Sins Of A Solar Sieve-brain

Aha! I knew I had downloaded something interesting and then forgotten about it. That something, I now realise, was Diplomacy, the latest expansion for Sins Of A Solar Empire. It came out last week, and I had a nagging feeling there was something I was meant to be playing... just couldn't put my finger on it. Anyway, it looks a lot like this expansion finishes off the SOASE experience, with a range of political options for this real-time space strategy - envoys, pacts, missions in multiplayer. Rather than wait for another week for me to get around to playing a full game, I thought I'd open it up to you lot. Who's playing it? Any thoughts on worthiness of the new features?