Transcription
Hello guys, and welcome to Real Politics. Today, I'm going to talk about diplomacy. Diplomacy is actually extremely simple in this game and made more in-depth in just the right ways if you do own the new Power DLC as well.
So, to start simple, I've picked America. We border Canada, as you can see by the relation map down here. They like us pretty much. Africa, South Central America, they don't really care about us too much. China and Russia, North Korea, they particularly do not like us. But all these other colors are just various ways to say neutral. The greener colors you see in Europe and Australia, New Zealand, that means that they kind of like us. But Canada—Canada really likes us, so they're a good one to demonstrate.
Diplomacy is simple, just as if you would right-click to build in your own lands; right-click on a differing Nation to get two options. There is spying, and there is diplomacy. We are looking for diplomacy. It comes out in a bit of a radial wheel kind of thing, and there's these many options. You will not have access to non-aggression pacts unless you own the new Power DLC. A non-aggression pact is exactly what it sounds like: a 4-year neutrality treaty to prove our mutual good intentions. Yeah, you get some score out of declaring these, so it's nice. You get a relations bonus with the person, and then you guys can't fight for 4 years—which is a good thing—at least not against each other.
There is a cost to it. I'm going to try it right here. There was only a 66% chance it went through, and it did, in fact, go through. I could have also gone to improve relations, which has a timer before it takes effect—30 days. The costs are lesser if it, you know, goes through, and it lasts for a lesser period of time. You can also decrease relations to try to worsen relations. This is good if you are, say, a democracy, and one of the things you need to declare war—like you already have a UN resolution or like core provinces or whatever—but you still need low relations, then just insulting them is a pretty good way to do it.
There's also the ability to help a country, uh, but that needs action points that I just spent. Let me show you on Cuba. You could offer developmental help to a country. This takes money and action points as well, and it does take time to implement. While it is active, which is about a year as a default, it will take some of your HDI and give it to the other country. That would be catastrophic if I did this right now, cuz it would put me under 60, which I need for my service-based economy. It would improve relations; it would give them some resources; it would lend it to them, essentially; and it would give them money—financial support—pretty much every month for that period of time as well. And so this is a temporary thing, but it's a good kind of like last resort to get relations. With the new Power DLC, you have access to making almost yearly random non-aggression pacts. It's actually very, very useful as opposed to helping countries—very, very costly in comparison.
Now, once someone does like you a lot, you could try to even get them into your block if you own one. Now, once someone likes you enough, you can even go further with the diplomacy and try to get them into your block. They may or may not join. Let's find out if they do. There are requirements to doing this. I need to have a certain relation and military size, and there's a cost associated with it. I will invite them. They said yes, with like a 75% chance. They are now in my block. My block is kind of like an alliance, but more accurately, it's a sphere of influence. Think more Cold War NATO versus Warsaw.
There are different integrators here that I can utilize if I so choose, to either up the unification level or benefit from it being low. You see United Offices. This increases the unification level, but it decreases the cost of maintaining the Block in terms of AP. And there's a bunch of different things that do mostly that. However, every single thing that unifies the block is also going to affect relations at the same time. By default, it takes 65 of a relation to maintain the block. You see my relation with Canada went up now that we're in the same block, so that's good—went up from 68 to 80. However, if I start enabling things, this adds 7 to 65, this adds, this adds four, five, five, seven. That would go well over 80, and then I would lose Canada from the Block cuz they don't like me enough. It's really that simple, cuz none of these things are making them like me more, but it's unifying us and making us benefit off of each other so much that they're starting to lose their sovereignty, and they need to really, really like me to be okay with this. Think about like the EU with the UK leaving. It's obviously not one to one, but you could say the EU's unification level was too high, and the UK's relationship level was not high enough. This is just a silly example. You could also go local autonomy instead, which actually reduces it, so 65 could go down to 55, making it easier to get others into your block. However, it comes with some debuffs. You have to pay a lot more for maintenance; you get less unit Max Capacity, I think everybody in the block does; and you do get some Unity, but it's at some severe costs—30% right here. It's really iffy on when you would use that—maybe if it would just help you get to 100, for example—because when you're at 100, you can diplomatically absorb a member of your block for free. So if I had Canada, Mexico, and the UK, for example, and you can have quite a number of members of your block, then this is something that you can do.
Additionally, with these nations that really, really like you and are this close to you, you can actually make an investment in them. You spend some money and action points over 45 days; you get a relation bonus with them for 600 days, which is very nice, and you could potentially get a return on your investment—potentially over that period of time. However, the chance of that is—well, it's a chance; it's a dice roll; it's not guaranteed to happen. So be careful with how you chance your money like that, but it's not a bad way to help maintain your relations, especially if you're in a block. This is how you can remove someone from a block, by the way—the same way that you added them—especially if you're in a block and you're trying to keep them in so that you can use a 100% unification level to absorb them. Otherwise, when they're in your block in general, you just want to focus on having very powerful Block members, because their military joins you. You see these parentheses next to all the different units that I have here; those parentheses are my Block members right now—that is just Canada—but it will add them all together, and they will then come into my Wars, fight my battles alongside my men. You can't choose who goes like in first or dies first, but they'll fight alongside me using my military Tech. This also kind of gets rid of their sovereignty; they can no longer really go around and start declaring Wars all by themselves. You and them are kind of attached at the hip at this point. Resultingly, the player cannot join someone else's block; they can only own a block and have others join it. You will rapidly see blocks form, as because that is like the main goal of diplomacy in this game is either to get to war or to get into a block.
When trying to choose who to get into your block, those that are close by to you are always a pretty good option; those that are stronger militarily are good; those that you can naturally maintain very high relations with is exceptionally good; you definitely want that. Make sure your nation's clicked on, turn on the relation map, and see generally the colors, then you can go investigate some more and see how you can work on it. 55, for example, if I had that block changer right here, the local autonomies, I'd be able to get most of Europe to join my block, and then imagine how powerful it would be—imagine how powerful we could be. There is a Max; you can't have everybody. I think it's something like six.
Additionally, when you click on any Nation like Canada, you have the relation screen open; you can see everything that's affecting the relations. So, Mutually Assured Destruction hurts it; the non-aggression helps it; historical relations buffs it up as well; being in the block, having the same civilization is important; and then there's like the basic amount versus Russia, where we both have MAD, so that helps; we both have stock markets, so that, you know; that none of this helps; historical relations have been bad; we're both block leaders, so we're opposition; we have different political systems, so we don't really get along too well. Someone that is in your stock market is also a really good opportunity to put someone into your block because that would make them more competitive. For example, I could add Canada to my stock market; they will be more competitive as a default just by being in my block. You see influence here; relations matter; distance matters; in block or not; in Civilization matters. This adds to the competitiveness along with, well, all the other things I just listed, plus GDP and the rating that you give them. Look how high up that is. There's other things as well, such as the UN, for example, but all these other things are very tiny. I've gone over them already in my beginner's guide.
This is how the diplomacy in this game works, pretty much just like that. It's very simple, as far as Grand Strategies go. This whole game is very simple, so hopefully this guide has been helpful to you. If you have any questions, feel free to leave those in the comments below. I'll answer them if I can; if I can't, hopefully somebody else can. If you have any suggestions for any other guides, leave those in the comments below as well, and I will get to making them if there's something that can actually sit here and talk about for at least 8 minutes. I don't know. I have a playlist in the description below in case you want to see the other guides that I have made already. And for now, thank you guys very much for watching, and I'll see you on the next one. [Music]