Info about Diplomacy is Not an Option:

Official game description:
Just Updated
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About the Game
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Diplomacy is Not an Option is a base-building survival RTS with an active pause, taking place in a medieval fantasy setting, where your choices can decide the destiny of the world.
You step into the well-worn shoes of the minor Lord. Circumstances force you to fight. Like all the time. Always outnumbered. Build your walls, raise your armies, and experience warfare on an entirely new scale. Over 25 THOUSAND enemies assault your castle walls. You're going to master engineering, economy and even magic If you hope to survive.
Your King is a mighty and powerful leader. Also, he is an egocentric pig. Adores to drink and in general he's enjoying his life. But after the treasury had emptied and even raising taxes had not helped, it became clear that he could not continue his leisurely lifestyle. Which is a problem. Mostly yours. Because peasants, who are not fond of raised taxes and hunger, are rioting in your feud. King demands you put down the rebellion and go to the distant land to get some gold. (Rumors are there is one where there are tons of it) Will you do as your sovereign bids and set sail to replenish the palace coffers ? Will you join the violent leader of rebels to bring the tyrant to justice ? Will you help poor natives of Uncharted Continent ? Or will you cast aside human nature and ambition and lead armies of Undead ? Questions, questions, questions. The one thing you can be sure of is that no matter what faction you support there will be blood anyway. And legions of archers, swordsmen, siege weapons, knights, and more will be staying by your side for you to achieve your goal.
While admittedly tongue-in-cheek, the laws of physics are still deadly serious in Diplomacy Is Not An Option. Every arrow, catapult stone and enemy launched skywards is physically modeled, making for a tactile and coherent battlefield. Just make sure your troops have towers to shoot from and clear lines of sight, or you might find your best-laid plans embarrassingly blunted by your own fortifications. Consider your gates, your lines of advancement and retreat. Create kill-zones and fall-back positions. You will need to take an active role in combat to get the best from your men.
Even under siege, never forget your castle was built on the backs of the peasantry. Defend your people, and they’ll serve you well. Engage in agriculture and farming, or food can become scarce, and your soldiers can starve on the battlefield. Build houses, bury fallen soldiers and peasants to prevent plague, and treat the infected when death comes knocking. If you do not care for your people you may soon find yourself overrun with the most unpleasant troubles. Like empty stockpiles, unrepaired walls and running dry barracks… or be overrun literally with swarms of zombies. And no lord wishes to see zombie apocalypse in the backyard of his castle, right ?
A functional army requires a functional economy to support and feed it. Food, Wood, Stone, Iron, and Gold are the foundations of your city’s economy, and you will need to watch your supplies carefully if you are to meet the advancing foe in a timely manner. Gather resources, choose your storage locations, plan your expansions and upgrades with care. The enemy will not cede their lands willingly, and unprotected civilian expansions will have consequences of falling prey to the hostile incursion. Trade, via the impressive merchant dirigible, bringing emergency supplies of food to feed the men, or stone to rebuild the walls. Can you strike the balance between greedy expansion and security ?
If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If you’ve inherited a cursed kingdom, why not master the dark arts ? Sturdy castle walls will protect you from most ordinary threats, but in Diplomacy Is Not An Option you're also be battling undeads. So why give them a monopoly on magic ? There is a dark history of tainted power that stirs zombies and traps wayward souls. On the lighter side: it can also be used to call down really very big fireballs onto your enemies. So enjoy that too. Build magical monuments, harvest soul crystals and give a try to a maniacal laugh as searing magical beams tear through your foes and summoned ghosts to chase down the stragglers.
The game has been designed with freedom as a core concept. Go beyond the campaign and crush your foes as you see fit in Endless Mode, Sandbox Mode or Challenge Mode. Develop your own personal strategies on procedurally generated maps. Go heavy on walls early, build large armies of cannon-fodder, or pursue the macro game of greedy growth and costly investments. Play battles in real-time or use pause constantly to keep everything in your hands. Will you be able to stand on a par with the most acclaimed generals in the world, like Joan of Arc and Genghis Khan ? Finding which style grants you the most success is up to you.
As in real life, stupidity and greed lie behind most problems, but here it is far too late to talk it through. You have no recourse to resolve this peacefully. At this stage : Diplomacy Is Not an Option !

Release date: 4 Oct, 2024

Categories: Real-time Strategy, Base Building, Survival, Resource Management, Strategic Combat, Horde Combat, Single-player Story, Multiple Endings


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Engaging campaign with choices (weight 0.93): The game features a well-designed campaign mode with varied missions, branching paths, and multiple endings. The story is often humorous and engaging, with choices that impact the gameplay and narrative. This enhances replayability and provides a unique experience with each playthrough.
- Large-scale battles and sieges (weight 0.9): The game features large-scale battles with numerous units, siege weaponry, and fortifications. Players must manage resources, expand their base, and defend against waves of enemies. The combination of RTS and tower defense elements creates engaging and chaotic gameplay.
- Balanced and adjustable difficulty (weight 0.86): The game offers a balanced and adjustable difficulty curve, with multiple settings to cater to different skill levels. Higher difficulties require strategic thinking and adaptation, while lower difficulties provide a more accessible experience. The game also avoids punishing players too harshly for minor mistakes.
- Classic RTS gameplay with modern twist (weight 0.86): The game successfully blends elements from classic RTS titles like Stronghold, Age of Empires, and Warcraft, offering a nostalgic yet modern experience. It combines city-building, resource management, and army command with a focus on strategic defense and large-scale battles.
- Appealing and distinct art style (weight 0.78): The game features a distinct and appealing art style, often described as cartoonish or low-poly. This visual style contributes to the game's charm and helps to maintain good performance even with large numbers of units on screen.
- Humorous story and characters (weight 0.17): The game incorporates humor through cutscenes, dialogue, and lore, adding to the overall entertainment value. The humorous elements are well-executed and contribute to the game's unique charm. The cutscenes often feature quirky characters and situations, enhancing the player's engagement with the story.
- Similar to 'They Are Billions' (weight 0.09): The game is frequently compared to "They Are Billions", sharing similar mechanics and gameplay loops. However, it often offers a more forgiving experience with a lighter tone and improved quality-of-life features. It successfully captures the essence of the horde survival genre while adding its own unique elements.
- Active developer support and updates (weight 0.05): The developers are actively involved in improving the game, responding to feedback and adding new content. The game has seen significant improvements since its early access release, addressing balance issues and adding new features.
- Sandbox and endless modes (weight 0.05): The game includes sandbox and endless modes that allow players to customize their experience and test their strategies. These modes offer a more relaxed and open-ended gameplay experience, providing additional replayability and opportunities for experimentation.
- Highly enjoyable and addictive (weight 0.05): The reviewer expresses strong positive sentiment towards the game, indicating a high level of enjoyment and engagement. Many reviewers have spent significant time playing the game and plan to continue playing it in the future.
- Enjoyable undead faction (weight 0.04): The undead faction offers a unique and enjoyable gameplay experience, often described as a refreshing change from other factions. Players can overwhelm enemies with endless hordes of zombies, reversing the traditional defensive struggles of the game.
- Meaningful faction choices (weight 0.03): The game allows players to make meaningful choices that impact the story and gameplay. Players can choose to side with different factions, leading to different outcomes and experiences.

Common complaints:
- Repetitive gameplay and missions (weight 0.16): Many reviewers found the gameplay loop repetitive, involving base building, wave defense, and resource gathering. Campaign missions often feel similar, lacking variety and meaningful progression. This leads to tedium and a lack of long-term engagement.
- Lacks depth and content (weight 0.14): The game is criticized for lacking depth and variety in units, buildings, and strategic options. The absence of multiplayer, mod support, and meta-progression further limits the game's replayability and long-term appeal.
- Poor unit AI and pathfinding (weight 0.08): Reviewers frequently mention issues with unit AI and pathfinding. Units often get stuck, fail to react to threats, or make poor targeting decisions, requiring constant micromanagement and hindering strategic play.
- Unbalanced unit effectiveness (weight 0.05): The game suffers from unit imbalance, with some units being significantly more effective than others. This limits strategic diversity and encourages players to rely on a small subset of units, making combat less engaging.
- Tedious resource management (weight 0.05): Resource management is often frustrating due to scarcity, depletion, and inefficient gathering mechanics. The game requires excessive optimization and micromanagement to maintain a stable economy.
- Unfavorable random map generation (weight 0.04): The game's reliance on procedural map generation leads to inconsistent experiences. Unfavorable resource distribution, terrain, and enemy pathing can create unfair challenges and necessitate restarts.
- Poor boss design (weight 0.04): Bosses are often criticized for having excessive health, unavoidable AOE attacks, and high damage output. This forces players to rely on kiting tactics and makes melee units ineffective.
- Unskippable, slow cutscenes (weight 0.03): The inability to skip or fast-forward through cutscenes and dialogue is a common complaint. This forces players to endure lengthy and uninteresting scenes, especially on repeat playthroughs.

Gameplay feedback:
- RTS, tower defense, city-building blend (weight 0.3): The core gameplay loop involves a blend of RTS, tower defense, and city-building elements. Players must manage resources, construct bases, develop economies, and train armies to defend against increasingly challenging waves of enemies. The game emphasizes strategic base design and resource management to survive.
- Strategic defense, unit deployment (weight 0.22): Defense relies on strategic placement of walls, towers, and units to create strong defensive lines.  Players can upgrade fortifications and unlock advanced units through research.  The game balances unit production with defensive structure construction.
- Proactive play, offensive strategy (weight 0.21): The game requires proactive and strategic play, emphasizing offensive actions and map control alongside base defense. Players must expand territory, clear enemy encampments, and adapt strategies to varied map parameters and enemy attack routes.  Effective strategies involve massing units and utilizing siege weaponry.
- Crucial resource management, finite resources (weight 0.08): Resource management is crucial, requiring players to balance food production, material gathering (wood, stone, iron), and population growth. Resources are often finite, demanding efficient allocation and expansion to secure new sources.  Players must also manage worker assignments and building placement for optimal production.
- Similar to "They Are Billions" (weight 0.05): The game shares similarities with titles like "They Are Billions", "Age of Empires", and "Stronghold", blending elements from each. It combines PvE RTS gameplay with base management and city-building mechanics. The game also features elements reminiscent of Kingdom and Cities series.
- Randomly generated maps, replayability (weight 0.02): Maps are randomly generated, influencing resource placement, terrain, and enemy attack routes. This adds replayability and requires players to adapt their build orders and strategies each game. The limited construction area on maps affects the intensity and difficulty of each match.
- Variety of game modes (weight 0.02): The game offers a variety of game modes, including challenge, infinite, and sandbox modes. These modes allow players to test their skills, customize their experience, and adjust the game to their preferred playstyle. The endless mode focuses on surviving as long as possible against increasingly difficult waves.
- Pause feature for strategic planning (weight 0.02): The game includes a pause feature, allowing players to stop time and issue orders. This emphasizes careful coordination of positions, formations, and movements. The pause feature allows players to plan, build, and command units freely.
- Magic available, limited resources (weight 0.01): Magic is present in the game, offering spells and abilities to aid in combat and defense. However, magic use is often limited by resources like mana or rare magical crystals, requiring strategic deployment. Spells can summon temporary units or provide powerful offensive capabilities.

Performance notes:
- Inconsistent game performance/optimization (weight 0.08): The game's performance is inconsistent. Some players report smooth gameplay even with thousands of units, while others experience lag and crashes, especially in later stages or with many enemies. Optimization may vary depending on hardware and game settings.
- Loading times significantly improved (weight 0.01): Initial loading times have been significantly improved. An earlier version had very long loading times, but now it loads much faster.
- Video settings have minimal impact (weight 0): Changing video settings does not significantly impact performance. Adjusting shadows, textures, or using FSR has little effect on frame rates.
- Few bugs noticed (weight 0): Many players have not encountered any bugs during their gameplay experience. This suggests a relatively stable and polished game.
- Requires stable internet connection (weight 0): The game's stability is affected by the quality of the player's internet connection. Unstable connections can lead to issues during gameplay.
- Smooth animations (weight 0): The game features smooth animations. This contributes to a more visually appealing and fluid gameplay experience.
- Driver updates may fix crashes (weight 0): Updating graphics drivers may resolve crashing issues. This suggests that outdated drivers could be a potential cause of instability.
- Runs on low-end PCs (weight 0): The game is able to run on low-end PCs. This makes the game accessible to a wider range of players.

Recommendations:
- Wait for sale (weight 0.35): Several reviewers suggest waiting for a sale before purchasing the game, citing balance issues, lack of QoL features, or the need for further development. Some reviewers feel the game is worth the full price, while others consider it overpriced for the content offered.
- Review score may change (weight 0.33): Some reviewers indicate they will adjust their review score based on future updates and balance changes. This shows that the game's perception is subject to change based on ongoing development.
- Balance adjustments needed (weight 0.32): Some reviewers suggest specific balance adjustments, such as adjusting enemy health, unit damage, attack intervals, and wave density. Others propose adding more unit types, powerful technologies, or a veterancy system.
- Tutorial/Easy mode needed (weight 0.32): Some reviewers recommend practicing in sandbox mode or starting on easy difficulty to learn the game mechanics before tackling the campaign. A prologue campaign or extended tutorial is suggested to help new players understand economy building.
- Start on easier settings (weight 0.29): Some reviewers recommend specific difficulty settings based on player experience and desired challenge. Starting on easier settings to learn the game is a common suggestion.
- Hopes for future content (weight 0.04): Many reviewers express hope for future updates, DLC, and content additions to expand the game's replayability and depth. Some specifically mention wanting more advanced technologies, new unit types, or a continuation of the campaign.
- Irrelevant reviews (weight 0.01): These points are too specific and don't represent a common sentiment among reviewers. They focus on individual experiences and preferences.
- Irrelevant reviews (weight 0.01): These points are outliers with hyperbolic scores and non-constructive feedback. They are likely jokes or expressions of extreme emotion rather than genuine reviews.

Other player notes:
- Decent content, humorous, challenging (weight 0.04): The game offers a challenging campaign with randomly generated maps, an endless mode, and scenarios, providing a decent amount of content. The integrated humor and simple cartoon style add to the fun, with the overall playtime being less than 30 hours. The reviewer also appreciates the developer's passion and attention to detail.
- Medieval setting, comedic RTS (weight 0.03): The game, set in a Medieval fantasy world, features a unique art style and a comedic tone, with humor similar to Monty Python. The story revolves around managing peasant revolts, and the game is advertised as an RTS with epic sieges. However, the title is a misnomer, as there is a 'Diplomacy' option in the settings.
- Wants multiplayer, mod support (weight 0.01): Reviewers express a desire for multiplayer functionality, improved pathfinding, and more naval units. They also hope for extensive mod support via the Steam Workshop, including new buildings, unit types, and turrets. There is also a desire for 1 vs 1 or team-based Napoleon-style maps with macro management.
- High difficulty, low completion (weight 0.01): Achievement statistics suggest a high level of difficulty, with a significant portion of players not progressing far into the game. This is evidenced by the low percentage of players who have unlocked basic achievements, indicating that many players may not be completing even the early stages of the campaign.
- Misleading trailers/screenshots (weight 0.01): The game's trailers and screenshots are not representative of actual gameplay, showing unrealistic amounts of structures and abilities being used. The trailers heavily feature combat with millions of units, which may not accurately reflect the player experience.
- Storylines converge, Snutt's endings (weight 0.01): The different story lines converge, with the most noticeable difference being Snutt's (butler) attire changing based on the chosen path. Snutt finds a good ending in almost every storyline.
- Zombies target player only (weight 0): Zombies spawned from corpses only target the player, ignoring other living enemies. This behavior can impact gameplay and strategic decisions.
- Inconsistent building costs (weight 0): Stone walls require more wood than stone to build, which is counterintuitive. This may affect resource management and building strategies.

Emotions:
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