Diplomat

Alert

Diplomacy

Type

Power to Negotiate

Makes Three-Way Deals

When not a leader, during combat, you may use this power to scrap a negotiate pod from your cache. Both fleets become envoys, and you also participate in the negotiation.

Legacy: When a negotiation occurs, sponsors also participate.

The Diplomats were personally responsible for many of the modern advancements of negotiations in Cosmic Encounters. Introducing both the influence mechanic and the rule that only punishes those who quash a deal, their prowess in negotiation have proven to influence even the Federation itself.

Not Leader: Combat

Optional

Wild Flare

Whenever a negotiation occurs involving two or more other aliens, you may discharge this flare to replace one of those aliens in the negotiation.

Any: Negotiation

Super Flare

As a leader, after arrival, you may discharge this flare to transform this encounter into a “vote”. Each alien in the match votes for either the invader or defender. Whichever fleet gets the most votes wins the encounter, and the other loses. If there is a tie, the match is a draw.

Leader: Arrival

Modifications

Diplomat’s legacy involves sponsors in the negotiation as well, allowing everyone to gain resources and information from the result. Aliens that can maximize influence can benefit more from this legacy, while persistent powers may struggle more due to having less. Original Cosmic has no legacies.

Tips

With Diplomat in a match, aliens will want to keep their influence as high as possible. Protecting home bases becomes more important when negotiations are more common.
Similar to Pacifist, Diplomat is limited by the number of negotiate pods in its cache. Diplomat can use its power to potentially get more negotiate pods. Otherwise, its best bet is backer boons.
Diplomat can use its power defensively to turn a loss into a negotiation, similar to Empath. Since it gets to see the drivers before using its power, it can make powerful attack pods much less threatening whenever Diplomat is not a leader. On the other hand, this could mean that aliens save their strongest attack pods to use on Diplomat, the only time they cannot be transformed into negotiate pods.
Using its power as a foreward is most advantageous for Diplomat, especially early-game. It allows Diplomat’s leader to obtain a peaceful victory.

Development Notes

Diplomat is the perfect alien for stress testing the changes I made to the negotiation system, adding both the higher frequency of negotiations and the additional dimension of the third alien. Influence is the primary determination of advantage in a negotiation, which is a combination of authority and dominion. Since Diplomat always participates in negotiations, it will want to maximize its influence to have the most advantage. Since Diplomat cannot force its own encounters to be deals, this means that it will want to defend its own home bases as much as possible while also working to gain foreign bases. With Diplomat in play, other aliens will want to do the same.
While my Diplomat is virtually identical to the original, the change in my negotiation mechanics make it much different in practice. Aliens cannot agree to a three-way “base for base” deal. Diplomat can only gain dominion through its deals by allying with the invader and joining in on the peaceful victory that the invader requests, which gets more expensive the more dominion the invader has. Instead, Diplomat can use its power to gain resources and information, which will help it gain an advantage in combat.
Empath is the most apparent point of comparison in terms of this design space, another alien that can engage in more negotiations. Empath isn’t as limited in making deals, since it uses its power as a leader and can take advantage of the opponent’s negotiate pods. Diplomat has more opportunities to use its power, since it can use it any time it is not a leader. However, without negotiate pods, Diplomat essentially has no power.
The more aliens involved in an encounter, the more likely the deal will be quashed. However, the change I made to negotiation exclusively punishes the alien that quashes the deal, making aliens less willing to do so. It is generally more advantageous to simply cancel demands you don’t want to pay than suffer the casualties to deprive them of it. The decision between getting your own rewards or depriving the opponent of them is meant to be the big decision to make when it comes to negotiation.
My main concern with such a design would be guaranteeing an invader a peaceful victory when Diplomat is a foreward, since they are essentially getting twice the influence. However, only the invader can request a peaceful victory, which makes it much more manageable for the defender to cancel. The same applies when all the sponsors can make demands with the legacy in effect.
Even if Diplomat is a foreward, it cannot demand a peaceful victory. However, if the defender is using up their cancellations on the invader, Diplomat can take advantage of it to request whatever it wants.