It is a very popular kind of map, this diplomacy business. But for posterity and upon request I label some of the flaws of the genre so that solutions may be better presented (or just for fun).

It does seem rather odd, at first, that game called Diplomacy would involve such a miniscule amount of actual diplomacy. Oh sure, some players ally for some arbitrary reasons, but at hear most alliances form because of militaristic reasons with very little strategic depth rolling along the line of, "HEY U WANNA BEAT DESE NUBS IM ON AC"

Which brings up the main problem with diplo which is the incredibly high focus on military expansion. All resources are poured into MOAR TROOPS or stronger troops, usually only of one "special" kind which is created en masse and used to exterminate the world without any strategic value. At heart, diplo boils down to this:

Build Troops → Expand → Income → Build Moar Troops

This, my friends, is the definition of shallow gameplay. This isn't to say that Diplomacy can't be all strategic with flanking and army composition, but that it is setup to encourage such play. In fact, I'd say it goes out of its way to discourage it. Improper balance and country "special" units are a quick way to ensure that players never invest in anything but the strongest jack-of-all-trades unit at their disposal.

This all has the makings for a bad game, and we haven't even started on the lack of features that should be included in a game about diplomacy.

So there you are moving along sending your troops into what is obviously a death trap, more than happy to oblige your commands. In fact you could send hundreds of troops to their deaths without so much a flick on the wrist. In real life, things aren't this easy, and the populace isn't composed of some grinning idiots that are more than happy to watch you spend everything they give you towards world domination while domestic programs are left penniless.

Invasion is too easy, there are very few tools for diplomacy, and the entire gameplay lacks depth. If anyone intends to reboot the series, it would be prudent to avoid these mistakes.

Pubs on battle.net are far too stupid/impatient/incompetent/whatever to sit through a game and actually try to talk diplomacy. They'll leave in the first ten minutes of the game, saying it's too boring. If things were added to make the game more intricate, it would only be playable if we had 5+ people from SEN, because everyone else would be too stupid to understand it.

That's the kind of attitude that leads to this kind of bad game design. You can't throw features at a player and immediately expect them to understand it, or if they can't, call them dumb and blame your failure as game designer on them.

Would it make more sense to expand upon the concept of Diplomacy if more factors were to be added? An example would be Country A is rich in Resource A but needs Resource B in order to build special top of the line units, and they happen to be limited. Adding a variety of resources/tech/military would prompt a need for alliances in order to truly thrive as a country. Spending minerals/gas on something other than army would also give the econ or army choice that Starcraft has always adhered to.

What Diplo specializes in is the shallow "DIS COUNTRY HAS SPECIAL MARINE, AND DAT ONE HAS DUH SPECIAL TANKS." that has no complimentary with each other when conquered. Each nation could just independently crush all nations without relying on any other factor, and that not Diplomacy, thats just Conquest. A proper diplo game could be more in depth thinking such as: "Hm, if I wanted to build more X tank, i would need more B resource from Country A that doesnt have much military power but protection from Country B who needs resource X which i have a lot of" and so on. I guess another factor that needs to be emphasized is that HERPDERP A CLICK needs to be weaker.

But I guess as Dem0n said, Pubs like simple as shit games so the good ol formula of "BUILD SHIT-KILL SHIT-BUILD MORE SHIT" is dominant. It would be hard for in-depth games to thrive as much in a community

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 9 2012, 6:56 pm by LoTu)S.

The problems that you list are exactly why "Diplo" maps are so popular in the first place.

Remember that your typical pubbie has the IQ of a dead goldfish, but has also been loaded up with so much self-esteem by the educational system that he finds it morally objectionable that his lack of intelligence should decrease his chances of victory. Therefore, for a game to be popular amongst pubbies, it must not only be easy to learn, but must also lack any sort of depth, lest the masses find themselves at a disadvantage (which will trigger instant ragequit). It's not just an issue of a game being easy or hard to learn, but also one of a game being easy or hard to win-- no matter who the opponent might be. Diplo is very pubbie-friendly exactly because of all of the measures, which you have listed, taken to avoid the possibility of players gaining an advantage through strategy.

It's not that they're stupid, it's that from a game designer's perspective, they're stupid.

It's a matter of perception. You spend countless hours designing systems and depth for a game, you know the ins and outs and how everything works spot on. So things that seem obvious or easy to you may not be so straightforward for someone who just picks up the game right away, especially for non-game designers. This is what I mean when I say it's blaming the people for bad game design.

In good game design, depth is layered so that the content is available, but not required until the player specifically tries to "reach" down into lower layers of the game and start exploring, having satisfied themselves with the surface gameplay.

But the point is not to put a big brick wall up in the top half of the game and require players to sink far lower into the game to complete the game. SC2 games like Star Battle or even SC1 games like TS suffer from a learning curve. It's more of a brick wall, really, because it requires people to know quite a bit before they dive in. Tutorials that are non-invasive and informative can be developed and work in SC1's framework if it's impossible to make the game playable with less content. Remember that people really aren't dumb idiots who need everything explained. Refer to Egoraptor for more on this.

Further, with SC it's safe to assume the player knows the basics of SC, so we don't have to teach them what attack move is or right click to move or how to select or build units. Using this to your advantage is important.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 9 2012, 9:24 pm by Sacrieur.

I agree with much of what you say. Where I think we disagree is in the assumption that "good game design" and "game design that will be successful on SC1" are the same thing. I contend that they are not.

For example, I agree with your claim:
...but disagree that such a principle is conducive to making a popular SC1 map. Many SC1 players never "become satisfied" with what we would think of as "surface gameplay", but instead prefer to do the same thing over and over without desiring more depth-- look, for example, at all of the defense maps that battle.net pubbies play over and over, despite those maps having been "solved" for years already. Furthermore, in competitive games (such as Diplo), the players who are content to repeat the simplest forms of play over and over strongly object to the fact that others can gain an advantage over them by developing more nuanced play styles. On the other hand, if your "layers" don't make any difference to the outcome of the game, then there's no reason for players to acknowledge their existence.

What I have often found when hosting games of higher-than-average complexity is that, when provided with adequate explanation and help, inability to understand how a game works is seldom the real problem. I think the real issue is that all of the years of playing very dumbed-down maps has promoted some bad attitudes in large portions of the SC1 community, where any map in which a player playing for the first time is not instantly as good as someone with months or years of experience is "unfair", and any map that has to be learned, even if the difficulty level of that learning is trivially low (and well within the capabilities of players) is automatically "too hard".

All that said, I still also think that a lot of people playing on Battle.net are just dumb-- probably as a result of a self-selection effect, where people who played maps with more depth left when those maps died out.

I have recognized and understand your issues with Diplomacy maps. My experience with Diplomacy is limited. I remember playing it once many years ago; I invaded and killed someone right away, then everyone got mad and left the game. They said things about needing to declare war and other stuff. But if I'm not supposed to just dominate them, why was it so damn easy?

So why am I posting here? Because what I have played extensively are Civilization 2 and 3 (the turn-based strategy games) and Civilization maps on StarCraft. Now, in the StarCraft maps, military power is still of utmost importance, but there were some other things to focus and spend resources on. There was where I found some of the depth that I couldn't see in Diplomacy maps.

Typical Civilization maps feature technology levels, where you invest your money in research and force players to strike a balance of more units versus better units. Some versions have World Wonders, where players spend (usually large) amounts of resources for assorted bonuses, which may or may not be military bonuses. Expansion is also still an important aspect, as in typical versions you will be doing at least some empire building before fighting any other players. The actual balance and full-empire management was done very well by the actual Civilization games; a lot of the concepts never quite made it into SC:BW very well. In multiplayer games or higher difficulty games against the AI, you will want to check every city every turn and optimize to make sure that you win.

When I set out to create my Civilization map (have I mentioned this topic might be used as inspiration?), I set out to address some of what we see are flaws:
- Adding at least one alternative victory condition, so that military victories are not the only focus. Civilization 2 and 3 (and probably others in series) had the "Space Race", which meant once you got the appropriate technologies, you could build a bunch of spaceship parts in your different cities and win the game upon launch or reaching Alpha Centauri, depending on the game. This is easy to mimic in SC:BW and was planned for my Civilization map.
Civilization 3 also had other victory conditions:
- Government types adds a additional, though relatively small dimension to empire management. Ideally, they will each have pros and cons and be suited to different empire sizes and styles of play.
- Adding a war weariness mechanic to discourage straight offense. Also, adding a draft mechanic for Civilizations as an additional or last measure of defense. (There was one more modern Diploy map that I played with a nice "Garrison" system that discouraged offense nicely.)
- A corruption/waste mechanic, based primarily on empire size, can help to slow exponential growth. Of course, care must be taken to ensure that two Civilizations of different sizes that are otherwise equal will end up with some sort of advantage for the larger Civ, but not so much that the smaller Civ is blown out of the water.
- Requiring upkeep based on the size of your military forces.
- Requiring upkeep for technological buildings, intensifying the trade-off between better units and more units. Of course, higher tech must be useful and powerful enough to warrant this. If you want to rush tech, it should cost you and it should be worth it.
- Giving players a robust set of World Wonders, Small Wonders, and miscellaneous purchasables with varying effects, preferably non-military benefits, gives alternative spending options.
- Improvements such as Banks or Marketplaces that apply just to a local territory where built adds another a degree of empire management. It also creates a tradeoff of money and time -- banks and less military/tech now for cash later versus stay focused on military/tech.

...

I really should work on that map.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Nov 10 2012, 7:50 pm by Mini Moose 2707.

You were probably playing a non-traditional Diplomacy map (traditional being Infinity or 7.7) which usually have de facto rules that are understood by the players but not always directly stated in the map itself. These rules are stuff like needing to declare war, no double-teaming, etc. In traditional diplomacy, however, there really are no rules and you can kill whoever you want.

You're right, I can't expect players to understand stand it immediately, but it's impossible to help them understand when they say, "omg this map sux wtf host infinity" and then leave 2 minutes into the game.