[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by Cyrien:
I won't beat around the bush. Diplomacy is probably the weakest link in the SE4 AI. You probably won't be doing counter offers back and forth across several turns. But to answer the question - Yes. Counter Offers would go back and forth and take several turns to complete, especially using Sim Turns.

However, diplomacy is one of the game's strong points in multiplayer - since diplomacy Messages are practically unlimited in length, you can really get into the roleplaying aspect, and since you can trade just about anything, you can set up some interesting deals - I'll give you my planet and Ice Colony tech for six of those battleships and a diplomatic contact with the Xiati, for instance. It's not unheard of for one player to act as an "armsdealer", selling technology and weapons to the other races in the hopes of winning the game through cunning trades instead of brute force! It's just that the AI isn't very responsive to these kinds of deals - it completely ignores the text of your Messages, and will only accept or reject a trade, instead of making a counteroffer.

BTW, Cyrien, you don't happen by any chance to be Cyriun Kairus from the Mobius Forum, do you? I kind of doubt it seeing as he's from Ohio and you're from Texas, but he did just go off to college... It's just that the name is kind of unusual...