On sale is an interesting RTS title in which you have to fight against hordes of enemies trying to conquer your settlement, and their number can reach up to 25,000 troops. In order to survive, you must build defensive walls and towers and create an army. It sounds simple, but the game is much more complex than the basic description. In order to achieve all this, you must first develop a strong economy and invest some resources in technology and magic. After that, you're ready to defend, according to an indie developer team and publisher called Door 407.
This real time strategy has 4 modes of warfare, and they are: Endless Mode, Story, Challenge and Sandbox. Also, you are offered a map editor with which you can create your own scenarios for the game. If you choose the Story campaign, you will get to know the main character. You are in the role of a Lord who has spent too much money on endlessly pleasing his family and because of this the mob is now revolting and rising against him. Your task as a player is to put down the rebellion and ensure that the castle and the Von Bexington family remain strong and protected. The whole story is lightly accompanied by a satirical tone and a touch of humor. Given that the game has a certain level of complexity (the mechanics of which sometimes reminds me of Age of Empires), it is good to go through the offered tutorial in order to familiarize yourself with the basics of establishing a city/settlement and useful shortcuts. In common with AoE is that you have a town center, building houses to expand the population, for food at the beginning you use berry pickers and fishermen. Wood and stone are some basic materials that you should immediately start supplying to the city at the beginning of the game. But this game gets into a bit more economic complexity. Namely, you have to constantly keep an eye on the population and what is happening to it, because it consumes the food you have in reserves and at the end of each day you are shown how much has gone to the population of the entire city. If you are not careful, hunger can occur. You also have a population health element here so you need to have doctors available as well. Some will die of illness or old age, so for that aspect as well, you have to ensure the conditions of taking care of the dead by providing the city with an undertaker and a cemetery. To defend the city, you can place stone or wooden walls with towers.
What I particularly liked is that you don't necessarily need defense towers with archers, since you can place the army on the walls without them. You recruit the army through barracks, and they exist in multiple levels and categories, each of which offers a specific type of unit. For the military, economy and magic, there is the possibility of improvements that cost a certain type of resource. The management of the army and the battles themselves are very intuitive. Most commands are a combination of left and right click. If in some situation you lack troops, you can use magic to summon reinforcements that will be present for a certain time. The number of magical aid calls depends on how many magic crystals you have collected, and you can get them by destroying enemy camps on the map. Although there are occasional hints, the Story campaign has around 31 missions to go through, and the whole point of them is purely to survive and complete the tasks that are asked of you. Some missions won't be too challenging if you set things up smartly at the start and be ready for the incoming wave of enemies
In Sandbox mode, you create a specific challenge for yourself. It includes choosing the difficulty, the amount of resources on the map, the number of starting troops and how many resources you will start the game with. You can choose whether to use codes and which enhancements you want already enabled in the game. In short, you decide how casual you want the game to be in this mode. In Challenge mode, you decide which type of mission you want. The difficulty can be set, and this is also a good way to familiarize yourself with the mechanics of real time strategies and gain some experience with this type of game. In Endless mode, you can focus on running the city economically or test your skills in surviving a siege. It could be said that this game mode is perfect for those who want to get a little better acquainted with the technology and development of the city.
In general, Diplomacy is Not an Option is a single player game that quite successfully delivered the elements of real time strategy and brings that element of fun and challenge that used to be present in games of this type. Whether you want to test your war and defense skills or if you just want to enjoy the economic development of the city, the game offers you a dose of fun adapted to your taste and affinity, as well as difficulty adjustment, where beginners and more experienced players can enjoy it equally. You can play Diplomacy is Not an Option on Windows (Steam) or the GeForce Now platform.
A copy of the game for review purposes was provided by the Door 407 development studio
