Hey All:
Yes it’s another Godlike is too easy type thread; however, I’d like to do this the right way with mutual respect and some suggestions not demands.
First and foremost I’m really enjoying Gal Civ 3, far more than I expected to. I appreciate the effort of the developers and really look forward to seeing how the game will continue to evolve in coming years. The Precursor DLC is terrific making exploration far more interesting and the AI improvements in 1.4 were really good. I know the game is designed for the masses, not for 4X hardcore players. So I don’t expect any of these suggestions to be implemented … but it would be awesome if they were. Also I fully understand I could play with “house rules” (e.g. no custom factions, less use of the diplomacy system and so on) but the intent here is to show what can be done without any house rules.
The game set-up was a Huge map with 8 opponents (none custom the standard opponents only). The strategy needed to win so quickly (Turn 53) was pretty straight forward … play peacefully but 100% dedicated to an Alliance victory. I used a custom faction with a diplomacy bonus, built sensor boats (which helps speed up discovery of AI empires), gave the AI open borders ASAP (relations bonus), accepted any demand for gifts (relations bonus), focused on diplomacy research through to Alliances once some initial starting technologies were out of the way, avoided trading diplomacy research to the AI (relations bonus as the AI perceives me as having diplomacy skill). To get the Yor over the line for an Alliance after I had an Alliance with all the other AI empires I proclaimed friendship and set-up a credit per turn gift.
The result is on the Metaverse (score of 5 LOL!) and also here is the save game on the eve of victory (not sure but expect you’ll need all the DLC to load it): https://www.dropbox.com/s/y3njp6k7caqxofn/Godlike%20Turn%2053%20Eve%20of%20Victory.GC3Sav?dl=0
At that point I reloaded and disabled the Alliance victory condition and continued playing. At Turn 102 I had a power lead over all of the AI and have some fleets ready to declare war on the Drengin. One fleet has an attack of over 2,000 and despite having a mix of all three defences, cannot see any AI fleet which could scratch my paint. The primary reason for this is the Precursor DLC, as fun as it is, the bonuses provided are huge. As soon as I could I put together 3 small fleets (some Duranium Driver medium sized ships and a survey ship) and aggressively explored the map with a focus on Precursor Anomalies … leading to a 250% wealth bonus, +9 raw production bonus, +100% manufacturing bonus, +6 morale bonus, various resource bonuses, and bonuses to hit points, ship range, logistics and attack. Also I colonised very aggressively (e.g. used the pragmatic 3 construction ships ideology trait and upgraded to 3 colony ships and have a bunch of custom colony ship designs) with a focus on Precursor worlds and used sensor boats to help with rush targets and avoid pirates etc. Obviously now the planetary wheel is back that was a priority, an example of the combined impact is that one world has manufacturing over 1,000 already! Since I have an alliance with everyone I can dictate the timing of any attack on the AI. The Malevolent ideology helped greatly boost production early via the Motivation pathway.
Here is the save game at Turn 102: https://www.dropbox.com/s/n528gqbqc02snzc/Godlike%20Turn%20102.GC3Sav?dl=0
Now the point of all of this is NOT to have a “look at me” thread but to encourage some changes which make it harder for the human player and make these difficulty levels a nightmare (preferably with reduced AI bonuses/freebies as well).
1. Precursor Anomalies: recommend reducing the size of the bonuses, or increasing defence ship strength making them harder to attain, and ensuring the AI is far more aggressive in targeting them.
2. Precursor Worlds: recommend reducing the size of the bonuses, or decreasing their frequency (not sure if the AI focused on them enough either).
3. Ideology Traits: reduce 3 free construction ships to 1 or 2 and reduce Motivation pathway production bonuses.
4. Sensor Boats: as cool as they are, they essentially allow risk free expansion and provide too much intelligence on the AI, they should not stack so easily.
5. Planetary Wheel: let’s just say I’m with Frogboy on this and wish he had stuck to his guns.
6. Diplomacy: probably merits its own discussion continuing the various good posts already provided by many around the community.
I'm sure some of these changes are already in the works and hope this prompts some healthy discussion (and better solutions to those proposed are very welcome) but I trust the responses will show the same respect I’ve shown (unlike some past “Godlike is too easy” threads).
Hey ice, big fan of your work on DW:U.
The Alliance issue you're having speaks to some pretty deep problems in GCIII, in my opinion. The whole idea that diplo tech offers bonuses to AI interaction is a rehash of the failed system from GCII, and it makes even less sense now that multiplayer is enabled.
Diplo research needs to be more than a sideshow to the standard colony/military spam game. Right now either it's a hilariously easy way to do an end-run around the AI, or it's useless. Neither option is very good.
It would make much more sense to move to a Diplo Points system, with techs like translators being more expensive but more valuable as gates to meaningful non-conquest interactions.
Just think about a Diplo Player approach under such a system:
- The Diplo Player has Diplo Points, and anyone who isn't doing a pure dumb conquest game needs Diplo Points for pretty much everything, not to mention somebody who can understand multiple races' languages and quirks. The person with the Diplo Points can spend them on themselves, or use them to broker deals between other parties.
- Simply conquering the Diplo Player isn't going to make Diplo Points magically appear in the galaxy. There's actually a good reason to not murderize them. They have something you may want. Indeed, if the game is balanced properly, it should be quite difficult to keep a war machine running without availing yourself of certain diplomatic actions like trade and tech-swapping.
- The Diplo Player gains a benefit from brokering deals. The more Diplo Points they spend to facilitate interactions in the galaxy, the more their Influence/Econ improves.
- They can spend extra Diplo Points (no extra Influence/Econ bonus) to "push" deals. Other races can defy them, but at a cost: influence penalty, econ penalty, other races party to that treaty can renege on other treaties without consequence, etc.
- They can spend DP on the UP to become OP (sorry, couldn't resist.)
- If Diplo/Econ are more fully merged, they can opt for the Banker route, offering loans and trade route piggybacking and interest for deposits. Failure to abide by the deals result in the usual Influence/econ/diplo penalties, plus the diplo player can put bounties out on the deadbeats, and other races can legally take their shit for a finder's fee.
A system like that solves a LOT of problems. It makes diplo meaningful in human-only games. It makes AI interactions more realistic, rather than having everybody suddenly love you and give you great deals just because you researched a few techs... while also maintaining a huge military so they don't automatically DOW you anyway.
It would require balancing passes, sure, but I think GCIII needs some pretty deep overhauls to resolve problems like the one you first mentioned in your post.
So...the diplomacy fix and Precursor worlds broke any challenge Godlike had? Sounds fair enough.
So let me get this straight. You try as hard as possible to employ every known balance exploit you can find, go for an under-played and thus underbalanced victory type, exploit a brand new and clearly poorly balanced (but cool) new feature, then complain game is too easy?
Uh huh.
Game might be too easy (I tend to agree with you), but you didnt prove it in this post.
Go and post a game where you get a conquest/tech victory in a non-skewed map (ie one with enough AI density to cause reasonable competition for resources), without hoovering up clearly imbalanced anomolies that Frogboy has already stated are getting patched this week.
So let me get this straight: you want him to play the game in one certain way while deliberately ignoring included features, instead of playing the game in a readily available way while not ignoring any included features?
The guy's not rubbing anybody's noses in anything. He's explaining what he did, how he did it, and then making suggestions as to how the various perceived imbalances could be rectified. And your response is to shut him down and challenge him to a silly-walking duel with one hand tied behind his back, strongly implying that that will prove something?
That seems both unnecessarily hostile and clearly unreasonable. I'm glad the Precursor stuff is getting nerfed, but that's not the only issue on the table.
There's exploits in every decent 4x game. As you increase the complexity, and interactions between features, then inevitably they will pop up.
The key is to squash the huge ones that affect the most. Diplomacy victory is not one of them.
I admit his suggestions were productive and broadly made sense, although #3 is clearly a bandaid solution and a nerf to an arguably underpowered tree (when not exploited), and #1 has been posted about 100x before in the forum.
I read these forums quite often, and I always see players write posts like "waaahhhh godmode too easy", but invariably they exploit the shit out of something that is obviously unintended.
I think I've only seen a few replays where someone has actually beat the game on godlike with a reasonable map setting (ie not really sparse), factory-standard race, no ridiculous sensor boats, etc.
I often wonder whether these guys who make these claims reload until they do win, then say, `Godlike is too easy.`
Hey Adam:
The title was selected to poke fun a little at past post threads on this topic where civil discussion often wasn't possible, the text in my post had no "waaahhh" in it at all.
As described in the OP simply using the Diplomacy system with targeted research towards Alliance was by far the biggest factor in the Turn 53 win. The Precursor Anomalies were only significant in the Turn 102 save i.e. at which point winning by any victory type is feasible. If you look in my Metaverse profile you'll see other Godlike wins with Alliance prior to the Precursor DLC albeit not quite so fast (about 100 turns).
I certainly agree there are exploits in every 4X game. The definition of the term "exploit" varies of course. In this case I'm using features of the game in a strategic way, I'm not stacking the game with crappy custom factions as AI opponents for example. As I said in my original post, I'm well aware I can play with "house rules" ... in fact I often do. But what I can't do in my favourite 4X games in recent years is win after the equivalent of 53 Turns. Ideally I'd like to keep those house rules to a minimum and in particular avoid house rules that mean I have to ignore entire features of the game e.g. diplomacy, custom factions etc ... these features are part of the fun.
Frogboy has made it clear in past posts he considers sensor boats a part of the game and uses them. Initially I avoided using them but after reading Frogboy's comments started to use them.
Custom factions and diplomacy are features of the game, all I've done is use a faction with a focus on diplomacy and used the diplomacy system as is readily available to improve relations at every opportunity i.e. which some would call strategy, not an exploit.
A Huge map with 8 opponents I wouldn't describe as sparse.
I agree the impact of all this was unintended by Stardock but some of these can be fixed fairly easily, Naselus has knocked off a couple of them already in the IAB Mod e.g. sensor boats.
With diplomacy a couple of quick band-aid fixes come to mind e.g. moving Alliance tech deeper in the tree, increasing the width of the diplomacy scale so it takes longer for relations to get to the point where an Alliance is possible. This wouldn't stop our ability to exploit the AI in other common interactions, however, so tend to agree with posters such as poothedestroyer and Naseulus that more significant changes would be ideal.
Also note Macsen has some LP's on Godlike with victories using standard races and also without sensor boats.
I would expect Stardock have a reload figure in the save files. There may well have been some reloads because with kids and a family I'm always up and down like a yo-yo. But I guarantee none of them were material to the outcome. You'll also see in my Metaverse provide this isn't my only win on Godlike.
I'm also happy to admit when I do reload. One Godlike win that I did reload a lot was the third campaign mission, that was rough!!! It felt more like a puzzle to solve in the end and I enjoyed the variety it provided by taking on a more advanced opponent. However, that game is a different subject.
In short, in this case, the answer is no. If you want to know more about the precise details of the strategy applied I'm more than happy to provide them because I think any good 4X player can replicate this.
Yeah look I agree your post was at least constructive. But I still think that a post about godlike just to say "hey I found this cool diplomacy tech exploit" or "diplomacy win is broken" is not exactly gamebreaking stuff for the majority of players.
Unlike say "hey so I killed this precursor anomaly and now I just win. Or my favourite still... "Hey so I found this precursor military manufacturing world next to my home planet. Let the colony spam begin!!!"
Guess I missed your tongue-in-cheek
As I said in the OP, I'm well aware the game is designed for the masses, not hardcore 4X players. That said, there are other games that have included the suggestions from good players to make the experience far more interesting. Distant Worlds is a specific example, the patches after Universe released are filled with our suggestions (either directly or allowed indirect changes via modding) and the game became immensely better as a result (albeit diplomacy remains a problem even still). That effort creates a lot of goodwill amongst dedicated players, you've probably noticed how many of us post around the internet about the game, which no doubt contributed a lot to sales (particularly given Matrix essentially don't do marketing). The same would be great here but that hope might be a stretch.
To be clear what I'm doing with diplomacy is not, by any reasonable definition, an exploit. I'm simply researching up to Alliance early, using the diplomacy system to improve relations at every opportunity and using a diplomacy improved custom faction. If I had some way to break the system to get multiple interactions or so on that would be different, but here I'm simply using the system as it's designed, with focus on an Alliance victory. It's really not rocket science and I think if you tried it you would be surprised just how easy it is.
Anyway, I appreciate the better tone and I'm always happy to discuss, either here or over in the eXplorminate forums (where we discuss Gal Civ 3 at length).
I guess i meant that the majority of players don't go for alliance victories. Even hardcore!
This game still has a long way to go, but stardock are moving it in the right direction I think
I would expect Stardock have a reload figure in the save files. There may well have been some reloads because with kids and a family I'm always up and down like a yo-yo. But I guarantee none of them were material to the outcome. You'll also see in my Metaverse provide this isn't my only win on Godlike. I'm also happy to admit when I do reload. One Godlike win that I did reload a lot was the third campaign mission, that was rough!!! It felt more like a puzzle to solve in the end and I enjoyed the variety it provided by taking on a more advanced opponent. However, that game is a different subject.In short, in this case, the answer is no. If you want to know more about the precise details of the strategy applied I'm more than happy to provide them because I think any good 4X player can replicate this.
I`ll take your word for it. I say this since I`ve seen people make claims like this (beating the game easily on the highest difficulty) in the past with other games, then later they reveal they reload for anything that doesn`t go their way which totally negates their claims.
On my side I only ever reload for real world reasons,(something happens that I have to quit the game for and return). I take ALL the bad no matter how it turns out. I can`t win Godlike, at least not yet.
But I guess I`m just not as good as you.
p.s. Also if a guy plays Offline his activity isn`t recorded on steam. I myself always play Offline, disconnected from the net. I don`t like Big Brother Steam monitering me.
I'm not convinced we are using it as designed. I think there's an implementation bug, but trying to figure out what it is is difficult. You can see some effects, though.
The file diplomacydefs.xml has a bunch of relations values that seem to be set up to activate AI behaviours - like
<DiplomacyEffect> <MinRelations>8</MinRelations> <Behavior>SupportUnitedPlanetsVictory</Behavior> </DiplomacyEffect>
Should mean you only get races' UP vote if they have 8+ relations with you
or
<DiplomacyEffect> <MaxRelations>-5</MaxRelations> <Behavior>RefuseAllTreaties</Behavior> </DiplomacyEffect>
means they should refuse to work with you in any way with lower than -5.
(I'm telling the forum these are your quotes because otherwise multiple quotes break).
However, these do nothing. You can edit them as much as you like, the AI ignores them completely. According to this file, there's a few actions which you're able to undertake at low relations which the AI should reject, yet presently it doesn't, making it easier to get on the relations treadmill than it ought to be (and this then pushes relations up rapidly).
The really relevant one here is this one:
<DiplomacyEffect> <MaxRelations>-6</MaxRelations> <Behavior>BreakTreatiesWithAlliance</Behavior> </DiplomacyEffect>
Which should in theory force you to make all races like each other (or at least not hate each other) to be able to maintain alliances with everyone. Given that it's pretty hard to influence other races' opinions of each other, that should make an alliance victory something that happens once you've killed off the races who just can't get along. It should basically mean that you can't get into an alliance with two races who are at war with each other, since they'll very rapidly get to -6 mutual relations and one of them will break treaties with you.
Cheers Naselus, seems it's pretty limited what can be Modded. Even if it worked, the UP had no effect at Turn 53 (elected a chair only), and similarly from first contract relations start neutral (and went straight up for all races due to open borders/gifts/diplomacy bonuses). The last Mod proposed would help a little as in the Turn 53 save the Thalan and Krynn are already at war, so I'd at least have to take one empire out to get the Alliance win. However, as we can still get Alliances with the majority of empires very quickly and control the game, that will just slow things down a bit, it needs to be harder to get Alliances in the first place. Also if Alliance tech was moved deeper in the tech tree or was much more expensive that would help since as time goes on onto factors come into play in diplomatic relations e.g. appearing weak, tension over borders etc.
Well naselus isn't talking about mods but game mechanics that don't function.
But that aside pootthedestroyer's first reply is spot on, ever since I found out how diplomacy works I wondered how the fuck that is supposed to work in multiplayer. Other players wouldn't give a fuck about any number of diplo points and dow you anyway and pootthedestroyer has presented a system that makes much more sense but nobody seems to coment on that.
Other than what those to said, I can only hope for an diplomacy revamp from stardock.The Custom AI Difficulty Section of my own Suggestion Thread if implemented could also help out but I didn't have time to expand on the core concept yet so it's still very short. I also might add a Section based on what pootthedestroyer said about diplomacy later on.
Deimos, I completely agree diplomacy needs an overhaul (although I haven't thought through the right type of overhaul, all I'm saying it's that it's ridiculously easy to gain massive advantages over the AI using it). However, an overhaul doesn't seem to be on the developers radar given we've just had a diplomacy patch. So short-term at least, it maybe more likely the developer will consider relatively minor changes to the existing mechanic that produce the most impact. Ideally there are both short-term changes and another diplomacy update is added to the roadmap (this time with much larger scope).
It's interesting that no-one from Stardock has responded to this thread yet. When we had similar threads like this that were arguably pretty insulting in the past, the developers were very quick to respond (often rather defensively). They also asked for save games and mentioned how important they are to improving the game. This thread has a more appropriate tone and save games ... but not a peep. I'll assume it's due to Xmas holidays despite their other posts in the last few days.
I like pootthedestroyer's ideas, which if I've read him correctly, mean that if you're a Diplomatic player, you got skills!! Skills that even people who might not like you much if at all need you alive for, so they won't go "Look at that namby-pamby with the lousy military, let's murderize his ass!" Your diplomacy skills give you a standing that means that other races may listen to you and do your bidding/take your politely worded suggestion: "Make peace with the Torians. Now, never mind that battle cruiser of mine you see looking out your office window, old bean! You make the choice you see fit! If you make the wrong one the battle cruiser destroys you, but hey, no pressure, now!" Or races will look poorly on a race that defies you.
If I've got this right, it sounds like a great idea. Not sure how workable it'll be to implement but I think it'd work. I'd add that I see espionage being able to undermine this to a certain extent - ie your standing in the Galaxy because of your Diplomatic Skills being downgraded by the Drengin doing something to the Torians and making look like it was you.
one problem is that a diplomacy system needs to work out for both players & AIs. currently the player has a strong advantage because he is completely free while the AI needs to rely on a system of relations. for good reason, because to take that freedom of decision away from player will create an unfun game.
I also cannot see why you need some sort of abstract "points" to be able to talk to someone, or how that "points" could possibly force me to do something against my will...?
We already have abstract points that make the ai love you, while any human player doesn't give a shit. I don't mean + or - from treaties or actions but just flat out researched diplomacy points that give you + relations to anyone for nothing, except for human players.
An aggressiv player or ai shouldn't look at how many diplomacy points a diplo player has but how many allies he has and how much you care if you piss them off.
Alternatively, a cassus-belli system might help - some kind of penalty for attacking other civs if you have fewer diplo points than they do would make these relevant to the human player too.
That would definitely work, but in a game like GCIII, I think it would make more sense thematically for "dumb conquest" (no offense, unless you're actually a Drengin IRL, then some offense) to be "free" from the perspective of Diplomacy Points. I think a player who goes full-on dumb conquest should be able to ignore Diplomacy Points and diplomacy tech completely and still be able to perform all of the traditional actions they want to perform. With zero Diplo Points, you should be able to attack anybody you want, DOW anybody you want, make a few basic, brutish demands (my two would be "give me credits or die" and "give me planets or die,") capture planets, demand unconditional surrender, and accept any ceasefire offer made to you by other players.
I would still love to see warmongers punished for being warmongers through the diplomacy system. However, I think it would make for a much more interesting game if the players with Diplomacy Points actually had to make a conscious choice to spend their resources to punish those warmongers. That makes for interesting and difficult decisions on both sides, and it gives "peaceful" players meaningful attacks and defenses against players who are trying to destroy them using traditional means.
What would make the "peaceful" game even more interesting is if Diplomacy Points/players had to juggle two compelling options for *how* to attack and defend against other players.
The first option would be directly spending Diplo Points on individual players to push deals, treaties, and relationships in their favor and against their enemies.
The second option would be spending Diplo Points on the UP to try to shape the entire galaxy's "international relations" ruleset in their favor. This is where the players themselves pushing and pulling over "proper cassus bellis" could manifest. There are already hints of this in the game' they'd just need to be refined and baked into the Diplo Point system.
And, it's worth mentioning, I think the UP could still function perfectly well as a baseline if nobody in the galaxy decided to invest in Diplo Points. It would just be a rather basic organization where non-diplomatic factors controlled how many votes people got (total population and/or military might, one supposes) and where players had less control over the power and nuance of the proposed policies. Thus, the strongest players would absolutely be able to use the UP to bully weaker players, but their options for how to do so would be painfully limited by their lack of diplomatic creativity and finesse. This would make thematic sense as well.
The other option, of course, is to have the UP locked behind *some* player investing in the diplo techs necessary to establish meaningful communication between all races. The danger there is giving that player too much control over the UP just as a reward for inventing it. That's something I don't support. If they want to control the beast they create, they should have to spend resources to do so.
You've got it right. Diplo players need a resource that can meaningfully attack and defend against other players regardless of whether they're human or AI, and it's important that that resource cannot be seized through dumb conquest. Destroyed through dumb conquest? Yes, absolutely. But not seized. If it can be seized, it's a sideshow. Sideshows feel bad and are impossible to balance correctly.
Other players will need to make choices in response to a powerful diplomatic player. If they want to make all sorts of cool deals and treaties, they need Diplo Points. If they research/build those points themselves, their other branches are going to be weaker. It should be an attractive option to ask the Diplo Player to spend their Diplo Points to make those deals and treaties. The Diplo Player will gain a benefit, sure, but (s)he will also be spending resources - resources that then cannot be used to directly mess with you. And meanwhile, you're also deriving a benefit from the deal or treaty that's been brokered.
Espionage, in my mind, is the murky penumbra that surrounds every other system in the game and can even bridge them together whereas otherwise they'd be a bit separate. It's a game of collateral attacks that depends, in part, on not being caught or even actively framing other players.
If a player makes a hard choice to focus on Espionage, they should be able to harm a military player without having a stronger military, and they should be able to harm a diplomatic player without having tons of Diplo Points/techs of their own. They should also have some ability to mask their activities.
One example that developers almost always forget: if it's possible to focus heavily on espionage and to try to win the game that way, Espionage resources and/or tech need to be able to trick other players - even other HUMAN players - into believing that the espionage player is NOT an espionage player. That's vital in a multiplayer game, actually. And it forces the espionage player to be smart. They have to use their limited resources in other fields to maintain their chosen illusion on the map itself.
Although I support the development of diplomacy in the game, any adjustments to accommodate MP seem less than priority to a game that is 99.5% SP.
Also, I think that human players in an MP setting are too arbitrary and treacherous and unpredictable for any reasonable AI-usable algorithms or mechanics. I think that Diplomacy features should be mostly ignored or disabled during MP except for flavor behavior for the AI itself. I know I would do everything I could think of to act outside of any Diplomacy mechanics and I would expect that from anybody I presently play Risk games with face to face. They're nasty!
Human players sidestepping the diplomacy system is exactly what my proposals seek to prevent. Trust me, I'm actively considering human players doing all manner of terrible things to each other. That's why the diplomatic game needs to be quantified.
As far as the AI being able to handle the system? Well, I'll be diplomatic myself and say that in my 20+ years of gaming, I have never seen a strategy game AI do particularly well without cheating. Given that context, I think it makes more sense to design a multiplayer game with humans in mind and then just make an ongoing good-faith effort to improve the AI as best you can.
Being able to spend Diplo Points in the United Planets is the ultimate failsafe for a multiplayer game where everybody decides to actively shut down the Diplomacy player in terms of trade deals, tech swaps and treaties. If they do that, the Diplomacy player has the option of specializing in UP manipulation, and can spend the overwhelming majority of their Diplomacy Points to shape the laws of the galaxy in their favor. Once they've done so, they could very well have created opportunities to use their Diplo Points on the more individual side, because the laws of the galaxy - which they shaped largely unopposed - now give them those opportunities.
Just as an example: the unopposed Diplo player is probably going to have an easy time becoming the head of the UP. Then they could pass resolutions establishing that the UP chair-squid's homeworld is the Galactic Capital, and that the Galactic Capital remaining at-peace and unconquered provides all manner of bonuses to the entire galaxy... but anybody who DOWs the chair-squid's faction loses those bonuses, and then if they conquer the Galactic Capital, they get hammered even harder. Meanwhile, the chair-squid could institute mandatory inspections of all trade routes, and taxes to support the UP; maybe special starbases need to be built to handle these inspections and taxes, and, wouldn't you know it, these starbases are nominally owned by the UP... which means by the chair-squid. And they're in other players' territory. And they generate influence for the chair-squid's faction. And messing with them will hurt you. Quantifiably. And then let me tell you about the Galactic Library initiative, where any technology held by two or more races needs to be submitted to the Library for posterity, under penalty of research maluses and approval hits. Now, see, two or more players have the tech. They're all obligated to submit it. Do they all make a deal with each other to ALL defy the GLI and ALL take the penalties? Or does one of them decide that maybe it's actually in their best interests to submit to the GLI at the last minute and leave the two guys to deal with both the maluses AND with all the other players getting their tech for free? Decisions, decisions...
That's just a slice of what could be accomplished by a Diplo player even if the other human players try to freeze them out. That's therefore entirely ignoring the deal-brokering part of their playstyle.
It's also worth noting that if a Diplo player is playing completely unopposed, they may also have a much easier time choosing a second playstyle to complement Diplomacy, since nobody else is bothering to amass any Diplomacy Points whatsoever. Maybe Espionage...
You have some excellent ideas for MP diplomacy. I will grant you that. With the right balancing work it could possibly put a diplomatic player on par with militaristic players. That would be interesting. I don't know how much work that would be, but it seems like it could be a lot. It is possibly more than the devs can justify given the percentages of MP play they see happening.
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