The Pacifist Law Trusted Broker is a net loss. Or am I wrong?

[aidanpryde13]

I've been playing Endless Space 2 for a long time. One feature that still confounds me is the Trusted Broker law under the pacifist party.

It provides a +5% diplomatic cost reduction per turn, up to a 50% reduction. This saves you Influence on any diplomatic deals you perform. However, the law has an Influence cost per turn of +1 per population. This means its costing Influence just to have the law in effect, whether you are doing diplomatic deals or not. You are spending Influence to save Influence.

In my experience, I lose more Influence than I save with this law. Seems like that will be true in just about every case, unless you plan carefully to activate the law, do a bunch of diplomatic deals at once, and then cancel the law right away afterwards. The law is only useful in a very narrow, carefully managed scenario (and perhaps not even then, since you have to wait turns to get the full benefit- turns that are costing you Influence).

Is there something I'm missing? Developers, would you consider revamping this law so that is makes sense to keep it active?

[Mephisting]

The effect applies to all diplomatic dealings to include minor factions and pirate dealings. Its main benefit if for the Lumeris early game who use dust to improve standing with minors instead of influence. This law eventually halves the dust cost (since it is still a diplomatic cast) and allows them to parley with pirates for a reduced rate. It also reduces the cost of the force peace action of the pacifist party that helps Unfallen keep off some early aggression.

However, as you suspected the long term benefits are not really there. Past very early game this usually gets thrown by the wayside as I've never come across too many instances where I don't have sufficient influence for any dealings, or I just don't care. In short, it has its uses but you aren't wrong in thinking it deserves a re-assessment.

[Zlorfik [CH/BY]]

The law is intended to be used to go for mintor factions. In the fkrst 30 tufns of your game you will not be getting more than 15 pops in your empire while having the pacifists in the lead already gives you 1 influence per popin addition to what you produce elsewhere. The gained influence can then be spent much better on minor factions. The law loses its value later when there are no more minor factions around and/or your empire grows too big. Not necessarily because the law's effects are not good enough, but simply because you'll want better laws active.

One thing i am not sure about is whether it also influences the cost of science and trade deals. Technically it should since they are diplomatic costs.