Is this how its supposed to work?

While playing a game on a gigantic map with 6 other races I researched Xeno Ethics and alot of the other races' attitudes toward me changed in weird ways.

Before I researched Xeno Ethics the Thalan Empire was friendly toward me, which was great because they are the superpower in the game so far. After I got Xeno Ethics though their stance toward me changed from friendly to Neutral. The game shows the factors as:

--Military Strength

++Trading

+Ethical Alignment

+Diplomatic Skill

-Close Boarders

++Historical Friendship

Maybe I forgot how to count but isn't that 3 negative factors and 6 positive? Another similar screw up happened with me and the Yor Collective. I think they were cool toward me before, and now they're Friendly with the following Factors:

--Military Strength

+Trading

-Ethical Alignment

+Historical Friendship

3 Negatives and 2 positives makes me great friends with the Yor while have twice as many positives with the Thalans makes us neutral somehow.

Anyone have any idea why this happened?

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What ethical alignment did you choose?

I've noticed the AI tends to be more forgiving when you haven't officially chosen an alignment. They don't treat "Leaning Evil" the same as "Evil," for example.

I've noticed I can get Friendly or Close relations with Evil civilizations if I'm "Leaning Good", but when I officially choose the Good ethical alignment, my relations go down to Neutral. We can be friends again, but it takes more work.

The Thalans are a Neutral civilizations, and those alignments tend to be suspicious of both Good and Evil. Especially if that Neutral race is a superpower. When a race is more powerful than you, if you are not of the same ethical alignment, they can tend to drop relations to Neutral. The strength of your civilization compared to theirs plays heavily into the equation.

As for the Yor situation, I can't say anything with certainty as to why that happened. If you chose Evil, I think (again, not for certain) that Evil civilizations, at first, see each others as competitors, but then can move on to forming closer bonds with each other once the official Evil alignment is chosen. But I don't know.

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

One thing I can say with confidence about the ++ -- yadda-yadda indicators on the Diplo page is that they are *not* simple arithmetic indicators.

I hate this fact sometimes, but other times it makes sense that the diplomatic context includes some fundamental 'mysteries' to reflect that fact that diplomacy is an art, not a science. Still, even when it makes sense to me, though, it's often still annoying. It'd be nice if the UI at least indicated that your ++ -- data for a given trait was clearly in flux or definitely questionable.

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