Greetings, emperors!
It’s been a while since I talked about diplomacy on this blog, so today I want to take stock of where things stand, and shine a light on two mechanics that quietly do a lot of work behind the scenes: Join Wars and Return Cities.
First, a quick recap for anyone who hasn’t dug deep into the diplomacy screen. Imperium Sine Fine already has a full set of diplomatic tools. You can declare friendship or send gifts to warm relations, offer peace, open borders, propose alliances, and of course declare war. Every serious proposal, peace, open borders, alliance, creates a formal request that the other empire can accept, refuse, or simply ignore. And ignoring one is always the worst option, it carries its own relation penalty on top of the refusal.
What I want to focus on today is what happens once you’re actually allied with someone, because an alliance in Imperium Sine Fine isn’t just a peace treaty with a nicer name.
Join Wars
When your ally goes to war, you have a real decision to make, and so does the AI when it’s on the other side of that alliance. The AI weighs it up using your relation value as the starting point, then subtracts for every enemy your ally is fighting, and subtracts again, heavily, if that enemy happens to be an ally of its own. Fighting alongside a good friend against a single enemy is an easy yes. Being dragged into a war against three different empires, one of whom you’re also allied with, is a very different proposition, and the AI will often decide it isn’t worth it.
This is deliberate. Alliances should feel meaningful without turning every regional conflict into an inevitable world war. An ally who judges the fight not worth joining isn’t being disloyal, they’re being sensible, and you’d probably make the same call yourself.
Return Cities
The second mechanic is quieter but I think it says a lot about how I want the AI empires to behave. If an AI ends up holding a city that was originally founded by one of its allies, perhaps captured during an earlier war, a diplomatic AI personality will hand it back. Not immediately, and not before more urgent diplomatic business, but it will happen. Aggressive and hardcore personalities never do this, they hold onto what they’ve taken. But a well-disposed ally genuinely acts like one over time, rather than sitting on stolen territory indefinitely just because it can.
Players have exactly the same option available as a standing action, Return Cities, for when you want to hand back a founded city to smooth things over with an ally or a former rival.
What’s coming
Diplomacy in Imperium Sine Fine is already a fairly complete system, but I don’t consider it finished, not by a long way. Once the game has launched, one of the areas I’m most excited to expand is exactly this space. There’s a bigger diplomatic addition planned, one that will give ultimatums and demands real teeth, and give you sharper tools for dealing with empires that have wronged you in the past, rather than simply declaring war and hoping for the best. I don’t want to say too much more yet, but if you enjoy the diplomatic side of the game, keep an eye on the post-launch roadmap.
If you haven’t yet, please wishlist Imperium Sine Fine on Steam, every wishlist helps enormously as I head towards launch!
Cheers!