can you elaborate on this? are you saying you are content with the current diplomacy because this game's predecessor was galciv2?

i never asked for anything specifically. i just made the observation that:

1) diplomacy is not very immersive

2) it makes the game one-dimensional gameplay wise. (too much of a wargame, less of a civ game)

i just mentioned EU4 for the stark contrast between the diplomacy systems, i never asked to adopt the diplomacy system of EU4, but i would like more depth to the current diplo system.

if the game "improves" these features it will also change it's identity and that's not a good thing.

There are a few consequences for war:

1) It takes population to invade planets. This means you have to weaken one of your planets to take another one.

2) Diplomacy. People will like you less. I have to admit, this matters less when you are killing them all anyway.

3) Approval penalty. You have skirted this, and it isn't that severe anyway, but too many planets can cause some trouble.

4) Oppertunity cost of military force: that production could have been used to get more research, money, or to improve your planets.

I don't disagree that maintaining a constant state of war is probably a little too uncomplicated in this game, but it is not without its costs.

Precisely. GC3 has every bug and disadvantage GC2 had and noone seems to be making effort to change this.

In Sid Meyer's they impose on warmongers quite heavily to eliminate reasons for endless war. Maybe some of their gains should be implemented here? Things like war weariness or morale penalty for every occupied planet.

personally i would go with something like this (just a quick draft):

1) Different kinds of war:

-War of extermination: every world invaded fights to the death, i.e. much higher casualties on both sides. successful conquered planets are immediately under your control, for declaring such a war you gain heavy diplomatic penalty with good races, medium diplomatic penalty with pragmatic races)

-War of conquest/occupation: every world invaded only fights with a fraction of it's citizens, medium diplomatic penalty with good races, conquered planets take a couple of turns of unrest until they come under you control, based on how large the conquered population is

-Show of Force: can't invade planets, planets/starbases of the defeated faction are cheaper during peace negotiations, gain negative diplomatic relation with malevolent races (they see this as an action of a weakling)

2) Morale:

-Affects combat (ship and ground) stats

-gain morale for successful actions like defeating ships and invading planets and loose morale for loosing ships/planets

-Depending on your alignment or race and the type of war declared, e.g.:

If benevolent Altarians declare war of extermination they start with negative morale; however if malevolent Drengin start a war of extermination they start with positive morale.

Yor would always have neutral morale (no morale chips installed)

If someone declares war of extermination on you, you start with high morale

If someone declares a Show of Force on you, your initial moral is dependent on the average approval of your citizens compared to that of the enemy (maybe your troops don't want to fight for your evil empire and see your rule as more evil than the enemies)

3) War exhaustion:

-Affects population growth and economy

-goes up, depending on troops lost (mostly during invasions be it defending or attacking)

-declines during peace time

-races with high war exhaustion are much less likely to declare war

I play another game called Making History that lets you alter history by re-fighting WWII, WWI, etc.

You get a penalty for war weariness, logistic penalties, and when you conquer a city, you can use the city for production, with a penalty, but you can't recruit troops from the population until you have conquered the entire county or made peace based on existing borders. If you are weaker than the greater nations there are serious hegemony implications from starting a war.

We have learned a lot about war weariness in the last century. Your people love you when you are winning, in spite of casualties, if there are spoils (Nazis/lebensraum). Your cause has a lot to do with taking casualties, (fighting at home or for freedom), and your population will not tolerate body bags beyond a year in any localized foreign war. Excuse the oversimplification.

that is good to hear frogboy. can you please elaborate on your last point (the data driven part)? are you sampling meta data that goes back into the ai decision making?

I think that the different races should react to war in different ways.  Warlike Malevolent races should perhaps enjoy war (think Klingon) but, it should still have an economic and political impact.  It should hurt technological advancement, cut back on Civil liberties and generally hurt them because war is expensive in terms of man, money and resources.

Pragmatic races would probably want trade rather than war, or would want to sell to parties who are at war... but not be involved themselves.

Benevolent races would want to avoid war where possible.

There needs to be war weariness, some effect on production and research as war drags on and on.  But, there also has to be diplomatic solutions to war that are viable.

+1 to liking the idea of a war weariness mechanic, with some adjustments for each race. E.g. for Drengin the weariness should occur if they are at peace for too long, etc.