Well the Ready to Play feture for Impulse will allow fellow minded gamers to meet up for a game. So those of us who like a long game can find those who like long games too. Start one up, save it and know we can find each other again to finish it up.

That's exactly right.  We're still balancing which tier said tech will be, but it's definitely going to be one of the new diplomacy techs.

Single players always seem to want "Epic" games on normal speed, long games, big fleets.

Ive seen a few on ICO that wanted that type of game play, but no one else wanted so, maybe he quit already. lol, he sounded pretty disappointed when he got rushed.

But anyways.... "epic" game??? naaah... In my opinion, a long game isn't Epic. its just sooooo boring. I prefer playing short game where theres lots of conflict in the beginning where everyone suffers from low amount of resources.

And you have to choose either you will want to spend your resource to research, or to make more fleet. I find the early game the most fun.,, And epic.

Lets see what happens before casting judgement on Diplomacy.

The only criticism I have towards Stardock at this point is that in the past, there have been companies who have released content like Entrenchment for all players for free before. I mean, it is $10 - but that $10 of our cash. I suppose that I shouldn't complain - I only recently bought the game on the weekly Impulse buy with Entrenchment for about $20US.

As for what is epic? That is entriely subjective. To me, epic means a very challenging game requiring days worth of play and truly colossal battles with very intelligent AI - in essence, a war on a massive scale with many, many battles and lots of units. Naturally, for that to happen, the allegiance system will have to be redone, so will the supply and resource system. I'm thinking thousands, if not tens of thousands of units here. (Beyond that is probably beyond the human capacity to manage, although the fleet system is innovative. I hope that the fleet system can be imporved on).

No, $10 isn't that much, but compared to the DLC you'll get from something like fallout 3... you get VERY LITTLE bang for your buck for Entrenchment/Diplomacy. A few new units, a bit more tech.

Most games, when they release DLC, end up adding whole new gameplay areas/types, etc, enough to add 5-10 more hours of gameplay to a singleplayer. Granted, Sins isn't a singleplayer so you can't really just add new "areas," but point being, we're essentially paying for what is a "patch" in the sense of a minor gameplay tweak.

A couple new units? A bit new tech? TRADITIONALLY SPEAKING, that kind of thing was always free for PC games. It was only when you got a new single player campaign, or huge changes, that you paid for DLC.

You forget the BIGGEST PART OF ENTRENCHMENT- the GIANORMOUS NEW MODDING OPTIONS!!!!!

First, you don't even know exactly what is in the Diplomatic expansion, so don't prejudge.  Second, Entrenchment changed the way the game played.  They made game engine changes to support the new features.  A lot of expansion just tack a few things on to the game, which is fairly easy by comparison, you just have to worry about balance.  I'm not sure what you consider a minor gameplay tweak because you neglected to give examples of your wonderful free content.  If you play one game of Sins and say, "Well, I just saw starbases and mines, I'm done" then maybe the game isn't for you...people who love the replay value of Sins get a lot of bang for their buck for $10 to have features added to the game..

Bottom line, you don't like Sins that much, and this is fine.  Sins added a respectable amount of content for $9.95. 

Brood War expansion cost $29.95 when it came out and had 7 new units.  It was discounted by major retailers, of course, but for those of us who had our pre-orders waiting on the day it came out, we paid near full price.  Brood War had a new campaign, which is why it was so expensive.  The new structures and options in Sins change the dynamics of the game just like Brood War did to Starcraft...for those of us who play multiplayer it changed the dynamics of the game quite a bit.  You probably would need a bit more challenge to change your relaxing playstyle.

By all means don't buy Diplomacy -- as with Entrenchment, it probably won't change the way you play.  But please, don't compare a $30 Blizzard expansion with a $10 Ironclad micro-expansion.  Your Kung Fu is weak.

You keep thinking that.

Sure, Ironclad has way fewer staff, and probably lower profit margins. That explains charging more for less.

It doesn't explain why the PR has been so hush hush. Why on earth would they put it up for sale without even giving a decent preview or description of exactly what we're getting?

I would suggest more positive thinking on two issues:

1. 10$ is not that much money (unless you've had Lehman shares). Let's assume you've had 100 hours fun playing Entrenchment, that would boil down to an investment of 10 cents per hour of fun. Try to get that ratio at a fast food restaurant, at a bowling hall, squash court or whatever you else like doing... you won't.

2. I can think of two reasons why there is silence around diplomacy and its features:

a) IC knows how desparately the community is awaiting this expansion set (as it is quite obvious with all these diplomacy threads in the forum). They do not need to advertise and release it with a big bang that will astonish the community.

IC will prevent the community from pre-judging the expansion set without even having played. "Experts" around here are quick with judments about balance, useless features and missing things. Avoiding that the community is tearing it to schreds before its even out, they keep the details to themselves.

Au contrair, the silence is making a number of people (obviously myself included, but I've seen others) far more disinterested in Diplomacy.

And as far as it not being out "for another year," they're planning on having the beta start far sooner than that, and they have a lot more locked in place than you suggest.