I didn´t buy Entrenchment and probably never will but my friend did.
I really enjoyed playing Sins in the first place but there was one thing that drove me almost insane. In FFA Games the AI is cheating like hell. They dont have unlimited resources, they dont build ships faster, they don´t have harder hitting weapons. So why am I complaining? It´s the diplomacy system.
As a player I have to spend a load of resources and have to fullfill almost impossible missions just to accomplish a fragile cease fire. The AI Players on the other hand can sign a full Alliance against me (of course) just in a matter of seconds.
At my friend I gave Entrenchment a quick try on the balance of power map (FFA). And guess what, the AI instantly teamed up and attacked me with combined forces.
I had enough of Entrenchment without building a single Starbase.
Why can the AI still completly bypass the diplomacy system to forge alliances against the player? In simple words: that sucks really really hard.
One time in a vanilla game with 10 Players I was simultanously attacked by 5 AI Players at once. I almost cryed a river...
With Entrenchment I had hope because of the "reworked AI" that this diplomacy cheating was gone but its till there. So no entrenchment for me.
Diplomacy is getting a major overhaul in the next Expansion. No worries.
Lock Teams. Problem solved.
It's too bad you need to disable an aspect of the game just to make it playable, but whatever, since diplomacy isn't much fun anyways, it's not a big deal.
If you don't team up with the AI, it will team up on you, unless you lock teams of course.
How and why it does it's alliances however needs a desperate overhaul.
It's really easy to have diplomacy work in your favor. But, you actually have to be willing to learn how to play with it, rather than coming on the forums and complaining about how much it cheats.
I don't know how you play, but I've never had a problem securing an alliance with at least one player on any map with at least 4 players. Maybe make sure you're playing with even number of players so that your more likely to find someone to team up with?
This is very true, even with the unfair AI. One thing you can do is do enough missions to get peace treaties with all the AI as you encounter them, and then do just enugh to keep said treaties. doing the resorse missions by them selfs is usely enough to keep your treaties, (at about 50% rep or so, as they wont brake them till its lower than 15%). If your rep falls and they brake your treaties, they will ask for resorses first. Doing this early game will free up alot of resorses and ships to build your own empire wile they fight it out. Keeping your fleet level low will also help keep your income high wich means you can build up planets and reserch alot more than the others while they are busy fighting each other.
Ah so funny, you think if Player A decides to attack Player B, and Player C decides to attack Player B then clearly Player A and C conspired together to attack Player B, right? I love this kind of reasoning! Only humans react this way, I had been in FFA games with all players where one player complained of this exact thing and quit. But once I viewed the replay I saw no chatter between the two players, it was merely a coincidence.
Also the AI diplomacy is a joke, I find it impossible not to have all the AIs in non agression with me.
There seems to be a little more than meets the eye when it comes to AI-Player relations. I'm currently (Almost done) playing a Huge random map (Multi) against 9 Unfairs, and never once secured an alliance or even a trade partnership with them. The AI seems to react very negatively to aggressive expansion, in the very beginning, all the AI are FFA and will actively blow eachother up, usually however, because we know optimal unit/upgrade combonations, the player takes an empire advantage over the AI. The AI see the human player as a bigger threat, and gang up. What worked for me, is first of all SCOUT. Scout as much as you can as fast as you can, get an idea what the AI is doing. After that, locate your Nearest AI, and try with all your might to take him out as quickly as possible. Sometimes victory hinges on securing the extra resources of that second Terran world. After you feel you've secured enough, bunker down and keep aggression minimal. Turtle up flanks to your Empire. Optimally, you would have just expanded towards the enemy you sought to destroy, making the "rear" of your empire very close to your Capital (at least starting) capital planet. I notice expanding uniformally (IE expanding in more than 1 direction) seems to really piss the AI off, every time I've attempted to secure neutral worlds on both sides of my empire the AI has come down on me with the fury of Thor himself.
The AI assesses threats very differently as well, which can be used to your advantage if you learn what it percieves as threats. Defenses for example, have virtually no impact on a Human player, who will probably go around them or exploit a weakness in a defensive formation. The AI however, assesses the entire planets defenses at once, you could place all your defenses at the ass end of the planet away from any Phase lane and the AI will still avoid that planet with everything but the largest of fleets. Also, unlike most RTS, the AI at least has to Simulate gathering intelligence before it will attack. This is particularly useful on multistar maps. Research as quickly as possible, wormhole or long distance phase jumps, and get to a different star system. Then position Light carriers at the star or wormhole you used to stop enemy scouting parties from locating your planets.
Another point of interest is AI relationships are dynamic as well. A few times I've seen 2 AI allied fleets attacking another AI's planet together, only to have them begin shooting eachother once the colony frigates arrived. If you're patient and are turtled up, eventually the AI will attempt to attack eachother. Even in desperation sometimes, as I lead 2 different fleets on simultaneous strikes on 2 empires, a former ally began attacking a very weak ally to take over their planet.
Not always; I've completed missions for every AI in the past only to have them all team up on me anyways. For me, this was a dealbreaker and I've rarely played unlocked teams since. As far as missions are concerned I'm damned if I do, and damned if I don't.
How about when they both attack the same system at the same time and clearly have a peace treaty?
Anyways, I think some map layouts just cause the AI to be more aggressive, and my experience is probably the extreme case, but I really felt like there was no way to stop all the AI's from attacking me at the start of the game. The solution if you don't like it is locked teams, and that's just how I play it these days. Here's to hoping for the next expansion to fix these concerns.
Noob
Please dont get me wrong, I have no problem if the AI is teaming up on me. The problem I got is that the AI is bypassing the whole diplomacy system and can form alliances in a matter of seconds.
Why don´t give the AI Players missions to each other to increase their standing and form treaties on that system like the players does?
And waiting again 6 months and spending $10 (or even $20 if I count entrenchment in) just to finish rthe diplomacy system that should have been working in the first place is just... meh
And Sins is advertised at a 4X Game and a 4X Game without Diplomacy is in my eyes no fun at all. Playing with locked teams is not a real option for me.
Oh boy, Diplomacy is a fun thing to play with actually, you can have quite the proxy war going on. The ingredients for a proxy war is... (This will require you to be a good economist.)
Get a bot to give you atleast a cease fire.
Fund him beyond what he asks for.
Order him to attack an enemy.
I pull this on one of my friends once, and the bot reigned down on him faster than lightning on crack. (and yes he was pissed at me.)
The solution is the "locked teams" option, which is what I figured out after my first game. If you say that's not an option for you, then you are simply screaming just to hear yourself scream.
I always wondered if giving extra did anything. Nice proxy tip!
When I couldn't find a MP going during the roll out of Entrenchment, I played some comp stomps and decided to work the diplomacy side. I found it very easy to get at least one to two AI's on my side. Sometimes, I even got it so I had the unfair advantage. I personally think you don't know how to use the system. Those first few "give me money" missions are so easy. The next missions are equally laughable , "go kill 5 ships for me." Go kill a few ships, and now you have a cease fire. The next one might be to kill some structures, you do that and you have a peace treaty. It's not hard, and you have 30minutes to do it. Seriously, try accomplishing the missions, and you'll be fine. Even if it means you have to lose 10 ships to kill the 5, it's worth it, because you may have lost the battle, but you just won the war.
We're talking about AI players, what does chatter between AI's have to do with anything? Players ganging up on one person in multiplayer is unrelated to this topic.
5 AI players attacking you, at the same time, is not likely to be an unfortunate coincidence, and is obvious when none of their ships fire on eachother.
lock teams. period.
the asymmetry of the diplomacy system in Sins makes it basically unplayable. AI's are just constantly extorting you for resources or military favors and will punish you with Betrayal if you don't do what they ask you. without locked teams its fairly likely for your ally to decide that actually the guy who just nuked 2 of his colonies is a better friend than you are because he succesfully destroyed 5 civilian structures of some other players. it makes no sense. its crap. utter crap. turn it off because its anti-fun.
In diplomacy, once you have signed a peace treaty with an AI, I believe the only way for that to be broken is if you fire on one of their ships or structures. More expierienced player, please correct me if I'm wrong, but this what I've seen.
It's a good think I care about nothing but conquest in this game haha.
From the matter of perception of the victim there would be no difference if they were being attacked by AI or players.
If you are at a planet belonging to player A and a player B arrives also, who will you be attacking first? Keep in mind that arriving at planet that belongs to Player A means you intended to attack Player A.
Also on topic, you cannot expect the AI to use the diplomacy system as well as a person, simply because they are not as smart as a person. So, if there is a way for AI to circumnavigate the diplomacy system it's probably by design in order to make it more challenging.
Also Human players can form alliances in seconds with other humans bypassing the entire diplomacy system as well. I guess AI's should complain about this?
Can use research for tune down punishment and raise the reward... by example, the TEC can research "Skilled Diplomats"... once researched, reward will allow 15% more hapiness and failure -10% unhapiness...
For the advent, research "Induced Leniency"... 30% more time for the quest, -15% unhapiness in case of failure...
So, Research can have some influence on your diplomacy too...
With those techs you can ignore all but hte give X resource missions and be friends with everyone!
Lock teams, forget about the bad mission system for now. If you don't make nice with an AI early on, they will all team up against you. Most 4 players FFAs turn into 2v2s with teams unlocked, so just keep it locked if you want a FFA with AIs. It's a shame since each faction has a diplomacy based research that goes completely unused 99% of the time, but it's kind of hard for a RTS to have a strong diplomacy aspect anyhow.
This is hopefully getting an overhaul in one of the upcoming expansions, since it's useless as is.
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