Diplomacy

I think its just a percentage. It also depends on your status with the AI I find. If your status is close you'll strike a better deal then if your at wary.

Yeah it is a percentage.. It depends on your morality of your race and how the Aliens are. Altarians for example being Pure Good, if you happen to dip down to below 50 (look at your stats, click on social to view your morality rate) they will not trade a thing.

Most of the time the Aliens will not give up weapons or a good trade bonus tech no matter how good diplomacy you have.

There are some good players at NeoTech Gaming Network http://www.neotechgaming.com check there for some other tips.

I do not know if anyone has bothered to figure out the percentage. The greater your diplo bonus is the easier and better trades you will get. Also, the level of the AI affects your trades as well. The higher the AI is the worse your trade will be.

For instance a trade with an AI set to normal may net you 50BC for 20 months. A Trade with that same AI set to Incredible (MASO) will net you 2 BC for 2 months.

Note: when playing maso it is better to trade Tech for Tech than Tech for cash.

Great tips.. I play at normal, tried a few games higher level but have not figured out how to win. It makes sense what your saying. Thanks.

That's a very specific case - Incredible AIs are set to refuse to give you significant quantities of money for anything.

For every trade type, AIs have a different rating for how much they value their own stuff more than yours. For example, they will value their own constructor ships and colony ships incredibly highly and refuse to trade them away, but that doesn't mean they want to buy yours.

At lower difficulty levels, an interesting experiment is to offer to trade cash for cash and see how much you can ask for before you lose the green 'deal will be accepted' text. Is it still possible for high diplomacy players to get easy AIs to give away free money this way?

Matthew Downie Good question I had one almost the same as yours. You obviously have more experience with playing then I do. Mine was not as specific.

I take it that each AI has something hardcoded in them for these trades etc? Or is this relative to the game level only?

The precise workings of the AI are a big mystery. Each one is supposed to work in an entirely different way, thanks to the magic of object-oriented code. Although these differences aren't very noticeable.
I think the only difficulty-level diplomacy changes are that majors get higher diplomacy at some levels, and that Incredible AIs don't like to give away money. (Note that newly spawned minors in Maso games are willing to give away money.)
Good things to buy are:
Techs, particularly those that can be traded on to other AIs.
Trade goods, especially diplomatic translators, (building them yourself is better still...)
Freighters in convenient places
Wars - pay powerful AIs to attack their trading partners
Combat transports and warships, especially from someone you're about to attack
Starbases on resources (in the late game).

Just to throw in another tactic that I like although it is a bit cheesy.

If a minor shows up mid to late game I will suround it with frieghters to prevent the Major AI from attacking it. They I will pick planet I have that is furthest away from that AI and build frieghters and setup all my trade routes to that minor AI. Then I go to the diplomancy screen and do a trade embargo on all remaining AI.

Initially I would have to adjust my spending slider because my income will drop but the effect is temporary because you have new trade routes that will soon be generating cash.

This typically hurts the AI more than me, specially if they have a large military fleet and no cash to maintain it.

Matthew Downie, cool tactics never heard of those.. Thanks I will give it a go with some of those.

NewfyScotian, it is only maybe slightly cheesy.. Hey if it works why not when a certain game is not going quite your way. I normally avoid cheesy things, but I am not able to resist doing one myself. I mentioned it before, wait for a minor to steal techs from some major race. They indicate they want planets. I look for a 14 pay for the PQ improvements. 80% of the time they will take this in trade for all the techs they have. To ensure the trade I usually make two worlds using only the orange colored planets. Anything else and they turn it down for some oddball reason. Now mine is cheesy! LOL

I have a more cheesy thing for you about planet: give/ exhange to the AI planet which hasn't lots of influence, in a sector where you have lots of influence (without the help of starbase). normally, the planet you have given will soon revolt and go back to your empire And you can give to another AI to improve relation or get important tech.

That is so totally different from the type of tactics I would use... I would have thought the AIs could easily make plenty of money from trading with each other. My main concern is making sure I have a reliable income. As long as I have money coming in, I can buy and bribe my way out of any problems. So I do whatever I can to encourage AIs to trade with me, such as colonising as many worlds as possible in order to attract freighters, giving away trade route technologies, and getting AIs to go to war with each other in order to break up their mutual trade.

I don't see anything dishonest about trading PQ14 worlds to minors. Unless you're low on money, PQ14s are very useful, with a bit of development. A source of influence, ship building, and technological research. The only issue is why AIs with planet quality bonuses don't bother colonising them themselves.

I have had the AI colonizing PQ 14 and even a PQ13 in some of my games. The I only knew because I have a colony ship headed to them for my own use. It was late games and I was culturally dominating them.

In itself it isn't dishonest to trade it to minors or majors. What is dishonest is to trade it, knowing that it will flip back to you due to cultural influence. Your were supposed to give permanently the planet, not for few turns

What I didn't say was that when I do a trade embargo I do try to make sure that the AI are fighting amongst themselves as well. This really wipes them out.

Yeah, no trade income, spend tons of cash on ships. Great tactic!

Personally I always go for a 14 in another races area not mine. I certainly do not want one of those worlds myself. It is kind of hard unless you have a Mod for PQ installed to keep the world happy. I did find that only orange worlds can be traded for techs. It does seem cheesy but when I am behind in techs this is my way to get in the tech race.

I have the New Diplomats Mod installed. I use it with a +20 Diplomatic, +20 Social, and +5% PQ bonus. Coupled with bonuses of the political party, when I colonize a PQ14, it automatically becomes a PQ15. Having that 10% bonus to play with at the beginning is nice.

Well, it is no longer in the Galciv Library.

It may be the Reserch Inc Party too. I was rather fond of that. I can't recall what it is at the moment.

Yes the research.inc party has remplaced the New Diplomats party. You could also have choosen the sneaky diplomats party

I think that the Diplomat party is on my download section not real sure but I do recall grabbing it. We have everything that is in the library now but about half of the events page 7 or 8 and beyond I still need to add.

If someone is not getting their Mod posted here NeoTech would be happy to put it online for you. We are FTP only at the moment until configuring and programming is complete on the upload module. Otherwise, if your not comfortable with FTP send it to my gmail account which will be setup in a few days. I will post it and send the link for you to use.