Locked Teams would help. Also, don't use so many AIs.

Basically you set the alliances at the start of the game. If the teams are locked, your relation levels cannot fall below 10 with your allies, so you can't betray each other or make up with the enemy. Envoys are still needed to get pacts, so some level of diplomacy is still kept.

If you really want to keep the whole making friends things, its quite possible to do, but you must adjust your playing style. First of all get the research that increase relationship levels ASAP. Second, see who you have a shot at actually making an alliance work. Note in rebellion some factions REALLY hate each other (TEC Rebels for example will hate anyone not TEC, so don't even try it if you are not a TEC faction).

The thing that tricks people up is that you are not in full control of your diplomatic stance. You can't just make an alliance with mortal enemies with just because its convenient. They have to do something for you. This means it maybe impossible to make alliances with adjacent players if you are fighting a lot, each time one of you destroys a ship your relationship falls.

Likewise, the main way to increase relationships is to blow stuff up. Each ship you blow up will increase your relations with the enemies of the player you attacked. Do this enough and you'll hit the 2.5 relationship level in no time, which will allow you to get trade treaties, and slowly your relationship will increase from that if you have trade ports. If you're kind of turtling, you won't kill enough ships and thus won't get treaties. Eventually, the AIs will also do enough damage to your enemies and you can get a cease fire, which can be cemented with envoys.

Also, if you like a faction already but they don't really like you, just bribe them until you hit the level for a cease fire. Its totally worth it, though usually the problem is your people don't like them enough.

Wow, thanks guys, that was very helpful indeed.

@Goafan77 - I did have some trade treaties happen in my game, but i was so intensely caught up in constant fighting, i never worked out how the trade system works. Now i know to build some trade ports yay!

Also i should have already mentioned this, but i'm playing the original, not the expansions and i play as the TEC (they have the least annoying voices lol)

Just one other thing, how do i bribe a faction ?, i gave heaps of metal and crystal to one guy and my favor didn't move at all.

@Ryat - Awesome, i will try to set up a 3v3v3 game and see how that works out. If i understand correctly, i should pick Advent and Vesari to be on the same team as me and then repeat it 3 times to make 9 players ?

I do own two of the expansions, but thought i might as well start from the beginning. I did however have a quick game of Trinity last night, and from what i can tell, it's little more than a patch. So i guess it makes sense to just play Trinity for a while until i buy Rebellion.

Currently playing Systems of War, which is really weird, but i like having all that time to set up infrastructure without the AI pestering me.

Could you suggest a good map with many planets that doesn't have "Wormholes" man i hate those things.

The thing i hate most about Wormholes is that, you have to station a garrison there, especially if that Wormhole branches to two other planets in the heart of your empire. So instead of having your armies defending the front-lines, you have to have additional armies positioned there with no ability to create defensive structures.

I tried defending from the connecting planets, but it was futile, since enemies could just warp to the undefended one. The usefulness of having armies in the Wormhole seems to outweigh the benefits of using one of two defensible planets in this scenario. The other problem was, the connecting Wormhole (to mine) was on the other side of the system, so it became impossible for me to shutdown the entrance to it.

I really dislike how you cannot build anything around a Wormhole, defenses/inhibitors.

Hehe, I just learned about this today. Playing Implosion in Trinity and wow the diplomacy system is So much better, to the point it's almost too easy now. It seems every faction wants to be my Ally, and my disposition goes up almost unrealistically, i might have to look for a mod to find a happy medium.

Thanks again Goafan, you've been so helpful.