Diplomacy is a little weird

from Sins Forums
My only criticism of the game is about the interaction with the other races on AI. The diplomacy is a little goofy.

I especially like the one guy who repeatedly says "I have a job for you....if you are interested!" Then you go through the little windows to see the interesting job he has for you. Wow, is it a mission? You read it and it just says "Give me 200 metal."

Kind of reminds me of the talking toaster in the old Red Dwarf sci fi comedy on the BBC. He'd beat around the bush trying to make you think he was about to say something really interesting, but in the end it was always just something about toast.

The other jobs are all "Go destroy some civilian structures belonging to the Blue player." The idiot will still fire on you if you have to go through his territory to get at the Blue guy like he asked. You also lose a lot of ships if the Blue guy is tough.

Anyway, after all that they just shift from utterly loathing you (0%) a measley 25% at a time up to a to 25% or 50% but it immediately starts dropping back toward loathing you again unless you keep jumping through hoops for him. It seems like you should be able to demand that same kind of tribute from them liek they do to you-a bit of a one-way friendship there.
strategy
8,065 views 13 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
agreed... its a very strange system which seems to be tacked-on rather than fully developed.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Every other person on this forum as already expressed their disdain for the AI diplomacy in other threads. A lot of people (myself included) just play on locked teams with the AI until it gets patched (hopefully in 1.03)
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
agreed - good idea, but not well implemented yet. The AI needs to be smarter about not firing on ships when you are doing jobs for it, and if you are actively at war (ie either of you is bombing each others planets), then it shouldn't offer any work.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I agree with the fact that the diplomacy needs some work. I especially dislike how you can't give the AI missions yourself even after your friendship reaches 100%. You know, like "I will scratch your back if you scratch mine," kind of thing.

Hopefully some work goes into it in 1.03. As it is, it is my only complaint in the game. It does get annoying trying to keep the AI from hating you in the beginning, since they always ask you for all your credits, and if you don't they attack you (even the AI still stinks, it does get annoying).
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
And what about adding a "REPUTATION" element to it like you see in the Civilization games? If you make an alliance with someone in CIV III or CIV IV, and then you screw them over, then your reputation suffers. It becomes more difficult to get alliances in the future. Not featured here at all.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Oh, I kinda liked the diplomacy mission thing. Very unusual, and I couldn't stand the CIV reputation deal. Although extending it so we can ask them for missions would be sweet.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
I defense of the diplomacy system, you only need to do 4 missions in a row to ally with a particular player and get planet vision, so that's relatively easy compared to most other 4x games where you have to 'build a relationship' before becoming allies. Also, you lose 8% with each failed mission, and they're usually 15 minutes each... so you can only choose to do 1 in 4 missions to keep it at 100%, meaning one mission per hour. 1 per hour isn't too bad.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Here's my 2 cents on the pros and cons of the diplomacy.

Pros:
-Innovative
-You can gain some resources
-You can gain some semi-useful treaties
-Alliances protect you from being attacked on certain fronts (for a while)

Cons:
-Treaties don't mean much; getting any ally to attack an enemy doesn't always work, although planet vision and ship vision is useful, trade treaties bring in very little
-missions are sometimes totally unreasonable, destroy 10 ships (which is tough in itself) of a player on the other side of a map.
-can't make any requests of your ally or coordinate attacks

If there was one area that they could improve and really make gameplay interesting, is to coordinate defense/attacks, yes you can do the ping defense, but let's face it, it's pretty basic and you have no idea if it works or doesn't and why. 100% doesn't always mean it'll work.

p.s. there won't be any AI changes in 1.03 - this will be primarily a bug fixing patch.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
Also it ticks me off that they get pissed if you decide to not do the mission. I think there should only be a penalty if you "accept" the mission and then fail it. If you do nothing then the AI happyness should do nothing.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
The only feeling that I am lacking in the diplomacy department is that I still have to do jobs for these slackers to keep them happy while they make zero contributions to my empire. Now, if my empire is so big and bad why would I pay tributes to scum like them? That's what is wrong with the alliance system in general. IE, it's a one-way street. It doesn't give the player a feeling of being all-powerful with other nations begging for your alliance (which, imho, is how it should be if you are a good player.)
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
I agere with Polistes. If you don't accept the mission you should not be penalized for "failing" it, especially since you can't DEMAND missions of the AI players.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
The diplomacy mechanics really feel lackluster and disconnected from what's going on during the game. It's weird to have the AI snarl "You have failed!" while his GIGANTIC fleet is in the process of wrecking one of my colonies. Somehow, I doubt that destroying those 5 civilian structures would have made any real difference in our relations.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
p.s. there won't be any AI changes in 1.03 - this will be primarily a bug fixing patch.
Completely untrue.

The devs have posted their list of top priorities for 1.3 more than once, and that list is always headed by "greatly improved AI", "AI replacing dropped players in MP", and "AI surrendering intelligently".

On-topic, for me, the primary thing that's wrong with the diplomacy system isn't the mechanic (although that's pretty darned flawed), but the feel of the thing.

It always feels like you're bootlicking. It always feels like you're the unpopular kid trying desperately to be accepted by the "in crowd".

Every faction out there, friend or foe, is constantly demanding things of you, and they all get pissed if you don't do exactly as you're told, while you get to ask exactly nothing from them.

Yes, this problem is completely due to the mechanics of the system, so it's essentially the same problem, but if you could magically keep the present mechanic and somehow make it feel like you might be slightly respected, slightly cool, and slightly in charge of the situation SOMETIMES, then it would be acceptable.

At the moment, thank goodness for the locked teams option.

The in crowd can bite me. I have big guns. ^_^