Introduction
I love me some good negotiations. Actually I love negotiations A LOT. I’m not really the best strategist in town, but man, I know how to talk out a difficult situation to my advantage, and if I feel like it, I may even stay true to my words and not stab you in the back afterwards.
I love heavily-themed board games too, and being a former RPG player, nothing makes me feel more like a medieval lord, a space diplomat or a “conquistador”, than roleplaying my character: offering a peace treaty to my neighbor then fulfilling my promise, threatening my enemies from across the board, encouraging my allies to start a campaign against the invaders, or even indulging to give someone a favour in exchange for a coin or two.
The Battle of Bouvines (1213 - 1214) painting by <PERSON> (1827)
King <PERSON> of France, in an encouraging speech, calls his vassals to army against England.
This comparison/review is an effort to understand how some great games that claim to be negotiation games, do or don’t actually deliver diplomacy and negotiations through game mechanics. Even if a game scores low in this review, it may anyway be a good game (and one that I enjoy for this or that reason), but not a good negotiation game. So the votes I’m assigning are just for the negotiation/diplomacy and not for the game in general.
On a side note, from here on I’ll be using “diplomacy” as a quasi-synonym to “negotiations” even though diplomacy may have a different meaning in game categories.
<PERSON>, Earl of Warwick, visits King <PERSON>, captive in the Tower of London in 1407,
a few years before betraying and kidnapping his former ally <PERSON> as well. Action that granted him the title of Kingmaker.
We’ll talk about:
- A Game of Thrones the Board Game
- Fief 1492
- Twilight Imperium
- Rex Final days of an Empire/Dune
- Warrior Knights
- Rising Sun
- Patchistory
- Archipelago
In no particular order, except for the fact that I’ll keep the best diplomacy game as last in this review, so if you don’t want to spoil the surprise, just don’t jump ahead
Negotiations: What I look for
I like the way a game lets the diplomacy flow naturally. 761
To me, just giving something in exchange for something else is not negotiation. It’s a conversion, except that it’s done with another player rather than with the game. Kinda like exchanging 10 gold for 1 Victory point. Also, starting a negotiation phase, where everyone must decide to be belligerent or tolerant towards someone else does not feel like true diplomacy.
<PERSON> and <PERSON> talk about pride, honor, rights and ransoms.
In a game based on negotiations I’m looking for mechanics that support negotiations and that tie well to the theme: we may start an amazing alliance literally on any game (unless the rules deny so) but not every games provide mechanics that support diplomacy. The mechanics must “accompany” the players to negotiate in a natural and spontaneous way.
I’m thus looking for a game that has mechanics that guide the person to talk, to exchange a favor, to make a deal, to seal an alliance, to trump it, to betray, and so on; not a game that says: ok this is the political phase, exchange money and your banners, then let’s move on to the next phase. Furthermore if a game helps you identify with the character you are playing it’s all for the better, cause roleplaying your character involves table talk.
Palpatine’s Declaration of a New Order (19 BBY) -Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (novel)
(1) - A Game of Thrones - The Board Game
Let’s start from the one that should excel in this category: aGoT - The Board Game.
Being the spiritual successor to Diplomacy, and being based on one of the most intriguing tale of negotiations, deals-making and betrayals, (and also seeing how a aGoT is very much inspired to The Wars of the Roses - a time period where negotiations, intrigue, deals and betrayals were common activities for the nobility) one would expect to play the non-plus-ultra among negotiation games.
AGoT The Board Game is a diplomacy game on the assumption that players place hidden Order Tokens onto regions on the map, allowing to either move to an adjacent/linked region, to defend, to raid, to claim influence from that region, or to support themselves or another player in battles. 366