But here's the thing, I DON'T play single player.

It bored me once I found that I could beat Unfair quite easily, Cruel hurt too much and got too insane, and Vicious was well out of my skill range.

I'm a support team player, I don't like single player.

Maybe now I can support my teammates with Diplomacy, IDK.

Good luck Iron/Dock.

The send Envoy is a good mission type.

Another mission type I would like to see is Deploy Star Base.

Agreed.

Yeah that is a good suggestion Zombies, and the Send Envoy improvement is welcome as well.

While I don't disagree with the inclusion of missions, there have been many problems with the design up to this version.  My basic issue with them is that the player profits from them while the AI does not.  As the player, my acts in the game, my destruction of structures or ships, will often complete some AIs mission and I will get a boost not available to the AI.  Also, as the player I can propose a truce despite the AI's failure to establish a high relationship level with me, so the player need not offer missions to the AI for diplomatic purposes.  This means that the mission system heavily favours the player.

Also, I have difficulties with the way the missions are initiated.  I would be happier if the default position was that you rejected the mission.  If within the time allotted you choose to accept the mission, then you could get a relations boost, with a further boost for completion or a huge loss for failure.  As it is the rejection of a mission seems to involve very little cost and failure is not that important, however my main difficulty is the passive manner in which you can ignore the missions screen and still profit from it.

The AI should get some sort of bonus in AI-AI relations for the absence of missions, a bonus that would be unavailable to the player.  Then you could scale that with hard/cruel/vicious etc so that the AI gets hard/cruel/vicious diplomatic advantages.  Two vicious AIs fighting each other constantly are no more a problem for a player than two normal AIs fighting each other constantly.

While I agree with the emphasis placed by Destraex on alliances, I just don't experience the game in the same way.  What seems far more likely is that failure to complete a mission might deprive the player of a desired pact temporarily, rather than jeopardise an entire alliance.  Far too much of the available 'range' of diplomatic relationships is devoted to pacts and far too little to peace/war, the fundamental and by far the most important relationship.  I'm not opposed to allies making demands that seem to the player to divert from a 'main effort.'  I presume that players don't play single player games with two or more allied victors? 

Would it be asking for too much to require the AI to achieve appropriate levels of influence with the player for a truce to be possible?  That would mean, to get to a truce, the player might have to design missions which the AI decides it wants to achieve.  Of course, if you offer a mission against a faction you would lose influence with them.

However, whatever is done with missions (and pacts), the three basic elements of strategy have to be strong in diplomacy.  The AI has to desire territory proximate to its existing territory, so that the owners of that territory find it difficult to build relations.  The AI has to be prepared to cooperate with other factions against the leading military and economic factions.  Finally, the Diplomatic Victory needs to take account of the current state of the game, rather than the previous states of the game.  As I've stated before, I would prefer this to be changed entirely, to an Artifact Victory, it makes much more sense.  If you collect all the Ancient Alien Technologies in the game you can combine them into a super-technology, the Dimensional Cascades, that means certain victory.  That would both shorten the game and be far less sudden and arbitrary.  

One little thing I notice is that often when the game starts, all the AIs seem to randomly yet collectively decide they don't like 1 empire, Now, sometimes I abide by this "council's" decisions and attack the pariah to take their planets and get mission rewards, or sometimes I ally with them, depending on my position and goals.

However, I like the idea of having them decide who they like and don't like based on their position, as a human might, as Des suggested (e.g. try to have 1 ally next to them and someone else close that they can easily attack), and to a lesser extent their faction. Different alliance and positioning strategies could be part the AI "personality" types (aggressor/researcher/etc).  The ability to spot defensible choke-points and high-value planets might also play into their decisions on who to attack ("our alliance has been fun but I want that terran world as the gateway to my empire"). 

Ideally, this should not always result in a 2 v 2 v 2... match up, but hopefully would get a little chaotic with empires getting squeezed sometimes, depending on the relationship web and who does their diplomatic research.  This might add some urgency to get in the diplomatic game early so eventually, everyone doesn't turn against you (unless you want to take them all on, in which case, pour your money into weapons and ships).

I also like the idea of AI's teaming up to take down the big dog and also perhaps more powerful empires making demands of the smaller ones (if they aren't already at war).

This needs to happen! Not only does it make more sense, but it allows players who WANT to ignore the mission screen do so. My main complaint is that the AI will spam missions even if I've already maxed out the mission bonus and are allied with them or if I've already been fighting a bloody war with them for a while and have no intention on listening to anything they say. On large games I have to spend a ridiculous amount of time just rejecting missions after I have my diplomatic position worked out. Granted the AI needs to continue to offer missions in case your Diplomatic inclinations change, but choosing to accept missions is a much more convenient and less time consuming system.

Yeah, well two vicious AI ganging up on the player is also a huge difficulty spike. I'm not saying your point isn't valid, but I don't want to go back to the pre-Diplomacy system where the AI were more likely to gang up on the player than anything else if not on locked teams.

Err, are you saying you want failing a single mission to result in an alliance being terminated? That certainly doesn't seem reasonable.

completely agree.  These are great ideas imo. 

I'd like to see a diplomatic level akin to aggressive neutrality. Will not fire unless fired upon, in own territory, or someone elses.

Darvroth

In other words, a cease fire, which is nullified if fired upon?

Isn't that already an option?

The difference would be the engagement would be limited to that gravity well and not universally applied, which is different from the current model which is more shoot anything in range that is not friendly.

Darvroth

That would be great. You could actually tell AI where to build SB. There could also be missions to upgrade SB (hull, weapons, Strike craft, Special abilities). Since I don't think that upgrading SB in gravity well of ally will be high priority of AI.

If this comes available there needs to be somewhere in code that AI builds SB where ally defenses or fleet are.

Even better it would be while settings a mission to build SB If you could set a spot where AI builds SB. Sort of same way as you can set a point for newly built ships to assemble.   

Now we just need a way to mod offerable missions, that would be some epic win, Iron/dock.

(I know, unrealistic)

Mission ideas,

Deploy Starbase

Upgrade Starbase (Would have to be linked to the deploy or to wherever there are starbases, maybe you have to select a starbase)

Deploy Mines (limit this to Vasari and Advent? Or scrap it altogether.)

Fortify (Probably better than the above ability, just designate a planet that could be fortified)

Super Weaponify (if a player has a superweapon, make it a mission that would designate a target that would need to be hit with that player's super weapon)

Also,

If possible, make the mission select screen more user-friendly, for example, make the select mission type button into a drop-down menu in order to improve ease of use.

The AI will base these decisions on how much it likes you (i.e., its relationship level with you) and if there's a valid target in range (aka - there's another player that's close to you that it wants to get smacked down). Since there's still quite a bit of variable data in here we've adjusted the time limit for missions higher too.  

This is actually a current sore spot that we're evaluating. The AI bases its alliances based on economy, with some relationship info tossed into the formula. If it thinks it can fight effectively on its own, it will tend to do that. Short of re-writing the entire system - which is far outside of scope - we're seeing what we might be able to do easily to make AI players ally up a bit more.

Hmm...probably not going to see much help on that front with these changes, sorry.

Without going into too much detail, Treaties (like Cease Fires) and Pacts now require both players to meet the minimum indicated relationship level. The AI also now prospers (or not) based on military and diplomatic actions (which now take many more factors into account) as well.