Hidden Relation is a Diplomacy variable which is directly added to the Visible Relations in most checks and formulas for AI decisions. Hidden Relation is asymmetric, and shows one wizard's feelings towards another, instead of the mutual relationship. At the start of the game, Hidden Relation is 0.
Hidden Relation is oddly narrow in scope and infrequently changed, compared to Visible Relation, which is affected by almost every kind of event involving two wizards and shifting constantly. Hidden Relation is affected only by Break Treaty actions and by the human player offering spells in tribute to the AI wizards. Additionally, the Break Treaty behavior is very buggy, causing the wrong wizards to benefit by the wrong amounts.
Ways to alter Hidden Relation[]
Whenever a player commits a Break Treaty action, Hidden Relation was supposed to be reduced by 10 for a Wizard's Pact and 20 for an Alliance. As this variable is not symmetric, it's important to mention that it's the person breaking the treaty will be "disliked", in other words, the innocent party's variable will change. Unfortunately, this is buggy and adds the above mentioned value to the variable instead of subtracting it, breaking a treaty will improve the Hidden Relation! If the guilty party is Lawful, this amount is doubled, which is yet another bug, because the innocent party should be whose personality affects the strength of the penalty towards the guilty one!
Whenever a player commits a Break Treaty action, Hidden Relation also decreases on all uninvolved players by 5 towards the guilty party. The innocent party is unaffected. At least that is what should happen in theory, but it is also done wrong, and does something completely different! What really happens is the innocent party will dislike all unrelated wizards, and the guilty party will be unaffected. Ultimately, everyone EXCEPT the two wizards involved in the pact or war will be penalized by the innocent party.
It's important to mention that Declaring War automatically runs the Break Treaty process prior to setting the War status. This means that Declaring War will always reduce the Hidden Relation of uninvolved parties, but even if there was no treaty to break!
The only way to increase the Hidden Relation is for the human player to offer a spell as a tribute. The AI players cannot increase the Hidden Relation at all!
Effects[]
Hidden Relation is used in most decision formulas as a direct addition to the Visible Relations, so it can be thought of as a "bonus" to that variable. For example, if the Visible Relation was 15 and Hidden Relation was 5, it would have the same outcome as having a Visible Relation of 40 and a Hidden Relation of -20 in most cases. Visible Relation ranges from -100 to 100, and many checks for success on diplomatic actions have a range of 75 between complete success and complete failure, which provides a framework to evaluate the impact of Hidden Relation changes.
This equivalence of Hidden and Visible Relation applies in most cases in all three types of Diplomacy. However, there are a few exceptions.
Only the Hidden Relation is relevant in these cases, both in Player to AI Diplomacy:
- When the player seeks an audience with the AI wizard, the initial check to grant the audience both adds and removes Visible Relation, making it "cancel itself out", but Hidden Relation is still included. This may be a bug, and Unofficial Patch 1.50 removes both relations from the check entirely.
- When the player threatens to attack the AI, higher Hidden Relation improves the chance of getting tribute in response, while Visible Relation is ignored. Oddly enough, this means offering tribute of spells (improving Hidden Relation) increases chances of receiving spell tribute later (by making threats).
Only the Visible Relation is relevant in these cases:
- When the player asks one AI wizard to declare war on another, higher Visible Relation of the AI wizards make the request more difficult, but Hidden Relation has no impact on the decision. This essentially means AIs will ignore broken treaties when asked to declare war on one another (since AIs do not give each other spell tribute).
- When the AI reacts to player actions negatively, it may respond by immediately declaring war. This check only considers Visible Relation, ignoring Hidden Relation.
- When the AI considers offering the player a treaty, there are Visible Relation cutoffs below which the AI will not even consider offering a treaty, which Hidden Relation does not help or hinder. Ironically, this means it ignores a variable meant to track reputation loss due to broken treaties - although Hidden Relation is still included as part of the subsequent random check whether or not to actually go forward with the offer.
The two relations have unequal impact to decisions in these cases, all in AI to Player Diplomacy:
- The initial check to interact with the player at all adds Visible Relation twice, making Hidden Relation relatively less important. This may be a bug, and Unofficial Patch 1.50 removes this check entirely.
- Unofficial Patch 1.50 changes criteria for decisions about offering Wizard's Pacts, Alliances, and spell trades. For the treaties, Visible Relation is doubled, while for spells it is halved. Ironically this makes the treaty-breaking variable less important for determining the likelihood of being offered treaties. On the other hand, it makes offering spells in tribute relatively more important for receiving spell trade requests.