Diplomacy

= Diplomatic offers Explained = Submitted by Balthagor on Thu, 01/03/2013 - 16:20

Diplomatic offers
A nation has a number of diplomatic treaty's available to it and this page will explain what they mean and do. All of the treaties give a bonus to relations between the two nations, however some give a larger boost than others. Any relation boosts are one time boosts. All the Transit Treaties allow proxy war's to be fought with that type of unit, by the nations who sign.

All treaties MUST be signed as a two way agreement for the AI to consider accepting. Unless the AI is a colony of the offering nation or unless the offering nation offers a one way treaty without any requirements. I.e. If the UK (Player) offers Full Transit to Slovakia without asking for Full Transit in return.
 * Embassy - The most basic treaty recognizing the sovereignty of the other nation. Provides a relationship boost.


 * Criminal Extradition - Provides a relationship boost.


 * Land Transit and Supply Treaty - This allows you to send units into and across their territory. It also allows them to keep in supply so they do not run of of fuel or supplies whilst doing this.


 * Sea Transit and Supply Treaty - This allows the nation to send ships through its waters and resupply them there. All nations start the game with this treaty with Egypt (Suez canal) and Turkey (Daradnelles) so that you are able to use there waterways to take shortcuts.


 * Air Transit treaty - This allows you to fly air units over their territory, as well as using their airports/airbases to refuel or base your planes.


 * Full Transit Treaty - Just a compilation of the three transit treaties.


 * Line of Sight Treaty - This allows both of you to see what each others units are seeing.


 * Free Trade - Increases your relationship with the nation you sign with. Also increases your UN rating. Provides a Minor economic Benefit.


 * Free Flow of Labour Force - Provides a Minor economic Benefit.


 * Missile Defence Treaty - As of Supreme Ruler: Cold War this treaty only increases relations between the two nations that sign this treaty. Best used as a stepping stone to other treaties.


 * Mutual defence treaty - Creates an agreement between the two nations that if one is attacked then the other will come to its defence. Does not actually force the player into war, just provides Casus Beli against the invader and causes a loss in relations if this treaty is ignored. Works well to dissuade nations from declaring war on the signatories. **This is the treaty that allows Proxy wars.. with a mutual defense and the proper Transit treaties Proxy war is possible. The treaty works in both aggressive and defensive wars**


 * Non-Aggression Pact - A formal agreement that neither nation will attack the other. Breaking this causes a large loss of relations internationally.


 * Formal Alliance - A compilation of the following treaties - Embassy, Full transit, Non-Aggression, Line of Sight and Mutual defense.

= SR2020 Diplomacy Guide = Submitted by Balthagor on Sun, 01/06/2013 - 08:50 It has been said that "Diplomacy is the art of letting someone else have your way." and that "War is a continuation of politics by other means." Here we will attempt to offer you an alternative to war in SR2020 and explain the diplomatic repercussions of using military might to win the game.

Diplomacy is an important tool for victory regardless of whether you selected military conquest, economic success, technological achievement or diplomatic score as a Victory Condition. This is because you can use diplomacy to obtain from other regions many of the things that you need for victory. Allies, transit rights, technology, fuel, diplomatic approval or raw materials can all be obtained through diplomatic means. "Diplomatic Score" and "Complete" victory with "Allied Victories" set are two examples of victory conditions that can be achieved by diplomatic means without having to eliminate any other region militarily.

It is important to note here what military conquest of a region often will not get you: Diplomacy can get you technology and can turn a region into a constantly profitable trading partner. Diplomacy can get you the use of foreign territory and protect you from foreign military units.
 * 1. Their Technology (never).
 * 2. Their entire treasury.
 * 3. All of their territory.
 * 4. All of their units.

Glossary
A partial Glossary of SR2020 game terms can be found here: SR 2020 Glossary

Diplomatic Difficulty Level
Your success at diplomacy is directly proportionate to the level of diplomatic difficulty that you have selected as a game setting. At the "Very Easy" level you will be punished for DOWs, but you will also be rewarded for peace treaties. The easier the setting, the quicker your diplomatic reputation will recover from actions that bring disapproval. Trade deals will be more frequent and more profitable. Diplomatic difficulty and approval effects work hand-in-hand to set the "temperature" of the diplomatic climate - very easy diplomacy and high approval effects will quickly heal your bad-reputation and create a peaceful world for you to play in. High diplomatic difficulty and low approval effects will create a volatile world full of wars where diplomacy becomes almost impossible.

Beginning Diplomacy
We will now attempt to explain how these diplomatic concepts interact and how to utilize them to win the game. The best diplomatic strategy will vary depending upon the chosen victory condition and upon the current stage of the game. It is always a good strategy to make as many allies as early in the game as possible. Surprisingly even at the start of a new game there will exist CB and Provocation between regions, even though none of them have taken any actions. Let's use a World 2020 Campaign on medium difficulty, high approval effects as an example:

When playing as the U.S. the Scoreboard shows us that the U.S. has CB against various dictatorships such as Iran and Yemen. A dislike of dictatorships is an aspect of SOI - Spheres of Influence - the U.S. will never like these regions.

Surprisingly both Canada and Mexico have Provocation against the U.S. Canada has 14% CB against the U.S., is diplomatically "outraged" and presents a "medium" Provocation to war with us. Why? Because of the huge U.S. MilCap and the proximity of these two regions. Central Americans are also diplomatically concerned about the U.S. for fear of its MilCap. More distant South American regions are not nearly so concerned.

So what are we to do? From the start we have CB and strong Provocation against us - even our democratic neighbors are "concerned" about our relationship. We have a toxic MilCap. Looks like diplomacy is not the way to go - right? Wrong. It is possible to negotiate treaties with all of these regions, and the more treaties and trades that we establish with them, the less they will disapprove of us. The more hostile regions will not cooperate at every step and you may have to devote extra time encourage them with extra incentives, but they will come around. It gets easier as you go along, if you do nothing that will jeopardize your diplomatic standing.

But for now the U.S.'s only problem is the high MilCap that came as a part of this Campaign. Surprisingly, the number of active military personnel or the number of air-fields, barracks and sea-piers does not seem to have any detrimental diplomatic effects. We can take steps to correct this even before the game clock is started. If we check page 2 of the Scoreboard, we quickly discover that the U.S. has the highest MilCap on the map. If we deactivate enough land, air and naval fabrication facilities, then we can lower our military profile to a level that doesn't frighten our neighboring regions or the rest of the world. Since the U.S. starts out with a huge standing army, reducing its MilCap won't affect its security if it delays large-scale arms production until they have established some solid diplomatic allies and reduced their national debt.

And there is a more pressing diplomatic reason for doing this - each month that the U.S. retains a big threatening MilCap, the more CB their neighboring countries develop, far beyond the original 14% of Canada and Mexico. This CB can easily grow until in about November of 2020 Mexico may actually declare war on the U.S.

Diplomatically we begin choosing important future allies such as traditional U.S. partners and regions that are strategically placed in locations on the map where we will need transit treaties. Best to bring the really hostile regions into the fold as well - it may set an example for other regions in their SOI.

We quickly discover that many regions already have embassies with us and a few have several treaties. Really friendly regions are eager to deal with us and will do a treaty with nothing in exchange - just watch for the green bar. Most regions want at least a token payment in exchange for closing the deal. In tough neighborhoods you will need to shell out a large dose of "the universal lubricant" - cold hard cash and lots of it. Our first treaty - a Free Trade agreement with Canada costs just $264 million. An embassy with Yemen is also cheap - $390 million. We are on our way.

Now we will have the U.S. DOW on Mexico. Once this is accomplished green and yellow medium provocation bars spring up on the Scoreboard where previously there was no provocation at all. Many of these newly hostile regions are the other-wise friendly democracies and others in the U.S. SOI. Harmless green and yellow Provocations have turned an angry orange. Orange ones turn dangerously red. There is now a high likelihood that Yemen, Cuba and China will DOW against the U.S. Only Cuba will actually do this since it is the only one of the three that is anywhere near the U.S.

We attempt to negotiate another agreement with Canada but they will not accept any deals. We immediately try to salvage our diplomatic reputation by negotiating a quick peace treaty with Mexico. Three times Mexico refuses but after three multi-billion gifts they finally accept a peace treaty for an additional $10 billion. Then we attempt to re-establish diplomatic relations with Mexico - a simple embassy. But Mexico is diplomatically and civilly outraged at the U.S. and will not accept any offers. So we try again for a new agreement with Canada. $5 billion buys us a free flow of labor treaty. Similar agreements with Yemen cost us $10 billion each.

Why did the whole world turn on the U.S. so strongly when it attacked Mexico? After all, Mexico had no allies to upset. The reason is that the U.S. had no CB against Mexico and it did not break diplomatic relations before attacking.

So what have we learned? First, make a lot of quality allies early and cheaply. Secondly, keep your MilCap low, at least in the early part of the game. Thirdly, consider very carefully before DOWing anyone without high CB, especially at Normal or higher diplomacy difficulty. Just one war can instantly ruin your diplomatic effectiveness.

The problem with the first suggestion is that early in the game you are usually paying off national debts and constructing things. This usually leaves you chronically short on money in the early game.

Regarding your MilCap - you can lower it in one day by deactivating a lot of military fabrication plants, but even on just medium diplo difficulty, it could take months or years for your diplomatic ratings to recover. If you absolutely need to have a high MilCap, then try not to have the highest one in the game. Russia, China and France all have high MilCaps, so you can try lowering yours below theirs.

Loss of diplomatic reputation due to DOW is a two-way street. If a nearby region DOWs you it costs you nothing in diplomatic rating and you may even stand to gain reputation by meeting a DOW with a successful peace treaty. If you really want a fight, you might be able to use your high MilCap to get neighbors to DOW you in self-defense. If their Provocation is in the red then it is likely to happen, so be ready to take advantage of it.

SR2020 Update 6 has improved the espionage/spy system so that it is now feasible to raise a region's CB against you by using spies.

Types of Diplomacy
With Influential Diplomacy, anything can be used as a bribe - cash, food, oil, technology or weapons. If you have offered something inappropriate, you may get a rejection E-mail saying that they are not interested in the type of item that you sent.
 * 1. Treaty Diplomacy
 * This is direct diplomacy using the Diplomatic Exchange panel to obtain one of the eleven formal treaties. If the second region doesn't go for the straight proposed treaty then you may need to sweeten the offer with cash or something that they need or want.
 * 2. Influential Diplomacy
 * This is the use of the DE panel in order to alter a region's diplomatic or civilian rating of you, usually with the use of one-way exchanges (gifts). This often involves the use of the "universal lubricant" and in some circles is referred to as bribery. Then when the transaction completes, hopefully you can follow-up with some substantial diplomatic proposition with an improved chance of success.
 * 3. Technology Diplomacy
 * The use of the DE panel to again obtain technological advances or weapons designs. Again, you may have to "sweeten the pot" to get what you want.
 * 4. Economic Diplomacy
 * Performed from the DE panel, the objective here is to obtain one or more of the commodities from the "Products" list - money, food, water, petroleum, etc. This catagory includes what I would refer to as "diplomacy-for-profit" - diplomatic economic exchanges used as regional income.
 * 5. Responsive Diplomacy
 * This is when you are prompted to respond to a diplomatic offer or counter-offer via E-mail. Un-solicited diplomatic E-mails will consist mostly of commodity exchange offers. Peace treaty requests are common. Occasionally another region will request an Alliance.
 * 6. Implicit Diplomacy
 * Non-diplomatic actions with diplomatic repercussions such as building too many mil-fabs or DOWs.

When exchanging technology on the DE, the game uses the cost of development of the tech to determine if the offer is fair. This may not always be a realistic appraisal.

Economic Diplomacy
Some experienced players will use Economic Diplomacy as "diplomacy-for-profit". You might ask "How could this work? Certainly regional AIs can do math and would not enter into a losing exchange." Again, surprisingly, AIs are not so sharp when it comes to economic trades and some experienced players exploit this weakness for profit. Prior to Update 6 (Gold), unbalanced exchanges with up to 1-to-8 profit ratios have been reported. Update 6 is reported by beta-testers to have reduced this AI weakness to the point that the maximum profit ratio of trades has fallen to below 1:6. Another reported exchange exploit takes advantage of an AI's inability to discriminate between offered and requested items, resulting in sharp players offering absurd but successful trades of $100 million in exchange for $600 million. This is all very amusing, but the lesson here is that an advantage of being a part of a friendly diplomatic community is that they can and will enrich you.

The following is an excellent (edited) description of "diplomacy for Profit" posted on the SR2020 Forum by Tokbo: Take that commodity or good that you bought at a discount from the one ally, and sell it to the other ally at a profit.
 * 1. Start with something people buy and sell a lot of like oil, consumer goods, military goods, etc..
 * 2.Make an ally out of a Region that is a large exporter of this item. This allows you to buy from them at below-market prices thru diplomatic trades.
 * 3. Make an ally out of a Region who imports said item - this allows you to sell to it at an above-market price.

For example: You've just made a profit of $13m in two days time.
 * 1. Make an alliance with Saudi Arabia.
 * 2. Buy oil from SA at 30% discount from market price.
 * Buy $10 million worth of oil, for $7mil.
 * 3. Sell the oil you bought for $7 from SA, to India for $20m.

Then take that $13m and buy more oil from SA - say $15m worth of oil for $10m. Then turn around and sell this $10m worth of oil to India for $30m - you've just made a profit of $20m in another two days time.

The following transaction assumes that you're cash poor - you can do this with billions instead of millions if you've got the cash. But even if you start out here, cash poor, the system is such that you can get better discounts on your purchase price the more you purchases you make, and better profit on your selling price each time you sell...until you reach the cap.

From my experience before Update 6, the cap for discount buying is at about 30% of actual price (which means you bought at about a 70% discount). So you can buy $10m of oil for $3m. Since the cap for profit in selling is about x10, you can sell $10m worth of oil for $100m. Combined, this means you can spend $3 million, and turn it into $100m in about 2 days time, at the high end of the system.

This means that there's a HUGE extra amount of traded commodities and goods that you can draw from to meet your own Region's needs and still make large profits. Even as a single hex-sized Region with zero production of anything, you can still become the world's premiere economic superpower.

Frequently in the game there are incidents of Responsive Diplomacy where allies beg for commodities via E-mail. Once you build a large community of allies, you will be bombarded with notices of such shortages among your allies. You can generate a lot of diplomatic good-will by replying with at least a token amount of relief in these cases. And it will shut them up.

Surprisingly, once you develop a decent diplomatic reputation, friendly Regions will start sending you some very good offers in the E-mail. You can start out building a good trade reputation early-on by by agreeing to offers that are not to your advantage. This will encourage more and more trade offers so you can gradually become more demanding until you finally start receiving offers that are in your favor. If you are big, powerful and scary, Regions will even send you free money - tribute to keep you from attacking them.

The AI's ability to negotiate for products has been improved for the Gold edition and Update 6; This should make for a more dynamic AI trading partner.
 * AI commodity offers will now consider market price more heavily, not just production cost
 * AI may offer/request product for product
 * AI may request product for cash
 * AI may offer product to allies discounted or for free (but not to human if diplo diff is very hard)

Exchanges of Military Units
We have not yet discussed purely military diplomatic exchanges of units in the DE because there are no pure Military exchanges. On the DE panel if you select "Military Units & Missiles", then the selected region's mil unit selection always just reads "Unknown". You can offer them your reserved units in a diplomatic exchange but you cannot request any of theirs in exchange.

Surprisingly, if you offer units in a diplo exchange then the selected region receives more than just those units - they also receive the technologies required to build those units. With Update 6 you must keep in mind that once you release a unit and its prerequisite technologies to an ally, they may very well trade it to one of your enemies. This is known as proliferation.

SR2020 Update 6 (Gold Edition)
Two aspects of Diplomacy were changed in Update 6:

Exchanges of Units
AIs now exchange militatry units and missiles. This regards Responsive exchanges only. The DE panel still will not allow you to request units from another Region. These are the new rules for AI unit exchanges: SR2020 regions are limited to receiving only military units that possess a matching distribution code, i.e. International, U.S. only, French only, Russian, Chinese, etc. Unit trades from AI regions are subject to the same rules already in place for unit trading - the units can only be traded from reserves and units that are transferred are subject to the effects of the Military Difficulty level game setting.
 * 1) The offering AI Region must have a reasonably-sized army in reserve (over 50 units).
 * 2) The offering AI Region must not be at war or in pre-war buildup.
 * 3) The limits for offered unit quantities are 5-15 for land units, 1-5 for air or naval units and 10-35 for missiles, or a combination of all types.
 * 4) Units will be offered only to regions authorized to receive them according to that unit's regional availability code.
 * 5) Units will be older designs, obsolete, low-tech and low cost.
 * 6) Units will not include Weapons of Mass Destruction.
 * 7) Offered units will include only one type of missile.

Making Allies
Players can now choose to turn on a notification through e-mail for each war and alliance which occurs. This feature, found in the game options menu, defaults to "Off" due to the volume of wars and alliances that occur in the game. It was added however due to user requests for such a feature.

These are also considered "different messages" in game meaning that if you enable the option, then choose "don't show me this" for Alliances, you will still receive notifications when wars occur.

We will now go through the process of making an un-friendly region our ally. This is still the World 2020 game, played as the U.S. with all game setting on "medium". For this experiment I have selected Yemen - an impoveriahed Mid-East region that has poor relations with the U.S.

The Diplomatic Exchange Panel
We go to the mini-map and click on the Arabian Peninsula. Then we right-click on Yemen and select "Diplomatic Offer". The DE panel appears and we see that we have no embassy with Yemen. The game clock is still running in the background. We also check the "Diplomatic Relations" bar on the right/Yemen side of the panel. When we hover our mouse cursor over the bar a "tool-tip" text pops up informing us that Yemen "feels Diplomatically Outraged Towards the United States". This is not good news since an "indifferent" or better attitude is usually required to get an exchange ratified. Under "Civilian Rating" we also read a "Outraged" rating. This is not so good either because a negative civilian opinion can keep a deal from being approved.

Our First Try
We pick "Formal Alliance" off the treaty list and double-click on it. The Formal Alliance treaty appears on both bottom lists, but the "Acceptability" bar is red. If we close the DE we can see that Yemen's treasury is just $564 million - and they are in debt. When we return to the DE panel we notice that our work is still intact - the formal alliance is still being offered. We now try to sweeten the offer by pressing the "Products" button and then selecting "Financial" from the left list-box. We then move the "Amount" slider to $6 billion dollars. When we press the "Add to Offer" button our $6 billion is added to the offer but the "acceptability" bar is red - the negative "no-go" color. We keep pressing the Add button and offer more and more but it does not help. Our SD keeps telling us that Yemen will not accept the offer.

Treaty Order
What is wrong? We made the mistake of aiming too high. In diplomacy you must start out by negotiating the less important treaty items first. Here is the list of available treaties in a viable order of importance: It is always expedient to try and package the first three or four together and negotiate them in one transaction. "Full Transit Treaty" includes the other three but is very hard to negotiate. Most likely you will have to negotiate the three seperateley. I find the Line-of-Sight and Mutual Defense to be the hardest treaties to obtain, but the progress towards a formal alliance can stall at any point.
 * 1) Embassy.
 * 2) Free trade.
 * 3) Free flow of labor force.
 * 4) Criminal extradition.
 * 5) Transit Treaties.
 * 6) Line-of-sight Treaty.
 * 7) Missile defense.
 * 8) Mutual defense.
 * 9) Non-aggression Pact.
 * 10) Formal alliance.

Second Try - Four Treaties at Once
Let's try again with Yemen. We press the two red "Clear Offer" buttons at the bottom of each side of the panel. Now we'll try for a "grand slam" - on the left side we double-click on "Embassy", "Free Trade", "Free Flow of Labor" and "Criminal Extradition". The acceptability bar is yellow! We hope that our luck holds and add "Full Transit Treaty" - no good, the bar turns red. We delete the FTT from both sides and the bar turns yellow again. We add an Air Transit treaty and we still have a yellow bar - good enough. But the bar is not green yet. We only need to sweeten the offer. Usually a yellow bar only requires a token amount of sweetening to turn the bar green.

Sweetening the Offer
We press the "Products" button to bring up the list of commodities that we could offer Yemen. Certainly money would work, but it is early in the game and we don't have a lot of that. We move to the Yemeni side of the panel and start clicking down the commodity list and watch the blue/red/green Yemen supply graphs for each commodity. For "Financial" products (cash) the production bar is blue and there is no red supply bar - they apparently don't need money. With "Agriculture" the red bar is larger than the blue which means that their demand is greater than their production - they need food. We move down the list to "Fresh Water" - the red is even higher in comparison to the blue. They need water even more than food. Timber and consumer goods are even more critical than water for Yemen, so let's offer them some consumer goods.

We return to the "offer" side of the panel and select "Consumer Goods". Then we move down to the "Amount" slider and carefully slide it to the right by the slightest amount with the mouse cursor. You can also use the left and right arrow keys on the keyboard to adjust this, as long as the mouse cursor holds the focus of the slider bar. We don't want to offer any more than we need to and it is important not to offer more than we have in surplus. The smallest amount possible turns out to be 245 tons of CG worth $7 million. We then press the "Add to Offer" button repeatedly until the acceptability bar turns green. It takes many presses but the result is a green bar, an offer of consumer goods worth $902 million and a Yemeni government approved offer for the five treaties.

Success
The Yemeni government has approved the deal, but how will the Yemeni people react when they hear of it? We press the "Send Diplomatic Offer" button on the bottom-center of the panel. Then we run the game and monitor the incoming E-mail messages. The message comes back almost immediately - the diplomatic exchange is successful! So, let's continue and work towards an alliance with Yemen.
 * I should note here that it would have been possible to offer Yemen our consumer goods a little at a time - say a gift of $100 million per month for 12 months. Maybe that would give us a diplomatic boost with Yemen twelve times per year? But no, it wouldn't. Only the initial exchange gets diplomatic recognition, not proceeding payments. And it is impossible to stop the payments without breaking total diplomatic relations with the other Region.

The E-Mail Notification
When we double-click on the diplo-confirmation E-mail, the E-mail window appears with a review of the approved deal. At the bottom left of the window is a "Negotiate" button. All we have to do to pursue the negotiation is to press the button and we are returned to the DE window for Yemen.

Completing the Transit Treaties
We see from the civilian rating that the Yemeni people are a little less outraged than before, probably due to our gift of consumer goods to them.

We have made good progress towards an alliance - now let's complete the transit permissions. We add the target land and sea treaties and the bar stays yellow. Should we try for more? Let's try it - we add the Line-of-Sight treaty but the bar turns red. We test the validity of red-bar in the Yemeni transaction and the indication is that the deal is indeed possible and our SD finally determines that for $76 billion, the Yemen government will approve the deal for three treaties at once. This is way too much money, so we delete the LOS treaty (from both sides) and the huge amount of cash from the offer. We will have to settle for just the two transit treaties - a good day's work if the deal succeeds. We select an offer of cash in $100 million increments. Once we have pressed the "Add" button five times the bar turns green - we have an approved deal for $500 million. We send the deal off and wait eagerly for the E-mail reply.
 * We need to mention at this point that the red-bar indication is not a 100% reliable indication of the deal's viability. Often simply adding a lot more money (or whatever) will finally turn a red bar to green. The quickest way to test this is to click on the center of the Amount slider (financial) and select an absurd amount of money, then offer it. If the bar turns green then the deal is possible. Then delete the huge amount of test money offered and recalibrate the Amount slider to a reasonable increment. Then start adding the small increments of the commodity until you get the desired green indication. This will tell you how much the Region really wants to complete the deal.

Surprise Counter-Offer
Surprisingly we get a counter-offer instead of a refusal or success notification. This is very unusual, but the counter-offer only requests an additional $368 million. I say "only" because as we have seen, such offers can easily cost billions. We press the "Accept" button on the E-mail window and the "Success" confirmation comes back immediately.

Again, we press the "Negotiate" button on the confirmation E-mail to continue the pursuit of a Full Alliance.

Line-of-Sight Treaty
We select the LOS treaty that we had to skip in the last round of negotiations. We carefully add cash to our offer until we determine that a LOS treaty will cost us $2.8 billion dollars. This is much less that the $76 billion indicated for the previous transaction so we go ahead and send the offer.

Missile Defense Treaty
Again the reply comes back very quickly and we have another diplomatic success. So we try again for a Missile Defense treaty. This is negotiated for $670 million despite an initial false red bar indication. The confirmation takes a little longer for this one but it is also successful. MD treaties often are. Our progress has been good as we try for the next treaty.
 * Game Bug - Prior to Update 6, the "Full Transit Treaty" would display as a treaty offering even though you effectively already a FTT with the three accomplished Air, Land and Sea transit treaties.

Mutual Defense Treaty
This time when we check the "Diplomatic Rating" bar on the DE, we discover that our diplo-rep with the Yemeni government has improved from "Outraged" to "Disapproving", but our civilian rating remains "Outraged". We try for a Mutual Defense Treaty but our luck seems to have run out - no matter how much money we offer Yemen, the acceptability bar remains red. What should we do? We try other commodities and other treaties. Finally we discover the answer - we still need to do the Full Transit Treaty. We get this treaty green-lighted for $550 million. It is quickly approved and we receive notification.

Diplomatic Impasse
But when we try again for the Mutual Defense treaty, we are met with the same refusal as before - Yemen will not agree to a MDT for love or money. We will need to persuade them a little. We check the Yemeni treasury again - they now have $4.6 billion dollars, mostly due to our own generous contributions. We must improve their ratings of us for us to successfully complete the final treaties required to make them our allies.

The Bribes
The size of bribe necessary for this is usually based upon how well-off the Region is. Yemen's treasury is about $5 billion, so we will try giving them $4 billion and we will add food, water and consumer goods in order to improve the attitude of the Yemeni civilian population.

We have made progress with this region - where before their Provocation indicated that they were "Highly Likely" to attack us, their Provocation is now just Medium. Their casus belli (CB) is 13%, down from about 46%. Their government is "Disapproving" and their population is mildly "Outraged". What we need to do is to nudge their diplo rating into "Indifferent".

We pull up the DE window and offer them $4 billion plus $146 million in food, $460 million in water and $412 million in consumer goods. On the left side of the screen we check off the "None" check-box to indicate that we are requesting nothing in return.

The successful confirmation comes back quickly - Regions always accept gifts, even if they are at war with you. The only indication of improvement is that their CB has decreased by one percent. Their government is still disapproving and their citizens outraged. We will try again, but this time we will just focus on the Yemeni government.

We send them $1 billion worth of my FIM-92 anti-aircraft units. This creates real progress since it causes their diplomatic rating of us to improve to "Concerned". Their population is still outraged - at what I don't know.

Mutual Defense Retry
We try again for a Mutual Defense treaty. This time we send their government half of my surplus timber and an additional $5 billion. It has no discernable effect. We try again, this time with a gift worth $3.25 billion, consisting of only civilian commodities - $500 million worth of food, $2 billion of water and a lot of consumer goods. The result is that Yemen's population is still outraged but their CB was decreased by 1%.

Failure
I won't belabor this anymore since I believe that the reader has finally learned that diplomacy is a long and hard road to travel. These transactions took place in the first 12 days of the game and I have no doubt that eventually Yemen will come around and become a U.S. ally if we stay out of unjustified conflicts.

Saudi Arabian Success
A more friendly Saudi Arabia was successfully made an ally in the next 16 game days, the result of intense negotiations. Each of the final steps required additional motivation of the SA population consisting of $3 billion gift packages between each of the three final steps. The cost of each treaty paid to the SA government was less than $1 billion. With the potential future lucrative petroleum trades that may be forthcoming from Saudi Arabia, I think that I gained a much better quality ally than Yemen might become.