Diplomacy

Diplomacy is an act of contacting other factions' councilors, usually to trade, or to bribe them to improve relationship.

Faction Hate

Faction relationships are governed by FactionHate score. This is a float value that determines how poorly a faction feels about another; the higher the score for another faction, the more it's hated. Each faction has a separate hatred score for every other faction, including the aliens.

Each faction has a war threshold for every other faction. While the threshold is usually 50 hate, it may vary from 22.2 to 100 hate depending on ideological distance and faction strength. The alien faction's war threshold for each faction is always 50 hate.

In the intel window, there are 3 different tiers of hatred levels for human factions:

• Tolerance: 0
• Conflicted: >0 but not above the war threshold.
• War: >0 and above the war threshold.

Visiting the trade screen allows determining hate score more precisely. From there, faction attitudes can range between following values:

• Pleased: <10
• Tolerant: >=10
• Wary: >=20
• Conflicted: >=30
• Displeased: >=40
• Annoyed: >=50
• Angry: >=60
• Infuriated: >=70
• Outraged: >=80
• Hate: >=90

As hate increases, factions will prioritize aggressive actions and target hated factions more. In addition, they'll also be harder to trade and cooperate with. Once the hate value increases beyond the war threshold, the faction will declare open war, and will begin serious attempts to kill habs, ships, and councilors until the hate falls back down beneath the war threshold.

Factions also have a minimum hatred score for each faction. Ideological differences affect this as well as used mission control (MC) cap in the case of alien hate. If the minimum level climbs above the current hate level, the hate level is moved up to the minimum.

Aggressive actions and combat increases hatred against the attacking faction. There is a table of hatred increasing councilor and military actions below.

Every time a hatred modifier is applied, the value is multiplied by a random value between 0.8 and 1.2. This means that the hatred score changes you get in-game can be between 80% to 120% of the values listed in this post.

Faction hatred can grow pretty much infinitely, so if you piss off a faction (or the Aliens) enough, it can become virtually impossible to get them back to Tolerance.

Passive Hate Change

Hatred may also passively change over time. This occurs just after the start of each month.

Envy-Based Human Hate

The human faction that possesses the highest fractional ownership of humanity is usually regarded as each human faction's biggest rival (referred to in the code as mostPowerfulHumanEnemy). Factions will usually slowly gain hatred for their biggest rival based on how much better the rival is doing, while slowly losing hatred for everyone else.

As a result, if you're doing better than the AI, they'll likely hate you regardless of what you do.

Note: On difficulties below Brutal, AI factions cannot gain envy-based hatred for the player's faction if they are ideologically close enough.

Alien Passive Hate

SPOILERS INSIDE!
The Alien Faction takes note of the human faction that possesses the highest fractional ownership of humanity, excluding The Servants and The Protectorate. The Aliens will slowly gain hate for this faction, as well as all anti-alien factions.

Actions that affect hatred

Missions

Mission	Critical Failure	Failure	Success	Critical success
Assassinate, or detain alien	5	0	10	0
Control Space Asset	2	2	7	7
Seize Space Asset	2	2	10	10
Coup	3	0	5	5
Crackdown	0	0	2	0
Detain	1	1	2	3
Extract Councilor	0	0	1	1
Hostile Takeover	1	0	2	2
Purge	1	1	5	5
Sabotage Facilities	2	0	3	0
Sabotage Hab Module	2	2	0	0
Sabotage Project	2	0	3	0
Steal Project	2	0	3	0
Turn Councilor	3	3	0	0
Cause Unrest	2	0	0	0
Dominate Nation	30	20	5	5
Assault Alien Asset, except xenoforming	2	2	10	10

If a faction detects (and has basic intel on) a councilor of another faction performing an action that affects them and causes hatred on success, they'll gain hatred equal to its success hatred / 2 regardless of whether the action succeeded or not.

Combat

Action	Hatred generated
Destroying a ship	0.4 * hull structural integrity
Destroying a hab module	hab tier level
Destroying a hab	3 * hab tier level
Assaulting a hab	8 * hab tier level
Bombarding and destroying an army outside of faction war	30
Initiating bombardment on any target	1
Entering combat against a hab	2 * hab tier
Declaring war on another nation	Number of CPs owned in nation* 3 (for faction with executive control only)

Alien Specific

SPOILERS INSIDE!

Action Hatred Formation of alien nation All non pro-alien factions gain 30 hatred towards the aliens and 100 hatred towards the Servants Anti-alien and very anti-alien factions gain an additional 30 hatred towards the aliens Destroying landed UFO Aliens gain 80 hatred towards the faction responsible. Destroying alien facility Aliens gain 10 hatred towards the faction responsible. Conquering or causing a revolution the alien nation Aliens gain 80 hatred divided up among the factions responsible.

Alien Hate Vent

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Aliens may lose hate when they destroy specific assets of their enemies: Destroyed Target Conditions Hatred Vented Councilor Must be assassinated. Average of all of the councilor's attributes without orgs or traits. Army Must not be at Total War. Must be bombarded. Must be targeted by Aliens. 1 Space Facility Must not be at Total War. Must be bombarded. Must be targeted by Aliens. Nation is fully controlled by one faction. 1 Ship Must not be at Total War. Must not be Trespassing. Must be targeted by Aliens. The Construction Tier of the Ship's Hull. Complete Hab Module Must not be at Total War. Must not be Trespassing. Must be targeted by Aliens. Module Tier ^ 2. +Module Tier if Module is a Mining Complex. +Module Tier if Module is a Construction Module. Divide by 2/3/4/5 for Cinematic/Normal/Veteran/Brutal Difficulty. Incomplete Hab Module with Previous Module Must not be at Total War. Must not be Trespassing. Must be targeted by Aliens. (Minimum of this Module and Previous Module Tier) ^ 2. Divide by 2/3/4/5 for Cinematic/Normal/Veteran/Brutal Difficulty. Incomplete Hab Module with No Previous Module Must not be at Total War. Must not be Trespassing. Must be targeted by Aliens. Hab Core must be complete at some point in the past. Module Tier ^ 2. Divide by 16. Divide by 2/3/4/5 for Cinematic/Normal/Veteran/Brutal Difficulty. Entire Hab Must not be at Total War. Must not be Trespassing. Must be targeted by Aliens. The Maximum of: Sum of hate vented if each individual module was blown up. Hab tier if Hab Core was complete at some point in the past. Hab tier / 2 if Hab Core is not currently being boosted over from Earth. Any of the Above Must be on Cinematic or Normal Difficulty. Must have lost >20% of Fractional Ownership over Humanity recently 35% of alien hate for faction. As a general rule of thumb, the aliens will only vent hate after destroying a target if: They are not at total war with the target's faction. They actually wanted to kill the target (not self-defense against stuff being thrown at them or their territory).

Contact with Other Factions

To conduct diplomacy, a councilor needs to do Contact mission on an adviser of target faction.

Trade interface

It's possible to trade following things:

• Resources
• Orgs (including assigned orgs)
• Habs
• Engineering projects
• Non-aggression pact and intel sharing.

Trade is the only action that decreases hatred directly. Equal trades decrease hatred by -9 and favorable trades decrease hatred by -18. Having a hatred score above a 6 with a faction hampers your ability to trade with them, so it's important to trade early and often with factions you want to ally.

Faction hatred significantly affects trade favorability:

• Each faction computes a score for a trade by weighing it against what they have, what they're prioritizing, etc.
• If hatred is greater than 6, that score is divided by hatred / 5, significantly reducing the trade's favorability score

Faction hatred may also reduce the amount of resources that a faction is willing to sell to another.

Contact with Aliens

SPOILERS INSIDE!

Pro-Alien Human Factions may contact alien operatives after completing certain story objectives. However, trade with Aliens is limited in some ways: Habs cannot be traded. Engineering Projects cannot be traded. Non-aggression pacts cannot be traded if one party is The Academy. There are lines of alien diplomatic contact dialogue in game files: Servants: Greetings, faithful servant (Kneel, domestic animal). You are loved (you are nothing). Protectorate/War: Yield (die). Protectorate/in conflict: Submission=survival (Resistance=obliteration). Protectorate/Tolerance: You are tolerated (You present no threat). Academy/War: Undesired obstacle (Expunge the threat). Academy/In conflict: Cease. Cease. Cease. (Threat. Threat. Threat.). Academy/Tolerance: Communication=acceptable (Human=persuadable?).

Pro-Alien Hate Sharing

SPOILERS INSIDE!

Servant hatred and alien hatred scores are related. Gaining hatred with one will increase hatred for the other according to the following relationships: If the Servants gain hatred on a faction and can contact the aliens, the aliens gain the same amount of hatred / 4 Otherwise, the aliens gain the same amount of hatred / 8 If the Aliens gain hatred on a faction and can contact the Servants, the Servants gain the same amount of hatred / 2 Otherwise, the Servants gain the same amount of hatred / 4 Same situation applies to the Protectorate, but only if they can contact the Aliens and to a much smaller extent Amount / 10 given to the Aliens for actions against the Protectorate Amount / 3 given to the Protectorate for actions against the Aliens Note: This hate sharing mechanic only applies when gaining hate through action: Passive Hate Changes are never shared. Hate loss, such as from trade, is never shared.

Aliens

SPOILERS INSIDE!

In the code, the aliens are treated as yet another faction (except that they do not have rivals), so they have a relationship/hatred score with each faction as well. For the alien faction, there's only 2 tiers: not at war (< 50) and war (>= 50). The alien threat indicator on the intel screen shows the estimated alien hatred level, with each light corresponding to an increase of 10 hatred. However, it's important to remember this is an estimate of the alien's hatred level, whereas the human factions level on the intel screen is accurate. All of the hatred score rules for the human factions also applies to the aliens. Actions that increase hatred for human factions also increases it for the aliens. Hatred also changes over time with the aliens. The every other month decay for rivals matters more than for human factions. The aliens will likely evaluate themselves as being ahead of your faction until mid/late game, so their threat level/hatred for your faction will decay even if you're the most powerful human faction to start. However, once you're a significant threat/very advanced, they'll start gaining threat like the other factions. Unlike human factions, the minimum hatred level is now influenced by MC usage. For anti-alien factions, the minimum hatred level is either 20 or the difficulty modifier * MC, whichever is higher. For the other factions (excepting the Servants, which are permanently allied to the aliens and cannot gain hatred), the minimum level is just the difficulty modifier * MC. Difficulty level modifiers are as follows: Cinematic: 0.05 Normal: 0.3 Veteran: 0.6 Brutal: 1 Some factions have research projects which decrease hate generated by used MC. Only used MC, and not MC cap affects hate levels. This means that increasing your MC usage enough will increase the minimum hatred level past the point of being at war with the aliens. For example, if you use 167 MC on normal, it is impossible to be at peace with the aliens (167 MC * 0.3 = 50.1). However, if their attacks destroy enough of your ships and habs to reduce your MC usage below that critical value, then it is possible to return to peace. The alien threat indicator is only an estimate of the actual alien hatred level. It is stored in assessedAlienHateOfMe key for each faction. At the start of the game, the estimated level will be at 0 for all factions. In contrast, the actual level will start at 20 for anti-alien factions (the Resistance and Humanity First). Every time hatred increases for the aliens, the hatred value is added to the estimated threat level before the 80-120% variance is applied. As a result, the estimated level change can be higher or lower than the actual change depending on RNG. The estimate is only corrected to the actual value after detaining an alien councilor or contacting the aliens as the Servants/Protectorate. All of these changes means that the alien threat indicator can be wildly off the real alien threat and it shouldn't be trusted before detaining your first alien. Alien threat indicator during total war Aliens lose hatred by destroying space assets and armies. However, after the aliens declare total war after a certain period of time has passed, this no longer applies (without all of your MC being wiped out). The number of years before total war is declared depends on difficulty: Cinematic: 25 years Normal: 20 years Veteran: 10 years Brutal: 0 years Aliens also need 300 hate to declare total war. Note: even on brutal difficulty, the alien's hatred score still needs to reach 50 before they start going after you. Also, if you're playing as the Servants, this relationship is inverted; higher difficulty means more time until the aliens get serious. Contact aliens Factions that can speak Hydra language may contact alien operatives. This makes alien threat level. Other than that, there doesn't seem to be a reason to do this. However, there are lines of alien diplomatic contact dialogue in game files: Servants: Greetings, faithful servant (Kneel, domestic animal). You are loved (you are nothing). Protectorate/War: Yield (die). Protectorate/in conflict: Submission=survival (Resistance=obliteration). Protectorate/Tolerance: You are tolerated (You present no threat). Academy/War: Undesired obstacle (Expunge the threat). Academy/In conflict: Cease. Cease. Cease. (Threat. Threat. Threat.). Academy/Tolerance: Communication=acceptable (Human=persuadable?).