RPS: How has the Diplomacy system changed, then?
David: We cant tell you too many details, but I can speak to it from a philosophical level. One of the takeaways from the base game is that the diplomacy system from Civ V, which we just brought over wholesale, didnt really work, because it relied on these characters from history. Players understood intuitively how Montezuma might behave or how Ghandi might behave. You could make strategic decisions based on prior knowledge of those characters. Because we have invented characters we wanted to provide more transparency in terms of how they behave and why they do the things they do. We wanted to make a game out of that. We also wanted the player to do more meaningful things through diplomacy. In Civ V and in Beyond Earth the outputs of diplomacy are trade and you can declare war or peace. Theres actually very little that you do in diplomacy; theyre important things, but theres not a lot of high frequency interaction that you have. You didnt have a lot of opportunity to interact with the leaders that we put in, their personalities didnt really get an opportunity to shine. We wanted to build a game around this idea of diplomacy, that would allow our characters to take centre stage and give the player the chance to introspect into their personalities and to give them more things to do, more benefits to be gained.
So just as an example, if Im playing a military game but I need help researching new technologies, I can solve that problem now through the diplomacy system. I can make an agreement with another leader and in exchange for other things can now have mututal benefits, but its a strategic choice because they get something from me too. So I have to be very careful about whos getting what.
Weve also built in some new vectors about how leaders communicate with you. The system as a whole is broader, I would say. Theres a lot more meat to it, theres a game to it, theres a progression to it, and its more transparent.