Diplomacy

Diplomacy

Establishing Contact

Diplomatic relations start when one empire has a ship or colony enter the scanning range of another empire. It is possible to explore a remote system, leave, and then see that an unknown alien species has colonized a planet there without establishing contact. Discovery of other empires is permanent.

Negotiations

Each faction has two main factors in negotiations with other factions, approval and tolerance. Combined, they serve to put a limit on the amount of mutual benefit empires can gain from one another in trades.

All diplomatic proposals have a tolerance cost when accepted. Tolerance spent this way decays at a rate of 1 per turn, or two if the other faction has the unique embassy structure. Thus, if you want your own tolerance to decrease faster so that you can more frequently offer things to make trade deals, then you need to research embassies and give it to the other empire.

Approval

Approval determines the maximum tolerance and also the likelihood the enemy will propose deals or declare war on you. Expansionism decays at a rate of 0.1% per turn. Colonizing while you have an existing expansionism penalty will sometimes result in an increase to this, although it doesn't seem to always happen with every empire.

Being caught spying results in -5% approval for 50 turns. This amount does not decay per turn - it simply expires at the end. If another spy is caught before the expiration, 50 days are added to the duration and the severity of the penalty increases by 5.