where are the under handed diplomatic chooses or races.

The Drath are quite well known for starting wars among other races.

I'm a bit confused. You want, for example, the Drath to talk to the Arcean such that the Drath convince the Arcean to attack a third race? Who is the "home" race, the human player?

If you mean that there are no races that convince other races to fight with one another, you are mistaken. This happens quite often, you should get a pop-up from a race that says for instance "We have decided that the Drengin are not fit to live in this galaxy, or that's what we've been paid to think." These happen a lot.

One AI will also convince another AI to attack the human player too.

No i want the drath to be able convince the arcean into talking the humans to attack the drath.

I get it. You want to go to war with the humans but make them look like the aggressor.

Yeah I've been trying to figure out how to do this in some of my games too.

If you want to do that, just drop some influence bases on the human border.

   Wow! Race 1 convinces race 2 to go and convince race 3 to attack race 1!

That would be neat I admit, but very hard don't you think?

That's not at all the same thing. The OP seems in the spirit of the old board game Diplomacy.

I could never stand playing that with people I actually liked, but I surely hope that GC3 (and maybe even NotMoM) will have a much richer diplomacy system that includes some real underhanded, two-faced sorts of options.

Even if you could do this, surely it'd be much, much easier to convince your allies, who you have better relations with, to declare war on your enemies?

Besides, being underhanded and backstabbing is usually only fun with real people. There is no pleasure to be derived from deceiving AI opponents. The thrill of the lie itself isn't there, and the satisfaction of finally pulling it off isn't there.

Just saying, if all you want is for an enemy to attack you so you can fight them without being the one to declare, there are easier ways to do that, since we're working with AIs here.

Diplomacy type games are great (I've even made a couple), but you can only play with the same people so many times before they figure out that everything you do is specially crafted just to manipulate them and predict their reactions

The ai isn't people tho.

Yeah, AI is worse.

I don't know about danielost, but for me the means are often more important than the end. It's that pesky role-playing streak of mine.

Plus, if your military rating is on a steep growth curve leaving others in the dust, influence bases seem to do little more than cost you the bother of constructor micromanagement (and speed up world-flipping, of course).

Not that I expect (or really want) effort on something this subtle for GC2. The diplo engine is just too primitive and there are plenty of other worthwhile areas for the devs to polish during the 2.0 effort.

I agree that the dipomacy in this game has the potential to be much deeper and better.

As far as wanting A to tell B to attack 3, I jut dont see why. Unless I'm completely wrong and just may be, but being the agressor doesnt cost you anything in term or relations with the other cics. Unless of course you were giving the agressee (is that a word?) race a treaty.

Why not just attack them and be done with it. HMMM Do the Alterians need to be the victums in order for thier superability to kick in?

I believe so, yes. I don't think they can bring in others as easily if they are the agressor.