending an ambassador has quite a big impact on relations. They should scrap that these ambassadors are characters that need transferring because a) it legit takes ages for them to arrive and b) it either seems you have loads of them or hardly any at all, c) it creates unnecessary micro management. When you auto character locations they seem to needlessly and endlessly be moved around as well as appearing and disappearing. Instead this should be like a treaty or a decision to open an embassy. Equally, perhaps give greater weight to the ai to seek alliances or their natural like/dislike towards other races/govs. It would be awesome if the ai was a lot more situational. If neighbours with hostile aggressive race for example - make their barrier to accepting alliances a lot easier.

Having said all of this the dlc is a really welcome addition and even though I've been playing since release - it does feel like I'm still just scratched the the surface.