Diplomacy is Not an Option

This is a mixed review. While enjoyable, it reminds me very much of copied variant of Age of Empires. The play style of the game is very similar in nature to it. The main differences are that you don't select different civillizations/race etc in Diplomacy... and Diplomacy's premise is the growing waves of enemies that crash into your walls and a story-arc mission map (though there are other game options to choose from). I honestly thought this was more of a castle-building defense game, but the "castle"-ness aspect of it is just building towers and walls. It's still enjoyable regardless.

Really want to like this game... but even easiest mode, way too limited resources to plan any defense. If the goal is to lose, and be defeated and start all over dozens of times, then this game is for you. Not a game to relax and play with. +60 hours and still can't get past 4th chapter of campaign on difficulty "a walk in the park". Even Age of Empires is mild compared to this difficulty in game play. Have played 4x games, Stellaris, and other tower defense on hard or hardest modes and won, can't with this game.

It's just such a tedious games. You don't build tower defence, you build warriors to sit on walls, then you need to house and feed the warriors. Everything you do takes forever, the story cuts are extremely slow and dull. Also doesn't feel that rewarding to complete a mission. Can't recommend this game.

Too difficult. needs some sort of indicator on what to expect on the next wave like most other tower defense, wave defense games. impossible to plan and sink resources where needed. Also level 3 upgrades on the town center seem way too costly, arrows feel spongy and unsatisfying after a while too, not recommended.

First, as many have pointed out, the campaign is not easy. And I say this as someone that has played many similar games like Age Of Empires and StarCraft II. The first 2-3 missions I could do with hardest difficulty, for the rest I change dot second-lowest. Moostly due to the counter-adaptive difficulty. That is, due to how the game works, it is very punishing if you don't have a good start on the level. With that out of the way, I enjoyed a lot the ~40 hours that it took me to complete the campaign. The humour and short cutscenes are a good way to rest after a long level. Somehow, the levels all feel unique, it's not the typical game where once you complete 2-3 levels, the rest are all the same. You can't just find a good strategy and effortlessly complete all the levels. While some strategies are very clearly superior in all levels, all of them requiere adapting. There are not a lot of different units, but there are just enough to find a good balance between lack of content and having an army with 10 different types of units to micromanage. The semi-random maps also gives it an interesting spin. Specially because I haven't found it a challenge to build the fortress, usually there are enoough mountains around you to make a decent fortress, while also at least a small amount of all the resources nearby. So the randomness isn't too punishing like in other games. The AI is also pretty stupid. But it has way more units, giving it a zombie-vibe that I like. You will probably have less better units, but the deciding factor will be whether you can adapt to their zombie-like brain to outplay them. Highly recommended.

Game is HARD. Super fun and a good real time strategy game but I dont think many people will fly through the game. The story is silly and entertaining enough to keep me hooked.

This seems like a game I'd like, but it just didn't click for me. I found more aspects odd or annoying rather than fun.

Other than that it gets repetitive and one flaw, game itself is very good. A more precise display of enemy pathing would be needed, as I don't know the amount of times I had to rely on luck and guess which path the waves will take to get to my townhall to set up defenses properly.

While the concept of the game is quite fun and interesting, the balancing leaves a lot to be desired. The random generation of the environment plays a significant role in how the early game plays out and is ultimately the deciding factor in the pacing of your economy. Even when you manage to get a decent start with good resource spawns, the resource nodes eventually run out anyway and you're forced to constantly relocate your workers. Last but not least, if you somehow manage to get a late game economy boom going, you're rewarded with lackluster combat units that are not capable of defeating the massive enemy forces waiting for your arrival. Is it a fun game? Yes and no. Even on the easiest difficulty, the game feels impossible to play. I would recommend this game on a steep sale as it'll provide a couple hours of entertainment, but the arduous gameplay loop stumps any replay-ability and will eventually result in frustration and dejection.

This is the most entertaining city builder I've played in awhile. I would essentially describe half of this game as tactical military strategy (on a casual level) and the other half on managing your actual city. But managing your actual city is split between both the actual design of it and maintaining what already exists, it usually annoys me when city builders only do one or the other. The only thing I can complain about is how there aren't more tiers beyond level 3 for your town hall, but the game is technically designed for the campaign with an endless mode as an afterthought, so whatever. They have an expansion coming out which looks pretty cool, maybe that'll scratch the itch.

One of the Best RTS Games I've Played in a Decade – A Strong Recommendation This game stands out as one of the best real-time strategy titles I’ve played in the past ten years. The core gameplay is excellent, with just the right balance of resource variety and progression in each level. Most missions increase in difficulty over time, making early expansion and economic growth critical. There’s a good variety of mission objectives and enemy types, keeping the gameplay fresh throughout. The mechanics strike a great balance—deep enough to be engaging without becoming overly complex. Every structure and unit has a clear purpose, with nothing feeling overpowered or redundant. Overall, it's a well-designed, well-developed, and finely balanced RTS experience. That said, while 90% of the campaign—roughly 30 hours long—was excellent, there were a few issues and annoyances: -Bugs: The game is relatively stable, but I encountered a bug during a mission requiring ships to be filled with specific soldier types. It got stuck and forced a reload from an autosave. -Cutscenes: Most of the cutscenes felt dull or poorly written. Thankfully, many are skippable—though not all. There were a few genuinely funny moments scattered throughout. -Unexpected Intrusions: There is a cool mechanic, that corpses reanimate as zombies after some time. But sometimes these zombies or singular enemies that slip through your defenses, could be difficult to tell apart from civilians. Additionally when you look for closest troops to deal with these minor threats, you again couldn't tell apart easily who is civilian and who is the closest soldier. There would be small clarity improvements needed here in my opinion. -Army Management: Controlling a large army with mixed unit types (e.g., melee, ranged, siege) becomes cumbersome, especially in high-intensity situations. -Mission Balance: Some missions feel disproportionately difficult. Due to random resource placement, you may struggle to find enough stone or iron if they’re located far from your base in exposed areas. -Trial and Error: A few missions differ significantly from the rest, and it’s possible to spend hours progressing only to realize you need to restart due to poor early decisions or lack of foresight. -Mission Pacing Unpredictability: Mission pacing varies wildly—some maps allow for early expansion with little resistance, while others have constant enemy trickles or sudden massive waves after long lulls. Since there’s no way to anticipate a mission’s structure in advance, you often need to restart after learning its unique flow the hard way. Despite these minor flaws, the game offers replayability with some choices to make in the campaign. Also there are endless and sandbox modes. If you're a fan of the RTS genre, this game is an easy recommendation.

I really like this game, the economy and micro with the troops is like AOE III which was my favorite one. Need to use Proton GE on Linux because regular Proton is missing a codec or something.

honestly, i give this 4/5 stars for gameplay but the whole point off is these cut scenes. these are the worst longest most annoying cut scenes ive ever seen and the fact that you cant skip them is criminal. im sure theyre funny to someone but i want to skip them and instead have to waste several minuets of my game time sitting through these.

I really want to like Diplomacy is Not an Option, the visual and audio design is great, the story and related cutscenes are as high-quality as they are funny, you get four different campaigns to play through, and building up a castle filled with tiny purple dudes manning trebuchets is hard to get wrong. However, it's hard to find a more unbalanced game. I'm all in for difficulty, especially when it forces you to think creatively to tackle problems. but many of the levels flat out do not, forcing you to build the exact same min-max base on every map, even on the lowest difficulties. This just saps the fun out of the later stages of the game, as it becomes less about strategy (and not at all about designing aesthetically) and more about memorizing a specific pattern marked by reloading old saves. Anyways, despite this major shortcoming it's still worth a playthrough, the first 10-15 hours are an absolute blast (undead campaign for the win).

The game is awesome. It's nice how much love was put into the scenarios, the humor is good, and I love the music. If you like They Are Billions or Strong Hold, I highly recommend it.

The game is pretty fun and addicting, but it is very hard even on the easiest difficulty. The missions can take hours, and if you messed up something you probably need to restart the whole thing and try a different strategy, because most of the time saving and reloading won't save you as you already messed up too much before the save.

Very fun addictive challenging game - please add multiplayer, huge armies and massive basses where you either work together in coop or raid each other until the last one is standing

Fun game to those who like Management Real-Time Strategy games. I haven't done the extremely hard mode but it is fairly balanced. There are no annoying bullet sponges, RnG spawn enemies or sudden disaster surprises. The game is predictable but is still a challenge. It is micromanage heavy so it is not recommended for average players but it is still fun. My only problem is the campaign dialogues. It is kinda dragging. I wish there was a skip dialogue option not just a skip scene.

Absolute nonsense, slow and needlessly drawn out cutscene: "cannot skip" ??!?

This game is brutally hard—it completely consumes your sense of time. Overprepare, and you’re rewarded; underprepare, and you’ll suffer—either restarting or losing hours of progress. My brain is fried… and I still can’t beat those @#$% holy crabs! Honestly this game is good but if you suck at rts dont play this game or your brain will fried like me

Excellent game, just completed the campaign on the easiest setting after 59 hours. Very difficult and engaging even on the easiest setting. I found you have to pause frequently to manoeuvre troops and make decisions based on each stage of the levels. If you liked stronghold and age of empires you will love this challenge.

If you like games about managing a kindom, defending against enemies, and breaking your keyboard. Then this is a game for you. In this game you can choose in your playthrough, if you are the villan or the hero. The cutscenes are amazing and extremely funny, YOU CAN DEFEND A CAT, not a kindom, BUT A CAT. If your going to play this game, then forget about the hours, cause your going to forget they even exist. To sum up, what your playing is a game about managin a kindom and not breaking your keyboar because some dude raided your village for the 10th time in 5 minutes, destroying absolutely everything

-buy the game -decide to try a 100 day challenge on labyrinth of pain -find out why it is called labyrinth of pain -go play a normal mission -keep failing and crash out after 2 hours of constant failing 10/10 would highly recommend

This has all the charme of nostalgic games while also being polished to the limit and having the dry humor of nordish people. I love it.

Nice game, the only BIG problem i've encounteres is that there is no option to play different choice branches on same save, forcing the player to navigate between different saves (horrible UX) in order to play all the game's content. Again, this is a BIG problem that needs to be fixed ASAP instead of continuing to ignore it. Other features missing for literally no reason: - diagonal (45°) wall connection - multiple rows connection (it currently leaves empty boxes between rows) These mechanics have existed since Stronghold (2001), it's not like asking for the moon to implement them. Until then, i do not recommend the game, it could have been huge but it's missing crucial QoL improvements

While this is a very fun lil game, it does not provide anything really new in terms of game mechanic. Mechanically its incredibly very similar to stronghold extreme core mechanic plus a simple building upgrade system, but otherwise significanty less depth. Esepcially the city-builderI/resource management aspects is based on a very simple core concept that has been done probably hundreds of times before. Thats not inherently bad, but the game lacks any kind of other depth. After few games you have seen everything there is to see, and everything just kinda repeats itself. Its ok, but there are a lot of better alternatives out there.

Do not waste your time, wish i could give this a worse review. ragebait unbalanced uncared for trash the exact type of game i want but put together so poorly with miserable campaign and mission design, could and can be a lot of fun but i dont see the purpose in having enemies constantly spawning in 8 different directions when your troop line of sight is his nose. you just play constant catchup and get fustrated. dumb. Walk in the park difficulty is so silly. you never get a break from enemies when its not even a wave. early game 2 enemies can wipe out half your base before your units can walk there. late game if they have so many enemies coming from such a spread thats its impossible to defend the width and then the enemies on the outside (even if its one or two, they kill level 3 buildings in seconds, game is so poorly balanced after the first few missions that i wonder if this game is actually ragebait

Game is so hard that it takes the fun away. You can barely get a game started without being overrun by the third wave. And this is even when I try and play an easier mode.

Awesome RTS, wish there are a bit more diversity in type of troop or possibility to train dragon/mythical creatures.

There´s 6 or something difficulty tiers so why does even the easiest one have to be so brutal? Waves spawn so frequently and seem to scale infinately and get harder until you loose. You have a few minutes between each wave and in that time you´re scrambling to rebuild your defences, armies and somehow progress your victory condition. When am I supposed to have any resources or time spared to tier up or get ahead of the enemy? I barely beat level 4 on the easiest difficulty by base raceing on the last wave.

Fun and funny, I just wish it had LAN multiplayer.

1. Too much of the border is wasted space and unable to be built in. 2. Your base is positioned to the bottom right of the map next to the un-buildable border (Normally). 3. Enemy spawns randomly across the maps edges and at times they spawn right near your base. 4. As a result of base position and lack of space near border, building defenses is extremely difficult for said wave area. Enemy spawns definitely need tweaking so it's more logical, currently it's anti fun for no reason, oh surprise wave 6 is next to your base and you've spent the entire map building defenses on choke points were other waves have come from. It's the only complaint I have, however it is a huge problem for me, losing to a random chance spawn is simply anti fun, rest of the game is great.

This was clearly a passion project that was created by developers who truly love RTS. I have not had this much fun with a RTS since playing age of mythology as a kid. Its entertaining, diverse, comical and difficult without feeling repetitive. I can already tell that it will join the few games that I will continue to play even after 100% completion and look forward to seeing what else the developers come up with.

great game! so much to do with multiple game mode

Games campaign is kinda meh, just throws endless mobs at you until your worn down. Starting over again, and again, and again carrying nothing over and doing the same research and buildings gets tiring.

It's awesome on ultra hardcore, very hard but not impossible

Good original story, fun.

If you like the game kingdoms and castles you will love this game

They Are Billions but medieval, 3 or 4 factions, and crazy lol.

huge armies and fun city building

This is my fav game in this genre, very fun!!

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It's become one of my favorite rts games

Really fun. Multiplayer when? DO IT!

The game is super fun!

Very Good game

great game

very good

Fun as hell

Addictive.