1 influence point?

Snap! Yes it's amazing but it works. I think its kinda like the fact that it's a symbol of cultural respect (just like in real international posturing, hehe "WALOBS"). I noticed also that sometimes paying a tribute of 1 or 2 bc per month for a long time can chill out hostilities.

Bizarre. What are your diplomatic stats like?

One influence point shouldn't be worth anywhere near THAT much...

i know 1 influence point is worth nothing, but it seems to improve my relationships with the AI's. my diplomatic abilities arent anything special, i pick the pacifist party (pop and moral bonus i belive), i pick moral and planet quality bonuses, and i have diplomatic translators, and any bonuses i end up picking up through research -but nothing special.

Those translator droids can be quite effective. The Goldenrod model seems to work especially well, when abused for its perceived mistakes.

I have my doubts they are supposed to be _that_ effective though...

On what level of difficulty are you playing? I already gave hundreds of BC and tech to the Torians on maso (with at least + 50% diplo) without their changing attitude a bit.

In my experience it usually works, including the current version and Maso level also. Sometimes though, the AI is simply hellbent coming at you. When I had that, we were the weakest army, and otherwise doing pretty poor also. It seemed Drengin (but other AI too) periodically go into this MUST WAR cycle...and if you happen to be the weakest link out there that time.....tough!

Other than that, the 1point gift seems to be one of the greatest AI weakness out there for the moment.
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right now im playing on painfull, and it seems to be working pretty well. i have good relations with all the AI's. i was giving everyone -including minors, 1 influence point almost every turn. its the same game where the drengins turned around from demanding tribute, to now saying that they want to snuggle with me.

Didn't work for me in my recent game. I had to give a couple thousand credits to move them up one notch.

But that's in the late game. Maybe its proportionate to the size of the AI.

try it right from the beginning, give 1 point to each guy every turn.

Tried it.

The 1 influence didn't do anything to the Altarians when I made first contact. Gave them a couple of ones in succession.

Then I made contact with the Arceans and the Yors. Gave them ones.

Amazingly, they moved to Warm from Neutral including the Alts which did not respond earlier.

I gave them another round of ones but they stayed Warm. Will now see how fast the relations degrade. I'm playing Maso so the disparity in strength should cause problems in relations soon.

I've been unable to raise the relations to anything above Warm. At least I feel better knowing that. If you could form alliances purely from giving out a few measly influence points, I don't think I would bother submitting to the Mverse.

for those that are testing this out, remember, only one gift counts per AI per turn. i read it someplace that giving 2 or more gifts to one AI in a turn will not bump up the relationship up 2 times, it will only go up once per turn.

Well I was on the scary Research Route to get The Terraformer in my game last night (48 turns spending 96% on research). While I do long research like this I just let my scouts do thier thing (hopping for a 25% research boon!) and leave the Diplomatic Relations screen open with all the AIs shown and click, click, click (watching relations carefully).

As ussual I had no millitary (except gifted rangers)but every trade good and wonder with a very high tech rating and morale. I'm the passive geeky scientist type (until I get Excaliburs and Terror Stars after which I'm the violent psycopathic type).

As the other AIs got coy my relationship with them started to slip as per ussual (i.e. Hi we're the Yor, we need money for peace keeping even-though there's no war on and we can't manage our economy because you set our intellenct to low, you bartard!) . . .

In any case gifting '1' influence point to any of the AIs would immediately improve our relations (unless thier alignment was diametricly opposed, thats an important point I think regarding this whole debate, in my games the Altarians are Evil and in the late game when I'm supposedly 'Saintly' they'll never become closer than Neutral (unless we have a huge ammount of trade) . . . mabye its just because I have so much more culture and tech generally but the 1 influence point gifting is a method I use often enough to know it works!

Infact (and this is the truth) I gave a single point to the Torians in a Painful game and they whent from Cool to Warm!

I don't think it's a bug or fault because it relflect the reality of deceitful foreign policy, broken promises and the like. Giving a tech or influence point to the AI . . . well it's still something for nothing which is a lot considering other races demand tribute and peace keeping costs. Moreover I can't recall ever being offered a tribute from another race freely on levels of difficulty above normal?

Couldn't edit . . . ")".

This trick doesn't work all the time but when it does, it works too well even in Maso.

Cotal, don't think I agree with you though
I think this is an exploit that should be fixed.

Yes I agree it shouldn't definately be fixed! LOL . Well not at least until I've finished my 'experiment' this weekend . . . it being a long weekend here in Brizzie and all! Yiha

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Would be much cooler if the Artificial Intelligence was able to handle this proper and smart. I love those times when it really feels there is some deeper thinking going on behind what they doing.

At the same time, I wish the AI was sometimes more forthcoming in some other deals. With Maso it seems almost impossible to buy anything else than techs and TG from them.

Definitely. The AI should know that it has been gifted with a worthless 1 influence point. Relations should probably degrade at such an insult.

The restrictions on Maso cash trading was done on purpose to make the level more difficult. Don't think that would be changed anything soon.

Tried this last night. Got the Yor from cool to neutral, and kept them there, which is all I really wanted.

I've been given money tributes at maso level.

One thing that I find odd about giving influence points to the AI is that I give them all of them and it pretty much has the same affect as 1 point. They both will move up relations, but 1 point shouldn't change the relations the same amount as 1000 points.

I think that the overall effect of lots of small gifts is more powerful than one big gift. What the devs are attempting here, i think, is to say that a relationship is something that is nurtured, not just bought outright. In other words, it's the thought and effort that count -- not the pricetag.

Galactic Civilizations:

We get our relationships the old fashioned way,

We eeeaaaaaaaaaaaaarn them!

~~Flashback to the late 70's/early 80's~~

Tested this while playing a Maso game where I didn't take any diplomacy picks. So I was down on diplomacy right from the start as Maso AIs get a 30-40% diplomacy bonus.

Didn't work at all. I believe this exploit is only effective when you have a reasonable edge over the AIs in diplomacy.