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Heya Rulerz!

I found diplomacy pretty useless (unworking?):

Playing WWIII as France:

- the best treaty i was able to achieve was a embassy/free flow of workforce/criminal extradition between me and Canada.

- No way to set a single embassy anywhere in world: 'our people hate you', 'we would loose support from our people', 'we are not interested in any diplo offers from you atm', ect...

- I only use diplo at start to trade for unit designs/tech that may be useful for me, such as the very long range Chinese MLRS, top of the edge US units, South African Rhino arty, Russian Akula II, and obviously harpoons and kazoo missiles/bombs from us/russia.

Since i'm in a very struggle to achieve a working economy, i dont have a single penny to spend to "smooth" relations with AI countries. I do give them money only when they ask for some for an embassy (wich only happened with Canada), or during tech exchanges when they ask for it again (counter-counter offer to reduce the amount of the lump sum with more unit designs, i trade low tech designs with third world contries to get a lot of weak units designs to get more "trade" value to my offer since AI seems not to take in account i'm offering him 10 variants of a low tech mech infantry in example :p .

My only way for now to make money is to sell electricity to the rest of the world, thanks to our nuclears powers plants, irl we do have almost one of the cheapest cost per unit electricity. Apart from my post, i was wondering myself why France didnt have a SINGLE uranium mine built since we have some built irl, but anyway not a real problem since there is enough uranium to build mines to cover my demand, at least at the begining of the game. Then once i could build synthetics fuels plants, i know i would become VERY rich! (too bad AI dont buy neither improve factories)



I tried starting with USA too. Way more easy to make cash with petroleum sales, and electricity too. I forgot to make cash with consumer goods/indy goods with both France and USA since most of others AI countries provide them much cheaper on the market.

I was able to set more embassies (Israel, England, France mostly), but i wasnt able to get further on. Even not possible to make alliance with Israel nor England... Since i get much more cash income, i should try to give money over time to those AI countries to try to achieve such treaties, but i find really unrealistic that if you do nothing, diplo and civilian rating slowy goes down, reaching a point everyone hates you (no matter how much casus belli i have against them or them against me), making treaties become truly impossible.

So i wonder what i'm doing wrong (not giving money to the AI? ), or what's wrong with the diplo model of SR2010 wich has the potential to be very powerful, but truly useless imo, at least for WWIII scenario.

I only reached alliances during campaign play as France with England and Nordic States during Europe Campaign (wich ended in a major battle since i went for a military option, i didnt want to get bunches of obsoletes units if i could ever won the unification vote, i'd rather get my units experienced for next step of the campaign... ).

So I ask: who cares about diplo in WWIII scenario...

The ww3 scenario is basically designed to be about war, not diplomacy, so it's not the best place to work that. Diplo is much more effective in the generic campaign game [IMO].

However - you can get some results if you are a bit more creative in WW3. I mentioned a few of these elsewhere - basically forget cash. Do trade deals to solve your own shortages that end up mildly profitable for your partners. e.g. Russia trades Japan oil for cgoods on 30day contracts. Japan gets just enough oil to produce the cgoods and keep a little profit. Russia gets cgoods that she desparately needs to retain population. Even China will trade with Russia [despite major belli], if you structure it right. Study your potential partners' commodity lists and look for the right deal. Repeat the one-shots a few times, offer free trade, then offer the 30-day contracts.

So even though China hates Russia and will declare by the first of the year if left alone, demonstrating to China [assuming you are Russia] that remaining at peace and solving trade issues is in their interest you may at least forestall or deflect war until you are ready.

You won't get alliances - nor do you really want them - but you will at least move to free trade agreements with a few, and you do reduce belli against you and improve dip- and civrelate to improve the general series of declarations in your favor. Russia trading with Austro-Hungary [whose belli against Russia never really drops] MIGHT get you a DOW from Austro-Hungary against Poland or Ukraine when those guys declare on you [assuming you are Russia] and you are busy elsewhere [even though you have no agreements with A-H and they hate you more than they hate Ukraine or Poland... See how this goes?]. These are the kinds of things that I look for diplo to do for me in most 2010 games.

Another thought to consider, especially when there is no WM presence: If you are strong in a given commodity [not necessarily petro, could be water or agriculture, doesn't matter], DO NOT trade it on the open market. Only make it available via direct trades. You get a couple of things here - any and all trades improve dip- and civ- with you and your partner, and they also improve your global treaty integrity rating [which is subtle but important]. It also lets you probe everyone for their inclination to trade and settle down to relations. Again using Russia - Canada and Mexico are often willing to do agriculture or cgoods trades [for oil, but sometimes for water or ore]. This has the effect of getting the US upset with you, but hey, they don't know how to do an amphibious assault, do they? Even the obnoxious Baltic Union will do a few deals - which makes them look really bad when they declare on you. Be patient, be devious, be nasty, but always look clean-cut when doing this kind of diplo. Never give anyone anything near what they need, but always be helpful. Counter your greed so that you don't facilitate others' ambitions.

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Colorless green ideas sleep furiously [but otherwise, they do not worry and are happy].

That what i'm thinking too ^^ but it is a bit unrealistic, since even in the description of the scenario they suggest you to do some alliances.



I do not totally agree with you on that point: ie as USA you could use Israel as a supply base for further ... investigations against Iran. Or get a sea treaty with Egypt in order to use the Suez canal or with Mexico for Panama's canal.



I'm gonna try this, see if they accept - or not - those agreements... BTW any way to see how much do they need for a given commodity? As example trading petroleum for indy goods to Japan?

Assessing others needs in trade is a wild-ass guess mostly - but...
If you examine the trade screens, you can see what their reserves are. Also note if you see them selling things that they really shouldn't be. You can judge by thier population size and buildcap what they ought to be consuming. If they are low in something, put together a small deal and send it along. Remember, you are not penalized for a deal not concluding, but you are rewarded for a successful trade.

This is especially useful in the first eighteen months, when you have nothing to do anyway while you are sitting around waiting for your first generation of armed forces to get built.

Whether you want alliances or not, you probably won't get them in ww3. Deriving benefits from alliances is a nice thought, but I would certainly expect my ally to turn their back on me at the most treacherous and costly moment - as I would to them given the opportunity [it takes one to know one].

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Colorless green ideas sleep furiously [but otherwise, they do not worry and are happy].

Speaking of penalties and rewards....

If I am trading anything on the open market - the moment someone declares on me I jack up the price [like 10%] and cut the supply in half. I don't care if it continues to sell or not, I just want the rest of the community to share my pain. Can't say if this works, but I can't say that it doesn't.

Likewise, if a neutral declares on someone I want to see in grief, i usually put together a nice foreign aid package of mgoods and igoods, maybe a social tech. I do the things an ally ought to do, I just don't want to publich the alliance.

Both of these together seem to work and make me much less concerned if the targets of such affection form alliances that I am not thrilled with. I really don't care what they say - I care what they do.

If a neutral neighbor is allied with with someone who declares on me, I might go ahead and send that as-yet neutral neighbor another aid package. especially if I have sufficient military capacity to kick their butt if I wasn't so busy on my other border. This is especially useful in WW3 where you are often engaged in three or more fronts. There's just too much war, too little time.

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Colorless green ideas sleep furiously [but otherwise, they do not worry and are happy].

Kinda buying peace! ^^ I always keeps my borders safely guarded, sometimes i pull fresh troups from those quiet borders to get them to frontline to remplace badly damaged units, then send those units once repaired to the quiet border: get troops with more experience if things turns bad overthere!

Got another question btw: did "mutual defense" treaty is a one way treaty, since AI seems not to honor this treaty, as far i've see: in that campaign where England and Nordic States where allied with me (France), they declared war on Germany before i did, (altough i had a one way mutual defense with Poland wich i used one year later to declare war with Germany ), but when Italy war dec me, they didnt seems to react (i wasn't expecting much help from them due to their geographical positions, and since AI seems not be able to plan amphibious nor airborn assaults).

It makes me bounce on another question: do you get a VM penalty while declaring war to honor a mutual defense treaty against someone you dont have yet a full casus belli bar?

As the one who designed this scenario I think I can shed a little light on some of the questions here.

Fist I gotta say, hats off to Il Duce, you’re understanding of the trade system and it’s nuances is quite impressive, you’ve given me some ideas of things to try in my next game!

Second: Diplomacy. If you’re going to look at diplomacy, in particular with the WWIII or European Wars scenarios, you need to be playing at normal difficulty . When playing on hard or very hard there is an automatic penalty to dip/civ values at the beginning of the scenario. There is no way to balance the scenario to get the right diplomatic settings at very hard for all regions since this penalty is only applied to human players.

I tried the scenario playing from France and was able to get an embassy treaty from Japan and Russia on the first day (cost me a token 100M). At normal difficulty, most regions have a few ppl who hate them and a couple that are ready for almost any deal. Playing at normal you can see the full potential of the diplomatic system.


Notes have already been made about this and will function better in the design for Supreme Ruler 2020 but this is always a tough one to get around since there are so many things to compare and weigh against each other.


I actually designed the France map as well and IIRC my research showed that all but one of the Uranium mines was closed and the last one was going to be shut down. Since it was a number of years in the future we decided the player would have to rebuild them from scratch. It’s not like France is a big producer of Uranium; http://www.uic.com.au/nip41.htm


This is the same issue, this only happens when playing on Hard or Very Hard. Whether it is realistic or not, that was how George decided to make it Hard or Very Hard for the player.


I would certainly suggest that you try the game on normal. I know that it means the AI military will not be as challenging, but that is the only way to really see the true balance of the diplomatic model.


One thing I’ve not heard anyone report back on yet is the fact that the AI will break alliances if they hate you enough and the WWIII scenario should have a high potential for this. If the US gets allied with Canada, Germany and UK, then UK declares war on Germany (giving US some Belli towards UK) followed by US DoW on UK, you should see Canada get upset about it and cancel their alliance with the US. Again, you’d really need to be on normal difficulty level to set this up right.

Thirdly: Mutual Defense. This treaty is somewhat odd in how it works both for the player and for the AI and gets very weird at Hard or Very Hard. If you have Mutual Defense with region A then B declares war on A, you will get more of a belli increase towards B then if you did not have the treaty. However, if B had a very high belli towards A, you might only see a 10% increase towards B without MD and 15% with the treaty. If you started at only 20% Belli towards B then at best you now have 35%. If you DoW on B you will see all the penalties that go with DoW with only a 35% Belli despite having MD with A. Normally this isn’t a big deal, either A did nasty things to B to make their belli so high and you know why you’re not getting involved or then A and B would have similar Bellis and so would you so when B attacks A you’d have enough Belli to attack. The AI uses Belli as the prime indicator for when to attack. If you get attacked by region B and have MD with A and this causes A’s Belli to go from 40% to 80% then it is very likely that A will declare war on B. The problem becomes that at Very Hard there are artificial pressures on Belli, Dip and Civ values so that whenever B declares war on you they have such high Belli that A sees no change in their Belli towards B and therefore has no justification to attack (and they don’t want to take the penalties just to honor their treaty).

There has been much debate among the team about belli, what affects it and how it game difficulty should relate to it but for SR2010, that is how the system works.

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

...Aw shucks.

One thing that you can do rather than up the difficulty level is set the AI to "Unpredictable." They are anyway. so lets just get it right up front. Under these conditions, I have [playing as Russia, and yes, I am fascinated by russia] had other regions repeatedly offer me unsolicited alliance proposals - not that I would take them up on it. Gambit here -reply with a mutual free trade offer instead. I think I wrote about this elsewhere, but anyway, if they really want to establish relations, they shold be willing to do some courtship rituals, no?

Overall, despite a lot of things I wish SR2010 diplomacy had [generally described as breadth and depth], don't write off its potential for diplomatic dimension. Be patient, be persistent. You can accomplish a lot with diplomacy, but you do have to keep the basic game objectives in mind.

Another thought. A US alliance with Israel for airbase access to Iran or the middle east generally is probably wishful thinking. You won't have the wherewithal to exploit it for a long long time, and it puts Israel in a really bad position - as they know ultimately you will not only consume their hostile neighbors, but themselves. The AI may be a bit constrained, but it ain't dumb. Real world correlary - US Bases in Saudi Arabia. These have cost the Saudis more political grief than any military or defense benefit they have ever gotten from them. A truly sharp diplomatic counselor in the U.S. should have put a stop to this a long time ago.

Your last question: "another question: do you get a VM penalty while declaring war to honor a mutual defense treaty against someone you dont have yet a full casus belli bar..."

The goats will have to answer to the specifics, but... WM is not really the problem here. The real problems are your domestic support [your population will not like this and you will see some resistance in DAR], but even worse, your peers will have an even more foggy notion of what you are about, and it will affect your treaty integrity rating and various bellis. This is why I am very careful about publishing alliances. If you ally with a belligerent peer, you can never benefit - either they drag you into an unpopular war OR you publicly have to renege on your alliance. You can't come out ahead.

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Colorless green ideas sleep furiously [but otherwise, they do not worry and are happy].