Removed due to no respect for opinion by a certain user who should really just make their own thread if they wanna be harsh about other people's and state their opinion there.

Edited 6/20/2016 00:38:11

Good post

What do you think about the idea of a diplomacy setting where you can declare war not in chat but with a button what is always public in chat and able to set how many turns have to wait after declaration and in real-time how many minutes needs to declare.

With a public diplomatic relations table where visible who are allies, enemies or neutrals. It seems you like diplo games would you like a feature like this?

^That basically sounds like something that would be the most wanted feature if warlight had... I don't know, a uservocie or somthing

would probably have over 1000 votes too,

[/sarcasm] https://warlight.uservoice.com/forums/77051-warlight-features/suggestions/1088481-peace-treaties

Edited 6/16/2016 10:49:00

Thats not enough. Diplo players should create a decisive size alliance and declare their claim. Or Strike!

I do play this little mobile game called "Age Of Civilizations" it is a risk-like game but it uses diplomacy. There are buttons to declare war, make pacts, send money to your allies, etc.

But making a uservoice sadly doesn't help when its not on Fizzer's "Immediate Roadmap" which hasn't exactly been shown to be an actual thing yet.

Now, Lillie to the untrained eye will look like the most honest person in the world and everything right? Wrong. That's how you get manipulated and twisted into a thousand knots. People like Lillie will take advantage of the little things and turn the game around to benefit them as much as they can. They also follow routine most of the time too and can make their movements very predictable.

I recently had to learn that the hard way..

^

Silesia and Prussia is German clay

Edited 6/16/2016 16:44:58

1. Fair enough

2. Warmongering isn't that bad. Also, Poland is stronk in good templates.

3. Yeah, don't be PE. But in good games there are none.

4. Declaring war varies from template to template.

5. Ya read da r u l e z

6. I disagree that warmongering =/= roleplay. Some of my best roleplay comes from being a total warmongering dick, and being an evil dictator who wants to expand his empire. However practice games are gud.

7. RP is fun. Invite players to your games that roleplay a lot.

8. Actually, make loads of allies. Then betray them all. It's great to be the villain :D

9. Wel duh kekuuuuuuuu

10. Don't pretend that things go this way :p

Zenvue, I also play Age of Civilizations! :D

OxTheAutist you are cancer.

There's nothing wrong with being a brutal warmonger.

@Vengence
@Prussian Monarchist

Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia & Estonia - Polish clay ;)

Oh, also space.

+1 Karl

We all know Lithuania was the predominate power.

The more and more I play Diplos the more I realise the complexities that come just from the expectations of each player.

Everyone is right to a degree, warmongering can be fun, but being crushed by 10 players isn't always fun.

In a perfect world people could just accept that some games will go well, and some will go bad, no matter how nice you play sometimes everyone will just kill you for no clear reason. But perhaps this is just part of Diplos and even PEs are something we just need to accept, take on the chin and move on.

But I also feel that really, people with these different expectations should just try and play Diplos together. ie: Seperate Diplos into more catagories, those that allow alliances and back-stabbing, those that are happy with war-mongering, those like me who prefer a more easy-going casual game with smaller localised wars.

TL;DR: The main problem, and the point I want to make though is that there is simply not enough Diplo players for us to all get what we want out of the game.

Edited 6/16/2016 19:53:07

"Diplombacy for Dumbies".

Hehe!

I agree with Fleecemaster.

There are so many different ways to play a "diplomacy", and people don't seem to realize that.

For instance, people try to limit aggression (complex declaration rules and so forth, which limit you from making war) and they want to attack "warmongers".

Well, as a thought experiment, would you be happy with a game where no one ever attacks anyone?

If not, why not?

(And if you say 'no', but speak poorly of 'warmongers', you might want to examine your position a little more critically. The word 'hypocrisy' comes to mind... your games wouldn't work without some of these 'warmongers' in them!)

Ultimately, for such a specialized mode of play, you need to play with a group of people who have created a consistent culture of play and implicitly understand who it works. That's pretty difficult with a bunch of strangers, but much easier if you always play with the same people. Just be prepared for 'growing pains'.

---

Ultimately, the game you play should support what you're trying to do. Rules matter, here. Want a super-friendly game? Change the defense/offense ratio *drastically* in favour of the defender (say, 10% offense, 90% defense). It will work much better than writing a long list of "Declaration" rules in ALL CAPS and then yelling at people for forgetting them in the middle of the game, trust me...

Most Diplomacy games I've seen do NOT support the style of play at all. Hence all the threads complaining about them! It's clear cause and effect.

Anyone who has played the actual boardgame "Diplomacy" would see very quickly how the rules of that game create a very specific style of play. You don't need "rules" - just a game which naturally encourages the sort of play you want as the most effective way of playing it.

Here's some more good discussion and reading on this topic, if you're curious in my point of view:

https://www.warlight.net/Forum/107248-diplomacy-gamemode-warlight

Edited 6/16/2016 21:10:29

Here's another post I made on this topic a while back:

The problem with Diplomacy games in Warlight isn't the game system... it's the artificial rules which have grown up around the style of play.

Rules for declaring alliances, wars, PEs, and so forth, are counter-intuitive, inconsistently applied, and vary from game to game.

Speaking as a game designer, they're poorly thought out.

The "typical" Warlight diplomacy game is most likely to end in bickering and arguments than a solid and fun game experience, for these reasons.

Most importantly, any "official" version of the game settings (like suggested here) will not only be incredibly hard to code (they leave all kinds of possible edge-scenarios where games can't end, don't interface with AI modes, etc, etc) but WILL NOT SATISFY EVERYONE. Each diplomacy game is different.

To really "fix" diplomacy games, you need a smooth and workable set of rules which lead to fun games instead of bickering. (Yes, there are fun diplomacy games: those exist because of good players who know to avoid their downsides, not because the procedures are well thought-out. The current set of "rules" generally tend to break down, given average/typical players.)

They also lead to games which are 90% boredom, and a high boot/surrender rate as a result.

How could you do it better?

A good start would be a system for players to change their name in-game. This way, players could name themselves according to their country/faction, and alliances could declared. For instance, your name in a European diplomacy game might be:

"[FRANCE] - AXIS POWERS - {PlayerName1}"

Later, you could change it to "[FRANCE] - Neutral - {PlayerName1}".

Some kind of "board" where current states of recognized alliances and wars can be posted would help a great deal.

A more flexible messaging system, where you can easily group and/or remove players from conversations.

Always use an army cap, so people who sit around and do nothing are not rewarded for it.

Rules for declaration of war and PEs need to go - they're ludicrous.

Instead, in a Diplomacy game where "peace" is the presumed status quo - a terrible and boring convention for a game called Warlight, but if you really insist on having that... - there should be an in-game group or coalition which acts as a sort of "United Nations". This Peace Coalition sets and enforces rules, like punishing unjust wars. They can certainly declare a player "Public Enemy", if they wish - but if players do not agree or support this decision, they'll have to go to war or suck it up.

This makes things much more interesting: a player might be interested in subverting the coalition, for instance, by secretly "signing off" on an undeclared surprise attack. When the victim of the attack turns to the coalition for help, they're denied. Oh no! What happened behind the scenes?

Then other players find out about it, and they form a rebellion against the Peace Coalition.

Now, that would be an exciting game, and with none of these silly arguments which crop in almost every diplomacy game.

And - more importantly - it would require almost no changes to the game engine.

[Ok, getting off the soapbox now...]

Some great stuff here. This should be pinned to the top of the topics list.

I'm loving the suggestions you made in that thread and in this one, Poireau! I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets annoyed at at least one person becoming a PE at the end of the first turn because they didn't read the rules >_>

I'm not a fan of the army cap myself but I think it could certainly liven up diplomacy matches...

Thanks, Tristan!

At some point I should post my Diplomacy template, which recreates the dynamics of the Diplomacy boardgame using some very weird settings. (For instance, it's almost useless to attack another player unless you have someone else's support, and long "sieges" are often in effect to take a city.) However, I'm sure a lot of people won't like it, simply because it is so *odd*.