yes

I think at least 1 pact takes more then 18 relationship.

The pacts overall are less useful before in multiplayer, yet are more balanced.  Now they seem more like slightly more difficult upgrades that take longer, that have less overall effect on the victory of your fleet.  considering how tight these border battles can be on resources, the extra 2 civ labs are most reliably used by TEC.  Advent requires more logistics slots then any race to be effective at both economics and warfare, and therefore they do not gain nearly the benefit that Vasari and Tec do. 

I find that as advent in a not eco spot, any investment in anything other then ships on the front lines starts to lead me down the road of defeat.  The other races might enjoy pacts, but honestly I have rarely if ever had need of advent pacts before the patch, and after the patch.  In multiplayer the pacts are irrelevant unless you can force a stalemate(or get fed) long enough to switch modes from military to economy without sacrificing any tactical advantage.  It depends upon the skill gap between the two players, if they are close in skill they will be hard pressed and therefore diplomacy is the farthest thing from their minds as far as effective additions to their fleet.  Now if envoys had some more interesting abilities that could be used in combat to say, prep a gravity well for attack, that would be something. 

Using an envoy with an ability like "deceive" that would increase planetary damage by 10% for the planet affected by that envoy would probably make the diplomacy tree more viable. No direct attack abilities, but something similar that would be the resulting affect of some sort of successful deceit that would warrant diplomatic envoys to be used in a sort of offensive manner yet still be peaceful enough to warrant a low priority on the "kill ship" list.  Its a fine line to walk, but I trust the dev team to come up with something excellent. 

After all, diplomacy isn't always about PEACE.  Case and point being diplomacy between japan and the US before the start of the war in the pacific.

 As it stands I feel that diplomacy still needs work to feel complete.

The other problem is that it takes longer to get the pacts now because relationship needs to increase from both sides and it starts out at zero and not 10.

Ah.  I thought the last patch set it to zero for both locked and unlocked.  Guess I haven't paid much attention to the diplomatic aspects in locked team games since the patch.  I do think that it's an improvement for unlocked because it decreases the chance of getting backstabbed since it's now an investment for both sides.