Fortunately for us, the Kappan want a non-aggression treaty as well, so we spend some of our influence points to negotiate to swing the proposition back towards passing. They have used the “Will of the Galaxy” action to sway the proposition in their favor. It seems that the Cyritan have managed to convince our ally, the Lawrence, to oppose this proposition together. The negotiations for such a proposition could go something like this: The negotiations screen shows how empires are leaning on a particular proposition, and is used to play diplomatic actions and negotiate with other empires. Unfortunately, the Cyritan Empire is currently at war with them, and would like our continued support in fighting the Kappan together. Remember from before that we currently have a proposition to end our war with the Kappan Conglomerate. It also has a Weight, which represents how heavily that action sways the proposition in one direction or the other. Each action has an Influence Cost: the amount of diplomatic capital that needs to be spent in order to successfully execute it. Let's take a look at a couple of the actions available to us.
The Nosu'us have a limited choice of diplomatic actions right now, but as the game progresses they will earn different types of actions through improvement or circumstance. During this proposition, empires can employ Diplomatic Actions to try and sway the opinion of the public and the Senate in their favour. When an empire tries to find a diplomatic way to get something done, they do so by petitioning a proposition. This represents the amount of power they have to get things done - whether gained through the support of the citizenry or through other means. Over the course of time, empires accrue ‘influence’. This screen represents the basics of their knowledge of other empires, their strengths, and the current happenings in the Galactic Senate. From the time they spend as the tiniest purple strings in the ground, each member of the Nosu race has only one goal: To prove that theirs is the greatest tentacle nation in the universe. This is the diplomatic overview of the great Nosu'us Republic.
The final game may or may not feature a variety of differently colored tentacles as the only playable races.
The artwork shown in this post is temporary dev art created specially by Firgof. In this dev diary, I will be talking about the basic principles of our influence and diplomacy system and how we hope it will improve the gameplay as a whole. For better or for worse, we intend to change that. Diplomacy has become the ultimate also-ran of 4X games. Interactions between races come down to the same old system - carbon-copied poorly from classics like MoO2 or the early Civilization games - with few interesting choices to be made. Like many regular players of 4X games, we think diplomacy features are one major area where the genre has failed to innovate. These Dev Diaries are intended to give you a perspective of our process while explaining the future mechanics of Star Ruler 2. As space strategy fans, the Star Ruler 2 dev team spends a lot of time discussing and designing the mechanics of the game and trying to learn from the ways in which the first game fell short.