Diplomacy is Not an Option Turns Castle Defense into a Tactical Battle for Survival

Hordes of rabid enemies. An array of fiendish fortifications. An utter disregard for the whims and wants of the peasant folk. Diplomacy is Not an Option has a simple goal. Build a castle, field an army, and crush anyone who dares speak out against you. 

It’s a world of conflict, where tensions run high. A powder keg is about to explode, but you’re not here to appeal to demands. Raise high your castle walls, and repel any attack from those who want a better life.

Scale is a big factor here - and the game takes notes from They Are Billions. An RTS where you’ll face overwhelming odds. Hundreds of enemies surging across the map to end your reign. You’ll have to utilise chokepoints, construct and upgrade fortifications. Your war machine is a hungry beast, and will require a constantly growing economy to feed it.

Feeding the War Machine 

There’s not too much to keep a handle on here. Food to feed your growing population. Timber, stone, and iron for buildings and units. Population will keep growing as long as you can sustain it, and bodies will need to be buried, lest an epidemic breaks out. 

There will be a lot of bodies.

The difficulty doesn’t come from understanding the systems but balancing them. Maintaining that curve between growth, defence and your military might. Knowing when to risk units clearing parts of the map, or pushing for a strategic chokepoint.

Throwing caution to the wind can have a domino effect which ends in your town being stormed and pillaged.

Some maps and scenarios have unique conditions, but most of the time your objective is simple. Survive. Mount your defences against increasingly powerful waves, and emerge from the other side.

Wave Defence 

There is this sense of strategic thinking and planning ahead when dealing with your town, your economy, workers, and resources. There’s a sense of satisfaction in that. There’s a  much more simple - arguably even greater - feeling of satisfaction in the other part of the game. Having hordes of enemies smash against your walls like waves. Blowing them up with god rays. Sending them flying across the terrain with trebuchets. God, I love trebuchets.

This is the main appeal to the game, yes, the granular detail of balancing your town’s resources and nailing the growth curve is great - but the real payoff is the massive battle at the end. 

As you expand, you’ll find chokepoints, reinforce them with walls, and adorn them with towers topped with archers and crossbowmen. When the enemy wave attacks, you’ll have some basic input, but all you're really doing is hoping your preparations are enough.

The game captures scale well. Enemies flood the map and slam against your defences. Your units man the battlements, trying to hold off the onslaught. These aren’t skirmishes - they feel like fully fledged battles - and each wave is more tense than the last.

The Campaign

There are a few ways the game serves the experience up to you. The simplest - and most appealing to the majority of players - will be the campaign. Initially, you’re dealing with a peasant uprising, but the stakes will keep mounting, sending you to distant shores and beyond.

Most maps have a unique spin, and interesting terrain to take advantage of. Connecting them all is a story - which has some fun comedic writing. A lot of the cutscenes do start to drag on, and some of the humour does overstay its welcome - but it's serviceable. 

At the end of the day, those beats are there to connect the dots, and give an excuse for engaging gameplay premises - and it achieves that.

Other Game Modes 

But there’s plenty more squirreled away within the game. A customisable sandbox mode. An endless experience. A whole bunch of challenges that twist the game rules and invite new ways to play. Different factions will throw a variety of units against you, and your successful approach to one may not work for another. 

If the core gameplay loop clicks with you, there’s a lot of content there to dive into. It’s not reinventing the game each time, but stretching the systems as wide as they will go. Providing opportunities to repurpose the mechanics in any which way.

Ongoing Support 

That push to explore new ways to play is constant. The game saw a huge amount of growth during its early access period, and even after hitting that 1.0 milestone - it keeps going. 

These offerings are substantial. Recently, they introduced a new story branch to the campaign - allowing players to ditch noble life and become an undead lord. This isn’t a reskin - but a rehash of the mechanics, and a different playstyle and approach entirely. 

If I saw this sort of sizable inclusion as a DLC - I wouldn’t bat an eye. But as a free content update - it’s very impressive. Clearly, the developers are still cooking with this game, and have other avenues to explore with it.

The Verdict 

It reminds me of something I’m always on the lookout for. The castle building, the sense of humour, the complete and utter disregard for the peasant folk - it reminds me of Stronghold. Now, I’m not saying it's a spiritual successor by any means, and on paper they are worlds apart. But it gave me that similar sense of glee. Captured that sense of silliness. It’s a really fun game first and foremost, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously - while boasting impressive strategic depth. 

Mechanically speaking, it's very solid. For wave defence RTS games, it's a worthy play to scratch the itch They Are Billions might have left you with. But don’t go in expecting the same game in a medieval coat of paint. This does things its own way, and keeps its own sense of personality throughout.