I have done some sleuthing around the forums and have many that share my opinion that the current implementation of the diplomatic victory condition is very dry (i.e. boring). My most recent game as the Drakken, consisted of a half hour of hitting “end turn” and cycling through the diplomacy menu 100+ times to compliment every race again and again. I suggest something more compelling and unique for the diplomatic victory. Here are three example ideas:



1) Have the victory condition require the player to be balanced in all FIDS+Influence production by requiring them to build a "World Diplomatic Council Wonder". Such a building would require era 5+ tech, and not just be built from industry, but from a combination of all FIDS (and maybe even luxury resources too). Also it would require a minimum # of turns to complete (about 30), and upon starting construction all factions would receive a notification that you have begun the process, thus giving them time to thwart you.



2) Make the victory based on the hero system. Such a victory would be achieved upon having the starting hero reach a certain max level, and visit/explore all ruins and capital cities. Lore-wise the goal would be to control a hero that was so widely know and respected by the entire planet that they would be coveted as a diplomatic advisor by all races, and he/she would bring peace to the planet.



3) Build the victory condition around the minor faction system. This would require giving heroes the ability to spend dust and influence to “reestablish” minor faction villages that have been destroyed, thus returning them to their original neutral state of not being aligned with any faction and spawning roaming armies. Additionally heroes could also spend dust/influence on minor faction villages in enemy regions to declare independence from their current ruling major faction, also returning them to their original neutral state. Victory would be achieved by having, let’s say, 80% of all minor faction villages simultaneously existing in the state of being liberated by you. Lore-wise this victory would be attributed to all the minor factions uniting together under a single banner and counseled by you towards a democratic future for Auriga.



Feel free to add your own creative ideas.



BTW I love this game.

I should add that if such a change was implemented, new value would have to be added to the diplomacy "compliment" option to keep it from being obsolete. For instance, complimenting a factions temporarily applies a small bonus to trade routes.

1) is wonder victory by another name



2) is pretty boring as well. End turn forever until hero levels, pick fights until hero levels, etc



3) So.... Basically cultists? Except with a slightly different flavor explanation.



If you want a more interesting diplo victory make it so you have some kind of world council vote like in Civ. That forces you to play an actual diplomatic game to win. As a side-note compliment should give a "petty-issues" bonus, essentially reducing empire aggression and (mayb) providing a minor influence boost.

Thanks. All good points. I would say the advantage of these 3 ideas are that they would be relatively easy to implement and require no additional systems to be appended to the game. Also, really anything is better than the current "coins in a bucket" system.



I do like (and would even prefer) your idea of creating a world council system. I'm guessing it would require more work to implement but could be worth it. So to be clear, are you suggesting that all of the minor factions would have a role in this diplomatic council, similar to city-states in civ5? Would players have to spend influence points to win their votes. And a victory would be achieved by getting a majority number of votes to be elected as council leader? I like the idea of playing "an actual diplomatic game to win", but am having trouble visualizing incentives for getting other major factions (both AI and human players) to vote for anyone but themselves. There must be a way to implement this without it being a carbon copy of Civ5's version...

I agree that the diplomatic victory is dry, which is a shame considering how rich the diplomatic system is. First pass:



-Each capital starts with a piece of The Diplo Win equipment set. This can scale with the number of players, up to 8.

-Once a player has researched Hospitality Den, they can spend X influence to "demand fealty" from a player they aren't at war with.

-The targeted player has two options: accept, or spend X influence and declare war. If they can't match X, they must accept. If they accept, one piece of TDW set is transferred from their capital to the other.

-If a player takes a capital, all TDW equipment in it is transferred to to conquering player's capital.

-When a player has a hero and the full TDW set in their capital, they can equip the hero with the set. This starts the diplo win turn timer. The capital could be "under siege" and unable to produce anything while the timer is going. The hero could be locked in. Fluff wise, this represents the city shutting down to watch the King of Auriga parade or whatever.

-Can the other players disrupt the parade in time?!?!

I posted this a while ago...

Propbuddha wrote:
Diplomatic Victory requires a player meet all of the following criteria:



[LIST=1]

Is Allied with player(s) that control 80% of the territories, including own <- This alliance is dominating

The above condition is in effect for a minimum of 20 turns (10 for fast, 30 for Slow, 40 for Endless) <- This alliance has been maintained for a while and can't be forged last minute

Has the highest Global Score of players in the Alliance <- A single winner who is the "best" faction in the alliance

[/LIST]

Another idea would be to make this into a team victory by removing the third requirement and allowing players to share the victory.

I'm against any official team victories outside preset teams. In FFAs, that would lead to weaker players ganging up on the strongest and calling it a win, instead of forming short-term alliances but ultimately playing for themselves.



The current diplomatic, economic and scientific wins are plain, but they do encourage interaction indirectly. Maybe it's better to keep the win conditions simple, and focus on expanding/adding other mechanics. There are pages of suggestions already, many I'd like to see before a victory condition overhaul.

TheWhetherMan wrote:
I agree that the diplomatic victory is dry, which is a shame considering how rich the diplomatic system is. First pass:



-Each capital starts with a piece of The Diplo Win equipment set. This can scale with the number of players, up to 8.

-Once a player has researched Hospitality Den, they can spend X influence to "demand fealty" from a player they aren't at war with.

-The targeted player has two options: accept, or spend X influence and declare war. If they can't match X, they must accept. If they accept, one piece of TDW set is transferred from their capital to the other.

-If a player takes a capital, all TDW equipment in it is transferred to to conquering player's capital.

-When a player has a hero and the full TDW set in their capital, they can equip the hero with the set. This starts the diplo win turn timer. The capital could be "under siege" and unable to produce anything while the timer is going. The hero could be locked in. Fluff wise, this represents the city shutting down to watch the King of Auriga parade or whatever.

-Can the other players disrupt the parade in time?!?!

I quite like the idea, not sure about materializing it as real items though. Also seems some additional rules should be added if only 2 players left (or only 2 players), since it seems they either go to war or one of them wins.

Basically atm I see 3 main directions here:

• Victory is based on player's decisions (so in game stats are not relevant)
• Victory is based on some in game stats (so like current one or economic/wonder or something more complicated but basically drilling down to producing X resource and maybe exploring smth)
• A combined approach
  
  

Maybe several round elimination vote (1 player voted out at a time), with votes weighted by player's influence and significant pauses between rounds (so kicked out players can get revenge in some other way) can work.

Still thinking about smth better.

Making the fealty tokens equippable items uses systems that are already in the game, and in terms of fluff it would be the Grand Poobah's Regalia or whatever. Scepter, crown, holy hand grenade, etc. It's already true that if there are two players left, one of them will win through war or other means.

TheWhetherMan wrote:
I'm against any official team victories outside preset teams. In FFAs, that would lead to weaker players ganging up on the strongest and calling it a win, instead of forming short-term alliances but ultimately playing for themselves.

As per the original idea (without the team part) the player with the highest score in the Alliance is the winner, so there is a single winner (the strongest member of the alliance). This is functionally equivalent to your "fealty" idea as the weaker alliance members have to support the stronger ones for him to win, except that they always have the option to bail out (unless their Influence is too low to break the alliance). This would require little code except for implementing the trigger.



I think this is a little more interesting as the Alliance members can always turn on the leader or have an opportunity to win. With your idea, once you give up your "TDW", you've basically lost. The capital sacking feels a lot like the existing Supremacy victory.

I actually started a similar thread just a little while before the full game release:

/#/endless-legend/forum/6-game-design/thread/3117-serious-suggestions-for-diplomatic-victory-conditions

Apparently, the ideas I proposed were a little too complicated and time-consuming



btw, I included an idea based around minor factions AND an idea based around heroes. Check it out and tell me what you think!

KrimsonVagus wrote:
I actually started a similar thread just a little while before the full game release:

/#/endless-legend/forum/6-game-design/thread/3117-serious-suggestions-for-diplomatic-victory-conditions

Apparently, the ideas I proposed were a little too complicated and time-consuming



btw, I included an idea based around minor factions AND an idea based around heroes. Check it out and tell me what you think!

Looks like a nice idea for spicing up current diplo victory. Haven't actually put any effort into analyzing difficulty/cost of the suggested items, but in game achievements giving you extra diplo points do not sound too difficult implementation wise and would definitely improve the current situation.

MANoob wrote:
Looks like a nice idea for spicing up current diplo victory. Haven't actually put any effort into analyzing difficulty/cost of the suggested items, but in game achievements giving you extra diplo points do not sound too difficult implementation wise and would definitely improve the current situation.

Looks like we're on the same page.



So now Amplitude has plenty of ideas to choose from. I hope they choose the ideas that everyone agrees on, such as the Heroes and Minor Faction for diplo victory etc...



As for the exact numbers involved in the diplomatic points:

Honestly, even I myself have no idea how they are calculated cuz I can't find any indicator in-game. So I'm having a hard time balancing the numbers. The numbers I used in that thread were based on the diplomacy mechanics pre-release. I need to test them more thoroughly... OR one of the smarter players (aka modders) can tell me more about how they work