My first real play of Diplomacy

Diplomatic Victory is mostly meant as an alternative way to play FFA games. When you turn it on, the goal becomes to earn a certain number of victory points (75 * number of players). What it does is sum up your total relations modifiers across all the other players (or if you prefer to think of it another way, takes all your positive relations and negatives, then compares). If the result is positive, meaning you have more positive relations than negative total, your points go up. If it's negative, they go down. The higher the number in each direction, the faster you'll gain or lose points.

You can view progress towards victory in two places:

1) In the old treaties screen, select yourself and there's new general rankings for your empire which will tell you your placement in diplomacy points (if you're 1st, or 3rd, whatever).

2) In the new diplomacy screen, the current number of earned points is displayed under the main portrait in the middle.

Rejecting missions is a welcome addition, since in an FFA you only take a small standings hit for doing so, compared to failing one. Relations rewards from missions work quite differently now, so failing a mission is Very Bad. The rewards are no longer cumulative, and your "relations from missions" modifier is the outcome of the last mission. If you succeeded, your modifier is +3 (or whatever that mission type awards on victory, +3 is most common). If you failed, it's -1.5 (or again, whatever the mission was set on). That means if you succeed on a mission and then fail the next you will lose 4.5 total relations with that player since you'll go from +3 to -1.5. So if you get a mission you really can't or don't want to do, rejecting it instead will just incur a small but cumulative penalty. Rejecting a mission while at 0 (beginning of the game) will not move you into negatives.

Is there any way to stop someone form getting a diplomacy victory? So far it seems like you just have to either invade or beat them to it.

Beat them to it, screw with their envoys to deny them a pretty large positive boost.

The game I played last night, I was allied with blue and purple who were attacking each other. I was at war with green. Green had the most diplo points by far and almost beat me to victory, but he had no envoys on my planets or anyone elses.

How did Green get so many points?!

You can see where other players are getting their Diplomacy Points by clicking on their name on the list on the left side of the new Diplomacy window.

Merci. I'll take a look.

I just played a game, and had a computer player win by diplomacy.  I noticed that all the computer players had a +10 boost to my relations with them.  Meaning they got points as if I was an ally, but they hated me so I got no points.  I'm not sure if this is intended to balance something, perhaps computers can't give missions to each other.  It mainly just bothered me that I couldn't do anything about it.  If I failed missions or attacked them, they hated me more but I still loved them.

All AIs get the +10 bonus to allow them to work with the current system and be able to offer pacts. Since pacts need 11.5 and up in relations, AIs start with 10 so to simulate all the missions/research bonus/etc that a player would have with an AI. It's not specific to the Diplomatic Victory condition, however if that bonus didn't exist, winning it would be even easier than it is now and a bunch of other things would be broken.

What is the function of "Allied Victory"? Does it mean you have to be allied with a certain number of players before you can win Diplomaic victory?

It is a limiter on how many players can win an FFA game as allied victors. It was asked for by the multiplayer folks who shied away from playing MP FFAs because you could have a premade group of 6 people ganging up on only 4 who weren't even together, for example. With this limiter, only a certain number of people can win when allied, encouraging more fair FFA play in multiplayer - hopefully. The setting is fairly meaningless in single player, unless you care to limit your AI alliances.

Thanks My manual for diplomacy does not open so I am fumbling through the learning curve, I am also trying to figure out what all the different factors on the Relationship infocard stem from, like what "Diplomatic Inclination" at the top is calculated from. Is there a good resource online that explains these?

I don't agree with the setting being meaningless in single player. It presents the opportunity to backstab your allies if you set the allied winners to a low number. Additionally it can also allow the AI backstab you and take the win (which has happened to me once already.)

Diplomatic Inclination is just a random number assigned at the start of the game that never changes. It can go from -2 to +2, always in 0.5 increments. Most of the others are pretty self explanatory. Racial relations is -1 between Vasari and Advent/TEC, -2 between Advent and TEC, +1 between same race. Mission bonus and mission rejection scores relate to the missions AIs give you. Fleet Strength compares the relative power of your fleet to theirs, can go from -3 to 0. The stronger the AI's fleet is compared to yours, the lower the score will be. Then there's resource donations score, Envoy bonus score, and the basic relations score that goes from 0 to 3 when you research the +1 relations techs.

Once I saw a "-0.00" value by Envoy bonus. Does it mean something? Can it be negative?

I've only seen a "-0.00" for Rejected Missions, probably because its a negative value too small to be shown with two decimal places.

As to how Envoy Bonuses can be negative, I'm at a loss.

No, looks like a minor display bug. The same happens if you reject a mission while at 0 on mission relations.. you don't take a penalty for rejecting, but the display changes from 0.00 to -0.00

thanks! great info!

I dont understand how diplomacy even works! The npc's are always set to 0, if i send an envoy it will get destroyed. I tried bribe and everything i couldnt get it over 3-4 points. What am i doing wrong, is there some sort of setting ive missed?

The npc always hate me, every single one of them. They wont allow cease fire or anything.

Im not gonna lie i have no real idea how the game works. In other "games" you always start at neutral... I wanted to see how diplomacy worked after playing aggressive.

Huldu you do the missions to achieve neutrality first, I dont know of any other way to approuch for an ally. But never again the npcs offered me mission, maybe is that because I set diplomacy victory off? I dont think thats it, but they don't offer missions to me anymore.

It can get a little random. There are 3 main modifiers you have to worry about when you start:

Diplomatic inclination: this is random, goes between -2 and +2.
Race relations: -1 between Vasari and the other two, -2 between TEC and Advent, +1 between same-race.
Fleet strength: -3 to 0, depending on size of your fleet compared to the AI's.

Inclination you can't do anything about. Race relations you can't do anything about in the beginning, there's a later tech that removes it. Fleet one updates every 5 minutes or so if memory serves, so just try to keep your fleet rating high to keep the penalty at 0 or very small negative.

Only 3.5 relations are needed for a cease fire, and you can research up to +3 in the new diplomatic research tree. You can also research resource giving and the related tech that increases the max relations gain to +3. With those you should be able to beat a bad start.

They should offer give resource missions if you have the tech researched that allows you to give resources, and they should offer combat missions if you're within 2 jumps of an enemy planet. Note that it only has to be their enemy, they don't particularly care if it's your ally.

Thanks, finally got it to work.

I do have some huge problems however. The problem with these "missions" that they give you is that they always want you to head to the other side of the galaxy to do something. I mean... what the hell is it a joke? The biggest problem is if you decline or fail the missions they hate you even more. Its annoying as hell anyway, especially when im in a war. To be honest i have only completed one mission so far, the rest have always been "go to other side of galaxy and do this". Bugs the hell out of me.

The problem here is that i just dont see a reason for diplomacy with missions like this, it would be easier to just crush them one by one. I am a bit disappointed as i write this.

You should never have a combat mission to kill a player that's farther than 2 jumps from your border. You can decline with a very small penalty if you don't like it.

There is always the possibility of locked teams and skiping to envoy which can still be fair game by giving the AI one or going against a difficult AI. In FFA tough I think its better it hard then anything else because thinking of it, you are not only getting an ally but thats also eliminating an enemy. Tough I don't know how complicated it is, Im still going to test it, I hope I can see the missions again (Ill have that in mind, thanks Annatar). I had a bad start with the diplomacy as two NPCs wanted ceased fire with me and trade and then both of them simple broke it saying there wasnt benefit in it. I though maybe I had to send envoys (since they sent to me ) but I was In a battle with the pirates tough I still dont know if that is the reason.

Um... yeah... I just finished playing a game where I had 4 TEC allies and me (TEC) vs. 1 Vasari on Vicious. I got a "Diplomatic Victory", but I don't see how it's much of a victory, because the Vasari were still aggressive and now I couldn't do anything with my allies.

Um... yeah... I just finished playing a game where I had 4 TEC allies and me (TEC) vs. 1 Vasari on Vicious. I got a "Diplomatic Victory", but I don't see how it's much of a victory, because the Vasari were still aggressive and now I couldn't do anything with my allies.