Diplomacy Expansion - Do you like it?

Envoy/Pact System: Alright, probably good have been better but it does change up the game a bit.

Revamped Pirates: They were turned off before Diplomacy, I haven't turned them back on yet.

Pirate Missions: Never used them.

Player to Player/AI missions: More useful but still not groundbreaking.

Relationship System: Still confusing, if a bit more detailed.

Diplomatic Victory: I think there needed to be a non-military way to win, but I would have prefered some kind of economic or wonder type win instead.

Maximum Allied Victory: A very good change here, I think this option should be present in ever game without an expansion back.

New AI difficulties: Quite fun to try and deal with despite just a bigger increase in cheating. 

New 'Faster' speed option: Very nice to have.

Indifferent; it's alright, but it definitely could have been done better.


A mess; took the most annoying feature of the game and made it more annoying without dealing with the EBAY bidding system at all.


Meh.


Good in concept, but the numbers are all out of whack.


It works, though the AI can't seem to get any alliances with itself.


Meh.


Definitely a step in the right direction; actually makes unlocked teams playable in multiplayer (not that it happens much).


Meh.


Meh.


Aside from the pirates (Which are turned off anyways) I didn't find anything bad in the Diplomacy expansion, but nothing really all that memorable either.  Nothing like the wonderful, juicy starbases of Entrenchment.

Envoy/Pact System - Nice concept but I agree with GoaFan77. Could be improved upon.

Revamped Pirates - Needs a lot of work. I modded them quite a bit to make playable on DS, but as far as the original I am in agreement with GoaFan77.

Pirate Missions - Game Breaking. Especially against the AI. I beat 4 Viscous AIs with pirates alone.

Player to Player/AI Missions - Never really used them.

Relationship System - ? very confusing

Diplomatic Victory - Meh, its okay. Like Civ's version better. (I-V)

Maximum Allied Victory - Never paid it much mind TBH.

New AI difficulties - Fun for a while, until you unlock the secret. Taking on more then 4 Viscous can be very difficult.

New 'Faster' speed option - Very nice to have. Especially when mod testing.

The Diplomacy expansion as a whole was inconsequential.  Except for one good change:  no feeding untill a tier 3 civil tech is researched.  This greatly leveled the early playing field for multiplayer, and is the main reason Diplomacy is played online.  But it is about the only feature that is used (except for faster speeds).  Pirates have always been ignored - even for most single player games.  And I don't really like them. I find them annoying.  So I question the wisdom in trying to revamp pirates, but good luck.

The Envoy/Pacts add some interesting twists, but ultimately they are rarely worth it, and the AI just doesn't do it well.  Its been my opinion that the higher cheating AI's were needed to get these systems to work.  (You know that Vicious & Cruel are 6X & 4X cheats!).  I've never had a reasonable AI teammate accomplish any of it.  Diplomatic Victory setting is just stupid, and therefore also never used.

The maximum Allied Victors setting is a excellent concept, and I think it has great potenial.  But I've never seen anyone use it online, so I don't even know if it works... and I can't get the AI's to do it. [Edit: I got the AI to do it, but its hard, and maybe impossible in some cases?].

[P.S.  Backstabbing your Allies is also far too easy, and is a major exploit in unlocked team games (both online & in singleplayer).  Penalties need to be added for being a traitor/breaking a peacy treaty.]

 

 

 

Basically, if you set the maximum allied victors to "3", then a team of 4 or more players cannot win.  They must betray each other unitl only three are left standing.  This encourages subterfuge since you know a large team must break up eventually.

Great for unlocked teams, but unlocked teams is not played very often.

Yeah Darvin, I know.  Thanks.

Sorry, I misread "I don't even know if it works" as "I don't even know how it works"

My mistake

The pacts are quite important in multiplayer.  The envoys can really make a small economy much larger.

one strat that is quite effective in multiplayer is if one player goes straight for supply pact with an ally, and never goes above 250 fleet supply.  suddenly you got two players with 1050 supply, and almost no upkeep.  Then they both came at me with almost nothing but carrier cruisers filled with bombers.  It hurt. 

I had 2v2s with my ally dropped early go fantastic for me... untill they got envoys on their worlds, and pacts up... then i just couldnt hold em off.

 

As a guy who only plays online multiplayer PvP, I don't think the Diplomacy expansion was really worth the $10, but online players had to purchase it in order to be able to keep playing PvP.  Most games feel the same as Entrenchment.  Sometimes people will make the pacts.  Things like pirates and AI don't come up.

I do like the Faster speed setting and the option of being able to have tougher AIs (Cruel, Vicious) was a good addition.  Obviously the pirates are all cocked up right now.

One thing that bugs me is that when a player on your team drops, you still don't have very good control over its AI, which makes it essentially useless (other than serving as a militia-like buffer to your opponents).  If the dropped player's AI is between allies ("eco spot") then it's almost entirely useless.  I'd like to see an option where allied human players can take complete control over a dropped ally's AI.  At least make it so the AI will absolutely listen to basic orders.  (Defend this planet.  Attack here.  Feed all resources and credits to Player X, etc.)

Diplomacy's problem is that the diplo techs are beyond boring to research and there's just way too many of them. New ships and upgrades and Starbases are on a completely different level of fun. Building envoys and sending them out is a chore and I'd much rather use that fleet supply for some warships that actually do something other than just find a parking spot.

Somehow it just feels that Sins is about blasting your enemies out of the sky rather than intricate diplomacies. There is room for diplomacy but it should be kept simple and involve far less techs.

Diplomacy was a failure. Entrenchment did just as the name said it would, add items in order to entrench.
But diplomacy? Where is the diplomacy? I have yet to see any socalled "diplomacy" in the game.
Does "diplomacy" promote diplomacy during gameplay? No, you make pacts, but the pacts are shitty and comes too late in the game to have an affect imho, so you really just don't care wether you form 'em or not.
You could have added diplomacy to the game. Something like The Guild 2 mechanics, or even Sid Meiers Civilizations  form of UN, But no.

Envoy/pact system - is a fail. I don't use it, I rather dislike having to spend resources on building a ship that does nothing for me. Atleast the TEC's envoy generates money for them, good for them, but I tend to play Vasari. I do love hunting those envoys in the end, though. Free XP.

Revamped Pirates - Pirates were actually something that was a bit fun. Made for some epic battles.

Pirate Missions - No personal opinion on this subject as of yet.

Player to Player/AI missions - Giving a mission to an AI makes me feel sad and hollow. I just feel that they do not take it as seriouse as I do.
Player to player on the other hand is... a waste. Why would I give a mission to my enemy? He'll ignore it. Why would I ruin my reputation with one of my allies?
If there was a hint of RolePlay in this game, I can see how missions could be fun. But it is no RP in the game.

Relationship System - 10/20 makes little difference imho. getting AI to sign cease fire is too easy. and why would I want to have 20 in a relationship with anyone? Pacts you say? Don't make me cry...

Diplomatic Victory - never tried it. It doesn't sound tempting.

Maximum Allied Victory - never been a issue for me.

New AI difficulties - I love the last two difficulties, or well, mainly just the last one. Bit sad that the AI need to cheat all over the line in order to feel like fun playing against. It makes it feel less like an AI and more like a little kid with a big gun. he doesn't have to aim, 'cause he'll hit just about anything anyway.

New 'Faster' speed option - I got 'em all on the fastest except culture and ship movement. They are stuck on normal.


Considering what one got in Entrenchment and that it delivered exactly what the title promised - Starbases, mines etc - Diplomacy felt like a scam. I just can't stress one point enough when it comes to Diplomacy - Where is the diplomacy people!? Come on!

Since I don't play it in single player at all, I can't really say whether I think the Diplomacy expansion was a failure.  I think it's merely "OK".  It did add the harder AIs and a Faster speed setting, which is nice.  The insane pirates part was definitely a failure since it (presumably) chased many new players away from the game after they threw their hands up in frustration.  The pact system and having to research feed is OK, I guess.

Perhaps one of the worst things about it is that it creates a new barrier to online multiplayer PvP.  Now it's not merely necessary to buy Entrenchment (which proved to be a great expansion) but now people need to buy Diplomacy.  For someone who only has standard Sins and wants to try Sins online, the barrier is now $20 instead of $10.

$20 instead of $10? I just checked impulse last night and its $20 +$10 + $10

Researching feed is great. I really didnt like spending more time in the lobby than in a game due to 1 team feeding 1 player and them stomping the n00b in the 1st 2 mins. Very lame.

I mean, if you already own Vanilla Sins, the barrier to playing online is $20 since it's $10 for each expansion (to get Diplomacy).

Ah yes, TY.

Envoy/Pact System

Pacts were okay.  Gave you more reasons to get civilian labs.  Some weren't very well thought out though.  Envoys however largely sucked, with only a couple abilities being worthwhile.  Advent one was particularly useless.  Both could be fine with some rebalancing.

Revamped Pirates

I like the idea of a nasty neutral force, but Diplomacy took them from one extreme to the other making them once again a non-issue as everyone turned them off.  Patch looks like they finally might have met a happy medium here.

Pirate Missions

Interesting gameplay mechanic, but failed for the same reason as above.  Again, people are reporting this is working well in the patch.

 

Player to Player/AI missions

Sounds good in theory for single player, but I don't think anyone used these.

Relationship System

Broken.  Too easy to make peace with AIs, while AIs have serious problems joining other AIs.

 

Diplomatic Victory

Worst idea of the lot.  Doesn't work in a RTS environment.

 

Maximum Allied Victory

Sensible, makes unlocked FFAs playable.

 

New AI difficulties

Doesn't hurt anything, but making the AI play better at non-cheating difficultly would be better.

 

New 'Faster' speed option

Necessary evil to keep multiplayer game length reduced to one session.  The game feel just right on 'Fast' though IMO.

Envoy/Pact System: I'm not partial to having to waste 72-96 supply on a single "ally" to be able to use the pact system. Furthermore, I don't like the pacts... some of them are lame and some of them are OP (I'm lookin' at you, Supply Pact - cuz yer ridiculous), there's no good reason to make certain pacts so ridiculously good. However, because many of them are that good - you're somewhat forced into using them.

Revamped Pirates: Revamped? You're joking right? These things were a mess. Hopefully they will be better after this upcoming patch.

Pirate Missions: Seems kind of redundant, but I suppose if the pirates are ever fixed it might be useful.

Player to Player/AI missions: The missions to the AI are useless, no amount of incentive will make them betray an ally. No dynamism. Unclear on how it affects multi-player.

Relationship System: Also useless... until relationships become interlinked and a relationship w/ one empire affects the relationship and missions w/ another empire - the system is just there to look at. As it stands each relationship exists in a vacuum and that's just plain silly.

Diplomatic Victory: I'm sure some people like it... personally I don't see the point, since diplomacy in this expansion is almost non existent. Not to mention bribery works impossibly well.

Maximum Allied Victory:  *shrug*

New AI difficulties:  Not really new difficulties... just more cheating. Instead of improving resources, etc, they would have been better served making the AI choose Cap Ships more responsively (AI seems to stock up on Marauders/Akkans/Raptures to a retarded degree), make more intelligent use of special abilities... make use of Super Weapons... and make use of special abilities on Star Bases (I'm lookin' at you, Transcensia). POINT IN CASE: Before making the AI cheat, please make the AI use *all* of the abilities they have at their disposal.

New 'Faster' speed option: I don't use them much, although they are nice to use at the beginning of the game because even with quick start the game feels slow at first. I'm glad they are there for people who like the game to be zippy, though.

Overall: Diplomacy feels like an amateur attempt at a sloppy mod. There are people in the community who produce better work for free. Sorry IC, but you guys really dropped the ball on Diplomacy. Vanilla and Entrenchment were the bomb though. I'm still hoping you guys make a good sequel - or even a decent expansion, but if you're going the expansion route - Diplomacy really needs to be cleaned up before you do.

-Itharus

PS: Thanks for the response template, GoaFan77

This reaction is exactly the reason why I created this thread before I made a decision on buying Entrenchment and Diplomacy.

As much as I like all of the new diplomatic options that it gave, I still had a diplomatic system that was similar to the Total War series or perhaps Sid Meiers Civilization in my mind. Where you maybe had to send a diplomat to negotiate deals with other races and convince each other to Open Borders, Peace Treaties etc. While the TW and Civ Series are turn-based I thought that they might create a Real-time version for it. But apart from that I didn't have many other issues with the expansion. I liked the New Difficulty settings for the AI and enjoy watching them tear each other apart, leaving me to pick up the pieces (If I survive), and setting up Allied Missions instead of being their B**ch and doing all the work for them.

I'd like to see what the community thinks of Diplomacy as a whole. (Bugs excluded.)

 

In short i really enjoy it and looking forward to the next expansion.

Keep in mind the mechanics:

Envoy/Pact System - 95% of the time never use it, do to harsh supply cost (just my 2cents)

Revamped Pirates - Over powered but getting better with the patches

Pirate Missions - Enjoy them but needs a bit of a balance as it can be over powered.

Player to Player/AI missions - Enjoy them when i need someone put in thier place till i can deal with them later.

Relationship System - Never been very good at following this.

Diplomatic Victory - Like it but rarely turn it on.

Maximum Allied Victory - Like them but rarely get it. More of a kill everything that moves player.

New AI difficulties - Never use them but glad they are there.

New 'Faster' speed option - Great

Envoy/Pacts = Meh. I agree with most of the views here. Seems like a waste to me. AI spams the hell out of them neutering the factions already bad AI's. Not worth it to me to research the pacts.

Revampd Pirates.. In the begining i was thinking "Finally a challenge" since the Pirate AI is the only AI that is a challenge in Sins. However the pirates became too OP. I lost a game because of the new pirates. That was a good thing to me, but to new players they would just wind up turning them off, because they were "too hard". At least the AI is ebaying bounty on each other now.

Pirate Missions.. I agree could be better. In a way that they help you, but cant win the game vs the AI solely by using pirates.

Dont play MP PvP so cant comment on PvP missions.

Relations is confusing. You cant really tell what exactly you need to do to improve your relations with another factions.

Dip Victory. Used it only on AI games. Helpful but unnecessary.

Max Allied victory.. Never used it.

Speeds usefull, but i never used it.

Diplomacy was an attempt to make Sins feel more 4X than what it was. Since many complained it was not 4X enough. Unfortunetly i feel that Diplomacy failed in that aspect. The diplomacy system doesnt really work like i think it was intended to. Some dont bother to use it.

 

correct! Where it faild the most was to provide a trade system so that AI players really felt like Opponents, not a borg collective hunting the human players. Where are the option to give planets/ships/techs/... to other players? As exchange for treaties? Or Pacts. Where is the option to set a minimum time for treaties so that one can have peace treaties one cannot break until time x elapsed?

To be precises, I liked Diplomacy, but was still very disappointed with it.

     How would you like to be the guy who thought Diplomacy was the way to go, then the announcement for the next expansion says:    the time for diplomacy is over. It's probably how Ironclad feels. I dont want to make friends, if I want an ally I'll lock teams with an ai.