[rdonj]

Oh, no, there will be no restrictions on diplomacy. Overlords and normals may feel free to interact as they wish. As overlords will control the bulk of the gem income in the game, I strongly suspect that there will be both groups of normals who band together to try to bring them down, and normals who do business with the overlords to get things they need. Neither of those outcomes is undesirable from my point of view. And I agree with squirrel, even another overlord would have trouble taking out an overlord without normal intervention. And to do it while not being killed by whatever normals were around him? That would take some doing without effective diplomacy.

Also, I think diplomacy in this game should be machiavellian (backstabbing allowed), thematically speaking. The overlords are the devil, and if you make a deal with the devil, you have to expect he is going to betray you in the end. Besides if diplomacy was not machiavellian it could lead to scenarios where a player could take victory virtually unopposed due to standing NAPs, which would be easier than normal due to the relatively easy victory conditions of this game.

Hopefully this is not too controversial of a decision, unfortunately I forgot to mention it in the first post. Bad form I suppose, I always forget to mention diplomacy.