The teams aren't locked, he mentioned getting missions from allies...

I also had this exact same problem in my most recent game. I failed to raise my "relationship" meter with another empire higher than 30% before I annoyed them in some way. And I also discovered that gifting resources didn't appear to do anything to help with that situation. It ended up frustrating me to the point where I had to quit that game and start another because I simply couldn't handle attacks from three different fronts plus pirates all at the same time. Any advice from veterans would be greatly appreciated.

The first part I agree only on the tweaking bit, but have you played the same game I have is the real question. With enough rapport the AI will aid you in fights and even follow you around systems, I am also pretty sure it might go to where you ping at. So there is balance, that and they give you friggin' resources for doing those quests. There are also researches to min-max those quests allowing you to skip the ones that do not favor your situation.



Don't chase them. Go hunt down LEVs or if you are chasing anticipate and hyper jump before they do thus when they land they are immediately being killed on sight. Use the researches to keep a friend, they'll stay with you all the way at the 30% marker I think. Failing that the 45% marker.

The missions don't require you to send your entire force, if you care to do it then send perhaps a cap ship alone with a small escort to hit and run the required things. Keep the majority of your fleet in your own base. The AI isn't going to be like the human with 3497398473 turrets pointing in all directions or mass hangar bays. Obviously if they're asking to kill civilian structures go after the extractor, ships then go after the LEVs/siege ships due to slowness and fragileness, and if they ask you go after tacticals then you just have to suck it in and kill .

That being said, the research option does help. Every race has one I think.

Yeah, the AI will help you out -- after you go on a bunch of "missions" for it and win its friendship. But if the missions hurt your ability to manage your empire by making you chase fleeing enemy ships hither and yon, thus putting a dent in your defensive abilities and taking your attention away from other areas of empire management, is it worth it?

Maybe, I dunno. I just think it should be give and take from the get-go. As it is now, it sounds more like catching and training a Pokemon to me.

I don't really want to come across as another 'me-too' noob.... but I'm probably going to!

When playing unlocked, the fact that the other factions start at a 0 allegiance seems wrong. It immediately makes them all your enemy instead of all starting at an even footing. The alliances are unlocked and so should be (IMHO) undetermined, thus start the allegiances at the 50% mark. That way you can maintain some and let other slide.

I'm fine with the AI always making demands (though the duration for achieving them could be lengthened), as Limz! says, you can ping them and have them aid you in fairly direct ways, plus you get to share info, etc.

At present it doesn't seem like gifting the AI materials does anything...? I've not had any missions that request resources, only the destruction of ships and tactical/logistical structures. It sounds like the AI does request these early on, but I suspect I'm doing something which is causing the trigger for combative missions to fire fairly early. Of course, the other use for gifting these resources is to help out an ally. But it would be much better if gifting them resulted in an increase in allegiance - 1%/100 is fine.

I've had resource missions and 'kill x' missions. Even when I successfully complete a bunch of these, at times getting my rep with the AI up past 40%, it only lasts for a short while. Pretty soon, the rep drops down to 0% again. There has to be an easier way...

Things like Culture and Trade should have a slow upward affect on your relationship with an empire. Kind of like how your culture spreads.

I've gotten empires up to 75% and enjoyed some very nice benefits of that relationship, like getting them to help defend my space. However, I was min-maxing toward civilian tech, and the missions to destroy stuff from other empires started straining our relationship, once it dropped to 40% things started to sour.

It can be powerful if you pull it off, but it's not maintainable, and it's really hard. It's way easier building a huge fleet of stuff and destroying everyone.

I'd like to play the trade / diplomatic route and build a few small-ish fleets to win a single player game, but it's way hard, even on normal.

On say, a 3 player, or 4 player map where one player is swiftly eliminated the diplomacy vaguely works (and may even be too easy). You pick a target, and blow it to pieces, one of the AIs will have given you missions to do so, and will soon be your ally. The problem comes on a larger map. Lets say you, and your ally player B, are fighting player C. Your relations with B are good, but you have no resources to spare. During the war, player C will suddenly decide you need to kill 15 resource buildings of player H, who is in another star system to which you have no access. He then decides you need to destroy ships from player I, then tactical structures from player D. Your alliance is now over, B allies with C, and attacks you as do players D through I, who all hate you.

A.I will be attacking with a massive fleet against one of your key planets then while are trying their best to kill you they give you a mission to go kill another player. I think that if everyone started with 50% relationship and a ceasefire then the diplomacy option could be better. Like the A.I. will only give you missions if you have a ceasefire (which to me makes more sense) and the only way the relationship drops below 50% is if you actually start to kill them instead of just not carrying out their missions. I also think that they need a screen where you can see what treaties people have with other players, so that you don't have to constantly remember who has an alliance with who.

The diplomacy is pretty shotty. I choose to forego the pleasantries and instead become xenophobic. If you arent my color and I can see you, assume I will be nuking your homeworlds in due time. The trick to fighting multiple A.I's is DEFENSE DEFENSE DEFENSE. Create as many defense fleets as you have fronts. Then fortify said front worlds as best you can. Choose one front to begin pushing on. Only push on THAT front. Once you capture a world push front forward. Stick to this formula and you should be golden. Also I should note that filling your hangar bays with vast amounts of fighters is the key to keeping your worlds. Bombers are only decent against med/heavy armor targets. The fighters however will SCORCH through siege armor like you wouldnt believe. They also have the added benefit of defending your cannons from bombers. So thats my advise to you. And if your TEC build vast amounts of trade ports. Not just one per system. Find yourself a nice desert world and go ass crazy on the things. That being said, you should build a trade port in every system. It should also be sitting smack dab in the middle of a retarded amount of cannon emplacements. You want this not for the money, but for the AI taunt factor. They will almost always bee line for your trade station..especially pirates.

After a three day long huge map battle where I put aside my normal shoot them all and let what ever disembodied astral power sort them out and started being friendly. Well I can tell you that it did not go well when my allies became allies of my enemies and while they were 'defending' my planets my enemies just flew right by them and my 'allies' sat about having tea going good show old boy good show. So yeah I would suggest just going to shoot first and then shoot them again when their down.

I agree that the AI diplomacy is frustrating as hell, especially since once an AI decides it's time for you to die, there's pretty much nothing that can salvage the situation. You can't not defend yourself against his attacks, but you lose friendship with him for doing so. Also, I seem to constantly run into a situation where I fail a mission with just one target left and only a few more seconds needed. Then the AI decides my 'failure' is intolerable and declares war on me after I sacrificed half my fleet to obliterate a vast enemy force just to get to the 5 civic structures my 'ally' wanted dead. Why isn't he thrilled that I crippled the enemy's ability to go on the offensive in an entire sector of the system? On top of that, why does it seem that a former ally will ALWAYS target me specifically after I lose an alliance with them? It seems like it's almost better not to every ally with the AI, because if you lose them they all gang up on you.

I have, however, had limited success with the AI recently, and here's how:
1: get your improved diplomacy research ASAP. Every race has some version of this, and it makes allies much, much easier to earn and keep. With the research fully upgraded, one mission is usually enough to push an AI into the range where they'll be willing to consider a cease fire.
2: 'kill x ships' missions seem to count everything as ships, so you can use the same strategy you would normally use to deal with fleeing fleets: stay in the grav well and smash all their platforms.
3: don't be afraid to betray your allies. Sometimes it's easier to gain a new one than to keep an old one, and a cease-fire allows you to maneuver into position to gank their capitol right quick when the betrayal happens. This works best with cease-fires rather than peace treaties, but it can work well either way. The caveat here is that you must be sure you can cripple your former ally rapidly (destroy their capitol and otherwise wreak havoc on their economy) while maintaining the allegiance of your new ally. culture and reconnaissance are critical here, as is a general 'feel' for fleet strengths and whatnot.
4: Never, EVER trust an AI. They are useful as allies only in that they are not, at the moment, trying to kill you. They may respond to pings if they have forces available, and they may even notice when you're in trouble and come to help out, (it's happened to me twice) but in the long run blue doesn't give a rat's ass if pink is bombing your capital to the ground. He'll still happily toss away your 3-hour alliance you if you don't send your fleets to the opposite end of the star system to hunt down those 15 orange ships, even though he's easily trouncing orange without your help.