Stellaris is a fascinating mess of systems that I could talk forever about. For those unaware, itâs a grand strategy game that takes place in a galaxy filled with different alien nations. If you donât know what a grand strategy game is then google it or something Iâm not your mother.
Anyway one of my favorite little tidbits is one of the fundamental underpinnings of how diplomacy works, which is the relationship score. Your relationship with another empire is the sum of two numbers, your opinion of them (on a scale from something like -1500 to 1500 or something like that), and their opinion of you. These two numbers are themselves sums of several different factors such as diplomatic arrangements youâve made, compatibility of political ideology, frequency with which you bathe, etcetera.
Now the part I want to talk about *specifically* is the basic diplomatic action you almost always have available to you: âImprove Relationsâ. Itâs the most basic idea: you ship over a diplomatic envoy to shake their least slimy tendrils and say nice things about the way theyâve decorated the place. This improves their opinion of you, which as you may remember, makes your relationship as a whole go in the positive direction. Pretty simple.
Now the funny part is that. Well. The developers decided that obviously you need the opposite option. You need a way to say âI DONâT want to be friends with that alien empire, they bathe far too frequently for my tastesâ. And whatâs the opposite of Improving Relations, of course? Why, Harming Relations! So you. You send them an envoy. Whose entire job is to just⊠piss these people off. To shake the incorrect tendril and insult their aesthetic senses just because they happen to be a race of sentient cubes. You make them hate you, because you already donât like them, and I guess you feel awkward about it not being mutual? And the funniest thing is that AI-controlled nations will, of course, use this option! If youâre trying to butter up the powerful, belligerent warmongering star empire next to you because youâre a race of peace-loving snails and youâve spent this entire time building megamalls in fucking space instead of, like, military installations, that empire will go âoh no you donâtâ and send one of their envoys over to start calling you a poopy stinky slimeball, resulting in a net zero change in your relationship score with them. Of course, this means that, technically, they have an extremely high opinion of you after a while, because the envoy youâve sent over is affecting their opinion, and the one theyâve sent over is affecting yours, but you know, letâs not think too hard about that.
Oh, and thereâs uh, already another mechanic for lowering their opinion of you. Itâs the âinsultâ diplomacy option. So you can like, ring up the Borg or whoever, ask them if you can speak to Hugh Jass, and then hang up on them when they yell at you. So the whole system is redundant but nevermind.
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