They only really become a problem for the exceptionally lucky. If the AI's smart, and they get 2 military resources, there's little you can do about it militarily (assuming that they're keeping anywhere near you weapons-wise. If you can out-pace them and get larger hulls, then you need to strike quickly).

Plus, you can always find them and initiate a deep-range strike at them. At the very least, they'll lose the bonus for a time while they go rebuild it. And if you hide your deep range strikers, you can keep taking out the base.

Is it unbalancing for the player? Perhaps; it does augment the human's natural advantage of flexibility. If a human finds 2 military resources, you can bet that he's going to be using that advantage.

Nope. Nerf them if you wish, but they aren't hard to overcome if you play to your own advantages.

A player can overcome the disadvantage, but can the computer? Will it organize a deep strike into your territory to take out your resources? Does it know that you must have influence resources someplace, then go looking for them if its borders are receding while yours are expanding?

My problem with them isn't that they make the game too hard, it's that they make the game too easy once you've got a couple of them. A couple of influence resources means an easy influence victory, whether you're actively pursuing that victory path or not. The kind of bonuses you get from a single resource could amount to half of your race's starting picks once you get it upgraded. They're a huge factor in the way the game plays, much more important than they should be. None of the AI's defend them nearly well enough considering their importance.

While others may enjoy having the resources be the pivotal factor in the game, I'd like to be able to turn them off completely. Either that or mod them into line, but I haven't tried modding GalCiv2 yet.

Um isn't this part of the challenge of the game?Try thinking of ways to counter act it instead of taking away the obstacle.

They are unbalancing and make the game too easy. It is ridiculously easy to launch deep space strikes, cripple the enemy, and just go hogwild.

I really would like an option to turn them off. Playing with all opponents set to intelligent, a ton of resources, end game, and I have fleets of fighters with 2000+ laser ratings flying around.

Let's just make all races with the same skills, just different colors. No resources, no trading just EXACTLY the same EVERYTHING. This seems to be what some people want.

Franco, Stardock didn't make many of those changes independantly, a lot were done in response to overwhelming player requests.

I love chess. However, lets discuss the overpowering of the queen.

An opponent with a queen against one without has a huge advantage. Obviously, if he isn't very skilled, he'll lose it. But he'll take out a few pieces, and properly get his opponent into check, quite a few times. The queen can do anything any other piece can, and the only piece that can really remove it without baiting it into a trap are knights.

Think of the starbase as the queen. And the knights as inferior yet still decidedly armed ships they chuck at you. Not a death train, they normally fleet and organise. YES, they can recognise them. YES, they attack them as a priority. I've seen the Drengin ignore a powerful, yet still just about inferior, fleet of mine (which if they killed would have hurt my military rating a fair bit) that they could probably have taken, and go for my economy resource.

I hadn't got a good economy, and was relying on it at the time, since my production was down while a lot of my newly acquired planets had caused me some economy problems. While waiting for one to finish converting to a cash-flow planet, which would have probably granted me victory in the war, I relied heavily on the starbase. And they killed themselves on it. I thought I was safe, and another fleet came out. Dead starbase, I lose the game because my economy crashed.

i like to be able to make the game more of what i want to play, the type and pace of game that I want to play. I like to be ABLE to turn teck trading off, to be ABLE to turn minor races off, to be ABLE to turn off resorces seems to me a reasonable request .... more freedom to the player

"I" find half the fun of this game is in the journey, to tell you the truth, I think winning isnt everything in this game, but having fun with some of the game mechanics in teh journey of my civ

i guess what im saying is give more more choices to customise my game, i fail to see how anyone/thing can be hurt by these kind of choices at the start of your game

The AI does care about your borders. If you examine the window that tells you the +/- effects on your relations, you will ususally see it there somewhere. I've seen races decalre war on me in the past, when our relations were previously good. The relations nose dive happens when my influence is covering their worlds.

I don't see it as much different to an opponent having more/less worlds than you. You might as well say opponents with more worlds have an advantage, so everyone should only have one planet. He got there first, so its his. If you don't like it, capture it!

However, I do think some of the bonuses are better than others, so perhaps the influence bonus should be toned down to fit in with the others, but I would be against removing them completely. If it was optional to play without them or not, then that would be another story, I'm all for it.