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.

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

Minimum Hate Amount

Factions whose ideologies are too opposing have a minimum level of hatred for each other.

Anti-Alien Pro-Alien Divide

Non-moderate factions on opposite sides of the Anti-Alien Pro-Alien divide have a minimum hatred of 20 towards each other. Specifically, the following pairings will always have at least 20 hate for each other:

• Humanity First and The Protectorate
• Humanity First and The Servants
• Humanity First and The Aliens
• The Resistance and The Protectorate
• The Resistance and The Servants
• The Resistance and The Aliens

Alien Hate for Mission Control Usage

SPOILERS INSIDE!

The alien faction has a minimum hatred level for all human factions except The Servants and The Protectorate. This hatred level depends on the amount of mission control used by the human faction, which roughly represents the amount of human space assets that could be used to threaten the Alien's dominance over space. This minimum hate level is calculated as follows: The amount of Mission Control currently used by the human faction. Multiply by Difficulty level Modifier: Cinematic: 0.05 Normal: 0.3 Veteran: 0.6 Brutal: 1 Multiply by 0.8 if Strategic Deception has been researched. Multiply by 0.8 if Maskirovka has been researched. Multiply by 0.8 if Operational Misdirection has been researched. 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 and have not researched any of the MC hate reducing projects, then 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.

Alien Maximum Hate Amount (0.4.85+ only)

SPOILERS INSIDE!

The Alien Faction has a maximum amount of hate that it can have for other factions. This maximum hate amount is calculated as follows: 70 Base Value. +930 if not on Cinematic Difficulty. +2 per year since the Campaign began. +98 per year since the Campaign began if not on Cinematic Difficulty. If at least 25 years have passed since the Campaign began and the hate maximum is below 200, then the hate maximum is increased to 200. Note: All Campaign Duration checks are multiplied by the Alien Progression Slider in the Custom Campaign settings. Accelerated Campaign mode sets this Alien Progression Slider to 200%, so every year that passes counts as 2 years. Note: Whenever the Minimum Hate level is greater than the Maximum Hate level, the Maximum Hate level will be set to the Minimum Hate level.

Passive Hate Change

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

Envy-Based Human Hate

Crabs in a Bucket - A Metaphor for Human Faction Relations

Each human faction considers the human faction with the highest fractional ownership of humanity other than itself as its rival.

The game simulates envy by making human factions slowly gain hatred for their rival based on how much better the rival is doing, while slowly losing hatred for everyone else. So human factions that are falling behind have a tendency to work together to bring down the strongest human faction, like crabs in a bucket.

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.

Just after the start of each month, the following happens for every pair of human factions A and B:

1. If B is not A's rival, or the month is even, then A loses 1 hate for B.
2. If A and B share a rival, then A loses another 1 hate for B.
3. If A's rival is on the opposite side of the anti-alien pro-alien divide, then A loses another 1 hate for B.
4. If B is A's rival, then A gains X hate for B, where X is calculated as follows:
   1. If A is ahead, then set X = 0.
   2. If A is on par, then set X = 1.
   3. If A is losing, then set X = 1.75.
   4. If A is losing big, then set X = 2.25.
   5. If A and B are non-moderates on opposite sides of the anti-alien pro-alien divide, then add 1.4 to X. (The moderates are Project Exodus, The Initiative, and The Academy.)
   6. If A and B are on the same side of the anti-alien pro-alien divide, then subtract 0.75 from X. Subtract another 2.25 if it has also been less than 7 years since the campaign began.
   7. If X is less than 0, then set X = 0.
5. If B has unlocked their Victory Objective, then A gains another 1 hate for B.

For example, suppose you are playing The Resistance. It is October 2042, and you have unlocked your victory objective, and you are far ahead of all other human factions. This month, The Protectorate will:

1. Lose 1 hate for you, because the month is even.
2. Gain 2.25 + 1.4 = 3.65 hate for you, because you are their rival, they are losing big, and the two of you are non-moderates on opposite sides of the anti-alien pro-alien divide.
3. Gain another 1 hate for you, because you have unlocked your victory objective.

On odd months, the first 1 hate loss doesn't happen. Thus The Protectorate will gain 49.8 hate for you every year, even if you take absolutely no hostile actions against them.

Alien Passive Hate

SPOILERS INSIDE!

The Alien Faction sets their rival to be the human faction that possesses the highest fractional ownership of humanity, excluding The Servants and The Protectorate. The Aliens will slowly gain hate for their rival, as well as for all anti-alien factions. Unlike Human Envy however, Alien Frustration with Humanity's continued refusal to fall means that their passive hate gain rate constantly accelerates as the campaign continues. Just after the start of each month, the following happens for every human faction B that is not The Servants: If B is not the Alien Faction's rival, or the month is even, then the Alien Faction loses X hate for B, where X is calculated as follows: Set X = 0.8. If B is anti-alien, then set X = 0.64. If B is not the Alien Faction's rival, and the Aliens are already at war with at least 3 human factions, then multiply X by 1.5. If the Alien Faction and B share a rival, then the Alien Faction loses another 0.33 hate for B. If the Alien Faction's rival is on the opposite side of the anti-alien pro-alien divide, then the Alien Faction loses another 1 hate for B. If B is The Protectorate and B has unlocked its victory objective, then the Alien Faction loses 10 hate for B. If B is not The Protectorate, then the Alien Faction gains X hate for B, where X is calculated as follows: Set X to 0. If B is the Alien Faction's Rival, then add 0.65 to X. If B is the human faction that possesses the highest fractional ownership of humanity, then add another 0.65 to X. If B has unlocked its victory objective, then add 0.5 to X. If B is Project Exodus, then add 0.07 to X. If B is The Resistance, then add 0.17 to X. If B is Humanity First, then add 0.34 to X. If B is The Academy, then multiply X by 0.75. Multiply X by 0, 1, 1.9, and 3.3 for Cinematic, Normal, Veteran, and Brutal Difficulties respectively. Divide X by 60. Multiply X by the number of years since the Campaign began. Multiply X by the Alien Progression Speed. This is a slider you can adjust in Custom Campaign settings. It is 100% on Long Campaign mode and 200% on Accelerated Campaign mode. For example, suppose you are playing The Resistance on Normal Difficulty, Long Campaign mode. It is October 2042, and you have unlocked your victory objective, and you are far ahead of all other human factions. This month, the Alien Faction will: Lose 0.64 hate for you, because the month is even and you are anti-alien. Gain (0.65+0.65+0.5+0.17) * 1 / 60 * 20 = roughly 0.66 hate for you, because you are their rival, the strongest human faction, have unlocked your victory objective, are the resistance, are on normal difficulty, and it has been 20 years since the Campaign began. On odd months, the first 0.64 hate loss doesn't happen. Thus the Alien Faction will gain roughly 4.2 hate for you this year, even if you take absolutely no hostile actions against them. Furthermore, since Alien Frustration is constantly growing, they will gain roughly 4.6 hate for you next year, roughly 5 the next, and so on, accelerating by roughly 0.4 per year. In practice, the Alien Faction will usually pick the Player's faction as its rival simply because the player will be developing that much faster than the Human AI factions. So the best a player can do to avoid passive alien hate gain is to avoid unlocking their victory objective as long as possible. Under these conditions, there are two rough deadlines to keep in mind: Hate Start: The time after which you would be gaining passive alien hate faster than you lose it, on average. War Start: The time after which the aliens would declare war on you, assuming you never did a single thing to change their hate amount, not even use Mission Control. Faction Hate Decay Hate Gain Per Month Per Month Hate Start Month Hate Start Year War Start Month War Start Year Bimonthly Monthly Normal Veteran Brutal Normal Veteran Brutal Normal Veteran Brutal Normal Veteran Brutal Normal Veteran Brutal The Academy 0.8 0.4 0.00135 0.00257 0.00447 296 156 90 25 13 8 568 353 240 47 29 20 The Initiative 0.8 0.4 0.00181 0.00343 0.00596 222 117 68 19 10 6 457 288 198 38 24 17 Project Exodus 0.64 0.32 0.00190 0.00362 0.00628 169 89 51 14 7 4 398 255 177 33 21 15 The Resistance 0.64 0.32 0.00204 0.00388 0.00674 157 83 48 13 7 4 328 207 142 27 17 12 Humanity First 0.64 0.32 0.00228 0.00433 0.00752 141 74 43 12 6 4 303 192 132 25 16 11

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)

Note: As a general rule of thumb, factions will never gain hate for any assets that they destroy in self-defense.

For example, if a faction A sends a fleet of ships over to a faction B's hab, and faction B kills all of the ships in that fleet, faction A does not gain any hate for faction B.

However, pre-emptive self-defense does not necessarily count. If faction B had seen this fleet of ships coming from faction A, and sent its own fleet of ships to intercept faction A's fleet before it arrives at faction B's hab, then any of faction A's ships that are killed in that battle could cause faction A to hate faction B.

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

SPOILERS INSIDE!

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 be on version 0.4.84 or earlier. Must have recently lost >20% of Fractional Ownership over Humanity 35% of alien hate for faction. Any of the Above Must not be on Brutal Difficulty. Must be on version 0.4.85 or later. Must have recently lost >35% of Fractional Ownership over Space Humanity 50% of alien hate for faction on Cinematic Difficulty. 35% of alien hate for faction on Normal Difficulty. 15% of alien hate for faction on Veteran Difficulty. 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.

For more detail on trading options, see Factions#Trade_Negotiations.

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. 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: If you're playing as the Servants, this relationship is inverted; higher difficulty means more time until the aliens get serious.