What is really new?

[NTJedi]

Endoperez said:
In other words, there's no diplomacy, but we've gotten used to it.

Well if a player is looking for a more challenging game that player can edit the .map file and setup multiple AI opponents as allies, and this permanent alliance lasts the whole game. Otherwise there's no real diplomacy within the game.
A very interesting idea would be if Illwinter was to add a very rare event where two or three AI opponents form a permanent alliance within a game.

Endoperez said:
One other common explanation is the fact that it'd take too much of the developers' time, "and we all would rather have more content, wouldn't we?"

Yes I agree... more content until the Illwinter company expands to 5 or more developers where one developer could focus on the diplomacy. A whole developer is to prevent gamers from finding exploits/weaknesses with the AI diplomacy.