The least involving part of any 4X strategy is very often diplomacy with AI civilizations. Even Endless Legend 2, a game with a faction of coral people who can make other people like them by infesting their territory with spores, does settle into a formula. You make friends with other leaders forever or you define them as enemies and obliterate them. Maybe you grease the wheels by offering some minor nation a palmful of glowy rocks in return for passage through their lands.
Developers Amplitude are trying to give Endless Legend 2's diplomacy more consisting and flavour, however, by giving the world itself a memory. As of the game's latest update, you'll find it harder to cuddle up to other factions after spending 20 turns incinerating their dominions. Even worse, you might be permanently branded a Bully.
"Let's be honest: diplomacy in its previous form had a bit of a goldfish problem," reads a recent blog post by lead game designer Julien, who notes that opposing empires tend to be just as upset with you whether you've razed one city or swallowed half their realm. "The world had no sense of escalation, no memory," he goes on. "You could be the most relentless conqueror in the history of Saiadha and the other empires would essentially treat each act of aggression as if it were the first."
No more! From now on, habitual invaders will be punished via the awesome medium of badges, reflecting a permanent public opinion shift in the target civilisation. These are awarded when the game identifies a pattern in your behaviour. If you keep sending one faction compliments, you'll rejoice in the title of Pleasant, earning a 10+ public opinion modifier. If you keep refusing that faction's treaty offers, you'll be slapped with the label Hard Bargainer. If you attack the same civ five times in a row, you'll be identified as a Bully. If you take seven territories from that civ, you'll be known as a Colonizer, earning an especially severe -50 to public opinion.
"Badges don't appear out of nowhere they're preceded by a clear escalating sequence," the post goes on. "Every hostile category has 3 temporary tiers before the badge triggers. This gives you warning. It gives your diplomatic partners warning. And it means the decision to keep going is always a conscious one."
Amplitude's hope is that "aggressive play now has long-term diplomatic costs that can't simply be waited out", while being a peacenik will make "coalition-building, treaty renewals, and joint actions meaningfully easier". The updated diplomacy system thereby "rewards consistency and punishes patterns you didn't notice you were building". While initially, your badges will only be 'visible' to the civilisation you're befriending or bothering, the developers are considering making them public knowledge, resulting in a world that gradually "closes ranks" when you pick on any specific rival. Amplitude are also "working on expanding the range of diplomatic tools available new treaty/declaration types, and improvements to how AI leader archetypes respond to your behavior."
While making the badges permanent does feel sensible in terms of fostering clear-cut consequences, I do wonder whether they've looked at the idea of generational memory and differences of opinion. Maybe the youth among the neighbouring Kin of Sheredin take a harsher view of my lategame encroachments than their parents, who remember when I used to be a font of goodwill? Also, I want to be able to issue badges to other civs, and perhaps write my own. It could be an extension of the diplomatic process, even! Call ME "Hostile", would you? Well I'm going to label YOU a "Puny Little Pushover".
If either those ideas, or Amplitude's revised diplomacy system sound like too much fuss, there's an obvious way to simplify things: play Necrophage. Necrophage leaders aren't entirely oblivious to foreign public opinion, but they tend to be more preoccupied with what the other side's civilians taste like.