Diplomacy

Diplomacy in Atomic Dawn is the contest for influence between the two superpowers and everyone caught between them. It is not one screen but a family of linked systems. Countries hold a running opinion of every other country, built from named and fading causes. They are pulled toward a bloc by the influence great powers exert over them. They adopt postures toward their rivals and neighbours, and those postures, together with armies and borders, set how much Threat Levels they feel. And they act through three channels: a short list of unilateral diplomatic actions, the persistent Treaties they negotiate clause by clause, and the Diplomats they send abroad on missions.

Most of this is shown on a country's view, which groups its information into Stats, Diplomacy, Treaties, Espionage, Factions and Politics tabs. The Diplomacy tab carries the relationship itself: opinion and its breakdown, posture, threat in both directions, ambassadors and the actions available.

Prestige and standing

Prestige is the measure of a country's international standing. Each country starts with a scenario-set amount, there is no passive income, and it can never fall below zero. It is earned and lost through deeds: landmark reforms, alliance leadership, military expansion, nuclear and space milestones, and the many events, focuses and crisis outcomes that award or cost it. The Great Powers ranking orders countries by their prestige total, alongside their GDP and military power.

Two recurring sources come from the calendar:

• International recognition. Every January 1 the ten largest economies and the ten strongest militaries receive prestige by rank: 25 for first place, 20 for second, 15 for third, 10 for fourth to sixth and 5 for seventh to tenth.
• The growth race. From 1951 onward the United States and the Soviet Union compare their economic growth over the past year every January 1. Outgrowing the rival is worth 10 prestige; falling behind costs 10.

Rank also buys reach. A country's diplomat roster starts at two slots and gains more for placing in the top ten in prestige, economy or military: 5 slots for first place, 4 for second, 3 for third, 2 for fourth to sixth and 1 for seventh to tenth, in each of the three rankings (see Diplomats).

Opinion

Relations are directional: every country holds its own opinion of every other, and the two need not match. Opinion starts at 0 and runs from -200 to +200. There is no hidden baseline: the number you see is the sum of named relation modifiers, each with its own cause and decay, so you can always see why a government feels the way it does.

History uses the same machinery. Each communist takeover in Eastern Europe adds its own Anti-Democratic Expansionism penalty to the United States' opinion of the Soviet Union, fading by 2 points a year, without changing how Moscow sees Washington. A delivered insult records a fifteen-point grievance that fades evenly over ten years, and each insult is remembered separately. Guaranteeing a country's independence grants +25 opinion only while the guaranteed country actually faces a hostile land neighbour with more than 80% of its military power; the bonus disappears the moment the danger or the guarantee ends.

The old blanket "Improve Relations" button is gone. Goodwill is built through eight specific undertakings run by diplomats, from cultural exchanges to state visits, in which both governments make real decisions (see Goodwill Missions).

Alignment and blocs

Alignment is a 0-100 score built from the influence foreign powers hold over a country. Each patron has its own share, and the shares together never exceed 100: when new influence would push the total past it, every share is scaled down proportionally. A leading share above 25 means the country is leaning toward that patron's bloc; above 50 it is aligned, and an aligned country that is attacked brings its bloc leader in on the defending side.

Only bloc leaders can project influence. In 1946 the United States and the Soviet Union lead the two great spheres, while the United Kingdom and France lead blocs of their own rather than sitting inside the American one. Events and focuses can grant or revoke bloc leadership, so new spheres can rise and old ones dissolve. Government type does not decide alignment: a monarchy, a republic or a communist state can each be neutral, leaning or aligned according to circumstance.

Countries can also be subjects. A satellite governs itself under its overlord; a colony is administered directly and is drawn on the map in its overlord's colour until it wins independence. Both stand in their overlord's sphere, and an overlord always holds peacetime military access across its subjects' territory. Subjects and countries inside a superpower's bloc cannot sign non-aggression pacts with outsiders unless their overlord or sphere leader already has one with that country.

Eastern Europe in 1946

The campaign opens before the Iron Curtain has closed. None of the Eastern European states is a Soviet satellite on January 1, 1946. Poland and Czechoslovakia are allied with Moscow, Hungary leans toward it under occupation, and Romania and Bulgaria are aligned monarchies with communist-dominated coalitions. Each falls under single-party communist rule on its historical date unless play changes the course, becoming a fully aligned satellite. In June 1948 Yugoslavia breaks with Moscow.

Postures

A posture is a country's strategic stance toward one other country, and like opinion it is one-directional: one side may seek an alliance while the other practises deterrence. A country holds at most one posture toward another. The twelve postures are Alliance, Non-Aggression, Threatened, Submissive, Conquer, Regime Change, Damage, Containment, Détente, Protect, Dominate and Deterrence.

Postures guide the AI toward matching actions (a Conquer posture fabricates a casus belli and prepares for war; Détente sends goodwill missions and reopens borders) but never create a treaty or declare war by themselves. AI countries re-score their postures monthly from ideology, the military balance, existing relations and the other side's own posture. To avoid flip-flopping, a new posture must score at least 1.25 times as high as the current one to replace it. Each posture also adds to or subtracts from the threat its holder represents (see Threat Levels).

Ambassadors and recognition

Diplomatic recognition is directional and is itself a treaty clause. Mutual recognition is required for friendly clauses and for most goodwill work.

Countries that recognize each other keep ambassadors in each other's capitals by default. These are a state of the relationship, not diplomat characters. They matter in three ways:

• Treaty talks require mutual recognition and ambassadors posted in both directions.
• Covert work runs from the embassy. Espionage and agitation missions abroad can only start where the country has an ambassador, unless the diplomat has trained in clandestine insertion; missions left without an embassy become riskier (see Espionage).
• Protest. Recalling an ambassador is a sharp protest short of a break: recognition and treaties survive, but opinion drops and treaty negotiations freeze until an ambassador is sent back.

A host can also expel another country's ambassador. Its embassy closes, covert operations it ran there lose their base, and it cannot return until the host requests an ambassador again. An AI government that uncovers a foreign plot against it expels the plotting power's ambassador, and so does one whose counterintelligence names the foreign sponsor of one of its factions, unless it answers to that power or likes it (opinion 25 or more).

Diplomatic actions

The remaining country-level actions are a short catalog of unilateral moves:

Ongoing actions cost political capital when they begin and at the start of each month they continue. Alliances, military access, guarantees and non-aggression are no longer actions at all: they exist only through live treaties or membership in a mutual-defence organization.

Claims

Every province records the countries that claim it, independently of who owns or occupies it. A province keeps its claims when it changes hands, which is why lost territory can be disputed generations later (see Stand-offs and Flashpoints). A country that claims every province of another receives the Unify Country casus belli.

How the AI conducts diplomacy

AI diplomacy and policy choices are evaluated gradually across each month from a snapshot of the month before, and applied together at the next month boundary, so the order in which countries are considered never changes the outcome. Each AI country makes at most one treaty proposal a month, reconsiders ongoing commitments, sends every free diplomat out on work (keeping one at home for peace talks only while at war), and saves political capital for peace terms when it is fighting.

Related systems

• Diplomats — the roster of named characters who carry out missions and negotiate treaties.
• Treaties — persistent agreements built from clauses.
• International Organizations — NATO, the Warsaw Pact, the UN and other standing institutions.
• Espionage — intelligence penetration and the operations that spend it.
• Threat Levels, Stand-offs and Flashpoints and Flashpoints and Crises — how danger is perceived and how disputes escalate.