The pirates in Diplomacy are overpowered.  Maybe what we need is for someone to make a mod that only affects the Diplomacy pirates, weakening them.  Are there any modders who would like to do that? 

If you ever decide that you want to play it against human opponents over Ironclad Online, note that almost all online multiplayer games have the pirates turned off and no one misses them at all.

I don't know what you are talking about. Once I got use to them I've been able to adapt my play style to totally defeat simply and easly adapted to. After about a week of with Diplomacy I've never had problems with them again. In fact I've had the exact opposity there over powering ability has been a great tool in defeating other players when my forces are other wise occupied.

Well Emplear, maybe you can explain to us how your playing.

I did not buy Sins of a Pirate Empire, because it seems either all my money goes to pay them or they are attacking me. The hole game was pirates, pirates, pirates.

Hm. I dunno how Emplear is playing, but I can tell you how I play. I have the latest version of diplomacy, and I enjoy the challenge of diplomacy pirates. The only thing I don't like is that the AI never bid against each other anymore.

I play single player. I'm usually TEC. I was playing versus all hard AI (either random or economist) and a while ago moved up to all unfair AI. I mostly play large FFA games, and ALWAYS with the pirates on.

I concentrate on my economy first and foremost. I rarely build more than the free cap ship until relatively late in the game, and often don't even send any support to it. I find that a single Sova is enough to take almost any planet, except maybe those tough deserts with 3 Kodiaks and their friends. This keeps my supply cost at 0.

If the enemy is close I'll build minimal defenses needed, always concentrating on the econ.

I click over frequently to look at the pirate clock, and if it's less than a minute away I'll curb my expenditures. When it hits 0 I sell all my metal and crystal, then I wait about 25 seconds (since 30 seconds is minimum for pirate launch) and (depending on the situation) then put at least half of my cash on whatever enemy is next to me, or seems the most threatening. Every few seconds I'll put another 250 or so to prevent them snipe bidding near the end (because they're trying to build up cash to beat me the whole time, or so I think).

Most games I don't get raided at all, and when I do it's usually because I was caught up in multiple battles and didn't notice the pirates were about to launch a raid. I've rarely seen the AI outbid 10k, so when my economy is strong enough I'll often bid that or higher and not bother babysitting the pirate clock for the whole 30 to 90 second countdown. Until I can do that though, I don't watch anything else while it's going.

So basically by concentrating entirely on economy, I can just hire out a navy instead of building my own. It's especially useful once you research the ability to send the pirates to particular planets. Even when I build my own navy, that's good for wiping my allies off of an artifact or otherwise juicy planet.

I've won entire games militarily while keeping my fleet supply cost at 0.

Wouldn't a scout be more economical?

Anyway: IMO, this is one of the reasons why the TEC starbase has "Safety Override Protocol". It may seem a little...wimpy to have kamikazee starbases, but hey, if they can kill pirates that would otherwise waste your fleet and planets, why not?

Richter {^}

Excuse me fist0, I was just making an observation. Not all of us are gifted with telepathic powers such as urself.

I was actually expecting you to say that the kamikazee starbase thing was a bad idea...

Richter {^}

Why thank you good sir.

I honestly havn't either, but in the late-end game I"ll waste credits on that upgrade, and 12000 range w/ 8000 damage or something like that seemed pretty impressive to me.

Please do tell if it works, I don't have Diplo yet, so I can't test it.

Richter {^}

That would be a sight to see...

however, whichever factions come out with the lowest losses will obviously annihilate the factions that took the heaviest losses, since the threat of pirates are gone.

Richter {^}