I don't have the game ... but I wonder why everyone is wishing that the diplomacy was like Rome:Total War? I found that diplomacy model to be a train wreck. It sounded good on paper but the AI was so erratic that it was pretty much worthless.

I agree that AI's should never get really offended if you turn down an exceptional request on their part. That is one of the things I hated about Civilization "Diplomacy". Hey I know we are allies, but you know those 30 turns you spent researching gunpowder ... can you give me that? No? I hate you!

Personally I think GalCiv 2 is the standard for excellent diplomacy models. I am not saying it would work in an RTS setting - just voicing that I think it works so well because 1) Their attitude is believable and 2) You get lots of feedback on why they feel the way they do, so it doesn't seem erratic.

Dano

I wouldn't mind being outsmarted, but being outsmarted using abilities I can't use in return? I can't call up an AI and tell them to go attack someone else (at least not until we're allies, which I can't seem to actually make it to because of stuff like this) and backstab them, yet they can do it to me. The only option is not to go on missions, and that seems to be missing the point of the whole diplomacy system.

See, I'd love a GalCiv2 model diplomacy, even if it was simplified. Right now, though, all diplomacy is, in the beginning anyway, is missions sending you to destroy structures or ships of a certain enemy.

in that settings file that was posted above, it seemed to intimate that each AI had its own timer for when it will give you a mission?

Surely a new mission roughly once every 10 to 20 minutes would be closer to achievable? Rather than the seemingly one every minute at the moment?

Agreed



Well then you won't understand until you play it!

I have to agree with this annoyance - I was also playing with 10 players (by the way, I could use a cap raise on that - 15-20 players!) - and everyone is requesting things.

Although I do see the benefit from it all - its more of an annoyance, and it REALLY sucks that you can't request resources from your allies.

Actually, I don't mind 'everybody asking for things'. You have to pick and choose who your want your allies to be. To me, the annoyance is how almost every time they're asking you to destroy something, and how easy it is to lose that favour you worked hard to get.

Well then it'd still be nice to have a Deny or Accept the mission , or how about being able to request any missions from a race?

Excuse me mr alien race could i please request a mission of you , why thankyou

I think the first key thing is the ability to make the system work for players too, then more complexity can come later.

TEC requests - Destroy 10 blue ships - Reward 3000 credits, 300 metal.

You'd always be a few clicks away from offering a new mission to the AI. Completing a mission from you against another player would make the AI who was attacked dislike the attacker, so the AI would weigh the rewards against the relative risk before trying to do it.

yes I highly agree - just because you see yourself unable to assist at that moment, you end up loosing a quarter / half of your ally's "friendship" or "trust" or whatever you wanna call it.

Its a bit out of proportion and I've seen other threads discussing this in full - so I hope things will change a bit.

I would just like to see it go BOTH ways. Like someone said earlier...seems silly to be asked to do this and that, but not be able to request. Also, the requests ARE silly sometimes.

I just ignore them all because it became an annoyance and not immersion.

The timer thing makes it worse. Same with the Pirate attacks. Why would a Pirate tell you when they are attacking? Shouldnt it be random times?

This is one of the only things about the game I Don't like, the whole 'diplomacy' angle. I can handle shelling out a few thousand creds to bump up my standings with a race ever now and again - but repeatedly, along with trying to take out other assets/ships that may not even be on my map yet is absurd.

It would be nice to have a more selective auto attack feature as well. If someone who I am working on increasing my standing with is just passing through my space in a scout ship and it gets attacked by my defenses by 'mistake' I loose every bit of ground I had gained. Putting all of my ships on a 'no fire' rule is dangerous in so much as I might miss hostile forces moving through and my fleets wouldn't attack them.

Am I just doing something wrong here with how I set up my fleets/diplomacy? This is all before being able to set treaties with said races due to poor faction.

Good replies people , keep em coming

Blair Fraser said:



So why the players have to "earn their friendship" and the AI doesn't have to earn your friendship? Can you give them missions like they do? No. Can you ask money or resources? No. Do they try to make peace with you actively to have an enemy less and focus their fleets in other enemies? (like human players usually do) No.

As others have said here and in another threads, diplomacy, simple or complex, have to go in BOTH ways.

Also, the game needs a relations section like GalCiv2. In my actual game i didn't even knew that my allies were enemies between themselves!. I only guessed it when one of them gave me a mission to kill units from the other AI.

How about each request has options like

"i need help for my war, destroy 10 ships for me or give me 5,000 credits"

Maybe it could even say please    

The mission system could certainly be better.

The two suggestions I've liked the best:

1) Make it a two-way street. You should be able to give your own missions. If you're significantly more powerful than the computer it should dearly want to be on good terms with you.


2) Make more interesting missions. I liked the idea of having to kill a specific capital ship. Of course the mission giver should have some idea of where the ship currently is and should provide that intel when giving the mission.