I recently bought the game (at the weekend) and have poured in nearly 20 hours over the last few days; nevertheless, I am probably a lot less experienced than many people on these forums. Regardless, I decided to post this guide, in the hope that others who have their own insights will be able to add more.



I have noticed a lot of people complaining that achieving diplo-victory is too difficult. Some of the posts are a little old, and the victory conditions have been changed somewhat in that time; I feel that a diplo-victory is not at all difficult to achieve as of 1.03. Nevertheless I thought I'd share my experience of a recent diplomatic win I achieved in the hope we can discuss what tactics work best in attaining a diplomatic victory.



MANUAL



First up, let's look at what the manual has to say about diplomatic victory:



"Diplomatic Victory: Survive long enough while being at war the least amount of time.

You gain “peace points” each turn depending on the number of cold wars, peace treaties and allies. Allies give a huge bonus, but be careful not to lose too many treaties with factions outside that new alliance.

Peace points also depend on the size of your empire. You’ll have to find the right equilibrium between expansion and diplomacy.

Required points will vary with number of players, galaxy size and game speed.

This is why you must always read the manual! The correct strategy for achieving a diplo-victory is outlined in its essential form in this list. Let's cover the points:



1) You gain peace points based on your treaties. War and cold war are bad, peace is good, alliances are great.



So we can make some basic conclusions about what we need to do: we want to create strong, long lasting alliances. Where we cannot have alliances, we want peace.



Wars are bad, but actually it's not war itself we need to avoid, it's LONG, DRAWN OUT WARS. This is a very important point - short, decisive wars which place us closer to victory are actually very helpful.



2) It isn't very clear from the wording, but I'm fairly certain that what this means is DON'T build a massive empire.



This makes sense - you aren't going for a conquest victory. Try to limit the size of your empire to what you really need.



3) This just means the designers have had the common sense to adjust the conditions to fit the reality of the situation.



We can acknowledge this, then remove point three from our discussion.



OTHER CONCERNS



It's important we recognise how the diplomatic system works in game: AI start off suspicious and are unlikely to ask for much more than peace or uneven trades on their own. Broadly speaking, gifts (technology, resources, systems) tend to give bonuses to your relationship with a race; so do lengthy alliances, and so does parity (in terms of military power, technology, influence etc). Disparity hurts your relationships. So does having mutual borders (which can be very significant), which check AI expansion.





ADVANCED REASONING



Now we've drawn some basic conclusions, lets systematically consider what they mean in terms of our game winning strategy.



THE EARLY GAME



Early in the game we need to play just the same way we do normally - steadily improve systems, choose carefully where it would be best to colonise, expand as quickly as is optimal, and hopefully take a good foothold in the hub of the galaxy. We need to research just enough military tech to hold our own. Note that we do not need to actually WIN the arms race here - our goal is to be safe from conquest, not to be a shoe in for military supremacy. Military tech needs to do the job - we don't want to under invest, but try to be economical.



As soon as is reasonably possible, we need to get the techs which allow us to make peace and ally ourselves with the other races. This is how we achieve victory, so it's a priority, but don't rush it. Make sure you have built a safe, viable empire.



EARLY-MID GAME



The transition from early to mid game is actually a stage in itself that we need to be very aware of. If we are going to win, this is the point at which we will forge our victory. Our goal should be as follows: we need to achieve a slight ascendency over the other factions, and we need to make our first alliances.



THE FIRST ALLIANCE



We want to make our first alliance quickly for two reasons: one is the points towards diplo victory. The other is that because we don't want a large empire, we may never be powerful enough to protect ourselves fully without allies. In this instance, by protect, I mean "prevent having to fight a war we don't start ourselves." A secondary objective we have is to only go to war when we are the aggressor, because then we can limit the number of turns we spend at war. Having powerful allies scares other factions into making peace with us - ergo we get diplo points.



For this reason, we want an ally who is strong. BUT, we don't want an ally who can compete with us. We may face a time when tensions with our ally rise. Under those circumstances, to keep the alliance from failing (and keep the diplo points rolling in), we'll need to drip feed gifts to our ally. We can't do that if they are stronger!



The perfect ally is strong, but a bit weaker than ourselves. We have the tech advantage, and we also have a few more systems. But they have a reasonable military which can keep up with the Joneses.



Finally, allies are best a little distant from us rather than closer. If an ally doesn't border us, and won't in the forseeable future, then we won't have any border tensions to negatively affect our relationship. An ally who has another faction between them and us is a good choice for an ally.



Once you have one ally, start romancing the next race you want in. For your second ally, anyone will do, weak or strong, far or near. All that matters is that they say yes, and that you can keep them in the alliance; you're already one faction with the strength of two!



SLIGHT ASCENDENCY



The key to diplo-victory is riding the sweetspot between dominance and alliance. If you are too strong (disparity in tech, military, economy, empire size etc), you'll be unpopular with other factions. If your empire is too big, diplo victory will also be slower (see the manual). But if you're too weak, factions will try to challenge your lead or even make war on you. The key is to be just strong enough that no-one can touch you, while making sure you don't race too far ahead. Note that the way to do this is to be just a bit ahead in every way; be a little bit more advanced on the tech tree, have a slightly better fleet, a few more (and more strategically important) systems. These little bits add up to a strong lead, but they keep other factions from hating you. Once you have attained your slight lead, all you need do is maintain equilibrium. Prevent any one race from expanding too quickly, and you will win the game.



Drip feeding tech is a good way to help maintain this equilibrium. So is gifting systems. Give weak, distant systems to allies and keep the good ones for yourself. Create barriers, where one ally's systems shield you from the systems of another ally - that way, no diplo penaltie for border tensions. Keep their tech ticking along without giving away all your best cards. Don't be afraid to be very generous sometimes, if it secures you an agreement. Your allies will like you, and they'll be strong enough to protect you.



Note that the amoebas' race specific techs are really useful for this since they pump your economy and military proportionally to the strength and number of your allies, helping you hold on to your lead.



WAR



As I said earlier, war in itself is not a bad thing; LONG war is. Cold war is not your friend either, so try to resolve this into peace ASAP. When war is unavoidable (for instance when you are making a play to become the dominant power in the galaxy in the early-mid game), keep your wars short and have clear objectives. In the early-mid game I actually suggest you DO start a war or wars in order to make sure your alliance is stronger than its competitors, especially in the galaxy hub.



What not to do: Wars of conquest. Don't wipe out your enemies entirely. Having a huge empire is bad. Lengthy wars are bad. Losing a potential future ally is bad. Keep your enemies alive. Admittedly, with Cravers, this is less useful - if you're going to exterminate anyone it should be them.



What to do instead: Neutralise threats, keep the peace. Your objective in any war should be to achieve a dominant position which leaves your enemy alive, in a state where they are too weak to mount a second attack, but don't hate you too much and aren't a target for your allies. Remember, allies can declare war too! You don't really want this. A good solution is to fight the enemy into a bottleneck. Take all their systems in the hub of the galaxy, then pin them at the bottleneck system by which they enter the hub (usually where a wormhole connects the hub to the arm). Ideally, you only really want to invade one or two systems - just enough to show them who's boss. Achieve military supremacy, crush their fleet, and relieve them of their strategic possessions. Then make peace. Give them a reasonable offer (you don't even have to actually have conquered a strategically system to force the AI to cede it to you, assuming you've knocked out their military - one good thing about ES's AI is that it's not suicidal). Then try to make peace as soon as the cease fire ends, and build trust so they will ally with you. It may be difficult, but remember that as long as you're at peace your earning diplo points.

FLEET



It's often a good idea to maintain a fleet roughly the same size and strength as the strongest of your opponents. Build a fleet that can kick the ass of the enemy in battle and survive, but don't build overkill - I found having a small, superior fleet is best. If your fleet is too small, you actually take a diplo penalty, so be careful. But don't waste resources on a massive fleet and try not to run the risk of being seen as too big a threat.



I recommend having invaders in every fleet. Your objective in these wars is to rapidly cripple your opponent's ability to fight back, and conquer his strategic strongpoints, before making an early peace. Clearly long sieges are anathema; try to have a strong enough technological advantage that you can afford to put a few well shielded, unarmed invasion/repair ships in every fleet (support ships in other words). I've heard about people using dedicated invasion fleets behind the ranks of dedicated war fleets - risky, considering the relative ease with which your enemy might slip past your front line, and not very useful when you only really want to conquer one or two systems without a lengthy assault into enemy space.



FINAL WORDS



That's about it. In summary, two jobs: first secure dominance, second maintain equilibrium. Unfortunately, the second part can make the game a bit dull, because once you've got a strong hold on the galaxy, nothing will really happen for about fifty turns as the clock counts down to victory. But achieving a decent balance makes for a fun an interesting challenge which is quite different from the usual wars of conquest; I have to say the is the most realistic, attainable and interesting diplo-vic I've seen in a 4x. Good luck! And please share you thoughts.

I mentioned this in another thread but I thought I would add it here as this thread is more appropriate for the discussion.



As gaining peace points is the prime factor in a diplomacy game, getting them ticking as early as possible must figured in to the opening strategy. For this reason I make Applied Casmir Effect an early goal. I try to meet all of the races as soon as possible so I try to have a few scouts (ambassadors) at worm hole points ready to move on the turn I have aquired ACE.



Im not sure if there is a set number of turns that the AI will wait before it is ready to enter in to peace as I have had to wait for a race to agree to peace even with tech gifts. Does anyone know about the details of this neutral period? This may help me in coming up with a different early game tech strategy. After all no point in getting relitavistic economies if the ai is not ready for peace.



In the game I am playing at the moment I had to wait for about 5 turns before the Sophons would enter in to peace with me ( 5 turns in the early stages of the game is quiet alot!). The problem was that I needed to secure an open borders agreement with them so as to get my scout further along the galaxy (I had made contact with them not on their home system but on an adjacent world so I could not then move into the home system and then past it).

I have found that a diplomatic victory as amoeba or pilgrims is significantly easier than any other victory as any other race. I play spiral-8, 8 player, large maps. I get casimir as early as possible and send scouts to the other 7 races. If possible, I put the scouts on "intercept" inside the other arms, to prevent their expansion; AI players will sometimes fire on the scout, but usually will just get "stuck" by it. Then I build a couple of outposts in the center so that once they get their colony disks, other players won't be able to expand.



After casimir, I beeline relativistic markets. I don't know how long the waiting period is before you can make a peace agreement. But, I find that if I visit the diplomacy screen every 2-3 turns, I can quickly cycle through each race to see if they are done waiting. Don't "balance" the acceptance bar, just click peace and click offer. If they say "not long enough", then wait. If they say "price not good enough" then throw one or two techs till they agree. Relativistic markets is a good one for this. Usually I can get 5-6 techs and establish peace with 6-7 of the other players. As soon as a race agrees to peace then I try open borders, and also move away any scouts I had on intercept in their arm.



There is a period in the early game where I have peace with all, or almost all of the AI. This is the expansion period; hopefully nobody declares war. I balance between all the tech trees as needed, but I keep an eye on getting to the alliance tech in the west tree. Building the trade improvements on each planet slowly builds trade income, to the point where I can keep taxes at 65% and keep everybody at happy or better.



Once I get the alliance tech, then I cycle through all the AI and throw tech at them to get alliances and cooperation agreements. Usually I can get 4-5 alliances and 2-3 new techs. To me, this is the start of the middle game. The diplomacy points start coming in, but usually I am only at 20-25% or less. It will be a while. To keep busy and channel all the AI aggression, I find one guy who is near me, but would not enter my alliance. He is the target. I declare war, which drags all my allies into the war. Since it is my allies' only war, they unleash their fleets. Not all AI's unleash, but if 1-2 allies do, then we have 2-3 players attacking the one target. I don't usually worry about keeping the marginal worlds I invade, I just donate them to another player; sometimes I don't keep any of the worlds.



By the time one target is dead or mostly dead, I have maybe 50-60% on the diplo victory bar. Now it is time to pick a second target. Interestingly, the best target might be one of my current allies. If there is another player outside the alliance, they can be the target. But it is not difficult to convert one ally into a target. First, save the game (in case something goes wrong). Then pick a player to target, usually the one with the lowest approval rating to you. Now, click that player in the diplo screen and click "leave alliance". This causes *you* to leave the alliance, which sounds bad but it is just temporary. Now immediately go back to all your former allies in the diplo screen and click "offer alliance". Since their opinion of you is positive, they will rejoin. You may need to throw 1-2 techs, and you may be able to get some new techs. Now you have an alliance with N-1 members and one new target.



Usually by the end of the second target attack, the diplo victory is close to 80-90% and I just click "next turn" 10-15 times to win. It is important to hover the mouse over the buttons at the top, to see if another player is close to a victory. I was surprised one time to find one of my allies was ahead of me on the diplo victory, 70% to 85%. So he became the next target. I kicked him out of the alliance and attacked him. As soon as he was out of the alliance, he stopped gaining diplo points.



I hope this experience will be useful to you. I find it more fun, and less tedious, than a full military victory.

By the time one target is dead or mostly dead, I have maybe 50-60% on the diplo victory bar.

I actually thought of that but wasn't sure. For confirmation, are you saying fighting wars with your allies give you diplomacy points?

I don't quite understand the question. You cannot fight a war *against* a current ally, if that is what you meant. Each turn, you gain diplo points for each cooperative agreement and each alliance you are part of, scaled slightly by the actual approval level of the player. So a "warm alliance" is worth more per turn than a "neutral alliance". I do not know the exact point values.



In general, if you can get through the whole game with alliances with all the other players, great. I am nervous that some player will get impatient, exit the alliance, and declare some war. So I try to have one war going, so that the impatient players will have "somebody" to attack. I also may need to eject an ally from my alliance, if they have more diplo points than I do.



Does that answer your question?

davea wrote:
I don't quite understand the question. You cannot fight a war *against* a current ally

Sorry about that, what i meant is allying with someone and fighting his enemies. If you ally with the amoeba who are fighting the empire, and you go and kill empire ships, will you get extra point for destroying ships or just points for the being in an alliance?

You do not get any extra points for actively supporting your ally, destroying the ships of your common enemy.

Thanks, I realize now that with just 4 alliances Mutual Understanding becomes a better weapons trait than Deadly Weapons while being a cheaper trait. This makes Pilgrim ships quite powerful. Blockade Breakers though isn't worth it if your going to have a large alliance since you'll have plenty of races at peace to trade with.



Custom Pilgrims (Puritans):



Dust Impaired 2

Feeble Warrior 2

Sloppy Sawbones 2

Diplomacy 2

Legendary Heroes 2

Mutual Understanding 2

Optimistic 2

Rebellion 2

Fast Travelers 2



I take fast travelers 2 because I noticed my scout ships only seem to escape battles when they have extra movement left in order to move to another system. Otherwise they are auto destroyed even if they retreat. This helps me find the other races quicker and explore their systems faster for more trade earlier. Of course, speedy ships without the wasted space trade means my ships can go surprisingly fast with engine upgrades. The lost of a few weapons is not so big a deal when I have several alliances. It also helps you pick of some outposts early from the race that will be your first target for your alliance. I just like Rebellion in order to make invasions go faster (so tedious).

This thread inspired me to try a diplomatic game and I got my first victory on Hard. Here are some things I learned. Some of this might not apply to higher difficulties.





ALLIES MUST LOVE YOU



If your allies don't like you enough, they may ABANDON THE ALLIANCE when someone declares war on you. You can "test" whether they might abandon you: put declare war on the table for each other faction and see if any allies disagree.



For this reason it's critical to keep your rep as high as possible with each ally; maxxed out at +200 if possible. I had someone quit the alliance at +167 mid-game.



Apparently you also get more points towards diplomacy victory when they like you more, so that's another reason to keep it as high as possible. The rest of these tips are mostly to help max your rep points.





ALWAYS OPEN BORDERS + CO-OP AGREEMENT



Open borders and cooperation agreements both give a boost to your reputation points (max +30 each) and are worth getting with every alliance member. However, the best timing for these is tricky. You may not want to get them before your alliance is ready to go, because when you start an alliance with an AI you automatically go to cold war with any players that AI is at cold war with, cancelling any agreements and earning you negative rep (max -100) with them for breaking deals. So, it may be best to avoid deals altogether until you have the alliance tech.



Note, also, that you cannot set up an open borders agreement *after* an alliance is started. You have to do it before, and it's worth doing so because of the rep bonus (+30 max). The bonus continues after the alliance is started.





RESOURCE DEALS? MIGHT BE BETTER AVOIDED



Resource deals can be useful and contribute to the cap on current deals rep (max +30) and past deals rep (max +50?) but if these accidentally get cancelled you will get a rep penalty which can be disastorous (max -100). So it might be best to avoid these. I'm not sure how much rejecting AI offers hurts but I don't think it's much, certainly not -100.



(I think blockades are the reason they get cancelled? All I know is the -100 penalty really sucks!)





MAX OUT DONATIONS



It's important to keep the "donations" benefit with your allies maxed out (+50). I found dust gifts to be an easy way. The AI often values dust very highly when it doesn't have much, and since the diplomacy victory doesn't require expanding as much as possible you may have an early dust surplus. Gifts of tech or systems work too.





AVOID INFLUENCE EXPANSION



If your systems are close to another player in your alliance you should obviously avoid the territory expansion improvements. You might also want to think about limiting population growth in some systems since that will also expand your territory and give you negative rep. Choose which planets to colonize carefully and skip the others.



To check friendly AI expansion, only cede to them systems with small max population. Keep the large ones for yourself and don't fill them all the way up.





PERPETUAL WAR



I'm not sure there's any reason to keep wars short, especially if you have a faction like the Cravers that you can't ally with anyway. Wars keep the AI fleets occupied and give you bonuses to reputation (max +90 for "war with a common enemy", sometimes smaller bonus for "ongoing war with another faction" also)



You don't necessarily need to participate in the war, although it's a good idea to be the one who captures the systems if you want to keep some or need to decide who will get them.





SCORE PENALTY NOT A PROBLEM?



I found I had a hard time playing intentionally badly and my score went pretty high. I ended the game with a score 3x higher than the next highest player. It didn't seem like a big deal because the penalty to rep for score maxes out at -80 which I was mostly able to make up for with other plusses and still max out at +200. This may not work on difficulties higher than Hard.





GOT A -100 PENALTY FOR BREAKING A DEAL?



I got a ton of these because I was stupidly doing resource deals with allies. One way to reset the penalty is to go to war with that faction (they might quit your alliance anyway because of the low rep). After a cease fire you basically start again with a clean slate. You lose the +100 from long term peace but the -100 from breaking deals is gone also. The + for peace counter will start ticking up again making it easier to max out your rep.



I'm not sure if the -100 penalty will go away on its own if you do nothing.



Also keep in mind that you must stay in war for 15 turns and then cease fire for 15 turns before you can get back to peace. Then I think it's 10 turns in peace before you can go back to alliance.





Anyway, I hope this info is helpful. I wish I had known it at the beginning of this game! Like davea and Smokey I think the diplomatic victory is more interesting and less tedious than conquest. Going to try the higher difficulties next.