My Thoughts/Questions Diplomacy

[Darknaj]

Is there a cap on certain modifiers when it comes to relations with other countries? I just find it odd that having a border with another country would guarantee dragging you into a war eventually. Especially if you share an alignment. I would have hoped that if I am a neutral country bordering another neutral country we would be getting along at least modestly because we share the same ideals/values/something.

This is only exaggerated by smaller kingdoms having less agents. Which I completely understand why. Was it considered having agents scale off of something so that countries with more territory have access to more agents? Or is this already in the game and I have been failing to hard to achieve it? (lol :'( ) I can see it including racial tendencies to have more or less, but eventually I would expect even the undead to have more than one agent abroad meddling with affairs.

[Jekky]

All relations are capped - i believe border friction only causes -10 at most (might be less.. i don't have the figures on hand). In any case, it will only reduce it by a certain amount.

You make a fair point that bordering countries sharing alignment and/or culture should probably suffer less border friction though.

[Darknaj]

Oh okay good to know about the cap. I had thought I had noticed one for non-aggression pacts, but at least now I have some ideas how to maintain non-conquest borders.

[gchristie]

One thing I discovered and like is that there are innovative ways to get another faction to have a more favorable opinion towards your faction. While playing as Dragonhold, I want to keep Dunmar happy while I stick it to the orcs. So I send an agent to Dunmar to sing our praises, which is a slow process. As I was readying my forces to attack the Iron Barony's army in one of IB's provinces, the Baron steals a march on me and invades one of Dunmar’s provinces. So I sent my forces after the orcs into Dunmar’s province, annihilated the orcs and then was given the option to retreat from Dunmar's province or stay and risk making Dunmar angry. I retreated and got a message from Dunmar thanking me for pitching in and viola, our relations improved. The agent could then be recalled to do something more pressing.

One adjustment I'd suggest, give the player a chance to decide where to retreat their forces to. ZOC would be a factor, but if you have two or more options for retreat can you allow us to select the province?

Great game so far.

Cheers

[Jekky]

Generally, retreat should favour the province you came from in the first place - it will use other adjacent provinces if that isn't possible though.

[Darknaj]

Fair enough I suppose. After enough game time I have come to the understanding that the border friction for similar race/alignment is actually already there. Since every country has a different base relationship that more then covers it. I am just tossing this in here before this topic is mothballed in case someone searches for the topic later.