Missions + Time Limit =\= Diplomacy

psychoak, I think the 3 sides are suppose to be at war, so starting off neutral doesn't make a lot of sense.

Alliances of convenience do make sense though.

this is one area of the game i'm pretty sure the devs are tweaking as we speak. INITIATION OPTION of diplomatic relations is a must.

why? just look at the total war series. it's a seperate mini-game in itself. it's supposed to be fun and challenging. hopefully they will fix it in this game.

The three sides aren't three sides. When you're playing a 10 player ffa with random sides, you're not TEC vs Vasari and Advent. You're TEC vs TEC, Vasari and Advent. Throw in race modifiers if you want, but it's silly for a 4x to start everyone off at war and then work out alliances. The lore is wonderful, but it has zero bearing on the current state of AI relations. You're at war with your allies just the same as your enemies in a free for all.

Ummm...the diplomacy in most of the Total Wars reeked. In my opinion, that is. It mainly bought you some breathing room from time to time. Which is, I agree, much better than Sins, but that doesn't really say much, now is it?

And second, Total War is not a RTS, not in any shape or form. It's a TBS with RTS battles. That's entirely different.

You want to see an example of a RTS that done it exactly right? Seven Kingdoms 1 and Seven Kingdoms 2. Granted, they are old and wrinkly now, and their graphics could make your eyes bleed, but no RTS ever beat them from diplomacy stand point. Alliances, surrenders, spies, bribes, demands for attack, demands for defense (which surprisingly worked - the AI actually came to your defense! That never really happens in RTSs, at most they just say they're coming but won't budge. In 7K your ally's army was right next to you on the fight and requested), you could convince one AI to attack the other, you could even offer the AI to purchase its entire kingomd and annex his empire to yourself. And if you were large and strong enough, and had a lot of money, this actually worked!

Ahhh, sweet reminisces This really was an amazing game, mind you. Very much ahead of its time. Too bad almost no one played it.

just to put it nice and simple

LOCK TEAMS!!!

your allies will not give you annoying missions and wont stab you in the back

The battle portion of TW is a RTT. Probably the best example for RTT's.

Try using hangers and carriers to counter siege fleets. If you have defenses, and ample bomber/fighter support, you really don't have much to worry about.

But I agree with the points on diplomacy. Could be I just don't know what I am doing in that regard, but FFA games tend to come down to me vs everyone. Been playing teams because of it.

psychoak nailed it on the head.

I don't really think the mission system is, in itself, flawed though, it just needs to make a little more sense. I mean, right now you could be Team A, and Team B, who has a fleet large enough to wipe you off the map in 5 minutes will send a diplomacy request for you to go kill X structures of Team C. Team B won't actually help with this, but YOU HAVE TO DO IT.

Missions should be structured to make a lot more logical sense. I think changing what types of missions there are would improve the situation a lot. Here were a few that I think make a lot more sense.

1. Tribute. Request another empire give you resources. Usually a request made by a larger empire towards a smaller one.

2. Defensive request. Ask another empire to come to your aid at Planet X. Usually a request made by a smaller empire towards a larger one.

3. Offensive request. You declare a location and a time. That many minutes from now, you will attack that location and are requesting the aid of another empire in that assault.

Change missions to these three types. Let humans send out mission requests. And finally implement some of the reward/penalty elements psychoak suggested and the game's diplomacy would suddenly become a whole lot better.

the ai could have researched a tech that gets you a percetage of everything you spend.

I hope they make Diplomecy better in an update, it needs work, but other wise good game.

Yeah, I found diplomacy hateful, as even in a 7x1, within an hour, all ai's turned against me and mass jumped in against me all at once, 3 different maps.

A lot of requests don't make sense given the time. Destroy 13 of so and so's ships in 15 minutes. Yeah, that's great, but their empire is 20 minutes away, or they don't have that many ships and the game just started.

As for everyone starting hostile, I can kind of see that as that's how the lore is, but why are TEC hostile to TEC, why are Advent hostile to Vasari straight off? Those two could be allies.

Seriously? I don't seem to have much of a problem just leaving my planets with a few cobalts (TEC light frigates) and hangers to defend against siege frigates. Certainly if I had 3-4 capital ships I'd massacre the siege frigates.

What difficulty level was this on? Do you give your fleets specific targets or just let them target whatever? Generally speaking for me, the AI will jump in with some siege frigates and then jump right back out. I often counter-attack at that point, too, because the AI will often pull back to protect its turf.

I'm not trying to knock your experiences, I've only played 4 games myself (3 wins, 1 loss), but I'm curious as to how people have such different experiences with siege ships. In my first game, yeah, they hammered me, but after reading the tips for siege/pirates that's stickied they basically became a none-issue unless it was a concerted, full-on attack by the AI.

Nah, it'd rather see the diplomacy working right. I don't like the diplomacy system but would live with it if the mission was a bit more realistic in term of possibility to succeed because right now, it takes more time just to get to the ennemy before the timer runs out.

Apologies for replying more or less off topic above

To rectify that, I agree that the diplomacy needs to be expanded - especially needing the ability for humans to make requests for the AI. I'm generally surprised since so much else is right that the diplomacy section feels half-done.

Here's hoping that a patch improves that aspect significantly.

How about instead of getting missions -assigned- from the AI, that players are allowed to -pick- from a list of missions they can choose to complete, missions that undoubtedly set one empire against the other?

To prevent stupid steamrolling you could have a weighted system based on the number of planets empire have and the number of phase lines connecting them- have smaller empires unite and offer more lucrative rewards, while some larger empires won't even dean to deal with the player.

I've had some of these issues happen on my 10 FFA game, yeah call me nuts but it's kinda fun even with broken diplomacy. Mission queue (Maximum number of new missions) would be nice too since oh boy they like to "spam" with me new ones, almost everyone of them at the same time.

It's funny when say a green faction wants you to take out yellow ships. Said yellow ships attack your colony but so does the green -> they work together to take you out. Then they jump away like nothing was wrong with that picture . I need a miracle to go anywhere in my current game unless i start camping each wormhole with massive fleets (it sounds good but it doesn't work). Cant win by turtling but cant really go on offense either.

This game is awesome but it needs better diplo :/

The diplomacy system is rather broken. It is very costly to gain an ally and even more costly to maintain them in the end game. There is no ability to negotiate at all. The diplomacy is entirely give in to the demands of the AI or else. That is not diplomacy but racketeering.

The diplomacy will be going through some minor tweaks for the upcoming patch.

That's wonderfull maybe i can finish my epic-game then . Right now i'm in a tight spot, can't really do anything, well i could try rushing their planets with everything i have but it can backfire. My game had 9 AI - now it's "only" 5 but the remaining are somewhat powerfull, when they ally it's ... something bad . No matter how i look at the situation who ever is the last one to be agaisnt me it's going to be the war of the century. If i get there that is.

Alot of people have suggested that we should be able to start FFA games with 50% allegiance and cease fires in effect. i love that idea.

I always find it funny when another race offers me a trade treaty and then breaks it 2s after I accept their offer.

Two points that kind of tie in together
1) The computer doesn't cheat, it is just not intelligent in managing its resources and ends up with huge surpluses near the end of the game
2) The diplomacy system is reasonable all things considered and will probably get better with time. Diplomacy is THE hardest thing to code for an AI without being formulaic (give x to get y). Consider first it is an RTS and compare this games diplomacy to other recent titles (are you going to find better in C&C3, SupCom, COH, DawnofWar? to name the recent big names) To be fair though it also is a little 4x but think back to the release day diplomacy systems for GalCiv or Civ4, the comps were basically braindead and all but the simplest interactions were impossible.
It is clear that the devs were working hard to give the best combat AI possible and they more or less delivered, the rest will come in time.
As a side note, Is it too much to ask for people to not call the game broken just because they bump up against something that is kicking their ass a little when they have only played three games. It is a strategy game, so come up with a strategy to overcome it. I've played over 6 games thus far (TEC only for now) and am just begining to get all the stratigic ins and outs and that is only one third of a game

People are chirping in that good diplomacy is an unrealistic expectation in an RTS and I view this game more as a 4X game with an RTS engine rather than an RTS with 4X sensibilities. That said, having a solid diplomacy system is not a kooky request and suggestions to simply keep teams locked is to absolutely give up on the problem and turn away from an entire aspect of gameplay (and by that I mean the role of playing the diplomacy-based game of manipulation and subterfuge, which is often more satisfying than the frigate-spam approach to a win).