I have for christmas recevied the long awaited entrenchment. On Launch day I got Sins and was sorely disappointed for reasons I will state below. With the receiving of Entrenchment I though I would speak for any others that use my play style (which doesn't seem to be a very common one but I enjoy it) on what I think has been done well and what I like. I won't be making any complaints as most points I have will have been made already elsewhere.

I am a Diplomacist/Economist. I use subterfuge and alliances to the point of death and since a LAN with my brother I have never gone online after it seemed alliances didn't work in multiplayer (confirm anyone?) though I will go online after my current offline game is finished now I am getting into sins.

My normal playstyle is to Use bounty, alliances, a strong culture (really I usually have half the systems culture before people start building broadcasters) and a very strong economy. However the Sins of last year drove me away with a few problems and I am pleased to see how Stardock has fixed them:

Purge Vessels

The title is a bit of a misnomer as I am referring to all planet killers not just Purge Vessels so TEC and Vasari stop sniggering. I was often the victim in my games before as were many of my allies of a planet killer rush where an enemy would put together 20 karrastras or Krosovs or whatever and rush in ignore casualties kill the planet and leave. I fond this very annoying considering I tended to fully upgrade my planets to the last and so this was one thing that drove me away.

I am now pleased to see that although this tactic is still employed it is rarely in such large numbers, the killers are easier to destroy, defences actually stop them and they more readily retreat. So one Pat on the back for StarDock.

However on the subject of rushing there still needs some work and this is my one and only negative point:

Rushing

In my last game I found myself with 10 Cobalt Light Frigates hanging about. My economy was perfect and I had no need for them with replacement cruisers coming up the line. I therefore sent them off to complete a diplomacy mission (actually 4 all with the same objective) to kill varying numbers of civilian structures. I found this empires outlying asteroid, lots of nice weak extractors and no defences and I set happily about my buisness. When the enemy sent forces to deal with me I was done with the frigates still alive and so I went to the next system.

This is where things start not looking right. I set off destroying the three extractors however there was a star base which turned up when I started on my second extractor. Half way through this the two cap ships turned up as well (a marauder and devastator, he's a vasari btw hence the moving starbase).  They managed to kill one frigate before I finished and went to the next system, his home system to repeat the process.

This time his starbase and caps were firing immediatly. However when they started on their 8th remainign frigate I saw something strange. My defence and offence research was at full but even so with 57% shield mitigation my 8th cobalt light frigate was taking fire from 2 caps and a star base at 198hull. And before my very eyes its hull recovered to full and shields started coming back. I managed to destroy all extractors of his 5 inner worlds + those on that asteroid before he was able to destroy my 10 cobalt light frigates. I would have been interested to know what would have happened if I turned such longetivity to destroying his ships.

Now I'm pretty sure I'm the only empire with this capability considering at this point I have a maxed research tree and so am not suggesting a fix but I did find it interesting that this was possible. It did have some interesting consequences however in my next topic:

Diplomacy

I soon found I had a peace treaty and was seeding cap ships and planet killers into his homeworlds after i received repeat missions requesting crystal and metal no doubt due to a conflict he was having with one of my allies and mt destruction of most of his extractor income.

Before I unhappily ignored Diplomacy as in my playstyle I could never want to or afford to antagonize my neighbours by completing missions killing their ships and in every game would inevitably find myself with 9 enemies and 0% happiness. The new engine seems to be a lot more logical and I find myself enjoying the game immensly as I use the Pirates (put massive bounties on him so that he requires resources from me and I can increase happiness) , attacks requested from allies I soon plan to betray (get them to attack him then his next mission comes and I'm ready to complete the mission and betray my ally) and attacks to weaken their resources (see example above) to guide their missions. So one more pat on the back for Stardock.

A final 3 questions:

Is there anyone else who plays like me?

How does the Diplomacy system work online?

And can my play style work online? (Gimme protection and I give a 10minute payment of 4000creds etc etc.)