Diplomacy Is Not An Option delays its hordes until next month
More time to plan your castle
Diplomacy Is Not An Option looks pleasant and lovely, a bucolic town builder of the sort that would enrapture me for a lost weekend. There's a little combat, but not mu-- Oh, wow. Waitaminute. There's a moment in this trailer where it suddenly looks like one of those adverts for fake mobile games. The hordes. Seemingly thousands of enemies on screen, and the physics to simulate them being hurled about.
You can watch said trailer below, released alongside the news that the game has slipped into next month.
Here you go:
That's what ten thousand enemies assaulting a castle looks like. It's not just punting the enemies about that's physically simulated: all the weapons, such as arrows, as physical projectiles rather than hit-scan, too. That should mean it really matters how you build your castle walls.
How have I not been excited about this game before now? Probably because I didn't see Katharine's article from October last year, which called it "proper magic" based on the still-available demo:
It's been a long time since I've found an RTS that recaptures the many hours I spent playing Warcraft 2 growing up, but Diplomacy Is Not An Option gets pretty darn close. I've been playing the hybrid citybuilder/tower defence game's demo this week, and those long forgotten memories of building row upon row of archer towers to nuke incoming orcs, defending my town hall and sending my little workers out to fish, mine and chop wood all came flooding back. Only here, those enemy armies come in waves of increasing size. Fortunately, in addition to the standard sword and bow folk at your disposal, you've also got a bit of magic - including a big fat giant sky laser.
DINAO was due to launch into early access on January 26th, but has now been moved back until February 9th. I'm glad it's now on my radar.