First game of Diplomacy

from Sins Forums

Just played my first game of Diplomacy, and a few things kind of bothered me.  It was a 2v2v2 with me and 5 comps.

First thing was the missions, instead of getting missions to give a few resources, I was told to kill my ally.  Now, I had some ships, but they were busy trying to capture unowned planets.  Also, it was my ally they wanted dead, not gonna happen.  So, pretty soon all the other comps hated me, which was expected and pretty normal.  But then, I realized that somehow I loved the comps, my relations with everyone else was +10, but theirs was 3 or less with me(except of course, my ally).  So then, I tried to give them some missions, try out this diplomacy thing.  But they all hated me too much to accept any mission.  Because I was +10 with everybody, most of them were accumulating more diplomacy victory points than I was.  Now, I realize that there were more factors than my view of them, but it certainly helped.  So, in a vain attempt to reduce my view of the comps, I attacked them.  Well, apparently I'm pretty sadistic, because as I attacked them, my view of them went up.  The changes were small, so could have been from other battles they were engaged in.  But either way, I still loved them.  Then end result was I loved everyone, all the enemies hated me, and there was very little I could do about it.  They wouldn't accept any missions I offered, and I couldn't accept any missions they offered (again, they wanted my ally dead).

This whole thing seems counter-productive.  Prior to Diplomacy, my strategy was to complete the give resources missions early.  This usually brought me up to cease fire level with some of the comps right before or during the first wave of attacks.  Then, when the missions turned into go kill this, I had expanded a little, had some defenses and a fleet, I could choose who I wanted to be friendly with.

Obviously I need to re-think my strat, thats understandable.  But seriously, why do I love other players just because they are comps?  My best guess is, that way the comps can always offer missions to go kill myself.

4,505 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

But seriously, why do I love other players just because they are comps?
End of quote

The AIs use this bonus to be able to work within the context of the new relationship system. It changed pretty dramatically under the hood, and since AI can't raise relations with players as a human can, it needs this bonus to be able to function with envoys and especially locked team settings.

There are 2 major reasons for why this bonus exists:

1) Pacts. Since all pacts need between 10 and 20 relations, the AIs start at 10 to more or less match the player's required number of envoys to be able to have all the pacts. This was balanced mostly around the fact that in the average game it's common to have only 5-6 planets (unless you're already winning at which point pacts lose most of their relevance), thus this way the AI only needs that many envoys (10 > 11.5 > 13 > 14.5 > 16 > 17.5 = 5 envoys, plus one or two for other factors if needed) to be able to reach sufficient relations to offer them.

2) AI commands. Prior to Diplomacy, having high enough relations with AI (and being in a locked team with it) allowed the player to select its ships and ask them to attack/defend/move to other planets. In Diplomacy's relations system, this got messed up when the system was redesigned and even locked team AIs complained that they didn't like you enough to do your request.

 

Having said all that, the goal of a diplomatic victory is to achieve a diplomatic victory, not a military one. Attacking AIs only penalizes you in military actions, so do do a mission to maintain the bonus and get back out before you drop it too low. You gain points when your total positive relations are greater than your total negatives. The greater the difference, the faster you gain points. Therefore it's in your best interest to research up the Diplomacy tree quickly, for the +3 relations techs, giving resource techs that give you the racial happiness bonus and max relations from donations, and removal of racial penalty. Your goal is to climb in relations quickly to beat the AIs - because other than envoys, their relations are static. And envoys you can kill to keep their rate of gain down. Diplomatic Victory in FFA plays quite differently from a military one.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Yush. Diplomatic Victory is a whole new play style. Go Rambo, and you're not going to win.

 

:fox:

Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Well, technically, if you go Rambo successfully then you kill everything before it can win :D

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

x_x

 

:fox:

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

Thanks Annatar, I almost didn't expect anyone to read my wall of text.  That makes sense, especialy for the AI commands.  Though I still think that give resources missions should be researched before other kinds of missions.  They are much easier to complete early on, but maybe that was the point.

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

my first game of diplomacy i was like what do all these new buttons do... omg pirates are way stonger... what do all these numbers mean on these new screens... better go look at the forum and find a manual.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

The manual and readme include explanations of much of the new stuff and are included in the installation folder of the game. Also, Brad has posted some great walk-thrus. Check out one of them here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/375420