What I find most maddening about an otherwise great game, is the difficulty in finding information about even the most basic gameplay mechanics.

Take diplomacy for example.  When I pull up the relationship screen and select an opponent, I get a list of 14 different things that explain their relationship with me.  However, I can't create a pact, because MY relationship with THEM is not good enough.  But I get absolutely zero feedback on why this is.  If there was something listed that showed zeroes or negatives, I might be able to puzzle out what to do.  For example my reasoning could be  "oh, this stat is negative, it has this name, so maybe I should look for a related unit/technology/ability that mentions that stat's name in its description and go from there".  But I get no information whatsoever, so I have no idea why my relationship with them is so low or what to do about it.

Another example is shield mitigation.  How do I tell which targets are a big enough threat to focus fire on and when I should simply let the damage get spread around without any good description regarding how shield mitigation works.  Even a mechanic as fundamental as how much damage I can expect to deal is obscured from me.

I am not convinced that the game is too complex, but it achieves the same effect by being too obscure about what the game mechanics actually are.

The fun factor is about my strategic decisions making the difference, when the game mechanics are hidden from me, I win or lose to either blind luck or trial and error, and unfortunately, it looks like it is going to take a LOT of trial and error to figure out what the rules are to this game.

Also, if anyone has gone through enough trial an error to reverse engineer how diplomatic relations work in sins, can you direct me to an online resource that explains it?  My searches came up with nothing.