I am equally bothered that CA don’t really understand diplomacy. This bit in particular:
“we’re putting love and hate at the very heart of the AI’s intentions”
Love and hate should ideally have very little to do with diplomacy. Diplomacy is gritting your teeth and being friendly to those you hate, being a dick to people you actually quite like, all because your own empire/kingdom/nation’s interests come first.
The warlord may have brutally crushed your valued trade partner, but you extend the olive branch because you don’t want to go the other way.
Your peaceful ally has been nothing but charming with you, but if you don’t turn around and conquer the shit out of them then those critical resources are never going to be exploited.
If you base your diplomatic AI on love and hate then conflicts like WW2 can’t happen. Stalin and Roosevelt would just turn on each other regardless of the practical concerns of having to stop Hitler first. The Cold War wouldn’t quickly turn hot because the USA and USSR hated each other so much. Forget that mutually assured destruction scared the crap out of both sides, it’s all about love and hate.
I’ve really fallen in love with Crusader Kings 2. It also has a love/hate opinion system, but it’s only tangentially related to declaring war. You go to war for a specifically defined reason, most frequently a family claim (or a forgery of one). Once you’ve achieved your goal in that war, it’s all over. Do you hate the King of France? Tough shit, you’ve got no legal cause to go to war. You’re still going to dick each other about, but it won’t be on the battlefield. And you never, never get in those ridiculous situations from other grand strategy games where your enemy is beaten but won’t surrender because
they just hate you so much.
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