I've already lost an evening to Endless Space and expect to lose many more but I find I'm running into some issues with the diplomacy aspect of the game. I didn't do an immense amount of research into that particular branch but enough to get some general stuff and I found it to be really hollow. It really lacks options, especially at the Cold War stage. Most options cannot be accessed until you declare peace with someone, but if they just don't feel like being at peace with you, then diplomacy is over. I felt kind of cheated to have used up all these turns researching diplomacy and then my enemies just refuse to work with me and I can't offer them anything more to convince them to be at peace (throw in tribute, tech, whichever). And if the answer is I have to research really far into the tech tree just to be diplomatic then that's a huge drag. I don't want to be wasting all my turns and science just unlocking a couple options for talking to someone when I could be researching terraforming or blowing them out of space instead (which really dissuades me from any diplomatic approaches. Why be a diplomat when I can opt to kill everybody?).



I also found that even when I was at peace with someone, my options were pretty limited. I could trade a few resources with them but I wasn't really sure how it determined which ones I can trade and which I cannot and I also wasn't sure what trading one of a certain resource for another was really doing. How long does it last? Can I set an amount? Etc etc. It would have been nicer if the person I was talking with bartered with me and offered counter deals, rather than me just watching a little slider go back and forth. And if they offered me trades more often, instead of just offering peace or war, it would be nice. I'd also love to see trade routes and be able to select and establish them, possibly by colouring lines between stars differently and showing small ships animations representing caravans travelling in between so I know what I'm trading and where.



I love the game so far, I really do, it's just that without a strong section for diplomacy this becomes more of a 3X game, not quite a 4X but hopefully a lot of this is remedied in the beta/full release.