Quoting Magnnus, reply 14
Quoting wbino, reply 13Unless I'm wrong the whole expansion is pointless once you get down to the last two remaining teams. (1x1)
Why should it have to get down to 1x1? Why not stay with your ally and make it 2x1 instead of betraying him? If you really feel the need to fight without an ally then thats just another sign that diplomacy isn't working.
I've always enjoyed large 1x1 games. So diplomacy is pointless in those. And 2x1 really? Is that fair or enjoyable?
I don't think you're understanding. I didn't mean that you should start a game locked into a 2x1 team, I meant that during the course of the game you should work your way through the diplomacy system to the goal of gaining the upper hand by having a larger alliance than the opposing team, which I see as being very fun. This would be for an unlocked game (which is the only time of game that employs diplomacy anyway) with anywhere from 3 - 8 players. Unfortunately, so far the diplomacy expansion has failed to deliver this type of gameplay, which employs alliances, trades, gaining the favor of select empires, and eventually forming a large enough and strong enough alliance to hopefully ensure victory.
If you're only interested in 1x1 games then you really don't have any reason to buy the diplomacy expansion, and you shouldn't expect to get anything out of it; I don't mean that in a mean way, its just not your style of play and this expansion isn't for that style of play. However, if the expansion succeeds (which so far it isn't) then you might find a fun new style of play.
Currently there actually isn't even such thing as an alliance, there is "peace", which is not the same as military cooperation. An alliance should be a bond that can be shared mutually between multiple empires for the goal of forming a single combined force. By mutually shared I mean that every member of the alliance should be in an alliance with every other member; if you want to add a member it should require the vote of the other alliance members. The ai should also understand this and try to form their own alliances either with you included or with other groups; currently the ai don't seem to understand the concept of working together, at least without a human telling them to.
There should also be trading. Something as simple as x credits for y crystals and z metal would be a nice start; this would be a way to form relationships without the current simplistic method of bribing, which isn't much of a mutual relationship anyway. That is only the simplest form of trading though. Players (both human and ai) should be able to trade ships, planets, research cooperation to boost research (either one way or both ways), logistics (one way, as in one party loosing logistics while the other gains), and tribune (a continual flow of a resource). Any combination of these should be able to be traded for any other combination of these.
To the people saying races shouldn't be able to use the ships or planets of another race: why not trade the crew with them? Maybe the humans can't control a vasari ship, but the vasari working for the humans can. As for planets, the other races logistics could be transfered while shipyards could be unusable to the receiving race (for obvious reasons), but they could be disassembled and replaced. Why shouldn't the receiving race be able to have another races buildings and ships so long as members of that other race come with the trade to man them; nothing special would even need to be done about it, just change the color and hand it over. I understand not wanting to give the receiving race shipyards or other constructors but all you have to do to remedy that is make them unusable. One race controlling owning the assets of another race would add another layer of strategy and depth to the game; in starcraft there is a unit that can permanently mind control units from any other race, and if you mind control a constructor from another race you can even start a base of that race under your control with all of their unique units under your control. If you think thats unbalanced remember that its not limited to one player or another; if you think that will give someone the advantage then get on working towards that advantage yourself. Whole strategies could even be formed around one empire controlling ships from multiple races, which is a good thing.
Of course these are only the ramblings of a dreamer *sigh*. So far all the dev team have worked on are a few bonuses to an empire in the form of pacts and time is drawing to a close. I personally feel ripped off; I was expecting some depth out of this expansion but all I get are a few bonuses, 10% to beams... woo hoo.... The pirate missions are nice but not 10$ worth of nice.
