Long Single Player Games of Diplomacy

I am playing a game with 4 stars.  My goal was to play strictly diplomatically.  But I wonder if there is a point of diminishing returns?  You see, I am allied with half of the other players.  The "other" four are at war with me but they are also dead.  I have 20 diplomatic points with 2 races and nearly max pacts with them.  I am very powerful.  So I am basically watching my allies duke it out while I do things like

 

1) pay tribute to keep relations high as I don't do missions (because I can't attack allies)

2) really micro manage my envoy ships as they may soon be on systems that become neutral

3) look for available systems to take over (see #2 above)

 

as everyone is my ally, there is at least one bad thing I can think of: when you take over a planet that has tactical and logistical elements in place, they must stay there.  they cannot be deconstructed or destroyed. 

Playing the diplomatic route means burning a lot of logistic slots for envoys.  that means less for a battle ship.  If an ally goes to war with me all of the sudden, I would have to scrap my envoys quickly and buff up my fleet.  I find that at this point, my fleet doesn't fly around via way points or anything like that.  It sits clumped in one system.  There's nothing to fight.  It's a wait and see game.

I am playing this game, but I am wondering, what's the point of playing this long?  I think when the AI beats everyone else but me, it will start a war.  If I didn't pick up planets that turned neutral via attack from others, then those others would occupy them and in the end they would be 2 to 3 times as big as I was.

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Reply #1 Top

I am playing this game, but I am wondering, what's the point of playing this long?

And this point there really isn't one. You should have set the number of allied victors to four if that's how you wanted to play the game. If you didn't set allied victors then when you are the only player left the remaining AI will turn on you no matter how high your relationship is.

Playing the diplomatic route means burning a lot of logistic slots for envoys. that means less for a battle ship. If an ally goes to war with me all of the sudden, I would have to scrap my envoys quickly and buff up my fleet. I find that at this point, my fleet doesn't fly around via way points or anything like that. It sits clumped in one system. There's nothing to fight. It's a wait and see game.

As mentioned, the AI won't do that if its relationship is high unless its allied with all remaining players and you are the ally it likes the least and you still haven't won a team victory. If you want something to fight just do exactly what the AI does, single out one of your allies and go to war while the other two are fighting each other. Backstabbing is a natural part of Diplomacy of course. 

Reply #2 Top

Envoys only take 8 supply points apiece, right? A few envoys for each player you want peace with is a small price to pay for gamelong peace. Having as many envoys as you need shouldn't put all that much pressure on your main battle fleet.

Reply #3 Top

It can be a real pain early on, though.

 

:fox: