This page covers the bilateral player layer — what one player can do to or with another player, distinct from alliance-level diplomacy and full-blown combat.
Simpler than alliance contracts; one-to-one:
| Proposal |
What it does |
| Truce |
Pause hostilities for fixed duration. |
| Trade Deal |
One-shot resource swap. |
| Tribute |
Voluntary one-shot transfer. Usually buys reputation or favor. |
| Hero Loan |
Lend a hero to another player for a fixed term. |
| Open Border (limited) |
Single-direction passage for X days. |
| Marriage Alliance |
Long-term reputation lock; governance-gated. |
Proposals process faster than alliance contracts and don't need council vote.
A player can attack another player directly:
- Raid — hit a non-walled outlying tile or extractor.
- Siege — full attack on a walled city.
- Naval engagement — sea battle.
- Caravan ambush — intercept trade.
Each escalates the public-war ladder (see escalation).
A player can deploy missionaries against another's cities:
- Convert population (raises attacker's belief tier in defender's region).
- Polarize society → Fanatic emergence.
- Damage defender's belief tier.
- Heavily attribution-tiered like spy attacks.
Counter: priests + festivals + counter-missionaries.
See faith §Missionary warfare and espionage.
Bilateral trade at the marketplace:
- Direct listings — sell to any player.
- Trade routes — recurring contract.
- Cornering attempts — buy out a resource on the global market (visible price-spike trail).
- Price manipulation investigations — counter to cornering.
Cultural listing discounts (Sun Dune, Azure Isles, Jade Lotus, River Crown) shape who profits from listings.
In Phase 2, prophecy mechanics let players reveal future divine events:
- Prophet Hero — a faith hero archetype with prophecy ability.
- Reveals upcoming weather, divine actions, or NPC threats to the prophet's owner.
- Can broadcast prophecies (player choice) — used as social or diplomatic leverage.
- Shared prophecies build reputation between participants.
Cairnveil's Morrwen Crow-Queen and Thunder Lodge's Storm Eagle have native prophecy mechanics.
A player can project culture into another's region without combat:
- Trade goods cultural footprint — heavy trade in your culture's exports starts shifting cultural affinity.
- Embassy presence — culture-specific embassy tilts diplomatic baseline.
- Festival invitations — cross-culture festivals raise both sides' culture status.
- Hero residence — your hero in their city tilts that city's politics.
All bilateral aggressive actions track attribution tiers:
- Tier 0 — Unknown → maximum deniability.
- Tier 4 — God-Witnessed → maximum consequence.
The attribution model is the spine of everything bilateral. A diplomatic relationship sets a low-attribution baseline; aggressive actions push it up; counter-intel sharpens it on the recipient's side.
Persistent per-player score, separate from alliance reputation:
- High rep — better contract terms, faster proposal acceptance, NPC stance.
- Low rep — penalties on all of the above.
- Reputation persists even after switching alliances.
- Some achievements / wonder participation give rep boosts.
From metrics.md:
The full SPY_REP_COST attribution-tiered dict lives in player_interaction.md §14. The structure is per-flavor (Sabotage/Misinformation/Cultivate-Spark) × per-tier (0-4) × per-victim-class (alliance vs player).
- Phase 1 — direct combat + basic bilateral diplomacy + marketplace.
- Phase 2 — missionary, full spy networks, prophecy, attribution.
- Phase 3 — Cultivate-Spark Uprising at full intensity, divine bilateral mechanics.
- Document everything you do. A clear paper trail of cooperation makes betrayal harder later.
- Build counter-intel before you build offensive spies. Defense compounds.
- Marriage Alliances are underrated. Long-term reputation lock is hard to break.
- Don't snipe a hero unless you can absorb the reputation hit. Some bilateral actions you can't take back.
Sources: player_interaction.md (63K, comprehensive), metrics.md §14, diplomacy_system.md §3.