As of changes with Guardians release, this guide is no longer useful.



A wise man once pondered, "What is best in life?" I offer today an alternative: to crush your sycophants, to see them kowtow before you, and to hear the lamentations of your courtiers.



Diplomatic victories are probably the most mysterious of the victory types because of the confusion surrounding how diplomatic points are gained. Nevertheless, it is a very practical victory type, second only to military victories in terms of speed. While I can't say that I have a perfect understanding of diplomatic victories, I've experimented enough to get an intuition for how it works. So here's your guide! Unless I say otherwise, we're going to be talking about a single-player game, because multiplayer is a little more complex.



There is only one faction that can seriously contemplate diplomatic victory.



Drakken gain starting bonuses to influence from Endless Excavation. They alone have a use for huge stockpiles of Influence, which they can use to protect themselves from war. And their quest is one of only two factions' that grants Influence improvements. But most importantly, Drakken alone can instantly turn their Influence surplus into a out-of-nowhere Diplomatic victory.



Winning a diplomatic victory is possible with any faction. But no faction can do it with the speed or ease of Drakken.



Turn 1



Take a look around. Not only at your own lands, but at those of your opponents, which you've got vision on. Look for Kanzanji villages. Look for dye deposits. Look for multiple ruins in close proximity. These are all places where you want to settle.



If one of your nearby opponents has some real estate that you'd consider prime, I urge you to settle, upgrade your 2 Drakkenlings as much as possible, and march on that real estate with the intention of a turn 6 war. Seriously, you can do it, against humans and against any AI that's not on Impossible or higher difficulty, and it's safe, and it will speed your development. Remember: there are no approval penalties for influence generation! Your hero can join up with them later via teleportation, so see if you can snag any ruins with him while your Drakkenlings travel.



Okay, that out of the way. Settling near a ruin is likely and a good move, but don't ignore anomalies in favor of them. During tier 1, industry is still more important than influence. Don't sweat the influence yet, you'll make some boroughs later.



Tier 1



You're going to play this like you would with pretty much any other faction. Your first goal is to get three cities up before your first plan. More cities = more influence = faster victory. Your second goal is to advance your quest as far as you can until your first plan. Keep all of your population on industry during tier 1.



Recommended tech/upgrade path is founder's memorial, settler, mill foundry, settler, seed storage, public library, empire mint, geomic labs, mercenary market, luxury extractors. Strategic extractors is, unusually for Endless Legend, optional: the only thing you need Glassteel for is maybe a public granary, and you don't need Titanium at all. You'll probably come back for a second assimilation and either mercenary market or open pit mine. Going back for fortification tech might also wise-- due to force truce, you're sure to get the full fortification bonus from attackers, who are forced into first-turn assaults to take any cities.



Let's talk about your quest.



Level 2 Drakkenlings to level 2. Easy peasy. Random reward.

Create 10 influence in one of your cities. All you have to do is move all your pop onto influence for one turn. Easy. Random reward.

Set an empire plan to level 2. Again, this should be pretty easy. Try to get it done by your first plan. Random reward.

Defeat 3 armies with an army led by a Drakken hero. Aura of Leadership (+2 influence per pacified village passive). Hey, you have a Drakken hero, you have an incredibly strong starting army, and there are minors running around. Simple.

Rest of the quest: Not important.



The easily met objectives and useful rewards encourage keeping your army in once piece at least until your drakkenlings reach level 2. Parley with every village-- if the quest or reward is a bad one, destroy the village. You get experience and unpacified minors can be a relative headache. Can't force truce with minors!



Your primary settlement goal is a province containing kanzanji or dye deposits. Your secondary goal is to settle every province adjacent to your capital. Having these provinces settled will give you a buffer zone in case of war. It's ideal to settle the unscoutable middle of the provinces-- 5 or more tiles from uncontrolled provinces-- but if this is too costly, don't sweat it.



If you can get Aura of Leadership on your first empire plan, do so. Otherwise, you don't really need an empire plan.



Tier 2

Tier 2 is about Glory of Empire and Diplomat's Manse, and these should be the first two techs of tier 2. You can take a break to pursue military techs if you want or need, but you're far less vulnerable than other factions thanks to force truce. Public Granary is a useful improvement that will end up increasing your Influence generation, and Imperial Coinage becomes more useful than it does for other factions-- you'll want it to purchase strategics for National Museums in tier 3, and to make up any deficits in dye. You probably don't want to build any second tier upgrades except for glory of empire and public granary. Of special note are roads: your human opponents will use any roads you build to home in your cities. Don't build them.



While you're at all this, expand as much as possible. So long as it's possible, you'll want five cities by the end of tier 2.



Once you have Glory of Empire built, you're probably going to want to move all your pop in that city onto Influence.



After you've earned the Aura of Leadership quest reward, you're well served by closing borders and entering peace with every other faction in the game, as soon as possible. If they can't scout your cities before initiating war, you're likely to be able to prevent their first assault with force truce.





Tier 3

Tier 3 is about National Museums, which require t3 strategics, so it's also about extractor tech. Nat'l Museums are a great upgrade, and it's worth purchasing from the market and putting pop temporarily back on industry to get these up as soon as possible. Bread and Circuses makes a good third research.



Continue to settle new provinces if you can. New provinces are a source of additional influence, but more importantly, they're a buffer zone protecting your capital from assault. Getting more Kanzanji villages is worth the risk of settling non-adjacent provinces.



Tier 4

Tier 4 is about Hospitality Den which is how you win. You'll win before you research much else, so don't stress it.



Wow, that's a simple tech tree, isn't it? Leaves an awful lot of room to research whatever you want to research. Focus on passives. Food is also nice. You haven't the industry to build much else.



Tech Trading

Since you don't care much about your techs, but you want to reach tier 4 ASAP, and you've got a bunch of Influence lying around, you're going to want to tech trade. As soon as you get diplomat's manse, start checking out other factions for viable trades. You'll want luxuries and techs. It doesn't even matter if the techs are useless-- they'll get you to your win faster. Continue to trade freely. The Influence isn't a real cost to diplomacy; it's how you win!



Don't forget to give a few techs: strategic and luxury extractor tech in the hands of your opponents is just going to mean more for you. Against high difficulty AI, you never even need to build extractors, just give them the tech and reap the rewards.



Share vision with AI, but never with human players.



Empire Plans

Empire Plans cost you Influence but don't contribute Diplomatic Points. I know it's hard to do, but after you get your quest taken care of, be very cautious of the empire plan. Yes, you have 5k influence banked. That's no reason to blow it all on a t4 plan. T1 plans, and even T2 plans, are okay-- they'll probably contribute to your development more than they'll delay your win. You'll end up gathering most of your influence near the end of the game: once you have National Museums everywhere, you might be raking in 500 influence per turn.



Governors

You will win by turn 100 (normal). Buying a governor is basically going to take you 150 pop-turns of dust. And it's not going to give you an extra 150 pop-turns of Influence. Spend your spare dust on governors, but don't put pop on dust to buy governors. Any cultist governor will do. Drakken governors with Influence Boost 2 or 3 will also work well.



Minor Factions

Kanzanji, kanzanji, kanzanji. And then Urces, Haunts, or Eyeless Ones. Gauran or Ceratan are good in multiplayer, where you can anticipate at least a bit of war that you want to proceed as slowly as is possible. You don't get diplomatic points from assimilation, but it's worth it to assimilate good factions.



Military

Your strongest military move is to settle in the center of districts and maintain closed borders. That way, they can't see what's defended and what's not. Your second strongest military move is to use force truce as soon as anyone ever declares war. Force truce not only eliminates the risk of second-turn sieges, it brings you closer to diplomatic victory. Your third strongest move is to stay in peace, or better, alliance, with every other faction. Force alliance as soon as it becomes possible. You've got the influence stores to end any war. They won't have the influence stores to continue it.



Garrison your outer ring of cities with smallish garrisons. With suitable fortification upgrades, 3 defensively upgraded Drakkenlings and a healer should be able to hold off any first-turn assault. You don't need to kill the opponent, you just need to weather a single turn of war. Or, take a look at a comment below this for a cheatier solution.



The win

It takes about 7 influence to generate 1 diplomatic point (via force alliance). Look at how much you need on the overview screen. Don't bother making your move until you'll win. In a normal sized, fast game, you'll need about 10k influence to make your full 1350 diplomatic points. But you'll probably be about 30% of the way there, so you won't need that much. Do the math.



Then rotate through every diplomatic contact. Force alliance. Peace. Force alliance. Peace. Until you're out of influence. Next turn. You win! Best of all, you appear to jump from a 30% diplomatic victory to a 100% diplomatic victory in the space of a single turn.



How diplomatic points work

As near as I can tell, you get diplomatic points every time you trade, in proportion to the influence spent. More importantly, you get diplomatic points every time you do something that improves relations, in proportion to the influence spent, but not when you do anything that worsens relations. That's why force alliance spam is the most effective way to win: it has the lowest ratio of influence spent on worsening relations to influence spent on improving relations. (Open/close borders is terrible. Don't bother.) And yes: you seem to get the points in proportion to influence cost, not effect. So having lots of cities, making and spending influence faster, means you win faster. You also get diplomatic points for every peace or alliance you have.



Custom Factions

There isn't a lot of chaff on vanilla Drakken. You don't really need a custom faction.



Dropping starting techs is probably wise, though. The extra tier of empire plans is probably not necessary, although it will delay the speed with which you can get Aura of Leadership. Knowing the initial locations of empires is useful-- both for rushing purposes and diplomatic purposes-- but it is pricy, and you might want to drop it. Brace Yourself is a usually a safe source of a few extra points as well.



With so few necessary techs, Incantation of Authority and Dust Purifier is especially intriguing. Extra influence and the best defensive ability in the game.



Your standard economic upgrades are always good choices-- Industry Efficient, Cellulose Mutation, and Landscapist are all top-tier.



Extreme exploity play usually sacrifices all military capability in order to win an influence victory more quickly. This usually involves cellulose mutation, food bonuses, and every military drawback possible, including the ability to declare war.



Multiplayer Considerations



Enter an informal alliance with every other Drakken player as soon as possible. Use "/w" to enter into communications with them. Your interests coincide-- peace, alliance, tech trading, and even vision-- and this will leave every non-Drakken player weaker in comparison.



Knocking a player out of the running on turn 6 isn't going to make you any friends, but it will make you stronger. There's little risk to doing so. No non-Drakken player will even have found your capital until you've returned your army. And some players will mistakenly discover your new province and assume it's your capital, particularly if you've closed borders. Avoid Cultists: you can do it, but it takes too long.



Avoid war unless you have a very good reward from the Princely Gift quest and plan to force truce immediately following. Even if you lose a city, it's usually smarter to write it off than to risk additional turns of war.



Above all, maintain closed borders as soon as possible and create a military buffer zone, and you should be golden.



Don't let the diplomatic points from peace or alliance make you think that you're better off with more factions in the game. You're not. It's going to take multiple players acting in concert to take you out. Encourage war among your opponents. If the opportunity somehow presents itself (it won't), take out your opponents yourself.



Guess who's the nemesis of Drakken, the strongest faction? Why that's right, it's the weakest faction: Roving Clans. Whereas other clans don't get access to privateers until tier 4 when you're on the verge of winning, RC get them at tier 2. Thankfully, these will be expensive and poorly upgraded units. If there's an RC player, you're going to have to have some military developed in t2.



If you're playing with timers, there are probably going to be some race situations. If another player declares war with you, it's in your interest that the turn end with a forced truce and closed borders so that their army is teleported out of your territory and is unable to penetrate more deeply. Force truce ASAP, as soon as the other player declares a war, and don't bother closing borders until the end of the turn nears. Just stay on that diplomacy screen: if the timer is nearing its end, force truce, close borders, with

trade with players is sure way to get diplom points, but how about just being in alliance...? this grants influence, but I'm wondering about dp?

Garlic wrote:
trade with players is sure way to get diplom points, but how about just being in alliance...? this grants influence, but I'm wondering about dp?

If I'm not mistaken, peace and alliance grant 1 and 2 diplo points per faction per turn. Which is significant, but not enough to win quickly.



The bigger reason to maintain peace and alliance is to increase the influence costs of waging war on you. You don't want anyone to get enough influence to even scout your closed borders.



Thankfully, it's trivial for Drakken to maintain alliance, and forcing alliance gives you diplo points taking you closer to the win. If your opponent decides to break the alliance, he's doing you a favor by saving you the influence cost of doing so yourself, since you will eventually break and reform your alliance many, many times.

It's 4 per turn for Alliance, 2 for Peace and 1 for other statuses as long as you know the other empire.

Stupid Dumb Easy Version



Thanks very much to furude who explained this tactic. I wanted to share it to show just how powerful this style of play is. I haven't tested it myself.



So here's the deal: when you have an army sitting on top of a city district, your opponent has to attack the army, giving you the chance to retreat. This isn't so hot for most factions-- but it gives Drakken the time they need to force truce.



So the most military you need is 1 unit for every district that can be reached in a single turn from outside of your borders. If you do this, it takes three players acting in concert to even have a chance of taking a city. (They'll still need to attack through fortifications.)



Slightly Less Stupid Dumb Easy Version



Play on multiple continents/islands with spread spawn. Settle the entire continent. Never build a district on a coast or adjacent to a coast. Hey hey, invulnerable empire. Sell all your military.

Many props to Amplitude for addressing force alliance spam. Drakken are no longer a shoe-in for a diplomatic victory, although it does remain a threat against AI or in multiplayer games containing AI.