Diplomacy not really improved.

Yes, I've noticed this too.

Same.

Sorry to hear that. No point in investing more effort in LH then (for me anyway).  I'm moving on to work on GalCiv.

Hmm it just needs some tweaks that is all.

If you have some specifics I'd be glad to ask someone to look at it.  I have a few ideas myself I'm going to ask Charles to tweak with.

That's not what I'm seeing. The AI do not go to war as much between themselves, which is a good thing imo.

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Sorry to hear that Frogboy.   Wish you would reconsider...

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LH Mods by Primal

XtraDeconstruct

XtraDeconstruct Canons

I was supposed to start on GalCiv months ago but my LH addiction got the best of me.  I can still ask others to look into things that people post.  But to put it in perspective, I wrote more code for -.5 than all the previous updates combined. So we are definitely getting to the point in finishing returns here. 

I haven't noticed that, but I think the AI should be an equal opportunity aggressor.

I know there have been a number of people who have been downright nasty about expressing their views of the AI, but I don't think the OP is one of them. No need for the "take my ball and go home" type of reply.

Nonetheless,

I get the impression that the decision to allocate more resources to GC3 was made a while ago.

Frogboy was spending his RL evenings trying to make LH better instead of hanging out with family/friends/whatever pursuing his own interests outside of work.

Ungrateful people told him he wasn't doing a good job.

He doesn't care to spend a lot of his evenings to work on LH if it is just going to result in people saying he is wasting all his time and there is no benefit.

I can see why he would give up on LH in light of those things.

GJ to those of us who helped put the nail in the LH coffin.

The intention was not to say the diplomacy is just a crap because I can see the added factors in the update but that those factors are too in favour of negative relations from my experience.The game is making it hard to get allies.

GC2 had relations seeming much more natural and with slower jumps and they did not have the added monster threat..The A.I would be cautious about being at war with most the map.A.I Empire factions like Umber are reckless and basically DOW most factions quickly.

Every time I have ever met Resoln when they had more score than me and when I was a good side race they always DOWd me 1 turn later.

I don't take that to mean that the diplomacy system is broken, I just assume that Resoln has some kind of modifier to DOW early.

I have not had the same experience when my opponents have been, say, Krax.  Krax seems not to DOW very early or easily even though they are also a dark side race.

I just kinda assume it is supposed to be that way.

Anyway, it was clear from other threads that Frogboy had about enough of using his personal time on fixing LH.  People like Primal_Savage tried hard to get Frogboy to ignore the people saying Frogboy's effort was wasted in those threads and he kept on.

This just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back.

It is very unfortunate for all of us that love FELH, but the writing has been on the wall for quite a while now that the effort wasn't going to continue much longer.  Frogboy didn't need many more reasons to quit and he was going to get them sooner or later anyway.  That is the nature of the world.

The lack of further support does sadden me a great deal, but I can't fault his decision to discontinue supporting it.

- Edit - One thing we can do is try to help design a diplomacy system that will do better for the next GalCiv project.  I don't know if Frogboy wants to open source the diplomacy system, but if he could be convinced to then we as a community could put a lot of good effort into that and maybe the next GalCiv will end up with a diplomacy system that is top of the line.  Not that it won't be if Stardock handles it alone, but I do generally think that the more eyes that look at the problem the better the end result tends to be.

I think the system is ok, maybe the numbers can be tweaked a bit, which an intrepid modder could do I believe.

For instance, sharing a trade agreement or giving tribute ought to give a greater diplo boost than it currently does (unless, of course, the AI you're dealing with is purely an a-hole and would gladly take your candy then beat you up for being so weak.)

In my opinion the system that was recently put in place is a big improvement and can be further tweaked by modders.  I think the effort put forth in 1.5 definitely made a difference.  However, I do find that Reslon is very erratic and declares war on me in every single game, and seems to do so whether they are stronger than me or weaker than me.  Besides Resoln, I find that the other factions behave less erratically.

I hope there will be more DLC for Elemental. Nonetheless, it's time to move on as I personally feel you guys have done an outstanding job! I just got the Undead DLC and am looking forward to starting my first new game in a month. Looking forward to GalCiv3. Never played the other ones years ago.

We have more DLC (And more updates) for FE planned.  I would expect at least a 1.6 and 1.7 to be honest.  For me, the question is what to spend my free time on.  

This Christmas holidays are coming and while other people like to play MMOs or other games I tend to enjoy AI programming instead.  I think LH is at the point of diminishing returns where the AI is pretty smart and pretty clever for most people but those who have truly mastered it are at a level I won't really be able to touch without massive work.

The LH project has been really educational in terms of AI design.  There's a lot of things I would have done differently if I had to do it over again, things I can put into GalCiv.  

I do think nodders could do a lot with the diplomacy. They would just need to modify the values in the XML on things like "we want to bring order" type stuff.  I think those negatives are just too big.

I think broadly speaking, one of the things that should matter a lot more and 1.5 is the first version that looks at this, is the distance between players.  The AI does a lot better when it focuses its armies on a particular players and actively stays out of war with others.  GalCiv II did this. They had a focused enemy and would avoid wars with others.  But that came at the cost of modding (since I hard coded all this).  I think that was a big mistake as data driving everything in the Elemental games made behaviors too generic.

I don't regret the effort in 1.5 to start having the AI behave more intelligently in diplomacy. I think it'll make a big difference for most players.  But I think it's clear that the hard core players won't really benefit from it because nothing short of a wholesale redesign would be sufficient to bring the kind of nuance they're looking for.

In the meantime, LH is still due to get some performance boosts, probably some visual improvements, some UI improvements, balance, and more.

Honestly, I think this is the right call, and I don't mean that in a way to shaft fans of LH.  I'm trying to look at it objectively. 

I noticed some improvements, but LH is still at its core- about war.  Probably as it should be.  Did seem that AI hardcoding determined warmongering heavily (I'm ok with this, but it was to a bit too much of a degree)

I think what people want out of diplomacy in games is a way to prevent going to war with a stronger AI, or to be able to ally weaker AI to gang up on a stronger AI.

Well, I have noticed in 1.5 that the AI seem to be alot less insane with sole exception of Resoln who actually have appropriate modifier saying I"m insane. with a -1 red modifier xD I still remember the first time I saw that then lol'd. She once dow'd me when she didn't even have an army ready to rumble in 1.5 and got flattened very early by me because of it. Only had random militia and spiders to protect her towns with. Insane indeed.

I'm glad to know 1.5 isn't the last update because I'm looking forward to new content. :P  Or even a expansion pack.

Take a break, Frogboy, enjoy the holidays and recharge.  

Glad to hear there is more in store for FE:LH.  It is a terrific game.  

As far as additional content, why don't you run a few more contests here on the forums like you did back before E:FE rolled out?  Great fun for the community, fame and fortune   for the winners and more fun stuff for the game.  Prizes could be a free DLC pack, an item, hero or spell named after the winner or just the thrill of winning!

If you really are going to be up to your neck in GC3 stuff, do you have any interns?  I mean, what would Magnar do?

Thanks for all your hard work Frogboy. I have to agree that since we have access to the xml we can improve the AI a lot. It will just take a lot of tweaking which the community might be better at anyway.

Don't listen to them "not really", "not much", "not enough" - these are just complains to have a deam game. The game in fact is GREAT! And its easily moddable. It's possible to make the game to suit anybody's needs!

But just one question - there will be no more DLCs for FELH? No chance for Siege Pack https://forums.elementalgame.com/450477?

I've really appreciated the work put into the AI in general, it's made the struggle against the computer controlled factions a lot more epic. Based on my (limited) experience with 1.5 I haven't noticed a massive change with the diplomacy. The AIs still go to war with me in fairly short order after season 100. If my power rating is ok and we are on the same side, then if I can get some treaties going I may be able to get them to positive relations, but otherwise it's pretty hard work. This may reflect however that playing on high difficulty levels my power rating is generally a lot lower than the AIs; they may be other factors (do treaties become more expensive on higher levels?). One thing I have noticed is that the AI seems to be readier to make peace if they're at war with you but in practice they're too far away for there to be any conflict. This is a good thing, the AIs did seem to end up in some pointless wars sometimes. However after they make peace their relations with you tend to be pretty awful, so they tend to declare war on you again in fairly short order.

I'm sure diplomacy could be further improved, however if Frogboy wants to spend his spare time on other things then of course he should do that. Given that improvements to the diplomacy from this point are unlikely to sell more copies of LH, then of course he should only be doing it if he enjoys it. If the framework is setup correctly then modders should be able to spend as many hours as they want to, for free, to improve this. If someone really gets somewhere then maybe Stardock can look at implementing some of their ideas in a future patch.

I'm probably coming to the end of my time on Legendary Heroes for the time being myself. Given that I've spent most of this year on Elemental (since I bought Fallen Enchantress), probably 500 hours of game play, I certainly feel I've got my money's worth. I'll finish my current Dead game, at which point I'll have completed with all the standard factions, and it's probably time for something else.

At least until an expansion or a good mod comes along. 

Adding all of the possible diplo modifiers together (except family modifiers), I come up with a net -58.  Basically this means the game is going to spiral into war at some point during any given campaign.  I don't necessarily think there should be a net 0, but perhaps a little love to the possible positive modifiers might help even things out a bit.

Yes please work on GC3 that should be a prority it has been too long since we had GC game.  Besides Diplomancy in Elemental is a bust anyway. Just please don't use the Diplomancy system that you have in Elemental in GA3.

GJ failing at constructive criticism.

AFAIK, all AIs basically use the same general system to determine diplomacy.  It is mostly the types and sizes of modifiers that differ.

You are free to suggest a completely new way of doing things, but 99% likely your suggestion won't be taken seriously.

Instead, you can figure out which modifiers should be increased or decreased and give justification and GC3 might just be closer to what you would like to see in the end.