I played warlight a lot and one thing i have noticed is the alliances. In team games it is okay but in diplomatic games often people cheat others. i have a suggestion-like in age of civilization we can make alliances and break have peace pacts and declare war with options given in the game.It would be awesome if we were able to make alliances, break them, declare war and have peace pacts given through the game options.this would make the game more interesting.i hope this feature is added. If you don't understand what i mean see - AGE OF CIVILIZATION - on android.

The issue is that a good diplomacy system (something like Rise of Nations) would probably not get implemented by the developers in the near future as they're short on time and funds. I mean, Mercer's probably going to respond with "buy a membership" if this post gets big enough because Warlight obviously doesn't have infinite resources.

So it's up to the game host to jerry rig a way to actually have functional alliances within the game- and this does exist. It's called the Public Enemy system.

I don't think most people understand the theory of diplomacy games (and why the rules are actually important) so most hosts just pardon PE's but the system exists for a reason, and it's very effective at enforcing rules within the game to a certain extent.

I must admit, I've never understood this.

What is to be gained by making alliances and wars "official"?

There is nothing like this in any realistic scenario, certainly not in the real world. The possibility for deception, for different kinds of agreements, for picking a personal strategy which relies on honesty or on backstabbing... taking all of this out just simplifies the game to a ridiculous extent, making it into a game of Checkers.

It always sounds like the whining of a petulant child to me: "I made an agreement with so-and-so, and now I want to make ILLEGAL for them to attack me! It's not fair if they don't follow the agreement!"

In a Diplomacy game, it's your job to make sure your agreements are followed and make the right deals. Arranging for a situation where your neighbour has few incentives to attack you is part of skillset of playing Diplomacy at a high level. Removing that cheapens the game, removing almost all of the complexity which requires true skill to master.

(Not to mention that this would be quite difficult to implement in any kind of way which makes sense, so I certainly wouldn't bother Fizzer or anyone else working on this site to make it a priority.)

Can someone explain to me why this is so important, and worthwhile? What does it add to the game?

Edited 5/23/2015 16:53:51

Use diplomacy card.

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Trading cards with other players, whole bonuses, armies or gift "cards" will add another layer of amusement.

Trading would be very useful in random cards FFA.


Cards generators for bonuses would be hilarious. You can make King of The Hill games on some maps using Custom Scenarios.

If you hold a bonus for 10 turns, you receive a reinforcement card piece each turn. You complete the card worth 1000 armies and win the game.

Edited 5/23/2015 17:23:11

Personally in my games, very few people become PE, because I tried to make it realistic, even if it is a diplo. I make it so its ok to attack someone without declaring, unless they're your ally, in which you have to announce that you're attacking them, mostly because otherwise everyone will just make it a FFA(I've seen it happen in one of my old games).

So, while I love the idea of adding actual diplo settings, we're just going to have to settle with what we can get, because war light really isn't big enough of a game to get what everyone wants, which is different even between people who play the same settings of games.

Edited 5/23/2015 18:22:32

The solution is to only play 1v1s

Can't cheat with alliances there

Well, shucks.

I was really hoping for an intelligent, reasoned answer to my questions, above.

There was no response to your questions. Thus, its not surprising that there were no intelligent, reasoned answers to it. :P

Diplomacy rules can't be enforced, as there are no official diplomacy rules, just a lot of commonly used rules that may opposite each other in many cases. That's why I doubt diplomacies will be featured.

QUESTION-
M. Poireau
Level 42
I must admit, I've never understood this.

What is to be gained by making alliances and wars "official"?

There is nothing like this in any realistic scenario, certainly not in the real world. The possibility for deception, for different kinds of agreements, for picking a personal strategy which relies on honesty or on backstabbing... taking all of this out just simplifies the game to a ridiculous extent, making it into a game of Checkers.

It always sounds like the whining of a petulant child to me: "I made an agreement with so-and-so, and now I want to make ILLEGAL for them to attack me! It's not fair if they don't follow the agreement!"

In a Diplomacy game, it's your job to make sure your agreements are followed and make the right deals. Arranging for a situation where your neighbour has few incentives to attack you is part of skillset of playing Diplomacy at a high level. Removing that cheapens the game, removing almost all of the complexity which requires true skill to master.

(Not to mention that this would be quite difficult to implement in any kind of way which makes sense, so I certainly wouldn't bother Fizzer or anyone else working on this site to make it a priority.)

Can someone explain to me why this is so important, and worthwhile? What does it add to the game?

Answer-I only meant that there should be a way to ensure that the person u r in alliance/peace with doesn't backstab u . like see u r controlling whole russia in map-europe big-u get a bonus of 108 armies per turn and also u have finland as ur ally{finland income =60 armies he has some other territories too}
now finland uses sanctions card on u cutting ur income then attks russia kiling ur 108 armies bonus also cause he is ur ally u'll put less forces there u will be forced to give a lot of ur land or fight finland back but if u do so u'll lose the war u were fighting earlier.and even if u declare finland PE his neighbour is afraid of him or is in a neutral stance.and if u attk his neighbour u become PE and finland is then obliged to attk u.so this is the reason why options for alliance peace war should be given.
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P.S.-did u get ur answer? [NO SARCASM]
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There is the option of having a "UN" in the game who stays, for example, in Switzerland and only ventures out to destroy PEs, and surrenders at the end of the game to whoever has won.
Using the diplomacy card is not an option, because there is no restrictions on the number of times a certain player can have diplomacy invoked on, ect.
I think the abandon card and airlift card can be used efficiently to allow the players, when attacked, an opportunity to flee with their armies.

Well not everyone follows the rules do they?

I support the introduction of diplomacy as part of WarLight.

I have previously suggested that this could be made by adding an option under a players' name to "Ally" or "Declare War".

THANK YOU>I HOPE THIS POST GETS BIG ENOUGH FOR THE DEVELOPERS TO SEE>

I think Rome : Total War Multiplayer FFA's are a good example of what warlight diplomacy should look like. You're all really fighting each other, but you'll make those truces to fight someone else.

I think the solution is to just play FFA games for those who does not want to be cheated or backstabbed. But if you guys really want diplomacy games with rules that players can't avoid to follow it then i support Falcon Colonel Harthacanute's idea .

vansh97,

Unfortunately, no, that does not answer my question. This is a game design question I've pondered a lot; I'm not coming from a position of ignorance.

In short, it sounds like a very naive and immature stance to take. Not unlike what happens when young children obsessed with authority figures start learning about the true rules of negotiation.

Kind of like this:

Timmy makes a deal with Lucy. Lucy tells him that she has a great pair of hockey cards, absolutely unique, of players he's never heard of, and assures him that they are really rare and really valuable. She says she will give him the cards next week, but only if he comes to school late at night and breaks the window in the principal's office.

Timmy, trusting fool that he is, goes and does so. He gets caught and is now in serious trouble. When he confronts Lucy about it, she just says, "What? I don't remember talking about this. I would NEVER ask someone to do such a thing. That's bad!"

"But you promised me the hockey cards of Genghis Khan and Muhammad the Prophet!"

"What? Those don't exist, silly."

Now Timmy is pissed. He's completely screwed, and of course no one believes him - he's the one who broke the window, after all, a hooligan. His story about the fake hockey cards makes no sense.

So what is his response?

"This is UNFAIR! We must make a RULE that NO ONE is allowed to EVER break an AGREEMENT!"

His sentiment is understandable, of course. But we all have an experience like Timmy at some point and learn to be wiser next time. It's part of growing up and learning about human nature.

Crying that an ally betrayed you in a game of Warlight and then begging for someone to - please please make a rule so they can never do that again! - is a pretty immature proposition, it seems to me.

I don't see what it adds to the game. In a Diplomacy game, there are many nuances: who do you trust? What deals do you make? Do you choose an honourable strategy or betray left and right and then deal with the consequences? Do you leave yourself open to your allies, or do you play it all paranoid and careful?

These are all important strategic considerations. Making a RULE against betraying agreements is just removing all that nuance - and much of the skill of a proper Diplomacy player - from the game.

Rather than repeatedly harass the owners of this site to make a complex and unnecessary system, I'd advise you to learn how to play better and enjoy learning some fascinating things about how people communicate and negotiate in the process.

If you're Timmy, instead of crying for an authority figure to come fix what everyone else is doing wrong, better to develop the skills to read between the lines, and make sure that when you make an agreement you have the means to enforce it.

If your kid came to you and said they agreed to give someone all their money in exchange for some vague promise, and now that person didn't follow through or turned out to have lied, what would you do? Well, there are lots of options, but I really hope you would also teach them not to make such a stupid deal in the first place - learn to "see the goods" before you hand over your money, in other words. Your kid needs to learn to say, "Ok, I'll give you the money, but only when you give me the thing I'm buying, I'm not going to give it to you now."

This is the equivalent (although much less nuanced) of what a good Diplomacy player must learn.

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A sidenote:

Worse yet, the "one turn warning" doesn't solve the problem of people breaking alliances at unfortunate moments *anyway*. It just makes it a bit harder. Instead of attacking with no warning, I have to estimate your production and make sure I have enough armies a turn earlier to break through your bonuses anyway. If your "ally" wants to break you, they can do it just the same. And they'll probably pick a very uncomfortable moment for you, just like in your example.

So how would you fix that? Make it a two-turn warning? Now you have the same problem, just with a two turn delay. Ok, let's make it a three-turn warning! You can see how this doesn't alter the fundamental gameplay in the long run.

And it's tough to enforce. So perhaps we should just say that NO ONE should ever attack anyone without a warning? Great, now it's easy to track!

Except now you're back to where you started: anyone can attack anyone, they just all have to wait for a period of X turns. Might as well go back to the drawing board and say X = 0. That's right, you have to give a warning that you're attacking someone, but only at the same time as you attack them.

Since we can all attack each other with a warning, why not just say at the beginning of the game: "Hey, fair warning! I might attack any one of you at some point in the game!" And now we're back to where we started: just playing basic Warlight, with no special Diplomacy rules. You can see, logically, that it's no different than what you are suggesting, in a fundamental sense. It just requires more skill.

Edited 5/26/2015 20:14:47

Well said and very true :) There is absolutely no need for officiated alliances.