All around, i think that the new Diplomacy options are a very decisive addition to the game, it feels much more alive and authentic, and enables the player to interact more with the other factions. You can get what you want or influence other factions through other means than war, and it leads to more thinking and less "map painting with armies" than before.
A few things could be improved nonetheless :
- The warscore cost of regions during a war is too high, and often leads to wars of total occupation in order to be able to achieve peace. It has already been mentioned by other players so I won't delve into it.
- The war exhaustion mechanic. I don't know if it has been implemented yet, but I've been waging wars after wars with Pontus without much rest, and I didn't feel any bad effects others than the ones linked to occupation of new regions. I was an hellenic nation so I had the "Ellines Sotter" bonus, and I could just rampage through Asia minor without too many consequences as long as I conquered Hellenic regions though, so it wasn't too hard
- I think that an option is missing from the Diplomacy : The ability to push a client state to revolt against its overlord. This would really be an interesting addition, and would create a very fun tool to deal with big factions with Client states such as the Seleucid, when you are for example Pontus, swimming in cash, and trying to cause troubles to your ennemies without going to war with them. The same tool should be usable by the AI against the player and other AIs too.
Ex : Pontus has -45 relations with Seleucides, and a -25% army strength compared to them. Bactria is a client state of Seleucides, with -25 relations between them.
With its money, Pontus will give gifts to Bactria to improve the relations between the two states, and then use the "Push to revolt against Overlord" diplomatic option with Bactria, either in a transaction deal (with more gold and/or metal/manpower to sway them) or through a unique demand. If it succeeds, Bactria will go to war against its Seleucid overlord, and there will be a relationship malus between Pontus/Seleucid. If not, there will be a relationship malus between Pontus/Bactria, and Pontus/Seleucid.
- Transaction deals including the exchange of manpower, metal or units should be limited to factions not too far away from each other. For example, I shouldn't be able, when playing as Pontus, to provide Pontic Archers to Caledones if my lands aren't close enough to the Caledones.
- An option to "Threaten war" could be created to send an ultimatum to a faction. "Do this or it'll be war". Doing it without actually going to war if the other faction refuse the offer could lead to a huge malus to relations between the two states, and a loss of legacy for the author of the ultimatum. Even if the %of army strength is already used in diplomacy between factions, I think that a "Threaten war" tool could still be an interesting thing, but it should be a gamble and lead to big maluses if the player is bluffing and fails.
I really appreciate the work that has been done with this game, the diplomacy makes the game deeper and gives nice and realistic tools for the players to achieve victory. Awesome update !
PS : Playing as Pontus, since I formed the « Galatia » province, I’ve been able to recruit Warbands as a heavy infantry unit. However, this unit doesn’t work as a provincial unit, but as a regular one : I can recruit these Heavy Infantry warbands everywhere in my kingdom, inside and outside of Galatia, and these units do not have a scaling cost, contrary to a regular Provincial unit. They just work as standard troops. It looks like a variation of the "Sagitarii bug" from 1.04
