Relation Values
Relation Values measure how one empire actually feels about another — the number underneath every diplomatic interaction, ranging from −500 (utter enmity) to +500 (steadfast friendship). Relation values update once per day, and are built from several independent modifiers added together, each with its own trigger and its own tendency to fade over time.
Treaty Status Modifiers
The current treaty between two empires contributes a fixed value on its own, replacing itself automatically the moment the treaty changes:
| Treaty | Relation Modifier |
|---|---|
| Alliance | +200 |
| Peace (or Peace with Open Borders) | +75 |
| Peace with Open Borders | an additional +50 on top of Peace |
These are fixed values tied directly to the current treaty, not events that fade — the moment the treaty changes, the old value is replaced by whatever the new treaty provides, immediately and completely. See Treaty Types for the full ladder these figures reflect.
Event Modifiers
Most other relation values are triggered by a specific action, jump by a set amount the moment it happens, and then decay back towards neutral over time — a snapshot of something that happened, gradually fading rather than lasting forever.
| Event | Initial Value | Decay | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broken Treaty | −180 | +1/day | Maximum 0 |
| Captured City | −180 | +1/day | Maximum 0, minimum −250 |
| Declared War | −180 | +1/day | Maximum 0 |
| Declined Offer | −90 | +1/day | Maximum 0 |
| Ignored (a request) | −180 | +1/day | Maximum 0 |
| Insulted | −150 | +2/day | Maximum 0 |
| Pillage (an outpost destroyed) | −100 | +2/day | Maximum 0, minimum −150 |
| No Communications (no translation yet) | −50 | +1/day | Maximum 0 |
| War Weariness | Accumulates +1/day for every day at war | Reset to 0 the moment war ends | None |
| Friendship (declared) | +100 | −1/day | Minimum 0 |
| Gift: Small | +150 | −1/day | Minimum 0 |
| Gift: Large | +250 | −1/day | Minimum 0 |
| Joined a War (an ally supported you) | +250 | −1/day | Minimum 0 |
| Returned Cities (an empire gave your cities back) | +250 | −1/day | Minimum 0 |
| Trustworthy (cities returned to you) | +50 | — | — |
A few of these are worth understanding beyond the raw numbers:
Captured City and Pillage both carry a floor rather than only a ceiling — repeated aggression against the same empire compounds into lasting resentment (down to −250 and −150 respectively) rather than any single incident capping out on its own.
No Communications resets to −50 every day two empires remain untranslated, decaying at only +1/day — meaning it never actually reaches its own maximum of 0 unless Open Communications is completed. See Languages and Translation for why this matters so much early in a relationship.
Friendship and the two Gift modifiers all serve the same purpose — a temporary, deliberately generous boost meant to smooth the way toward a treaty upgrade — but they decay at only −1/day, meaning a well-timed gift or declaration of friendship can hold its value for months if nothing else disturbs it.
War Weariness works differently from every other modifier here — it doesn't represent a grievance at all, but rather a slow, deliberate improvement in relations towards whoever you're currently fighting, accumulating at +1 per day for the entire duration of a war. The intent behind it is to keep conflicts from dragging on until one side is utterly destroyed — as a war stretches into months, both sides gradually become more receptive to ending it, nudging a long, grinding conflict back towards the negotiating table rather than a fight to the last city. The moment the war actually ends, this accumulated goodwill resets to 0 — it's a pressure valve for finishing a specific war, not a standing relationship modifier that persists afterward.
Trustworthy is a simple, durable reward for returning captured cities — see the Return Cities diplomatic action on Diplomatic Actions. Unlike most positive modifiers, it doesn't decay away on its own; it represents a lasting reputation for good faith rather than a temporary gesture, and holds its value until circumstances genuinely change how an empire is regarded.
Border Modifiers
Two further modifiers apply specifically when two empires hold cities close to each other, and interact with each other directly:
Border Tension applies whenever an empire's city sits within 10 hexes of another's, while the treaty is Neutral, Peace, or Peace with Open Borders. It resets to −100 every day the condition holds, decaying at +2/day, capped at a maximum of 0 — a persistent low-grade friction simply from proximity.
Calm Border is the reward for enduring that tension peacefully. Once Border Tension is active, Calm Border climbs steadily at +1/day for every day that passes without combat between the two empires' forces — but any combat between them resets it straight back to 0. Its maximum depends on how far the relationship has already progressed:
| Treaty Status | Calm Border Maximum |
|---|---|
| Neutral | 100 |
| Peace | 50 |
| Peace with Open Borders | 25 |
Interestingly, the ceiling shrinks as the treaty improves — Calm Border rewards two Neutral empires for staying peaceful neighbours far more generously than it does two empires who've already formalised peace, since proximity naturally matters less once genuine trust is already established through the treaty itself.
Background Modifiers
A handful of modifiers apply constantly, in the background, without being triggered by any specific action:
- Distance — a small negative modifier that grows with how far apart the two empires' nearest settlements are, at −1 per hex. Distant empires simply have less reason to care about each other, for better or worse.
- Race Modifier — a fixed value reflecting how one race inherently views another, independent of anything either empire has actually done. Find your own race in the left-hand column below, then read across to the column matching the race you're dealing with:
| How [row] views → | Dwarf | Elf | Ende | Goblin | Greenskin | Human | Krant | Skulk |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dwarf | +100 | −50 | −50 | −100 | −100 | −50 | −100 | 0 |
| Elf | +50 | +50 | −200 | −50 | −100 | +50 | 0 | +50 |
| Ende | −50 | −50 | +50 | −50 | −50 | −50 | −50 | −50 |
| Goblin | −50 | −50 | −50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −25 |
| Greenskin | −150 | −150 | −100 | +100 | +100 | −100 | −100 | −50 |
| Human | 0 | 0 | −50 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | −25 |
| Krant | −50 | −50 | 0 | −50 | −50 | −50 | −50 | −50 |
| Skulk | +50 | +50 | −100 | −150 | −150 | −100 | 0 | 0 |
A few things worth noticing in the pattern: racial opinion is not symmetric. Dwarves view Elves at −50, but Elves view Dwarves at +50 — the same relationship can look completely different depending on whose side you're reading it from, reflecting genuine one-sided cultural attitudes rather than a mutual "rivalry" value shared by both sides.
Greenskins hold Goblins in real regard (+100), but the feeling isn't returned — Goblins view Greenskins with cool indifference at 0, which is really Greenskins valuing the Goblins' usefulness far more than Goblins value them back. Dwarves and Elves both regard Ende with real hostility (−50 and a striking −200 respectively), consistent with the deep-seated Elven resentment toward the Ende's nature covered on Population and Special Races.
Skulk draw a sharp divide — warmly regarded by Dwarves and Elves (+50 each) for their reclusive discipline, but viewed with real hostility by Greenskins and Goblins (−150 each), who see little to respect in a race that avoids confrontation rather than embracing it.
- Empire Spirits — certain empire spirits carry their own direct relation modifier, affecting how every other empire perceives that faction by default.
- Court — the skill of another empire's Emperor, Heir, and any Advisor with the Court ability all feed into how favourably that empire is perceived — see Leader Skills for the Court skill's own effect table.
- Faction Power Comparison — every empire's relative strength constantly colours how it's regarded by others, based on a comparison of army strength, settlements, and workshops between the two sides:
| Their Faction Power vs. Yours | Modifier |
|---|---|
| 50% stronger (minor) | +40 |
| 100% stronger (moderate) | +80 |
| 200% stronger (major) | +120 |
| 50% weaker (minor) | −20 |
| 100% weaker (moderate) | −40 |
| 200% weaker (major) | −60 |
Being visibly powerful earns a measure of respect, and being visibly weak invites a measure of scorn — neither modifier decays over time on its own, since it's recalculated fresh from each empire's current standing rather than representing a one-off event. As your own empire grows, shrinks, or a neighbour's fortunes change, this value shifts automatically to match.
Standing: Hatred, Disliked, and Trustworthy
Most of the relation values on this page are reactions to a specific moment — an insult, a gift, a declared war — and every one of them fades with time. Standing is different. It expresses something closer to a settled reputation than a passing mood, and unlike everything else here, it doesn't fade on its own — a relationship can genuinely hold a grudge for years.
Every empire sits on exactly one rung of a four-step ladder toward any other empire:
| Rung | Relation Value | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Hatred | −225 | Permanent enmity |
| Disliked | −75 | Standing distrust |
| (neutral) | 0 | No settled opinion either way |
| Trustworthy | +75 | Proven reliable |
This is on top of, not instead of, every other relation modifier already described above — a Hatred rung stacks with Border Tension, Broken Treaty penalties, and everything else. Its size alone tends to dominate the total, though: −225 is larger in magnitude than nearly any other single modifier on this page.
While an empire holds Disliked or Hatred toward another, it simply won't deal with them diplomatically — no peace, no open borders, no friendship, no alliance, regardless of what the rest of the relation total says. Standing is a hard gate, not just a number that happens to be low.
How Standing Actually Moves
Standing shifts one rung at a time, never jumping straight from Trustworthy to Hatred in a single step. Two things move it:
Diplomatic gestures step it up. Returning Cities to their original founder, or having a Demand Return of Cities or Demand Reparation accepted, each moves standing one rung toward Trustworthy.
Repeated conquest steps it down — automatically, with no diplomatic action required. Only actually losing a settlement counts toward this; declaring war on its own does nothing, since a declaration alone doesn't cost either side anything real yet.
Escalation
The system tracks conflicts, not individual cities. If a single messy war sees several settlements change hands back and forth, that's still counted as one incident — trading five cities during the same ongoing war doesn't move standing five times, as long as no more than six months passes between losses. Only once a genuinely separate war starts, more than six months after the last city was lost to that same empire, does it register as a second incident.
If that second incident happens within five years of the first, it reads as a pattern rather than bad luck, and standing steps down: neutral drops to Disliked on the second incident within that window, and Disliked drops to Hatred on the third. Go longer than five years between incidents, and the next one is treated as a fresh start rather than an escalation.
One consequence worth knowing: a war that simply never formally ends — dragging on for years through lulls and renewed offensives rather than a signed peace — can still cross the six-month gap against itself and register as a fresh incident, even with no new declaration of war. Refusing reasonable peace terms to keep grinding a war out doesn't protect a relationship from escalating; that protection only covers wars that actually end.
Recovery
Grudges built this way can also fade — but only if nothing renews them. If five full years pass with no further settlement lost to the same empire, standing thaws one rung: Hatred eases to Disliked, Disliked eases back to neutral. A full recovery from Hatred to neutral therefore takes two clean five-year stretches — ten years total — with no further losses in that entire span.
This uses the same clock as escalation: any new incident against that empire resets the recovery timer completely, so a relationship can't be quietly thawing in the background while the two empires are still actively fighting.
This recovery mechanism is specifically scoped to grudges the conquest system itself created. A standing change from some other source — a scripted event, for instance — doesn't fade on this timer at all, since there's no reliable record of exactly when it happened to measure five years against.
In practice, there are really only two paths back from Hatred: act — Return Cities or an accepted demand-request, each worth one immediate step — or wait it out. Given most campaigns run shorter than ten years, waiting alone rarely resolves a serious grudge fully before the game ends. But it does mean an old war doesn't have to define a relationship forever, provided both sides genuinely stop taking cities from each other.
Why It Matters
Standing feeds directly into how an empire behaves once its diplomatic gate closes. An empire holding Hatred or Disliked toward another is measurably more willing to declare war on them specifically, and more willing to commit its armies against that empire's forces once a war is already underway — a Hatred rung outweighs most other single factors either empire is weighing. Because recovery is genuinely possible, this isn't a permanent scar left by one early mistake — it's a real, but temporary, state tied to an actual, recent pattern of conquest between two specific empires.
