- How easy or hard should be to befriend or ally a civ?
For the poll I said, it's a little too easy, but really I think the difficulty somewhat misses the problem. It's not that befriending civs is too easy or difficult, but it feels like something that's completely unrewarding to put concetrated effort towards. If I'm playing a peaceful game, most civs are going to like me, sooner or later, regardless of their agendas. If I'm conquering, everyone's going to hate me, and that's fine, it makes sense. The only grey area is if I'm doing a bunch of conversions, but usually the eventual "same religion" bonus will eventually have them forgive me for indoctrination anyway. Furthermore, the rewards for maintaining positive relationships are pretty low outside of the deals screen. The bonuses from alliances are either weak or way too slow to accumulate, and the only thing I really ever NEED from the AI is Open Borders in a culture game, which they'll give as long as they don't hate me outright or see I'm about to win. All this to say is that outside the early game "please don't attack me" phase, I don't deeply think or put effort towards diplomacy, so the difficulty of succeeding is somewhat immaterial. If you want diplomacy to be engaging, I feel like you're going to have to fiddle with systems like Alliance Points, AI military strategy, and the Deals screen, so that players have a reason to engage. From here on I will try to answer the questions though, rather than just criticize them.
- If diplomacy and diplo modifiers should be symmetric or rather asymmetric (negative influence not equals positive)? [Edit. Usually agendas are constructed like positive and negative situation, and positive one gives +X and negative one gives -X; this is symmetric; it is possible that e.g. positives would give more or less diplo points than negatives - this is what I call asymmetric]
I'd say that should be on a case by case basis. I've never deeply looked at the numbers for agendas myself, but generally I'd say that it should depend on how easy it is to be on the positive and negative side of the bonus, plus how "aggressive" or "friendly" one wants the civ to end up being. I would argue that Monty or Trajan should be much harder to please than Curtin or Kupe for example, civs I picked for the example because of them only Montezuma is not a complete prick in every game I see them in, and that feels wrong.
- Which agendas are erroneous or badly implemented most absurd, but also which you find actually working as intended? [Edit. Sorry, "absurd" is a wrong word because it refers to its concept, and changing the concept is changing the core identity of a given civ, I'd rather hear about its implementation in the game]
I'm gonna scroll through the agendas list on the wiki now and see if any stand out from either experience:
- Gilgamesh: Everyone knows that Gilg is silly, but that's kind of the idea. Although it's mechanically quite stupid it's an endearing part of the game, so while I bring it up, I'm not sure it should be changed. Maybe however he should somehow end up playing more of an aggressive "world police" role, since he's easy to make friends with, and hates people who attack his friends, he should hate anybody being aggressive and rush to people's defense. That would require changes to the military logic to make meaningful though, so I suppose it's off the table.
- Eleanor: I've never understood this bonus thematically. Eleanor should like you for having low pop cities on your border with her, because she can flip them. Not only would this let her use her bonus, but it also makes sense that she would feel no need to war such players, she can annex their stuff anyway. The result here is that she wars when she doesn't have to, and keeps peace when war might be in her interest. It also means she frequently hates players for settling near her, which is exactly what she should want you doing. Furthermore, with the way population works, it tends to be based more on the actual land being settled and player strategy than anything else.
- Gitarja: She always loves you early game, unless you're playing on an archipelago, which feels kind of wrong. I don't know how strong the positive is here, but it could probably do with being weaker, and truth be told I don't even know if I've seen her negative agenda message.
Kristina: I don't know if I've ever seen her positive agenda message. It's not like I always play culture either, the only explanation I can think of for this is that she is one of those leaders I always seem to end up at war with for no reason, so I suppose she just doesn't want to praise me.
-Bull Moose Teddy: Like a lot of the "peace/war" agendas, this feels poorly implemented. He approves of you the moment you meet most of the time, and even if he waves his finger at you during a war, he's right back to approval the turn it ends, so usually his negative is so short-lived as to be meaningless, especially if you're in Friendship or Alliance already. Even in Dom games the war is never nonstop from turn 1 until the end, so I feel like some sort of cooldown should be required.
-Wilhelmina: As everyone says, super spawn dependent, there really should be some modifier for distance, or maybe the negative only triggers if she's sending you a trade route, so she expects reciprocity. Idk.
-Black Queen: I actually really like this one, it always makes sense, and even if I am not going to go out of my way to fulfill it, I know that I can, and it lines up with her bonuses nicely. Whether it be her affection or scorn, Catherine's opinion of me always feels earned and within my control.
-Hojo Tokimune: I almost never get the positive agenda here, and if I do he'll often hate me for other reasons. It feels too specific, and insufficiently impactful on his overall opinion.
Laurier: This simply takes too long to become relevant, his opinion's usually locked by the time this could shift to negative.
Bolivar: Another aggressive civ who will only approve of me if they otherwise hate me.
Amanitore: The "maximum" part of this provision makes it feel incredibly arbitrary, I kind of wish it was based on total number of districts, or average districts per city.
Hammurabi: Hates you for playing the game well. This makes sense since Babylon's gimmick is being stupid and poorly designed. 10/10, would make a separate leader pool to specifically ban just this guy from my games again.
Mbande/Empire Victoria: Super passive for the most part, just not very engaging at all.
Ba Trieu: Cool idea, but in practice civs very few civs forgive you for delcaring a war against them anyway.
Ludwig: Have only played like, one game against him, but I feel like he has the opposite problem of Amanitore.
Menelik: Hills are way too important and ubitquitous to have an agenda around, I know we're not supposed to criticize concepts, but this one has always been stupid.
Robert the Bruce: Another war/peace leader that's too binary, also super easy to please.
Steam Victoria: Super start dependent early, inevitably fulfilled late because the player isn't incompetent.
Poundmaker: If Alliances are coming up, then it's already quite a while into the game and his opinion is likely decided. If I meet him later, whether I can make alliances has already been decided. Poorly considered.
Kupe: I think this is dumb because Kupe doesn't NEED to be giving the player more reasons to hate him, his gimmick does that anyway, but his agenda almost always has him complaining constantly.
Konge Harald: You know this, I don't have to explain this.
Tamar: Players only build walls when attacked, and Georgia's approval is insufficient to change the math on that.
Trajan: As alluded to earlier and otherwise well documented, this agenda causes Rome to usually dislike the player early. Given that they're an early war civ, I think that this actually works out quite nicely.
Curtin: I suppose the agenda is fine, but this guy is always super aggressive anyway for whatever reason, and I will take every opportunity to complain about this pompous prick.
Pachacuti: Super start dependent, and mountains are really common, so I never really know whether I'm in the positive or negative with this guy until I plop the city down.
Montezuma: Actually really good, having Monty as a neighbor genuinely impacts my early game decision-making around luxuries, both in terms of improving them, and trading them. Partly this is due to him being an early war civ, the stage of the game when the whims of the AI are most important, but really I feel like he's one of the better examples of an engaging agenda period.
Gorgo: Functional, but incredibly annoying. Furthermore, it's not an agenda the player is ever going to go out of their way to fulfill the positive of, because declaring wars to make white peace is bad for diplomacy anyway, not to mention it's a waste of resources. Just a terrible civ to play with.
Yongle: Super boring, exceedingly rare that I ever run a deficit in this game, and if I do I have much bigger problems than Yongle not liking me. As a matter of fact, that's probably not a problem, because realistically the only time I'd be running a deficit is during a Dom game, so Yongle will not like me regardless.
- What AI's behaviors you find most stupid or absurd, and conversely which are reasonable and make sense?
I guess I've kinda gone into that, but one general note is that I really can't figure out how big a part agendas are supposed to play in diplomacy. Whenever I get reprimanded by a life-long ally, or praised by a sworn enemy, for some arbitrary aspect of my empire, it always feels super bizarre, because it never affects the total relationship enough to change it. I feel like those messages shouldn't pop up (obviously the modifier can still be listed) if they don't match the leader's current opinion, this by itself would help tremendously with the "feel" of the AI.