Bad Diplomacy = Flawed Game = Bad Value

While the diplomacy system isn't as robust as turn-based games, it's not impossible - and usually it's pretty easy to maintain at least a cease fire with 1-2 AIs once you get used to how it works.

The AI does gang up on the strongest player - which isn't always you, it can be other AI, that's a normal mechanic. In an FFA, everyone's trying to win themselves, so the strongest is the biggest threat and they try to curb it a bit. If they succeed, they break off their own alliances and start fighting among each other.

A lot of learning how to deal with diplomacy and AI comes from practice and knowing how it works. I play a lot of large FFAs and I've gotten pretty good at keeping 2 AIs off my back and allied.

In short, don't expect to know everything after a few sittings. Once you get the hang of it, it's very workable. The devs have said the diplomacy system will be getting improvements, also. Either way, the current system is far from bad enough that you could call the game rubbish because of it

Chris, you made pretty much the exact same post here: https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/304835 and here is what I said in the other thread:

"Chris that isn't true. Missions are chosen to be with 2 or 3 jumps of one of your planets and are always accomplishable at the time the mission was issued. You can ask AI allies to attack and defend planets but you have to earn it first. Just like teams of humans, AI's will team up with each other to take down whoever they perceive is too powerful (among other things) and sometimes that is another AI or AI team - they don't just go after the human. Teams against you is why its important to gain allies before getting too powerful. Ofcourse you can always lock the teams so they don't ally at all."

Now I'll add a few more comments.

-Everything Annatar said is correct and I agree with his subjective comments.
-The AI's do not ally when teams are locked (atleast not in version 1.03) and if they do please send me the replay because its a serious bug and I'll have it fixed immediately. It's possible this is caused by the save game reload problem which we have fixed in 1.04.
-Just because you can't see the AI's fighting and ganging up on each other that doesn't mean they aren't (try watching a replay).
-You can initiate requests (attack/defend/stop).
-We've consisantly said the diplomacy needs some reworking (but not for the reasons you mentionned) and it will be improved.
-It is VERY possible to defend against 2 or 3 AI players. I've seen people beat 8 AI players on Unfair...
-I think its unfair to suggest the game is an overall "bad value" and people shouldn't buy it because you aren't happy with a small portion of the game. There is a lot of really good stuff in Sins...

It sounds to me like you just need to learn the game a bit better and if you don't like the diplomacy, turn it off by locking teams until we release the revamped version. Hopefully, you'll have more fun without it and discover all the best parts of the game

Your post begins by stating an impossible situation :

« with teams locked », as you have declared ... there cannot be any form of diplomacy !

Diplomacy is only possible if teams are UNLOCKED in the game setup options.

If you want to be certain that the comps will not gang-up on you, you must define LOCKED teams before starting the game AND you must put a single A.I. per different « team » when you select your computer adversaries :

For example, if you are playing against 8 comps, you would have NINE locked teams (checking that to each pseudo-team # is associated only one player).

Then, with LOCKED teams, you would have NO diplomacy, and the comps would not usually gang-up on you.

That's why I find your post's situation very odd : « with teams locked », as you have stated in your OP, you should NOT have had any form of diplomacy going on !

One hypothesis to explain your odd situation is that you defined « teams locked » before starting the game, but the option was broken if you reloaded a save-game.

That's because there is a bug (fixed in the upcoming 1.04 patch) : when you load a saved game, the options are reset to default, where teams are unlocked ! (The present solution is to re-change those default options and re-accept your changes just before you're going to reload.)

In conclusion, if you don't want the comps to gang-up against you, follow my instructions : but then, your game will have NO diplomacy whatsoever ... which is not a great loss, because I somewhat agree with you that the A.I. missions are mostly annoying tasks.

An Ironclad dev has stated, a few weeks ago, that Diplomacy will receive a major overhaul for the game's first expansion. On the other hand, Stardock & Ironclad will continue to publish patches & updates, and Diplomacy will then probably be tweaked.

The very end of your OP, where you declare that the game is « rubbish » and that one should not buy it, is extremely unfair ... especially if you take into account what I have just explained to you. This game is very fun to play ... if you know what type of game setup to define, to suit your tastes.

Lock the teams, and keep them locked !

even with locked teams and no diplo, if you are the strongest player, you'll be facing attacks from multiple AIs, they'll just be shooting each other at the same time that they're shooting you

That said, trashing the game for a diplo system that is actually quite good already, but admittedly needs some tweaking, is utter idiocy on your part... honestly I sometimes wonder why the IC devs still read these forums at all.

Let me ask a question: a friend of mine played a 4 person game. We set the teams to locked. We put us on team 1, and the two opponents on teams 2 and 3. We played the game over two days (saved it once, and came back the next day to finish).

At some point the AI started asking us to do missions. I even remember the AI asking me to attack my friend! The question is, is it possible this is the bug that Blair is speaking of, and perhaps the mission requests only happened the second day, after we loaded the saved game? Should, in fact, the AI never have asked us to do missions since we set the locked teams setting?

I wish I could remember if the AI started asking us to do missions the first day. If if I had to guess, I'd say it didn't.

EDIT: actually, if I recall properly, we had to reload a save game twice, not just once. The first day we did a reload after 2 hours because my microphone died and I needed to reboot my PC to fix it.

Thanks in advance,

-HM

That's the bug Blair mentioned. Locked teams is part of the custom game options that don't properly load on their own, but there is a pre-1.04 fix if you're still playing it - just re-accept the options before you click Start on game load.

Hollow Man > Read my previous post. There is a bug when you load a save game.

If the comps start to offer missions, that means that the teams have unlocked.

When the teams are in a locked state, NO mision is offered and NO diplomatic action can be taken with the comps :

The options to do those actions then have grey buttons that do not work.

Patch 1.04 will soon fix that save-game reload issue.

Ok, thanks, it sure as heck baffled us when we started getting missions.

-HM

Yes as said above, on reload the settings are lost. You just have to go into the game optons screen, just hit accept as all the setting should show right, and hit play.

By the way, trashing SINS on the SINS FORUM is not going get you very far. How about some suggestions Chris?

Don't be a "T"

The thing I love most about Sins is that there is more than one game here. If you play on large maps you have time to expand and gather /really/ massive fleets and fight it out on a large scale with the A.I. or other players. Last night I played my first tiny little map, while at the same time trying to get the achivment where you have to use only capital ships. It was really intense with the enemy A.I. putting a Sova carrier with 10 cobalts on my home world before I got two caps out and an extra colony. I built my second capital ship durning the attack and the two combined where able to drive away the Sova, but only after a long drawn out fight. From there they chased it down and finished it off. The pirates played a huge role in this one because both I and the AI were dumping /all/ of our credits on them trying to get them to go against the enemy. In the end the pirates ended up saving my fleet just before his horde of cobalts destroyed my 4 or 5 battered capital ships and I was able to destroy his last capital ship (he'd made about 4 of them but never more than 1 at a time. His last one was a Kol battleship and it was probably going to destroy me if it hadn't been for the pirates) After his last battleship exploded and it was clear he didn't have a chance the A.I. player actually gave up! It was a fast, intense, and extremly brilliant game play experience. I just wish I could play online, I'm sure multiplayer games are always like that.

The diplo system is unplayable, just turn it off by locking teams. Yes, it drastically shortens the replayability lifespan of the game and reduces the depth of something that's already pretty shallow, but such is life. The game's a little less retarded on big maps, I suggest trying one or two of those with locked teams, maybe you can at least squeeze your money's worth out of it before setting it on a shelf and forgetting about it.

I still hold out faint hope that we may see a diplo overhaul and some drastic AI improvements in patches. Failing that I'm done with the Sins franchise and Ironclad generally.

I found that the diplomacy missions were not that bad. However, if things go sour for you, they will start to beat on you pretty bad. What you need to do is try and keep at least one allied with you on a small map, and maybe two on a big one. Do the missions they set, and none of the others. That will give you time to do other things, and keep some of the AI's appeased.

Also, I did notice that occasionaly after starting a game in 1.03, it will change the settings back to the default. I was wondering if that is a bug, or did i do something wrong?

It's a bug, fixed for 1.04, for now you can fix it by re-accepting the game options when you load.

Damn, I must be fooling myself that Sins is a good game. Thanks for setting me straight, Vin.

I'll contact my buddies that I was going to play with tonight and tell them to forget it.

That's a little harsh, don't you think, especially considering the critical and commercial success of GalCiv?

Sins is not a bad game- it's stable, it has had (and will continue to have) great postrelease support- it just isn't a great one. It will probably never reach the critical mass of a Starcraft but that's not a reason to give up on the company entirely. How many games you own are true classics? I buy at least 20 games a year and the number I'm still playing 6 months after I purchase them can be counted on 1 hand.

Also, we all need to support devs that don't include paralysing copy protection on their software, as well.

There's no connection between Ironclad and GalCiv outside the fact that Stardock (the developer of GC) happens to be publishing Ironclad's games. I wouldn't terminate my business relationship with Stardock over this, they do excellent work, but if the single player side of Sins (the diplo and the AI) don't receive sufficient attention then there's really no reason for me to continue buying Ironclad's products. I have no use for developers that neglect SP gamers.

No, you just have a different opinion than I do. Sometimes people disagree about what makes a game fun to play, shocking isn't it? Sounds like you're mostly playing MP anyway, which isn't even the side of the game I have a problem with (I don't play games like this MP).

The amusing thing is that a good number of MP folks complain about the opposite - that it's only the SP crowd that's getting attention, and not them.

Who's right? Neither.

Then both sides are unhappy, what do I care? All I care about is whether the SP game is fun to play. Right now, for me, it isn't. If that doesn't change, why would I give Ironclad money for a new product when they haven't succeeded in making this one fun?

 Vinraith, sounds like you need to smile once in a while

So.... go away? Why troll an obviously well regarded product with few problems and attempt to drive away customers that based upon that evidence generally won't agree with your view?

It's a successful and fun game, well written to boot. Don't like it? Doesn't fit your idea of a fun game? There's the door.

Alas, it's not about both sides being unhappy, it's about both sides making baseless accusations

Tell me you're planning to significantly improve the AI and overhaul the diplo system before you put out an expansion and I'll give you a great big one. What's more, I'll actually enjoy the game and probably buy the expansion. Sound good?

How can "I don't find the single player game fun" possible qualify as a baseless accusation? And I'm hardly alone in finding the AI and the diplo system flawed, some of the games biggest supporters readily admit that both need work.