In desperate need of a diplomacy-based strategy game

[B5Alpha]

Civ 5, especially with Brave New World coming out soon.
Endless Space has diplomatic victory, as long as you aren't the cravers.

 

[I.Muir]

I personally would like a diplomacy and political intrigue based rpg. Less actual fighting and more figuring out your alliances and gaining wealth.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Crusader Kings II is definitely about diplomacy, but not so much about a civilization-building pacifist foreign policy type of diplomacy, as about a simulation of medieval feudal dynastic politicking.

It's not mainly about the details of warfare, but it's still pretty violent.

It's basically Game of Thrones - The Game, more so than the licencsed GoT games. It's all about incest, and intrigue, and arranged marriages, and assassinations, and legitimized bastards, and de jure land claims, and about rebellions, and deposed royal heirs taking back their birthright from usurpers, and about setting up your own council, distributing honorary titles, and cheating on your lord husband, and about putting heads on spikes.

And hunting. Lots of hunting.

...

And for the people spruiking Shogun 2... fuck no. The diplomacy mechanics in the Total War games are simplistic and often broken. You want diplomacy and warfare in feudal Japan, go grab Paradox's Sengoku instead.

 

[mahks]

Diplomacy, trade

I am developing a game that focuses on diplomacy & trade. Combat is a tool of diplomacy.

In play testing there have been "wargamers" that have gone down the path of conquest, only to be crushed by the diplomatic players. Not that conquest is not possible, it just has to be prepared for, allies accumulated, enemies isolated, agents infiltrated.

I feel it is possible that the right player could play "puppet master" and triumph without themselves being militarily aggressive.

Trade is also a major part of the game. My mechanism to promote trade is this : Assets are built from Nanobits. Nanobits are created by refining minerals. The more mineral types you use in refining, the greater the ratio of conversion. Thus, you want as many mineral types as possible. Of course only some of the minerals are available locally...

This is a non-commercial project, so the graphics and audio (what audio? ... maybe some day) are low end.
But if you want diplomacy & trade...

The game is still in closed beta, but if you want in on the next test run, PM me.

 

[Exhuminator]

http://www.gog.com/game/democracy_3

I hear trying to handle the diplomatic issues between all the different social groups is pretty tricky.

 

[RJ 17]

If you can find it, there's a space-based RTS called Pax Imperia in which you can get away with no conflict, though it makes it a bit trickier. You can ally with any other race you encounter, but your allies might not be allied with eachother and constantly fighting. Basically the way you win is by wiping out all the other races or being part of a unified alliance of the last races left in the galaxy. After that point you can actually keep playing to explore the galaxy (you can make it as big or small as you want, I think ranging from 10 star systems up to 99, which is frickin' huge).

It's neat how the alliances work in that game too, they progress from "neutral" at your First Contact with a new race to "trade routes" which bolsters your economy to "repair and refuel" which allows you to explore further (the exploration is based off of hyper-drive charges, you can only expend half of the max charge in exploring outward before you'd have to turn around and head back to your home territory to refuel...unless you have some friendly neighbors who can serve as a pit-stop for you). Then you become official allies and can share vision (so you can see all of their territories and ship activities and they can see all of yours) and I think the last level of alliance is officially sharing technology.

So yeah, you can definitely serve as a peace-brokering race in that game if you want to...and it's actually pretty advisable since the combat in that game is a bit wonky to begin with. Still, it's a very fun, very old game, but if you can find it I'd say it'd be something right up your alley. And since it's so old, I'd imagine your computer should have no trouble running it.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

Star Drive has pretty extensive diplomacy. Most other factions are chill with you from the get go and you can even design your race to be ultra kick ass at diplomacy. Finally, there's a victory condition of having all remaining races united in an alliance with you. The only enemies you might have to deal with are the Remnant(always hostile). Unfortunately, it may melt your processor.

Likewise, Sins of a Solar Empire can turn into this if you're willing to do missions for others and give them resources. This game being around 5-6 years old, it shouldn't melt your processor.