Yea I remember when the wait thing was put in & agree with it, that's why I think it's probably just a matter of the ai's beg/demand functions not being forced to honor a wait timeout.  It's pretty bothersome when an ai keeps demanding $thing, which you would happily trade for $OtherThing, but you can't ask for something else in return

I rather suspect that once the diplo AI is improved, we'll start to see reductions in the diplo lock-out and an increase in what we can ask it to do - such as properly alliances, telling it to stop colonizing etc. The diplomacy game for the player is probably intended to have most of the same features as the AI currently enjoys, eventually.

I hope you're right!

Had a half hour before my next person shows up so I ran into the computer room and saw that it had already downloaded (my status from the 1.2 Opt-In still had me showing as having Opted-In) and started a new game. Already saw an issue from the first screen after colonizing a planet. Off to report it.