Diplomacy & Trade

Guild relations

Shows the opinion of each guild toward you. Red (Loathing) means hostility, blue (Empathy) unlocks better trade options, gold (Devotion) means they're your ally.

Every other guild holds an opinion of you, from Loathing to Devotion. Attacks and captures sour it; gifts of gold sweeten it. Guilds that bear you no grudge leave your lands alone. War is something you earn, by drawn blades and sour demands. Nobody begins as your enemy, and there is no guild you cannot win over. Entropy answers to none of it: its armies never range beyond the creeping edge of the blight, but where the rot has reached, they spare no one.

Relation Thresholds

As a guild's opinion of you changes, new options unlock:

Opinion	Can they do	What you can do
Loathing (red)	Attack you freely	Nothing yet; keep gifting
Neutral (grey)	Leave you alone	Send gifts; slowly warm them
Empathy (blue)	Proposed trades still ignored	Parley opens: give gifts to warm them more
Devotion (gold)	Actively avoid you	Full barter unlocks: propose any deal, both sides offer/request

Auto-trades: Even without contact, guilds trade among themselves. A neighbor may have better resources than you simply because they have a better arrangement with someone else.

Raising the fallen

When a guild falls, to Entropy or to anyone else, its cities go dark. Take a fallen guild's capital city and you'll be offered a choice: keep the walls, or hand the capital back. Returned, the guild rises again with a fresh Lord and a seeded treasury. They come back at Devotion, remembering who raised them, and another banner stands between you and the blight.

Envoys at your door

Trade is not something only you propose. A guild that is short of one thing and sitting on another will send an envoy to you with a deal already written: so much of theirs for so much of yours. Take it and the goods change hands at once, and they warm to you a little. Turn it away and nothing moves. Refusing is not an insult.

They deal among themselves the same way, whether you ever hear of it or not. A neighbour who never seems to run out of bread may simply have a better arrangement with somebody than you do.

Parley & barter

Build a deal by offering/requesting resources from both sides. The scale shows whether they think it's Insulting, Stingy, Fair, or Generous. Your stance (Plea/Request/Demand) affects how much you can ask.

Parley opens an audience with another guild's lord. Gifts always work; full barter opens once they feel Empathy toward you. Build a deal from both ledgers, what you offer against what you request, and watch the scale: they'll call it Insulting, Stingy, Fair or Generous.

Your stance matters too. A Plea needs the sweetest deal, a Request is the honest middle, and a Demand extracts more but sours their opinion whether or not they accept. Generous deals warm it.