I had some such thing brewing in a DA game recently. The Torians put troop transports in striking range of my planets while they were still friendly. I got worried and put fleets around for defense. Their diplomacy with me then went quickly south, so I attacked their transports/escorts before they had the chance to strike. Still, they were definitely planning something sinister!

Nice thing about the attack I suffered was that the Terrans were in a 6 month old War with the Carinoids - whose planet was deep in my Influence sphere. The Cari's had some tough ships - so the Terrans were constantly sending in ships to replace those the Cari's destroyed.

I was lulled to sleep so to speak - I got used to the Terran fleets in my space. Relations never went bad - they were Friendly when the Terrans bushwacked me. They did it the very next turn after I added a 25% Influence module to the Influence Starbase I had just built near tow of their planets.

They just sent one of their fleets to attack a lightly defended planet - destroyed two of the orbiting defenders I had there without warning.

The only thing that really saved my bacon was they never attacked my Influence Starbase or two Econ starbases that were all defensless and I had no fleets in range to protect them, being fairly early in the game - and all aI's were Friendly. Instead they sent their fleets against my planets - luckily I had enough cheap defenders in orbits to slow them down enough until my Fast Response Fleets arrived on the scene.

Losing the econ starbases would have really set me back - and the Influence one too, as it was also keeping several asteroid mines from defecting to the Torians.

So ... an A+ for the aI in launching a totally unexpected Surprise attack - but a D+ for ignoring the undefended Starbases - they had fleets right next to two of them, and very close to the third - instead they moved those fleets away from the defenseless bases toward the planet they intitially treid to attack - several weeks move away.

They could have really crippled me - but I survived.

No, it was not on the way at all...

In fact, I watched the Terran fleet back trak away from the Cari's to attack my planet.

In my experience I've never had an 'accidental' attack occur in the year plus I've been playing GC2.

No, Brad had said he was improving the aI's response to 'Influence' attacks in the latest beta - I'll stick with my view, thanks, not yours.

Hey--now that's a good idea! Building an influence starbase to protect your asteroids. Now there's a nice tip-you-will-seldom-use-but-it's-good-to-know.

Yes, in my most recent beta game, my neighbours the Korath parked a spore ship near every one of my planets. I'm not sure if that was a smart move, though... talk about telegraphing your intentions!

GASP! Terrans being agressive?