The intention was not to upset anyone, I apologize.
We were still debating the matter internally, as attrition and difficulty has still been in flux.
We will continue to keep an eye on attrition & difficulty, however at this point in time it seems unlikely to add a 4th round for negotiations.
The reason is that negotiations provide two advances (with a slightly increased chance to obtain a reward), and this is because it considers all other factors:
- Negotiations will always cost you precious goods, whereas battles may end up without any losses
- Negotiations always take quite some time (as opposed to auto-battles), which will be especially significant for high leagues, where provinces get focussed to be taken within minutes
- Experienced players have a good grasp on when a battle will be won (beforehand), whereas current negotiation setups sometimes fail
Also keep in mind that Guild Expededition negotiations may demand more than 6 options (as opposed to Battlegrounds), which makes the 4th round option quite necessary there.
Cross-world play for Battlegrounds is something we have considered in the beginning of the development.
In fact, some of our developers wanted to have this so strongly that they went the extra-mile to investigate its feasibility.
However, as it has been pointed out already, it's not that simple and it comes with a lot of potential edge-cases and risks (i.e. what happens if one game world goes offline accidentally?).
I wouldn't say it's comepletely off the table, but it won't happen in the near future, that's for sure.