Diplomacy for dummies?

The manual.

Errr trail and error Brad, personally I think the Diplomacy / AI side need some TLC to make it work.

Meson blasters are universal communicators.

If you REALLY wanna try diplomacy, the low-down:
Migration treaties, at last check, do not work correctly. If you sign one, even if it is one way, two-way migration still occurs.

Never, ever, agree to no-research, research is life. Never agree to no-intel unless you want to get raped by spies, since it stops even defensive intel. Share vision will share all vision, even from cloaked ships, allowing the other race to attack your cloaked ships even if you did not include sharing of cloaked ships. One-way seems to work, though.

Mostly, though, the AI will propose are-you-completely-crazy treaties and practically never accept a perfectly REASONABLE treaty presented in good faith.

Meson blasters are universal communicators.

The SEV diplomacy model goes beyond any other game I've seen yet and is definately something for multiplayer...Though the AI is almost completely unresonable. I never had much luck in SEIV with AI diplomacy either.

Treaty-wise the AI has not accepted any of my proposals and is only good with something they kick out which could be good or bad, like Neutrals sharing minefield codes does good for me, not much for them.

I tend to stick with getting some sort of basic non-agression treaty set up, trade if possible, and a few bans on the WMD's (or rather Weapons of Universal Destruction...) The other stuff is great but right now only so much seems to be fully implemented or bugged.

Gifts and Trade I believe are the real tricks to getting the AI to comply. I've always been reluctant to give gifts since I never learned how much a particular gift adds to my diplomacy score. (I also tend to end up a the Mega-Evil empire so that kind of kills any chances for a long fruitful relationship with even the peacenik-bubbleheaded Eee.) Same with my games in SEIV which I imagine shares the same model.

I've noticed a few message bugs where I am accused of being in someone elses terrortory on the far side of the galaxy or asked to honor my treaty pledge and go to war that does not exist along with an empire I do not have a military argreement with.

I'm looking forward to some tweaks with the system. Dimplomacy can really add some spice to the game. In the meantime I'll just police everyone else's systems with clocked ships like a good Hegemon.

I am well aware of Strange Warp Points.

In the standard game here are a few of the things the AI dislikes:

Any treaty element further down the list.

That is high trade, high research, high sharing etc. Aim for lower value treaties to start with, they will give your relations a huge boost per turn (even crappy basic treaties)
Go for one or two options like 5% trade, non aggression in neutral systems. This makes sense for races that dislike diplomacy but its the first thing I altered for the Tarsus AI which prefers 20%+ trade over 5% but will take either.

Any ships in their space, per ship this racks up anger.

Refusing anything they offer

Being friends with one of their enemies

Closing a wormhole or opening it, any stellar manipulation of any kind.

Any kind of combat, even where they lose.

That sort of thing

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Designing an advanced, diplomatic AI + shipset
Consult the great SEV Wiki

For those who want to know the point value and how it is all caluclated enter the AI script for politics txt file. There are specific points assigned to each element impacted by length of turns, anger levels and so forth. It is a rather elaborate algorithm though definitely in need of some minor tweaking.

In most cases like giving general messages, gifts, granting independence, etc. you get one positive per and I believe that is subtracted from the overall anger level between you and the AI. Declare war and the anger level is increased by 2 points...and so on.

I have looked at it a few times recently just to see if it would be worth editing the script to allow for a cultural achievement that would bolster your influence even if tagged "The Mega Evil Empire". I think it would be feasible by embedding another global var in this AI script and doing a simple loop to check to see if a player has poured in the requisite research/resources to achieve a level. If the boolean check proves true then you adjust the calculated anger level X points lower before any other calculations occur. The hard part is that this will be invoked any time the AI runs the script or you send a message which means if you poured the right research and got the max points even as the Mega Evil Empire you could become their love bug....

The whole point of the mega evil thing is to create some challenge to the one who is far ahead of the other players. Generally, when you are branded mega evil, you have the ressources to reseach about anything you want. This make becomming ME a minor issue if you can research techs that eliminate all penalities of being the "king of the hill".