I just had one of my shortest games ever ... on hard difficulty and on slow game speed.



I played Drakkens and went for the diplomatic victory. The thing is, giving Drakkens the ability to immediately engage in even very basic diplomacy with all the other AIs allows them to start building up relation points simply by giving them compliments as soon as you're able.



Although there's the issue that there isn't enough information on how "relation points" are built, it was extremely easy to start building them as Drakkens. Just basically having a positive relationship with other factions just causes them to grow. I was essentially in a race with the other two Drakken AI factions to see who can "peace" our way to victory faster.



Weirdly, I think the more enemy factions you have in the game, the faster you can win, because you can just compliment them all, which is fairly cheap, and just keep having your relationship grow.



I've got the game attached below. I won the game at turn 215 (this was the 450-turn speed) with only a couple of fights against minor faction units.



Drakken - Twitch.zip



I have a feeling this won't be as big an issue with other factions given they have to take the time to explore and meet the others, but it's possibly way too big a boost for Drakkens.

Sadly that's very imbalanced. Drakkens should have strong diplomacy, OK. But their gameplay is way too easy if you start good.



The whole mechanic with "relation points" is too UNCLEAR. You shouldn't win only by complimenting other factions !!

That is just too easy and BORING. I hope Amp fixes this system.

An easy solution may be that the Drakkens may be able to see the starting locations of other factions, but still has to actually meet them through map exploration in order to begin diplomacy.



I think I may set up a game playing a different faction (and don't allow Drakkens in the game) to see how a diplomatic victory plays out for other factions.

This is a ridiculously easy and shameful victory



I agree with your idea Larcent, I think its weird that they can start diplomacy from the first turn oO



And the Diplomatic Victory is still too simple to succeed :/

Non-military (Science, Diplomacy, Economic, Wonder) should be obtainable in the last third of the game (turn 200+ on Normal, 100+ on "Fast", 300+ on "Slow" pace). Turn 215 on Slow is too early.



There's a little bit of a bigger issue here though. Diplomatic victory should be obtainable by all factions but some factions (like the Drakkens) should be good at it and others (ex. Necrophages) should not. The problem is that the Drakkens are currently so much better at accomplishing this that it's impossible to set the bar at the "sweet spot" where other factions can attain this without it being too easy for the Drakkens. Simply raising the "Peace Point" bar may fix the Drakken issue, but it will put it out of reach for other factions.

Devs, how will you improve this?

This is a really tricky qeustion. I'm not sure if Complimenting actually increases relationship points (since I can't find any connection between the two in the game files), but the Drakken gain such a massive head start from knowing everybody else, and they don't even have to work to improve their relationships, as they can just force peace or an alliance.



I don't think this issue can be solved by simply tweaking the numbers, as they Drakken would still have this massive advantage.





P.S. A theory on how Relationship Points are gained can be found in this post.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
This is a really tricky qeustion. I'm not sure if Complimenting actually increases relationship points (since I can't find any connection between the two in the game files), but the Drakken gain such a massive head start from knowing everybody else, and they don't even have to work to improve their relationships, as they can just force peace or an alliance.



I don't think this issue can be solved by simply tweaking the numbers, as they Drakken would still have this massive advantage.





P.S. A theory on how Relationship Points are gained can be found in this post.

It would be interesting to be capable of destabilising the international diplomacy, in order to substract or reduce points for diplomatic victories. Let's hire a broken lords mercenary unit, harass the Drakken's with it and reduce the relation score with the Broken Lords, maybe even cause a little war..?

That's probably too hard a mechanic, especially in terms of teaching that kind of counterfeit and backstabbing in the dark to the AI, but it would be fun.



Ironically, that would make the Roving Clans the #1 anti-Drakken arms dealers.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
This is a really tricky qeustion. I'm not sure if Complimenting actually increases relationship points (since I can't find any connection between the two in the game files), but the Drakken gain such a massive head start from knowing everybody else, and they don't even have to work to improve their relationships, as they can just force peace or an alliance.



I don't think this issue can be solved by simply tweaking the numbers, as they Drakken would still have this massive advantage.





P.S. A theory on how Relationship Points are gained can be found in this post.

It will be hilarious if it turns out complimenting doesn't actually do anything because that means I won the game doing pretty much nothing at all.

The-Cat-o-Nine-Tales wrote:
This is a really tricky qeustion. I'm not sure if Complimenting actually increases relationship points (since I can't find any connection between the two in the game files), but the Drakken gain such a massive head start from knowing everybody else, and they don't even have to work to improve their relationships, as they can just force peace or an alliance.



I don't think this issue can be solved by simply tweaking the numbers, as they Drakken would still have this massive advantage.

It's fine if the Drakken have an advantage for this victory type, as long as they can't win too fast or too easily (as they can now). I really like the way Drakkens "know" all of the other players at start and hope they can fix this without removing that unique advantage.



There's definitely some other factors than just status in play. I'm in the middle of a game where I'm at peace with all other races and got 1379.67 points on the last turn, which is an ass ton more than 10 (2 X 5), that multiplier must be huge...

Not to pile on, but attached is a Turn 46 Diplomatic win with Drakkens (Fast speed, Small Map, 6 players). I basically made peace with everyone and tossed in the occasional compliment and added a couple research agreements late...
Drakken Fast Diplomatic.zip

Yes, there's definitely a lot more involved than just the diplomatic status, but I am yet to find any clear information on it. I'll keep looking, though.

Larcent wrote:
An easy solution may be that the Drakkens may be able to see the starting locations of other factions, but still has to actually meet them through map exploration in order to begin diplomacy.

I fully agree with this suggestion