Just played my first game of Diplomacy, and a few things kind of bothered me. It was a 2v2v2 with me and 5 comps.
First thing was the missions, instead of getting missions to give a few resources, I was told to kill my ally. Now, I had some ships, but they were busy trying to capture unowned planets. Also, it was my ally they wanted dead, not gonna happen. So, pretty soon all the other comps hated me, which was expected and pretty normal. But then, I realized that somehow I loved the comps, my relations with everyone else was +10, but theirs was 3 or less with me(except of course, my ally). So then, I tried to give them some missions, try out this diplomacy thing. But they all hated me too much to accept any mission. Because I was +10 with everybody, most of them were accumulating more diplomacy victory points than I was. Now, I realize that there were more factors than my view of them, but it certainly helped. So, in a vain attempt to reduce my view of the comps, I attacked them. Well, apparently I'm pretty sadistic, because as I attacked them, my view of them went up. The changes were small, so could have been from other battles they were engaged in. But either way, I still loved them. Then end result was I loved everyone, all the enemies hated me, and there was very little I could do about it. They wouldn't accept any missions I offered, and I couldn't accept any missions they offered (again, they wanted my ally dead).
This whole thing seems counter-productive. Prior to Diplomacy, my strategy was to complete the give resources missions early. This usually brought me up to cease fire level with some of the comps right before or during the first wave of attacks. Then, when the missions turned into go kill this, I had expanded a little, had some defenses and a fleet, I could choose who I wanted to be friendly with.
Obviously I need to re-think my strat, thats understandable. But seriously, why do I love other players just because they are comps? My best guess is, that way the comps can always offer missions to go kill myself.
