Humankind – blackmailing my way to victory

In the Together We Stand DLC they added a better diplomatic system. Whenever an empire pisses another empire off, Intel drops show up on the map, or if they piss off the player it shows up in the diplomatic screen. The Intel on the map is collected. The grievance in the diplomatic screen can be collected as Intel or used as a reason for war. If you collect enough Intel you get some of those precious fame points.

The other use for Intel is to impact the other empires, including lowering their war support. You have to have so much war support to start a surprise war, and you have to have a lot more to start a formal war. And once the war is started, this war support determines how well you are doing in the war. When you hit 0, you lose the war, and then your opponent can pick your empire to pieces.

Now you have the background, let us talk about my blackmailing campaign. I was doing decently. I had turned all of the empires on my continent into my vassals, but some of the empires overseas were also doing well for themselves. One of them declared war on me.

I had a decent military, but I had a problem: your vassals can break free of you. Hell, they can attack you in areas that are not owned by anyone. One of them did, nearly taking out my fleet. I realized that there was no way I was going to move enough armies to actually accomplish anything without opening myself to revolt.

What to do? I went to the diplomatic screen and realized that I had a lot of Intel on my non-vassal opponent. The upsides to forgiving the oppression of my people. So every turn, I used that lowering war score option, basically was the equivalence of winning a couple battles. After a few turns they had to surrender.

I did not get very much out of the win, just some gold and the satisfaction of turning blackmail into a winning strategy.