Diplomacy is great but could be even greater. One thing to improve are more options to threaten and react to threats. Here’s a short list:

  • Blockading outposts (not colonies): When I blockade AI outpost, the AI gets angry at me and says so. When AI blockade my outpost, I got no diplomacy options.
  • I can ask for one sided trade deals/I get asked such deals, and sometimes they are accepted. But a clearer distinction between threats and “nice if you want to help me out” would be an improvement. Examples:
    • A situation where I need help and by no means want to add bad alignment with AI players, I would want an option where I’m sure my request is not evaluated as a bad alignment/threat.
    • A situation where I want to threaten. Like in my current game I would have liked an option for “Open borders for diplomacy/exploration or face war!” I have twice declared war just to be able to explore my opponents, and as I do that I send in my larger ships and kill of their largest fleets as I go, for the additional hero experience and giving them a necessary set back so I would get peace again after. I’m not actually going for military victory, so I would be happy to send in exploration ships only if they would accept open borders and peace. (The option to ask them not to attack my ships is insufficient for exploration deep into opponent territory.)