Stellaris Dev Diary #315 - The Velvet Glove

[rylasasin]

It's a good start, but I don't think it goes nearly far enough. While it does stop every empire from whimsically throwing themselves at the feet of every nearby empire that's 1% stronger than they are, or vise-versa, I don't think it really addresses the core problems with vassals and federation blocks.

That is, they're far too stable and easy to maintain. They're too 'one and done'. You vassalize a subject, and then for the most part you never have to worry about them ever again (unless you're dumb enough to put on 'offensive' or 'all' wars in the subject agreement, or you're really stupid oppressive with your taxations, but even in that later case it's more having to worry about putting down a subject's internal rebellions than having to deal with a rebellious subject itself.) They almost never rebel (their planets will sometimes revolt, sometimes repeatedly, but that doesn't really count,) and once subjugated (even if it's completely milk-toast regular default subjugation with no downsides or upsides) they just sort of give up on playing the game. They barely develop a military at all, which means they never have the strength to rebel either.

Point is, it's much harder to get a subject to rebel against their overlord than not. Yes, they do Secret Fealty, but there's no logic behind it, and will often waste their SF on an empire that really likes their overlord instead of one that's bound to fight against them. So 90% of the time secret fealty ends up becoming a big wet fart. In fact I don't think I've ever seen an AI do a SF war because of this.
There's also the fact that they end up trusting their overlord as time goes on instead of the the other way around, which means even the SF ends up fizzling out, and only compounds the problem.

The same exact problem goes for federations. It's too easy to maintain them, even on high centralizations. I mean we have a whole precursor digsite that details how hard it is to keep a coherent federation in order, but in game it's harder to make a federation go the way of the First League than not.

So I propose the following:

1. Vassals gain a 'discontent' modifier that creeps up as time goes on. There are ways to mitigate this (overlord buildings, subsidies, etc.) but not entirely stop this. It'd have a cap somewhere just to prevent this from going off into infinity. This means it'd be hard if not impossible to keep vassals indefinitely. Note that self-created Vassals don't suffer from this (as those are less 'vassal' as they are 'semi-autonomous regions'.) Vassals gained through conquest start with a higher amount of discontent.
And on a related note, make cohesion more of a problem with federations, especially with non-galactic unions.

2. Have AIs stop 'giving up' once they become vassalized. Especially if they have a secret fealty going or are discontent with their overlord, they should start building up militarily in order to fight their overlord. Also, stop making them go down a difficulty or two when they get vassalized. Not sure who's 'brilliant' idea that was, but it isn't. It just contributes to the forever vassal block problem.

3. Make it so secret fealty cannot be given if the empire in question has positive relations with the overlord or has defensive pacts already in place or is already part of a federation with the overlord. Basically, make AIs smarter about who they give their Secret Fealty to.

4. Make 'smear campaign' more effective when used against someone in a federation or an overlord. In the former case, it lowers the opinion of ALL federation members and lowers cohesion, making it more likely that they'll get kicked out of the federation. When used against an overlord, it raises discontent among the subjects.

TL;DR: Vassal and federation blocks should still be possible, but they should be harder to acquire, and even harder to maintain. Give vassals an actual chance to rebel. They should not be 'one and done'.

Unrelated, but:

* Make overlord holds per planet instead of per empire, like an overlord version of megacorps. That way the ones besides garrison can actually be useful (though as a counterbalance garrison itself could only be used once per empire, just to prevent you from stacking them.)

 

[Zeta-0]

I wonder if it would be too easy to get 50 trust to subjectgate? Only one commercial or reasearch agreement can make that. I think it should at least have a political or military agreement and may be increase the benchmark to 75.

 

[Jabarto]

I don't think the vassal problem can be solved by anything short of making it impossible to diplovassalize anyone who doesn't qualify as a protectorate. Just as we can't trade systems because the Ai simply can't handle it, the proof is pretty solid that the AI will aggressively throw away its autonomy at the earliest convenience it gets; this is just kicking the point of "earliest convenience" a little farther out.

Honestly the whole concept is rather silly. No state should ever surrender its independence without a fight unless it would be sheer suicide not to; if you want a mechanic whereby smaller states can protect themselves from stronger aggressors, federations are right over there.

 

[mrt1212]

It's a good start, but I don't think it goes nearly far enough. While it does stop every empire from whimsically throwing themselves at the feet of every nearby empire that's 1% stronger than they are, or vise-versa, I don't think it really addresses the core problems with vassals and federation blocks.

That is, they're far too stable and easy to maintain. They're too 'one and done'. You vassalize a subject, and then for the most part you never have to worry about them ever again (unless you're dumb enough to put on 'offensive' or 'all' wars in the subject agreement.) They almost never rebel, and once subjugated (even if it's completely milk-toast regular default subjugation with no downsides or upsides) they just sort of give up on playing the game. They barely develop a military at all, which means they never rebel either.

Point is, it's much harder to get a subject to rebel against their overlord than not. Yes, they do Secret Fealty, but there's no logic behind it, and will often waste their SF on an empire that really likes their overlord instead of one that's bound to fight against them.

The same exact problem goes for federations. It's too easy to maintain them. I mean we have a whole precursor digsite that details how hard it is to keep a coherent federation in order (First League) but in game, it's harder to make a federation go the way of the First League than not.


So I propose the following:

1. Vassals gain a 'discontent' modifier that creeps up as time goes on. There are ways to midigate this (overlord buildings, subsidies, etc.) but not entirely stop this. It'd have a cap somewhere. This means it'd be hard if not impossible to keep vassals indefinitely. Not that self-created Vassals don't suffer from this. Vassals gained through conquest start with a higher amount of discontent.
And on a related note, make cohesion more of a problem with federations, especially with non-galactic unions.

2. Have AIs stop 'giving up' once they become vassalized. Especially if they have a secret fealty going or are discontent with their overlord, they should start building up militarily in order to fight their overlord.

3. Make it so secret fealty cannot be given if the empire in question has excellent relations with the overlord or has defensive pacts already in place or is already part of a federation with the overlord. Basically, make SF smarter about who they give it to.

4. Make 'smear campaign' more effective when used against someone in a federation or an overlord. In the former case, it lowers the opinion of ALL federation members and lowers cohesion, making it more likely that they'll get kicked out of the federation. When used against an overlord, it raises discontent among the subjects.

You're pretty much on the money with what ails both vassals and federations in similar but different ways - they are very much set and forget unless you really start abusing the hell out of them with asks or they can't uphold their side of lopsided bargains.

In general the problem with Federations as stable entities is that there is some sense of internal animosity if there are a few oddball divergent ethics empires in there, that rarely actually gets in the way of conducting business, which is very idealistic. But the function of differing ethics being the only animus that exists within and any number of envoys can overcome in the cohesion effect, which most AIs dedicate at least one envoy to, and the votes on items that are very unpopular can be goosed so hard with Favor Bombing, or simply having vassals that don't have their own diplomacy -there's always a release valve on the pressure. So there really isn't internal friction present except incidentally on some action items.

Vassals have two animus related to being vassals in conjunction with other vassals in the 'Too many other subjects' which has relief in the Shared Destiny AP (which is a must in some baroque scenarios) and the below mentioned Relative Power of Subjects to Overlord

1. Vassals kinda, sorta, maybe, gain discontent via Relative Power of Subjects To Overlord as the game goes on creating the largest malus in relations. It really depends but in every game where I've turned on the faucet of vassals, the modifier for that is anywhere from -60 to -150 depending on the composition of vassals and my own ways. I think the general issue is that being an exploited vassal for so long, with many other adoptive siblings also being exploited, is just kind of an individual empire's problem, and not recognized as a larger collective problem for every Vassal. Exploiting every Vassal with +75% everything across the board is 20-30 individual problems according to the game even though maybe after the first 5 or so vassals yoked this way, it is an Overlord problem. Having too many vassals is an all vassals problem with direct relief, all your vassals collectively having more power for you is an all vassals problem. Basically the quality of exploitation should factor in too, and if you're super benevolent then there shouldn't be any problems, and if you're grinding 20-30 vassals into dust, there should be big collective problems. A rebellion, a revolt, a revolution, where dying and out of the game is preferable than being under your thumb. It happens.


2. This is less of an issue if they aren't yoked so hard by their Overlord, but they do kinda just do bare minimum and don't consciously pursue a crack in the door to shimmy out of your grasp, collectively or individually. The modifiers are the modifiers but there should be some more fiestiness especially for vassals you didnt create by your ownsome. Tens of Thousands of years of history but now a docile kept bird in a cage because handsome, intelligent brute met them in the last 10 years in space smacked them down and thats that for the Glorbs and Glerps?

I think internal/external, created/extant should weigh in this. A colony on an empty planet is probably gonna have less feistiness, than a 10,000 year old empire that you stomped on until they cried uncle. Its not just ethics, its not just relative power, its not just about being the umpteenth victim of a known brute, its about the fight in the dog to be as 'free' as they once were in a continuity of their own history. Even the charade of catch and release wont help with this - same pops, different and ethics set...naaaaah...there are tombs and tomes still extant...thats a puppet government.

3. Yep! If were were looking to get out from under a brute, there would be a litany of questions that go beyond being available and unattached and a baseline agreement on a share enemy.

4. Vassals should be running every Op it can on an overlord but especially one it does not like, imposing a cost of sorts on having so many vassals and treating them poorly. Dont want to be the defacto target of unconventional insurrectionary dissent by those you keep? You have management options and drastic options. So the Ops actually need to be better, and I am pretty sure that vassals really dont have any use for Influence at the moment and could stand to use an outlet for it, if youre doing them dirty.

LIke your post and thoughts because my feeling with both vassals and federations is not that theyre too easy to make or get as a core mechanics of the game but entirely too easy to maintain if you can do them and choose to do them. I know players don't like having to deal with costs for supposed victory and moan about 'rewards that are punishment' but every gripe and grouse about them seems to revolve around them becoming intractable fixtures that dont change once established, not quantitive aesthtics on the right amount of Federations and Vassals in galaxy or per empire, or even their actual composition.

And I am very much in the tank for both vassals and federations of tools I use, love em to pieces, but even I would love to see them band together to give me hell if I overdo it. I generally dont get too gamey with my vassals always seeking positive relations and being a genuine pal to those I play steward for but...I have broken a lot of empires in half and am ready for my medicine on it - especially if it helps break gridlock among AI which is what a lot of this is all about anyway, no humans even needed in the equation for their own decision.

 

[DeanTheDull]

That is a point, but I feel like this change favored them and nerfed diplomatic empires.

I'd agree to the first part (favors militarists), but disagree with the second (nerfs diplomatic).

It's definitely an increase the militarist early-aggression style, because that style was one that could/would get blocked by vassal swarms that could turn early-wars into 2-or-more-vs-1 that were unreasonable. This made for a short window of opportunism.

On the other hand, I disagree that it's a nerf to diplomatic empires, as the primary vassal builds weren't, well, diplomatic builds. Diplomacy could help, but the biggest source of vassal-garnering relative power in the early game was military power. Supremacy in particular- by making ships cheaper, increasing your fleet cap significantly, and then increasing the diplomatic weight of said ships- was the single biggest factor in being able to peacefully vassalize others.

Now that AI offers of vassalization require trust, Supremacy is actually going to have to fight for wars (which it's good at), but not be tripping over peaceful vassals from relative military power but lacking trust.


For Diplomatic styles in general, the key value of them- the ability to avoid unnecessary early wars to focus on economic acceleration, or else get co-belligerants to make early wars easier and more profitable- is still there. The real question will be how/if independence guarantees are removed, as those were the key to leveraging the AI as a guarding force / neutralizing at low-influence cost.

 

[Idle America]

I think the federations issue could be eased if forming federations wasn't locked behind the Diplomacy tree. Instead, it could be any number of bonuses to federation cohesion, acceptance, etc.

 

[mrt1212]

I think the federations issue could be eased if forming federations wasn't locked behind the Diplomacy tree. Instead, it could be any number of bonuses to federation cohesion, acceptance, etc.

This is just creating a new Influence Min/Max, isn't it? A ramshackle fed that has no intent of growing or administering itself because mutual defense among many parties with influence savings is kind of a no brainer?

You have to take a whole ass Tradition for it because its immediate straight benefit that only grows if you choose to do it. A system where its like 'Save 3.5 influence by uniting all parties for a mutual defense pacts' probably leads to ramshackle federations where there isnt enough benefit to cohesion and internal decisions passing, and still leads to power blocs, just without a fleet or some nifty sweetners if you play nice.

 

[SirBlackAxe]

• Anomalies that reward Scientist Expertise traits now apply those traits to the Cognitive Node for gestalt empires.

[snip]

• Fixed Secrets of the ... no longer granting Expertise traits.

This will block them from gaining a different expertise trait, right? Is there a way to decline an expertise trait you don't want? If not, there's a bit of an incentive here to keep track of which anomalies give which traits, and then ignoring the ones that give traits you don't want.

Diplomacy and Trust​

A common complaint since the release of Overlord and the 3.3 ‘Cepheus’ update is that the galaxy frequently degenerated into a handful of powerful vassal blocs, and things like Federations only formed rarely. A significant cause of this was due to the willingness of AI empires to quickly diplomatically submit to more powerful empires, even if the difference in power really wasn’t all that high. This then led to a snowball effect, as newly encountered empires would generally be less powerful than this already established bloc.

We’ve made a few minor adjustments to AI Acceptance in past releases, but decided that we need a more impactful change to delay this sort of behavior. We do want it possible for these political formations to form, but it shouldn’t be a fast and virtually guaranteed phenomenon.

Sounds pretty good so far!

I do notice that the only sources of trust decline listed are war and rivalry - is there anything else that negatively impacts trust, or will it always grow to and sit at the maximum?

AI

The AI will no longer request to become the subject or overlord of another empire unless they have 50 Trust with the other party.
Certain AI personalities (Federation Builders, Spiritual Seekers, Migrating Flocks, and Peaceful Traders) are now 25x more likely to select Diplomacy traditions.
The AI will no longer request to be subjugated by empires that are equivalent or weaker than them.

It'd also be nice if you could figure out a way for AI to tell if it's only temporarily weaker due to a war or crisis - if it has a weaker military but equivalent or better relative tech and economy and unused naval capacity, it should try to use an estimate of how much fleet power it expects to have once it finishes rebuilding its fleet unless it has some reason to believe another empire will declare war on it soon. Ideally also accounting for ability to hire mercenaries/marauders or recently expired fleet contracts.

 

[Millbot]

As for buffer vassals. First warfare needs some serious reworks, particularly in regards to how they end and how they can expand to include new parties,

In regards to buffer vassals. I'd argue that if you get to dictate who they can or can't open their borders to, then if you declare war on someone, that means that if your vassal with no diplomatic independence closed their borders to your opponent, well you opponent is going to no longer honor that arrangement.

This in turn could create an interesting dynamic where the vassal now has to decide if it wants to go to war or tell it's overlord "hey man, I know you told me to keep my border closed to them, but don't really have the means to resist and/or want to fight a war. So you're just going to have to deal." This would be a good spot to flesh out some penalties for having disloyal vassals, since they might be more willing to decide they'll no longer follow orders in regards to who can enter their systems or not. Inversely this could be a benefit of keeping vassals loyal, in that they might being willing to go to war if someone threatens to start one to force them to allowing them to have access to the vassals hyperlanes.

I will also say I wish we had an option where we could tell other empires "hey, you can pass through our systems, but you cannot have open conflict in them. Don't care if you pass your mortal enemy in one of our systems, while you two are duking it out in a war. You want to fight, you do it it outside of our territory."

Anyways, I'd also argue another aspect of vassal loyalty should be that the more disloyal they are, the less likely they are to pay their taxes. I mean, that would be justification to add a new war goal called "We'll have our tribute." I do think disloyal vassals should come with downsides because right now they really don't have any and that does make the system way too easy to game.

 

[Bayes]

Trading favor felt more like abusing the ai so I am happy you got rid of it, now I just hope that manual trading gets compeltely revamped and removed as that also feels very abusive.

 

[jedavis]

Removing the trading of favors is probably for the best as a quick fix as it was extremely exploitable, but I think influencing the Galactic Community will be much harder without it and may become frustrating.

Favor trading was one of the main things that made the GalCom fun to engage with, as players had a lot of agency even if their diplomatic weight was low. I think it should be possible to trade favors with empires you have very good relations with. That way, making friends means you can count on their cooperation in the GalCom, which is a big incentive. Favor trading was also fun and more balanced in multiplayer with friends.

Removal of favor trading does further buff the already extremely powerful (and underrated) Extort Favors operation though. Previously, it was game-winning when faced with a hostile runaway AI with huge diplomatic weight whose favors could not be bought. Just steal favors and have them vote to have themselves declared a crisis. Now, that solution applies to ANY runaway AI, not just hostile ones.

Yeah pretty much all I use favors for is GALCOM and getting federation votes to go the way that I want them to. Very sad to see bribing other empires' politicians fall by the wayside. Frankly I find that joining federations with the AI is just not fun - if I don't have a way to game the votes (favors or vassals) then I'm getting pulled into stupid wars or other bad decisions that I want no part of, and if I have enough vassals to win all the votes then it's just an extended vassal sphere. Buying favors gave me enough pull to have to think about which federation votes were important enough to spend it on, but not just win all of them outright like vassal swarm+federation.

The traditions that give favors are very slow and not very targeted. Given that I need a huge pile of favors with typical a single empire to swing a federation vote, I see these being usable to do that like once a century. Doesn't seem worth. Will probably just continue to not federate with the AI.

It is very strange that in the image of the spreadsheet, federation association has no trust growth associated with it.

The rest of the changes here seem fine, I guess. I agree with other posters that big mutual threats should be enough to get a defensive pact even if trust is low.

Gonna pour one out for protectorate+ministry of truth spam for tons of Influence, I guess.

 

[Ikael]

Very interesting diplomacy changes, some comments about them:

- It seems that both federations and vassal blobs will form later than usual, allowing for a less stagnant mid-game, and a more aggressive-driven early game. We'll see, but so far, it looks promising.

- Having those changes in mind, perhaps vassal and federation leveling should happen a bit tad faster. Especially federations, which are still locked behind Traditions. The same goes for the whole set of xenophile bonuses, which perhaps they should focus on trust or federation building instead.

- Mixed feelings about the removal of favor trading. While it was exploitable, I also liked the option of "punching above my weight" and having some margin of maneuver inside federations and the Gal Com. Perhaps with the upcoming leader rework, envoys could act as the "regular" way of obtaining favors from a particular empire? until such a thing happens, "Extort favors" galore, I guess.

- I am extremely interested in leader consolidation, especially about the "leader-ification" of envoys. It will be quite interesting to see if their primary role will be diplomacy (increasing trust? increasing trade and research treaty output? gaining favors?) or powerful espionage shenanigans.

- It also makes a ton of sense that each leader type can administer a planet/sector, rather than relying on a specific governor type. Not to mention that this would give more flavor to each class (commanders upgrading the naval cap output and sector's defenses, scientists giving more science to their assigned planets, etc, etc.).

 

[Imp0815]

It doesn’t seem like a militarist buff. It’s not any easier for bullies to get subjects now. They will now have to actually expend time and materiel to get underlings, instead of just waving their big sticks around.

It’s true that we’ll most likely see vassals as a militarist thing, while diplomatic empires will favor treaties between equals, but that hardly seems like a bad thing.

You are right. Overall, this is a good change, but still, I think the issue at first is a side effect of how military might is considered in the whole affair, and how we increase it and interact with it.

 

[Imp0815]

I'd agree to the first part (favors militarists), but disagree with the second (nerfs diplomatic).

It's definitely an increase the militarist early-aggression style, because that style was one that could/would get blocked by vassal swarms that could turn early-wars into 2-or-more-vs-1 that were unreasonable. This made for a short window of opportunism.

On the other hand, I disagree that it's a nerf to diplomatic empires, as the primary vassal builds weren't, well, diplomatic builds. Diplomacy could help, but the biggest source of vassal-garnering relative power in the early game was military power. Supremacy in particular- by making ships cheaper, increasing your fleet cap significantly, and then increasing the diplomatic weight of said ships- was the single biggest factor in being able to peacefully vassalize others.

Now that AI offers of vassalization require trust, Supremacy is actually going to have to fight for wars (which it's good at), but not be tripping over peaceful vassals from relative military power but lacking trust.


For Diplomatic styles in general, the key value of them- the ability to avoid unnecessary early wars to focus on economic acceleration, or else get co-belligerants to make early wars easier and more profitable- is still there. The real question will be how/if independence guarantees are removed, as those were the key to leveraging the AI as a guarding force / neutralizing at low-influence cost.

Well put!

You brought my pain point into a better perspective as in:

"but the biggest source of vassal-garnering relative power in the early game was military power."

Which loops back to my initial post that, in parts, we had these issues because of how simplistic the military and fleet power works.

The simple nature of more ships -> more fleet power -> more diplomatic power is just a downer as this value is not as abstract as it might seem, as often fleet power directly converts to how well you do in a war. It makes the whole thing lopsided and takes the depth and complexity out of it, which is unintriguing and dull.

If the military might was just a consideration for diplomacy to a part where we would consider it was only in relativity to each other and less of a concern in terms of raw numbers, it would detach it from the diplomacy better. If we then had a system where raw fleet power numbers would be a factor and not THE factor, it would be even better.

P.S. Oh, and I guess the biggest source of vassal-garnering relative power in the early game is still military power.

 

[DeanTheDull]

If the military might was just a consideration for diplomacy to a part where we would consider it was only in relativity to each other and less of a concern in terms of raw numbers, it would detach it from the diplomacy better. If we then had a system where raw fleet power numbers would be a factor and not THE factor, it would be even better.

This might be part of a recent semi-nerf to Supremacy? Part of the most recent patch changed Supremacy's diplomatic points from just boosting military, to also reducing your tech/econ scores.

If the diplo-vassalization consideration not only considers diplomatic trust, but relative strength in all categories (as in, you can't be superior in one but inferior in others), that would go a ways to further negating Supremacy-swaying in the early game.

 

[Foxosaur]

Maybe 1 military power should not equate to 1 diplomatic power. If it ever is compared like that. Maybe it's value should be a divisible by active wars and other factors so its possible that weaker empires might dog pile a strong empire *insert thinking emote*

 

[Peter Ebbesen]

- Mixed feelings about the removal of favor trading. While it was exploitable, I also liked the option of "punching above my weight" and having some margin of maneuver inside federations and the Gal Com. Perhaps with the upcoming leader rework, envoys could act as the "regular" way of obtaining favors from a particular empire? until such a thing happens, "Extort favors" galore, I guess.

Ignoring trading, which currently allows you an easy shortcut to gaining lots of favors, envoys are already the regular way of obtaining favours from a particular empire via the Eminent Diplomats(Diplomacy) tradition and, to a lesser degree, as it is max 1 per Galcom session, the Quid Pro Quo(Politics) tradition.

The Extort Favors spy operation is merely a way of increasing the rate of favor gain per envoy at the cost of influence.

If you want more favors to punch above your weight, the obvious approach is to take civics and traditions that grant favors and increase envoys - nothing really needs to change with leaders for that, as it is already the case.

Of course, I don't know what they have in mind with leader consolidation for diplomats, but given the loosening of the soft leader cap, I would be greatly surprised if we ended up in a situation where a diplomatically inclined player couldn't match with diplomats the current number of envoys, and hence have at least equivalent options for the passive generation of favors.

 

[Nevars]

And here I thought that federation and vassal bloc is pretty good thing to happened to Stellaris cuz otherwise I would be able to stomping all empires as soon as I get cruiser first.

With the power bloc forming, it's really limited my aggression and forced me to relied on other thing such as diplomacy.

 

[George Fernell]

Any news on the reduction of "leader types" you mentioned some time ago?

 

[Lorenerd11]

If we get Admirals and Generals fused into a Commander class, can the Commander of the fleet bombarding a planet also lead the invading army?
Can Army Ships be part of a fleet now?
Could "boarding" enemy ships be a thing in combat? So that armies can capture enemy ships instead of being defenseless in space.

Transport ships being proper military ships, weaker than corvettes but not completely useless in combat would be neat.

They should be balanced to have extremely low odds of overcoming actual military fleets, and still avoid enemy ships in engagements, but be able to overwhelm unupgraded starbases for instance, so if they enter in a system with one they're not just completely stuck.