Tech trading.

Thanks a lot for this feedback, as it's super important for us that the diplomacy system feels just right and is as best as possible for the release.

This is a good point. You do need a research treaty, which can take a while to get, especially if your race doesn't have the Charismatic trait. However, after you get the research treaty you can exchange many techs with the AI in one go. That is one thing I already noticed as well, and was already thinking in improving this. So, thanks for your comment as it reinforces this need.

The AI doesn't exploit this though, as successive tech trading doesn't happen in one go like the human who can ask for many techs in a row. So, the human could exploit this but the AI really not at current implementation. We could add a limit of techs the player can exchange in one go, or another limit mechanism to not allow the human player to exchange so many techs in one go.

That is also a good one. Tech brokering is actually already in the code, it just didn't surface out as a game option yet, but we should definitely have this.

Let's dissect the next ones because it's very important for us that diplomacy is in the best shape possible at release.

You cannot declare war for 10 turns after declaring peace (peace treaty enforces peace for 10 turns). Other treaties (trade, mining, research, alliances) don't have cooldowns, but if you break them you get a reputation hit, and some races will be more offended than others. We could also think in adding ambassadors cooldown here, just like when we declare war.

Breaking treaties costs you reputatiion, which will take some time to clear up and it stacks up every time you break one again. If reputation goes down considerably you will not be able to propose that treaty again until you have enough reputation back again. If this proves to not be enough we may think in ways to make it more costly to break treaties, by just increasing the reputation hit, for example.

As I said above, you cannot declare war for 10 turns after declaring peace. However, you can propose a peace treaty after declaring war a few turns later, although the AI will probably not be very receptive to it. You also get a strong reputation penalty "You declared war on us!" that will take some time to clear up when you make peace after declaring war, and some races are more forgiving than others.

Also, the AI ambassador will be unavailable for some turns after you declare war, so you cannot declare peace right away in the next turn. It can take up to 5 or 6 turns for the Ambassador to be available again after you declare war, and this also depends on the race in question. We could think in increasing this cooldown a little for some races tough.

I addressed the research treaty exploit above, we will have a mechanism to stop or soften that up, which also includes the tech brokering option. The consequences of war were also described above.

Ok, no problem. Please let us know what other areas in diplomacy you think could be improved in light of your knowledge of recent games.

The diplomacy system was designed to be as flexible and transparent as possible. It's also one of the hardest systems to get right and it was available in a complete form for the first time in this release. So, please keep your suggestions coming and we'll see what we can do.

In any case, we expect to keep improving this and other systems as we further update the game after the release. However, we want to have the best system at release as possible.