How does dimplomacy work?

[Blackhydra]

I have basically only played against bots. And then I've know discovered the diplomacy. But when i tried to become nutral or at peace with the ai, it just allways replies like this: "I'm not intrested in an allience". Am i doing something wrong? Or is the issue that I'm playing against ai?

Edited July 15 by Blackhydra

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Make sure to try Neutral first, and not after you've killed any of their units. They're less likely to agree to neutrality if you've killed a bunch of their units. 

[Gurken Khan]

I don't know how often the AIs make an offer in this version, but I'm likely to deny it anyway: I came to finish them.

I usually play with one ally and four enemies, if you team them up it becomes harder; with three teams in total there's decent variability in how they behave.

[Thalatta]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Make sure to try Neutral first, and not after you've killed any of their units. They're less likely to agree to neutrality if you've killed a bunch of their units. 

It would be nice if there was some indicator on how much they like you or not (Sins of a Solar Empire had this for example). This could influence not only diplomacy and aggression, but also the market, which right now is a copy of AoE and I'd totally change for something more interesting.

[Grautvornix]

Isn't that like in real life? Neutrality is not guaranteed , especially not if you harmed the other country.

The AI consistently replying "not interested" seems strange to me.

In SP, I often use neutrality which works in many cases (could not find out why or why not) and in a second step also an alliance which sometimes can be established. often there is a tribute to pay (1000 wood or the like) for one or the other.

 

[Obelix]

If you get neutral with an AI competitor, send traders to their markets. After that, many offer an alliance proactively after some time or if you offer one to them they agree (or still want some tribute).

[Grautvornix]

@Obelix Ah! Cool - was not aware - thanks a lot! 

[Blackhydra]

On 16/07/2026 at 8:51 PM, Grautvornix said:

@Obelix Ah! Cool - was not aware - thanks a lot! 

Same here, thanks a lot!

[Blackhydra]

On 15/07/2026 at 6:06 PM, Grautvornix said:

Isn't that like in real life? Neutrality is not guaranteed , especially not if you harmed the other country.

The AI consistently replying "not interested" seems strange to me.

In SP, I often use neutrality which works in many cases (could not find out why or why not) and in a second step also an alliance which sometimes can be established. often there is a tribute to pay (1000 wood or the like) for one or the other.

 

I think, when I said that they replied "not interested" I didn't think like that was exactly what they said. I just wanted you to be aware of that they always weren't interested in an alliance.

[Thalatta]

On 15/07/2026 at 8:18 AM, Gurken Khan said:

with three teams in total there's decent variability in how they behave.

Indeed, in this example, Liu Hu accepted straight away both neutrality and alliance, Antiochus rejected everything, and Ptolemy accepted neutrality but required a tribute for an alliance:

It took me like 10 tries to get such a varied output, so there are some random starting parameters in this. The tribute asked was always 1000 Wood. I wonder if there's a way to display messages again after they disappear, I had to do all that a bit fast (but not so much for the order not to get messed up, since they take a second to answer).

So, the game is quite good at describing things, but it would be nice if, when they don't accept, they mention that more trade would be needed if that's the case, or whatever is, although some friendliness indicator would be ideal.

Edited 3 hours ago by Thalatta
Rephrased and added first quote and last lines.

[Gurken Khan]

2 hours ago, Thalatta said:

I wonder if there's a way to display messages again after they disappear