Postby zolobolo » Sun Oct 01, 2017 3:20 pm
I would suggest utilizing Influence resoruces for Diplomacy Victory
Similarly to how metal is a key resource for Conquest victory
To win diplomatically, the empire needs to:
1. Create enough alliances to win the game
2. Creating alliances should thus be costly in terms fo influence, and should not be possible withouth
3. Influence also needs to be used for other tasks in order to created shortage of it and force decisions: making peace or buying slaves and mercs
4. War should be inevatable if a player does not invest heavily in peace, but buying mercs should be an alternate way of winning a war when the empire has enough influence, while war mongering empires should lack this resource (if primary income is via embassies, and good will trades, then this is more or less given)
5. Buying slaves would give the empire a boost in production, but would hinder the diplomacy victory as infuence is spent but not gained via slaves indirectly
The game already seems to be heading to the above so what I would recommend as a new element to cement this is the following:
- Let Phidi like and lie-minden empires pay off Marauders with money.
- As this should be a money heavy investement, it coud only be done by income heavy empires which would automatically be the diplomatic ones, closing free trade deals.
- Consequently, closing trade deals should give a considerable boost to trade fleet capacity and trading should be the only sure way to accumualte large wealth
Thus the player can choose between two basic strategies or alternate between them:
1. Build fleet with Metal and conquer the neighbouring planets (leading to bad rep with remaining empires)
2. Close deals with other empires, accumualting large amount of income and use that to pay Marauders to harass the other empires before they attack the growing alliance
Diplomacy victory is underestimated and I think a lot of palyers would go for it as they also try to do this in combat heavy 4X games.
If for no other reason, it gives more strategic options to the player to work with making for a more interesting gameplay