Like the game, some Diplomacy comments

Hi folks,

First, thanks to the devs for making a great game. At first I didn't like it, but after playing it a while it started growing on me. It is a dynamic game in single player, more dynamic than many games I have played. By this I mean the AI does not seem to get "stuck" that easily, although I'm sure with time there are human exploits that can be used against it.

Now, I should probably play the game more than a few days (~ten games) before drawing any firm conclusions, but I do have some comments immediately about the diplomacy.

In strategy games where the macro game is "Risk-like", I enjoy the intrigue of making alliances, breaking them, and back stabbing people when they are not expecting it. However, the diplomacy in this game is strange. It is almost completely centered around the mission system, which is one-sided (as another poster pointed out). It would be nice to assign missions to allied players. I can't figure out how to get the AI ping to work.

Given enough AI players (say 5), eventually everyone in the game gets mad at me. Well, they start mad, and I do some missions and they sometimes are willing to ally, but eventually the missions are too hard and they all get mad again (0%).

I even tried starting with one player already allied with me, (teams unlocked). Eventually he got tired of me and broke our treaty.

I appreciate the good AI that makes "allied" enemy players coordinate intelligently against me, but my appreciation of this is somewhat tempered by the fact most of the time AI players eventually gang up on me, often at the same time.

Am I the only one with this opinion? Of course this is not an issue multiplayer, but I rather enjoy games like this single player and it would be great if I could play a game reasonably without having to lock the teams from the get-go to make things balanced. The last 6 player game I tried ended up being a 5v1.

I have a little (somewhat unrelated) suggetion about the missions: Maybe if you partially satisfy the mission goals, perhaps reduce the diplomatic penalty? Several times I killed 14 of 15 ships or destroyed 5 of 6 civilian buildings only to have time run out and receive the entire penalty.

Thanks for reading!

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I hate to do this on this forum and I will completely understand if the moderator(s) delete this response but I'm going to say this anyway. If you are really looking for a game that is heavy into diplomacy (and is fairly balanced at doing that) check out Europa Universalis III. It is set between the late 15th century up thru the early 19th century and is big on the strategy from diplomacy to economics to military.

Just a thought if you are really looking for a diplomacy oriented game.

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The diplomacy in EUIII is a lot less predictable and more random seeming than in Sins. In fact the Sins diplomacy model, while certainly new and different from other games may be a bit too predictable. You know that you are always going to get a cease fire at 50% happiness, it will be broken if they fall to 25%, and you can get a peace treaty at 90%.

I do agree that the all-or-nothing aspect of the missions can be a bit frustrating at times. Especially the "destroy tactical structures" missions, sometimes you just cant find the needed number of tactical structures in the required 15 minutes you get. I do like how allies give you longer times to get missions done. Perhaps a way to mitigate this would be to allow players to extend mission times by 15 seconds or so for every a bribe of 100 resources sent to the AI with the expiring mission.

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