I'm a little bit confused, truth be told. The old diplomatic system of Sins consisted of preforming random missions to help appease rivals so they would not gang up on you (like a protection racket). If you did well, you may get some trade going and in the end gang up on someone else. When everyone else died, the two former friends had at it.
The new system, I am not so sure. I've played a 1 vs. 1, 3-way, and 10-way (all bots, all normal). 1 vs. 1 had no diplomacy, which makes sense. The 3-way had some embassy trading going on, but there was still no diplomacy, even as everyone began to max the tech tree and I became the dominate player in the system (I crushed one player without effort and won the game, even though the other player was still alive and intact). Finally, the 10-way. Lots of embassy trading, a rainbow of race relations, but still no missions, no demands, no requests, no alliances.
This has me somewhat confused. I understand there are more diplomatic factors now, but there have been no noticable change in gameplay, especially long term. This got me curious as to the point of Diplomacy to begin with, since everyone ends up in a big space war in the end, regardless of diplomatic rating. Am I missing something, or doing it wrong, or is this just how the game currently is?
