Diplomacy
The diplomacy window is used to control the political stances towards other empires.
Political Stances
Empires have 5 different views they can take of one another: Neutral, enemy, friend, vassal, and ally. The relationship between two empires is determined separately by each empire; an empire could be neutral towards someone that is friendly towards them, or an enemy of someone who is neutral.
When an empire change political stance to something lower, the other empire is also lowered to that political stance, unless it is already lower. For example, setting a friend to natural will change their stance toward you to natural as well.
Neutral
Neutral is the default political stance, it can symbolize a case-fire or an otherwise non-aggressive stance.
Enemy
Enemy can symbolize a defensive stance, a hostile stance or even war.
When an empire has an enemy stance toward another empire, their space stations, officer commanded spacecraft, and military weapon systems will open fire on that empire.
Firing upon another empire's unit, vehicle, spacecraft, etc... will automatically set both empires as enemy of each other and can only be changed by each empire's government.
Friend
Friend can symbolize a peace treaty.
This status opens up a series of features:
- If the empire's commerce policy has been edited, this will grant the friendly empire access to the "friends only" items.
- It will also open up the option to speak via the "Friend" communication channel (Note: all your friends may see your messages but might not see eachother's messages).
- This will also allow your empire to receive alerts from friends if they're being attacked.
Vassal
Vassal can symbolize many different things, such as surrender, subjugation, and extortion.
An empire that is a vassal to another pays 10% or more of their treasury a day to the other empire. This state usually implies a type of protection by the larger Empire.
It can also possibly be used by a conquering empire to subjugate other Empires without completely destroying them, which is both more kind as well as eliminating management for the conquering empire.
Being a vassal of another empire will also "add" your empire's score to the other empire. An empire may have many vassals, but can only be vassal of one empire.
Ally
Ally can symbolize an alliance.
The smaller empire appears similarly to a vassal, underneath the larger one. As with a vassal, the statistics of the smaller are added to the empire that you declared your allegiance to on the empire rankings page.
An ally may 0%-9% in taxes, more tribute will change the stance to vassal.
An empire may have many allies, but can only be ally of one empire.
Common practices
- Experienced empires set enemy stance towards all other empires by default. This helps to prevent trespassing, theft, and spying. This may not mean they intend to be hostile though.
- Larger diplomatic talks are usually conducted in the Diplomacy section on the forums.