Diplomacy Is Not An Option is a real-time city builder focused primarily around turtling, or hunkering down and building up defenses in order to defeat waves of enemies. It’s similar to They Are Billions, a zombie-focused city-builder that came out of a few years ago. They Are Billions is notorious for it’s difficulty, and while Diplomacy Is Not An Option is no walk in the park, it is much more accessible to newcomers. It also has a colorful, lively art style and sense of humor, the later of which is nothing special.
The setup is silly and mostly pointless. You are a bored king who’s decided to abandon his responsibilities to his people. This leads to unrest and riot, but actually it just provides an excuse for massive mobs of enemies to storm your castle walls. The story bits that set up the campaign and run between missions are very bare bones. At this point there’s no voice acting and little in the way of animation. As it stands they are pretty boring and don’t really hit home the humor they seem to be aiming for. Luckily you can skip them and get right to the action.
That’s where Diplomacy Is Not An Option really shines. You have to quickly transform your meager settlement and handful of units into a formidable defense. To do this you must collect various resources like wood and stone, while also providing food to your ever growing populace. Like the best of these games, Diplomacy Is Not An Option is a delicate balancing act. You have limited resources, including works to perform jobs, so you have to prioritize right from the start. Luckily it’s easy to shuffle worker around and get your town on task early on.
The first few waves of enemies are simple to deal with, but things quickly ramp up. You’ll soon have to begin walling in your city and making educated guesses on where to begin. Each wave comes from a different, random direction and you’re only a given a few minutes notice as to where it will be coming from. This leads to last minute building that you can hopefully afford and quickly requisition your builders to erect. Often times you’ll be fighting off pitchfork wielding peasants with a half-built wall and poorly positioned guard towers. Thankfully you can quickly make some soldiers to help literally fill in the gaps in your defense.
While Diplomacy Is Not An Option is considerably easier than similar games like They Are Billions, it’s definitely no cake walk. The waves ramp up considerably and it’s very easy to get caught with your pants down. However, there are several difficulty options to make the game easier, or harder, and the penalties for letting small batches of enemies through are low. It just launched in early access, but already has a robust research tree and several tiers of upgradable buildings. Right now if features an endless survival mode and two campaign missions. However, you can see dozens of missions they plan to add once the game leaves early access. It seems like Diplomacy Is Not An Option already has a solid foundation that will only get better the more Door 407 builds upon it.
