Diplomacy Guides Please

[ngoldwe_2000]

Are there any good guides on diplomacy in MOO 1, especially charts on what the scales mean (war to friendly, alliance, etc.)? I need some good tips I could use to improve race relations. Playing Humans against Psilons, Bulrathis, Sakkras and Alkaris.

[Someone]

I am also interested in this question, since such a guide will allow me to correct diplomacy bugs in 1oom

[astrosha]

There is a strategy guide that was in print back in the 1990's that goes into detail on how Diplomacy works - or how it is supposed to work, I don't know if there were any bugs.

I don't tend to use Diplomacy much in MoO or MoO2, sticking to Research and Trade agreements, and tech trades.

Going off of memory here - I've read that book a gazillion times in the 1990's but it has been 25 years since I last did so - race relations are on a -100 - +100 scale. -100 is basically total war and +100 is total harmony. 0 is neutral.

Different races start off at different values on that scale with one another. Humans start off at 7 with everyone, I think. Other races start off ok with some others but at odds with others, with an average of 0 overall, though there may be some exceptions (overall less than zero relations - Silicoids and to a lesser extent, Klakons).

That race relations slider is also a modifier, for how likely a race is to agree to some request; the more friendly the race relations bar, the more likely they are to agree (to a point, and this also depends on the request itself and whether there is a non-aggression pact, alliance, state of war, or peace treaty in force). The Human advantage is an additional 20 or 25 points added on to that particular roll.

I want to say that the human advantage also applies to research/trade agreements. They start off at about -30%, and then every turn or so get a small bump - think it was -1% to +3% but memory could be off here - until it reaches the agreed upon max. New agreement while an old one is in effect gets aggregated into this, by the way. Anyway, the Humans - they have a 25% bonus on that scale, so they start out at -5% and go to 125%.

Or it was another race that does that, but Gnolams did not exist with MoO (they appeared in MoO2) so I think the money agreements favored Humans in MoO.

By the way, whenever a race tells you "No", they don't mean "We won't do that". They really mean "Stop bugging me." Wait 5 or 7 turns before broaching that, or any other topic, with that race's diplomat again. They actually programmed in what I can only describe as a "patience modifier" that starts out good but each agreement reduces it, and each decline reduces it a lot more. Wear it out too much and their diplomat goes away for a while. I do not recall if that has any repercussions on the race relations bar above though.

For serious inquiries about how the original MoO worked though, I strongly recommend trying to find a copy of that strategy guide. It was a serious in-depth look at the under-the-hood mechanics of the game, beyond the norm for strategy guides.

[ngoldwe_2000]

Thanks very much atrosha, that definitely will be helpful in figuring out what should do next. I will see if I can find copy of that guide you mentioned online. Hopefully somebody has made a pdf copy of it.

[Jack Burton]

Specific races have buffs to relations (Humans especially) and other races have detractors to starting relations (ESPECIALLY Darloks, Mrrshans, and Sakkras). The problem with that... is the worse your relations are, the more likely you are to PERMANENTLY damage your relations with said race. For example, the Alkari and Mrrshan hate each other to start, and you will notice they pretty much always end up at war throughout the whole game.

LIke Astrosha said, you don't want to aggravate other ambassadors by continuing to ask them the same question and they refuse. They will recall their ambassador, and you can actually get permanent race relations damage from doing this (amongst other things).

The races/relations in this game was actually quite highly advanced for its time, possibly one of the best ever.

If you can find the strategy guide I would buy it. I think I paid $20 in 1995 for it... You can get it on Amazon right now. Just buy it. It literally reads like a book. Will answer all your questions.

[ngoldwe_2000]

Thanks Jack Burton, will definitely do that, especially since Black Friday is coming up.