Death by diplomacy

If you lock teams, there's no diplomacy...

The teams aren't locked, he mentioned getting missions from allies...

I tried the same last night.

I found some similar issues. Researching some of the tech helped quite a bit, the one where you lose less "friendliness" for not finishing a mission helps. If you want to win through peaceful means, you'll not be "destroying" anything of the other guy.

I also had this exact same problem in my most recent game. I failed to raise my "relationship" meter with another empire higher than 30% before I annoyed them in some way. And I also discovered that gifting resources didn't appear to do anything to help with that situation. It ended up frustrating me to the point where I had to quit that game and start another because I simply couldn't handle attacks from three different fronts plus pirates all at the same time. Any advice from veterans would be greatly appreciated.

I haven't bothered with diplomacy (or anything other than 1 vs. 1) yet either, precisely because I've been hearing all these horror stories about missions. Playing musical chairs trying to kill fleeing enemies for half an hour, while the other AI sends a gankfleet in to blast your home planet, isn't my idea of a good time.

Diplomacy needs to tweaked / fixed, I think. It's unbalanced because it's not give and take... it's just give, give, give. The NPCs don't have to do jack squat for you, but you have to run missions for them and give them gifts to get on their good side?

The first part I agree only on the tweaking bit, but have you played the same game I have is the real question. With enough rapport the AI will aid you in fights and even follow you around systems, I am also pretty sure it might go to where you ping at. So there is balance, that and they give you friggin' resources for doing those quests. There are also researches to min-max those quests allowing you to skip the ones that do not favor your situation.



Don't chase them. Go hunt down LEVs or if you are chasing anticipate and hyper jump before they do thus when they land they are immediately being killed on sight. Use the researches to keep a friend, they'll stay with you all the way at the 30% marker I think. Failing that the 45% marker.

The missions don't require you to send your entire force, if you care to do it then send perhaps a cap ship alone with a small escort to hit and run the required things. Keep the majority of your fleet in your own base. The AI isn't going to be like the human with 3497398473 turrets pointing in all directions or mass hangar bays. Obviously if they're asking to kill civilian structures go after the extractor, ships then go after the LEVs/siege ships due to slowness and fragileness, and if they ask you go after tacticals then you just have to suck it in and kill .

That being said, the research option does help. Every race has one I think.

I am glad to read this post, as I experienced the same thing with a 4 player unlocked against the ai. i was doing great until they decided to all gang up on me. i sent scouts to various enemy planets while this was going on and they were leaving one another alone.
fix please stardock.

Yeah, the AI will help you out -- after you go on a bunch of "missions" for it and win its friendship. But if the missions hurt your ability to manage your empire by making you chase fleeing enemy ships hither and yon, thus putting a dent in your defensive abilities and taking your attention away from other areas of empire management, is it worth it?

Maybe, I dunno. I just think it should be give and take from the get-go. As it is now, it sounds more like catching and training a Pokemon to me.

Actually I found out that the game AI seeks friends when faced with an all powerfull being. If you are the strongest apponent on the map with most or all your stats putting you on 1 they will join together to get rid of that threat.

If you become weaker they might actually stop their alliance and attack each other. It's a balancing thing.

And I think that is awesome.

I don't really want to come across as another 'me-too' noob.... but I'm probably going to!

When playing unlocked, the fact that the other factions start at a 0 allegiance seems wrong. It immediately makes them all your enemy instead of all starting at an even footing. The alliances are unlocked and so should be (IMHO) undetermined, thus start the allegiances at the 50% mark. That way you can maintain some and let other slide.

I'm fine with the AI always making demands (though the duration for achieving them could be lengthened), as Limz! says, you can ping them and have them aid you in fairly direct ways, plus you get to share info, etc.

At present it doesn't seem like gifting the AI materials does anything...? I've not had any missions that request resources, only the destruction of ships and tactical/logistical structures. It sounds like the AI does request these early on, but I suspect I'm doing something which is causing the trigger for combative missions to fire fairly early. Of course, the other use for gifting these resources is to help out an ally. But it would be much better if gifting them resulted in an increase in allegiance - 1%/100 is fine.

I have not found difficulty at all in playing one AI off of the other. I had been screwing around with the small map and 1v1 games with easy or normal AI. That got boring so I played though a few Med random map with pirates 3 normal AIs and myself.

What I have noticed is that the first few missions most AIs give you are the give me x number of resource missions. I ignore those. Your already and 0% faction anyways its not gonna get worse. When I start getting destroy x number of ships or x number of structues thats when I go to work. I know myself and I am terriable about being aggressive in these games....I always want one more squad...one more upgrade etc. I am the turtle king. Those missions help me break out of my shell so to speak.

Usually 2 of the AIs will give missions againist one of the others. Those are the ones I go for. You get 2 missions done for the effort of one. Usually those are worth 25% plus extra resources. Typically you will get more kill x missions after the first so rolling up to 50% or more with 2 of the factions is not too hard. As soon as they offer me cease fires I take them up on it. It keeps my turrets and random ships etc. from attacking them and losing faction.

Buildings are easy to find and kill. I usually go for asteroids and ship manufacturing. Ships are a bit tougher to pin down but any ship counts. Those construction ships in each system count. But, if you do want to pin AI into a fight pull a capital ship up to their home planet and let 'em start nuking it. It usually gets their attention (sometimes too much). Last game it drew out the AIs capital ship and about a dozen light frigites. I had about half that so I withdrew to an asteroid I set up with another dozen missle and light frigites. As they chased me and phased in they blew up.

Eventually in the last game I played that inital pressure put on the AI I attacked ment they were they first faction destroyed. The remaining two factions were trying to play me off ech other. eventually one of the two broke off the cease fire and he was the one I went after. That game me enough faction the get a peacy treaty with the third and finish the game by killing off the second.

I am working on a 7 AI large map game now. We will see if the diplomacy plays any differently.

I've had resource missions and 'kill x' missions. Even when I successfully complete a bunch of these, at times getting my rep with the AI up past 40%, it only lasts for a short while. Pretty soon, the rep drops down to 0% again. There has to be an easier way...

The AI is retarded, they make stupid demands of you to do certain "missions" for them and if you don't they hate you 15% more and other dumb stuff. Sorry I'm not going to go bomb a planet for your retarded self, I mean come on some of the things they request are lame. But anyway, after a few of these missions, they are in yellow you can see what they want from you in the diplomacy tab, they all hate you, and since they hate you, their hate draws them together into alliances against you, and you die. Diplomacy is probably my least favorite aspect of the game right now.

Things like Culture and Trade should have a slow upward affect on your relationship with an empire. Kind of like how your culture spreads.

I've gotten empires up to 75% and enjoyed some very nice benefits of that relationship, like getting them to help defend my space. However, I was min-maxing toward civilian tech, and the missions to destroy stuff from other empires started straining our relationship, once it dropped to 40% things started to sour.

It can be powerful if you pull it off, but it's not maintainable, and it's really hard. It's way easier building a huge fleet of stuff and destroying everyone.

I'd like to play the trade / diplomatic route and build a few small-ish fleets to win a single player game, but it's way hard, even on normal.

if htere is one flaw in the game it is diplomacy. I too have had a terrible time with it because i get mission requests at the worst times like im invading player A, and player B tells me to go after player C.

I think they should make it where they give you the mission and you have a CHANCE to accept or decline. if you decline, no penalty . if you accept and then not do it penalty. I would like to pick WHEN to do these things. Its just wrong that you lose faction because of bad timing, and its not small faction either, 10 or 15 percent at a time!

Oh and you cant buy their friendship,, which is wrong, bribes have always been a huge part of diplomacy. I got to a point in a 1 vs 3 map where i was extremely rich, i decided to test out the "bribe method" i gave one faction 50,000 gold, 50,000 metal, 50,000 gems and his faction didnt move at all LOL PLEASE LET US BRIBE THEM FOR FACTION, at the very least to a point where you can get a CEASE FIRE.

On say, a 3 player, or 4 player map where one player is swiftly eliminated the diplomacy vaguely works (and may even be too easy). You pick a target, and blow it to pieces, one of the AIs will have given you missions to do so, and will soon be your ally. The problem comes on a larger map. Lets say you, and your ally player B, are fighting player C. Your relations with B are good, but you have no resources to spare. During the war, player C will suddenly decide you need to kill 15 resource buildings of player H, who is in another star system to which you have no access. He then decides you need to destroy ships from player I, then tactical structures from player D. Your alliance is now over, B allies with C, and attacks you as do players D through I, who all hate you.

The diplomacy in sins sucks.
plain and simple.
infact it got so stupid after a while, (when i had lost all favor with everyone), that i was being attacked by 8 freaking enemy's all at once.
and because money accumulates waaaaay to slowly, even when you have some of the upgrades, there was nothing i could do but watch my forces get slaughtered with no hope of reinforcements.

so i used galexy forge, and gave my home planet defenses of 9999999 gauss cannons.
and the game Still turned out to be boooring.

the game need to focus way more on diplomacy, and way less on building bigger ships than the other guys.

something more akin to the diplomacy in space empires V, which i must say is n many ways a better game.

i personally like it when there are many different diplomacy options, (50 or so), and in that i must say Sins really let me down.

game sthat revolve around doing nothing but blowing stuff up, are boring as hell.
that has been one of the reasons i play strategy games, because there is usually more to them then having the bigger ship.

so while sins has nice graphics, and the battle system is close to flawless, the game is made nearly unplayable by the fact that it relies upon you building a massive fleet to go kill people, were as other games have relied upon exploration, complicated peace treaty's, such things as border rights.

ah well, enough of my ranting.

A.I will be attacking with a massive fleet against one of your key planets then while are trying their best to kill you they give you a mission to go kill another player. I think that if everyone started with 50% relationship and a ceasefire then the diplomacy option could be better. Like the A.I. will only give you missions if you have a ceasefire (which to me makes more sense) and the only way the relationship drops below 50% is if you actually start to kill them instead of just not carrying out their missions. I also think that they need a screen where you can see what treaties people have with other players, so that you don't have to constantly remember who has an alliance with who.

i dont think ive ever got my ai meter above 40%..

..i did find it possible to establish a trade alliance with an ai immediately after gifting 200 gold.. this may be because we were neighbours and my trade network stretched several system..

HOWEVER, that alliance didnt last long.. the douche ai even attacked me a few seconds after politely bowing out of our agreement. i think NAFTA is more efficient.. and thats sad.

oh! ive started researching diplomacy and apparently (at least for TEC) it can lessen the impact of 'failed' or declined missions and increase the reward on mission successes.. il post if that turns out to be helpful.

The diplomacy is pretty shotty. I choose to forego the pleasantries and instead become xenophobic. If you arent my color and I can see you, assume I will be nuking your homeworlds in due time. The trick to fighting multiple A.I's is DEFENSE DEFENSE DEFENSE. Create as many defense fleets as you have fronts. Then fortify said front worlds as best you can. Choose one front to begin pushing on. Only push on THAT front. Once you capture a world push front forward. Stick to this formula and you should be golden. Also I should note that filling your hangar bays with vast amounts of fighters is the key to keeping your worlds. Bombers are only decent against med/heavy armor targets. The fighters however will SCORCH through siege armor like you wouldnt believe. They also have the added benefit of defending your cannons from bombers. So thats my advise to you. And if your TEC build vast amounts of trade ports. Not just one per system. Find yourself a nice desert world and go ass crazy on the things. That being said, you should build a trade port in every system. It should also be sitting smack dab in the middle of a retarded amount of cannon emplacements. You want this not for the money, but for the AI taunt factor. They will almost always bee line for your trade station..especially pirates.

Meh

i just tried on a huge map with 9 AI's all FFA...

that didn't work real well... I did manage to get a few of them above 55% but too many conficting priorties floatin around... between them and the Pirates it was getting untenable.

have to try something different next time... maybe fewer AI's.

After a three day long huge map battle where I put aside my normal shoot them all and let what ever disembodied astral power sort them out and started being friendly. Well I can tell you that it did not go well when my allies became allies of my enemies and while they were 'defending' my planets my enemies just flew right by them and my 'allies' sat about having tea going good show old boy good show. So yeah I would suggest just going to shoot first and then shoot them again when their down.

Against 9 basically anyone you attack builds up relations with someone. It's impossible to avoid but it's hard to keep them satisfied. The problems start to arise later when there's fewer left. I'm on such a game now, 12 hours played it. 7 are left and currently they're all against me more or less. . I'm still waiting for break it will happen.... i hope. It isn't "nice" though.

I agree that the AI diplomacy is frustrating as hell, especially since once an AI decides it's time for you to die, there's pretty much nothing that can salvage the situation. You can't not defend yourself against his attacks, but you lose friendship with him for doing so. Also, I seem to constantly run into a situation where I fail a mission with just one target left and only a few more seconds needed. Then the AI decides my 'failure' is intolerable and declares war on me after I sacrificed half my fleet to obliterate a vast enemy force just to get to the 5 civic structures my 'ally' wanted dead. Why isn't he thrilled that I crippled the enemy's ability to go on the offensive in an entire sector of the system? On top of that, why does it seem that a former ally will ALWAYS target me specifically after I lose an alliance with them? It seems like it's almost better not to every ally with the AI, because if you lose them they all gang up on you.

I have, however, had limited success with the AI recently, and here's how:
1: get your improved diplomacy research ASAP. Every race has some version of this, and it makes allies much, much easier to earn and keep. With the research fully upgraded, one mission is usually enough to push an AI into the range where they'll be willing to consider a cease fire.
2: 'kill x ships' missions seem to count everything as ships, so you can use the same strategy you would normally use to deal with fleeing fleets: stay in the grav well and smash all their platforms.
3: don't be afraid to betray your allies. Sometimes it's easier to gain a new one than to keep an old one, and a cease-fire allows you to maneuver into position to gank their capitol right quick when the betrayal happens. This works best with cease-fires rather than peace treaties, but it can work well either way. The caveat here is that you must be sure you can cripple your former ally rapidly (destroy their capitol and otherwise wreak havoc on their economy) while maintaining the allegiance of your new ally. culture and reconnaissance are critical here, as is a general 'feel' for fleet strengths and whatnot.
4: Never, EVER trust an AI. They are useful as allies only in that they are not, at the moment, trying to kill you. They may respond to pings if they have forces available, and they may even notice when you're in trouble and come to help out, (it's happened to me twice) but in the long run blue doesn't give a rat's ass if pink is bombing your capital to the ground. He'll still happily toss away your 3-hour alliance you if you don't send your fleets to the opposite end of the star system to hunt down those 15 orange ships, even though he's easily trouncing orange without your help.

The diplomacy system is designed for multiplayer games really. The AI is much better in fixed team or locked FFA games, although it is very good at balancing against an overarching power (IE: me). Only problem with that is that theres no way to make them break their alliances after a while. You end up killing so many of them they all hate you, despite the fact that you're completeing all their kill ship missions. Those kind of games usually end up with me wedged in a corner until i get beaten down to about four planets. Then they all break down, their fleets annihilate each other, and I claim the victory once the fighting is over.

It's beautiful, really.