I was running a quick 4'player' FFA (me and 3 easy AIs) to flip through the new stuff and see what presents everyone got from space-santa. 2Player Alliance Victory, no Pirates (I have heard the stories, not a good learning environment), everything else was normal.

[ Me(advent)/advent/vasari/TEC ]

I naturally hooked up with the Advent lady (and we where on the same half of the map, yay!), even though her first move was to all-out pound the crap out of me...I was busy reading stuff.  Getting a meaningful diplomacy score is kinda hard mid-combat, you really have to work for it.

...more stuff (and explotions)...

Later in the game I was expending quite a bit of effort to keeping her on my side. The map was tiny (she had four planets), so I did have limeted envoy-lovin' going on, but even with the +3 "love me bonus" from research, my bank account flowing to her and doing her bidding lest she leave me (and take all my stuff in the process), the game ended with us winning and me feeling kinda...used, heh.

Where are our "give me money or I will hate you forever" missions? hehe

I am going to try a larger map tomorrow, but I wanted to get people's takes on keeping several aliances alive on a medium map, while still defending and attacking.

OH, one more observation to add...get two of the same race sharing pacts and DAYUM!!!! The Advent SC-pact and laser pact [plus the carrier-cap's already cruel abilities]...Send a carrier group into a star-system and it will lead to an anema-enima that one would not soon forget!...can't wait until I get to try it...