[GS] Diplomacy. Am I missing something?

[acluewithout]

So, I’ve been tooling around with EU IV. And one of the things it got me thinking about is how limited diplomacy is in Civ VI.

Let’s have a look at what we have to play with.

• War. War as diplomacy (the old “diplomacy by other means) actually works pretty well. CBs, Grievances, Emergencies (and DF to stop them or buy in), Loyalty and Grievances. Yeah, all pretty good.

• The bit that was missing was being able to drag other people into your wars. No we have that it’s much better.

• What’s missing? Well, it’s pretty good as is, but no proxy wars are a big one. A lot of historical wars was fighting with x because you actually want to fight with y. There’s none of that, unless you count capturing someone’s favoured city state. But no “proxy wars” is more about there not really being anything in the game except other Civs, City States (which are passive, see below) and Barbs (which are mindless).

• There’s also not much to declare war over. Capturing Cities and Pillaging. Capturing a Holy City. Capturing / liberating City States or (marginal) allies captured Cities. Winning Emergencies. The lack of “vassals” is maybe part of this (although a suzerain is a kind of vassal).

• Alliances. These are okay, but kinda odd. So, Alliances (and open borders , trade) create an incentive to play nice. But what exactly do you get? Well, Alliances provide you a way to defend victory types you’re not pursuing. So, a cultural alliances helps you defend against someone else getting a cultural victory. And you get additional yields from alliances via trade, alliance levels and policy cards / governments.

• But alliances don’t seem to have any real diplomatic benefit. It’s just more yields and more yields. And there’s a limit to how much I care about that, because I’m usually swimming in gold and science anyway.

• Alliances are also very narrow, because you only have one of each type, and each alliance is bilateral. It’s certainly no EU IV personal unions etc.

• City States. CS have worked well since Vanilla, and have mostly got better. The whole envoy thing is cool. Amani and CS is cool, although a bit hamstrung by how narrow Governors are (see below).

• My only gripes with City States are that (1) CS have very limited impact on the game world really - each is a single city, they never “team up” or have their own opinions. They are deeply passive, and (2) your actual diplomatic options are limited. You can Suzerain. You can loyalty flip (good luck) or capture. You can send trade routes (woo-boo). You can levy or declare war. You can invest no envoys, a few envoys or a lot of envoys. (3) City States are pretty divorced from the rest of the game (particularly as you can only assign envoys to City States, not other Civs - the only real connection to other systems is (a) envoys come through civics, (b) diplomatic policy cards, although most green cards are about CS so whatever (c) war and (d) trade routes, resources and amenities and yields, but not in any particularly dynamic way).

• Diplomatic options. Beyond war, my actual diplomatic “tools” are very limited. Embassies, which don’t really do much (some visibility, good will). I can have a Diplomat (Amani), but only one and she really only focuses on City States[0]. I can trade, but there’s not much to actually trade - diplomatic favour, open borders, joint war (war again), alliances etc (already covered)... and more yields, resources etc. Can’t trade techs, can’t trade units. I can trade cities, but that never comes up.

• Really, the only “diplomatic” options I have are (sort of) religious units (which can effect relations and loyalty) and spies. I like spies, but they feel more like something that should be added spice to diplomacy not the core diplomacy system itself.

• And what do spies and embassies get me anyway? Visibility. And that gets me ...? Yeah. Combat bonuses. Back to war again.

• World Congress and Emergencies. The WC is okay, but it’s not game changing. My only gripes are (1) it lacks some flavour - eg starting automatically rather than being triggered by meeting everyone or building some wonder, and (2) resolutions are too narrow.

• I’m not really sure what would make the WC better other than some more flavour and better resolutions. I’d hate having player selected resolutions. It would be fun having something like Permanent Security Counsel Members or International Institutions (World Bank, IMF), but surely the former would just mean additional DF or something, and the later would just be equivalent to having a wonder.

• I think the WC is mostly fine as is. My point is just that it hasn’t and it’s not going to make Diplomacy meaningful by itself.

So, what’s my TLDR? Well. I guess... Diplomacy: War is great, but there’s not much to fight over. And other than War, there’s not much to do, and what there is to do isn’t meaningful beyond more and better war and more yields.

Put another way. I do play a lot of diplomacy in Civ. I make friends. Make enemies. I can captured Cities without the world hating me. I get alliances and all that stuff. But I feel like my options are limited and there’s not much reward (or actually, there’s lots of reward, but it’s largely just more yields). There’s not even much difference between who I make friends with or make enemies with. All my friends give the same yields (because that’s how alliances work) and all my enemies give the same yields too (gold, faith and cities).

What do people think? Is Diplomacy a damp squib? Or is there something awesome here I’m. it missing.


[0] I’ve said this before, but Governors in general are kind of underwhelming - I really dislike the whole “one of each” model FXS uses for Governors (and Alliances, Districts (one science district, one faith district ... although at least there’s more than one production district now).