Declaring war on rival kingdoms

Happy Friday! We end the week with another update to Saxon Kings. Let's talk about the new diplomacy system and how it lays the groundwork for more options and variety in gameplay.

The way in which you conduct wars, and by extension fight battles and capture territory, is changing. As returning players will know, the old way in which it worked was every faction was at war with every other faction.

You had to divide your army on every border, because if you didn't, the cut-throat AI would pounce and take anything it could get for free. In a lot of cases it didn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense for a minor power, who is economically and militarily weaker, to attack a much stronger neighbour. Simply because the stronger neighbour doesn't have as many troops on the border. 

This is where the new diplomacy system comes into play. To fight battles and capture territories you will now have to declare war on your target first. Below you can see the early game position of Mercia.

You can see that although Mercia has fewer troops on its borders, NPCs do not attack. This is because they are not at war with Mercia.

You can tell if you are at war with another kingdom by the colour of their units:

• Green - Armies and Hillforts that belong to you.

• Yellow - Armies and Hillforts that belong to a faction you are neutral with.

• Red - Armies and Hillforts that belong to a faction you are at war with.

Just because they have local superiority in army size, doesn't mean its wise to attack. NPCs are more strategic now, they will consider the overall size of your army, as well as your economic ability to replenish forces.

Because we are no longer at war with all of our neighbours, we can concentrate our forces. Let's focus our army in the south west of the kingdom where we border Wessex.

As long as we don't lose too many soldiers in battle, our neighbours will fear our economic power. We could declare war here, but let's wait another turn, using our superior economy to amass a larger army.

To interact diplomatically with another faction, simply hover your mouse over their territory and a button will appear.

Clicking the button will open the new diplomacy screen. Which will allow you to view the details of other factions and interact with them. 

Highlighted in yellow you can see a list of all kingdoms currently in the game. You can click on any of their names to open their faction details. The list will shorten as kingdoms rise and fall throughout the game.

Highlighted in yellow you can see the faction details of the kingdom you have selected. It tells you statistics about the military and economic strength of the faction. As well as wars and truces they have with other kingdoms.

The power rating of a faction is drawn in yellow on a banner, it represents the combined military and economic strength of the kingdom. Wessex has 18 power coming from 10 military strength and 8 economic strength.

Military strength is represented with a sword, each unit is worth 1 military strength. Economic strength is represented with a building, each territory is worth 4 economic strength.

You can also see which wars Wessex is fighting, as well as what truces Wessex has with other kingdoms. 

Highlighted in yellow you can see the faction actions for the kingdom you have selected. For now you can only declare war, but over the coming weeks and months more options will be added.

Let's now declare war on Wessex. We have a stronger military and economy, so as long as we don't lose too many soldiers in this war, we should come out stronger as a result.

Highlighted in yellow is the war preview panel. You will have one of these for each war you are currently in. It shows the flags of kingdoms at war, as well as their respective war exhaustion.

Wars will end once war exhaustion for both kingdoms reaches 100%. At that point the war will end and a truce will come into effect for a year. While a truce exists between two kingdoms, they cannot declare war on each other.

For now war exhaustion increases by 25% each turn, that means wars will last 4 turns. Followed by a truce which will last 4 turns. Both wars and truces will be expanded upon in future updates.

Now that we have declared war on the Kingdom of Wessex, lets attack them with our army. Although they have hillforts that reduce the size of our army by 2, we still have numerical superiority and odds in our favour.

Winning the battle, we have forced the remnants of the army of Wessex to retreat and we have captured the territory.

This is going to be an easy war, they only have 3 units left!

Our superior economy is enough to intimidate most of our neighbours. Unfortunately for us, the Kingdom of Anglia has an aggressive personality.

A war with Wessex, a weakened army from battle and an unprotected border. The aggressively-weighted AI, has decided to strike at us.

NPC factions now have personalities and don't all act the same. At the start of the game a personality is randomly assigned to them, this will affect how they play and what decisions they take.

Previously each NPC faction would follow the same logic and make the same decisions based on their respective environment. This is no longer the case. Factions will take decisions based on their environment and personality. 

The personality of a faction determines how biased it is towards an action. There are three personalities and more will be added in the future:

• Defensive - Focuses on eliminating weaker opponents methodically, doesn't like over extending and getting into multiple wars.

• Aggressive - Likes taking risks and will attack stronger opponents if they have a weaker army.

• Balanced - Will attack weaker factions where they can, but primarily concerned with stopping strong factions from snowballing.

Returning players who have played a lot will build up a good idea of how an NPC will act. This change will hopefully increase replay-ability for you. This new system should keep things interesting for now.

We have a superior economy but fighting wars on two fronts. How would you salvage this situation and come out on top? What would be your strategy?

I hope you have as much fun playing this build as I did making it. As always you can play it here

This week was all about laying foundations for the future. The first iterations of the diplomacy and faction personality systems were added. Expect further additions to these early systems soon.

Build: v23.02.10