Does the AI think that I am weak when low military spending?

I don't think so. AFAIK the only thing the AI looks at is where you are on the miltary graph relative to itself.

I don't think so either. On challenging, just gun for medium hull ships and biuld lots of em, AI won't mess with you for a while.

Alternatively, build a Spin Doctor super project, it makes all your military around planets look five times as strong to the enemy. I was at war with the altarians, built the Spin Doctor, then offered them peace. Two turns later they accepted it.

AFAIK if you don't actually build military ships the AI sees you as fruit ripe for the plucking. I've used that in a few games to my advantage. I build up a surplus of cash and when the AI declares war on me (the last time it was my "good friends" the Altarians), I pumped out a huge flotilla of large ships on all of my planets. I went from 30,000+ BC to a negative number in two turns. Then I set out to take all of their planets. I just LOVE when I go to the diplomacy screen and they say something like, "I guess this war wasn't such a good idea." Yeah, buddy, too late for you now.

I also like to watch when my military graph goes vertical while theirs drops like a rock.

Then I set out to take all of their planets. I just LOVE when I go to the diplomacy screen and they say something like, "I guess this war wasn't such a good idea." Yeah, buddy, too late for you now.

Not exactly the most efficient way to go about things, but it sounds like fun.

Mmm I dislike when a game allows you to do this. I'd rather have enforced delays based on hull size, so crash spending has a say up to 75% effect on construction time rather than 100%.

When you are on the bottom of the military graph you can be damn sure one of the other races will attack you. Seen it in all of the game that i have played.

I've found the military strength estimator slightly off at times.

The most egregious example was when the Arceans declared war on me, so I built up a few brutal fleets (I was technologically more advanced), and proceeded to devastate their attack fleets, then take a couple of their planets.

The quarterly report coms up, and yammers something about how "this war isn't going too well for us against the Arceans". Huh?

I mean, I understand why it said that; I had fewer ships than the Arceans (even though they were incomparably more powerful), and my empire was still smaller than theirs. So just looking at the current situation in a vacuum, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they had an advantage.

But if you compared my situation to the state AT THE START OF THE WAR, it was clear that I was demolishing them, slowly but surely.

Actually the way it works is this.
From what I have learned in my games on sub-normal trough painful is that in all instances the Ai ONLY looks at other players's Millitary Rating, which is defined according to the manual as Attack+Defense+Hitpoints /10, and most definatly NOT at how big your military spending is. Figures, 'cause people (I anyway hehe) tend to build only constructors and such.

If your millitary rating falls below 20, (meaning your combined Att+Def+Hp figure ranks 20% of average compared to the other races) someone will surely attack you within a couple of turns.

The smarter the Ai, the quicker it will attack you. Sub-normals might tolerate you at 40, but a Bright one certainly won't.

Also, the AI will want to quickly keep pace with millitary rating, and to do that they all build fleets and ships that are quickly constructed. The downside is, their ships will often have slightly dated technologies and defences. This they do on all difficulty levels to some extend.

If you are winning the war ,and you get a messages saying 'the war is not going well, blabla' it means the AI has a massive fleet you just haven't encoutered yet. Doesn't matter, if you're winning with superior technology the amount of ships they have is totally irrelevant.


A good way to keep track of your likeliness of being attacked soon is to regularly check your race relations screen. It wil sometimes say ++Trading, -Ethical alignment, +Millitary strength, etc. If a strong neighbour starts to get sour for no obvious reason (you're trading and swapping techs, after all!) its because your millitary rating is too low and he figures he can subdue you.


The best solution I have found to this so far is to pick the most productive colonies you have, design a defender (small/medium vessel maxed out with your latest weapons and defences but no engines/other stuff), and let them crank these out as fast as they can.

If its enough, you'll see the relations starting to warm up again, and if you have a truly superior army, you'll see that everyone wants to stay friends with you, start paying tribute all by themselves, etc etc.


Good luck!

Yep, exactly.

I think the military rating should be calculated more realistically. Alpha Centauri, for instance, had a much better rating system. Also, it would be nice if your military POTENTIAL could be taken into account as well. If you have the economy, technology, and production to build a killer fleet in three turns, it shouldn't matter if you don't actually have a big fleet. In fact, in such a situation it would be a mistake to spend precious BCs on upkeeping an expensive fleet, when you can just manufacture it at a moment's notice.

It's pretty dumb how the AI thinks it's so strong with it's massive fleets of suck with tiny fighters with 1 mass drivers each.

My frigates got to 60 HP destroying fleet upon fleet upon fleet of low-tech armies. And still the AI was, "My military rating is three times yours, no peace for you!". Even as it was losing many planets, and it's fleets were methodically destroyed. I had to reduce them incredibly in size before they noticed they were sucking.

Why doesen't the AI just build a few fleets of good ships rather then uncountable lame fleets?

By the way, in Galciv1 the AI would sometime trade planets for peace. I've never seen it do that in Galciv 2. Then again, they seem to barter much more agressively.

I agree, partially, because the millitary rating is OK imo (it is purely a millitary rating after all), but the decision making process that the AI uses to determine relation attitude and wether or not to declare war should be drastically altered and take in account, as you say, your potential and not just your millitary rating.

Featuril, it makes me wonder. Wouldn't it be nice if you are at war, the Ai also uses the rate at which it loses ships and planets to determine if it should opt for peace? These diplomacy tweaks would make an already phenomenal game even more errr... phenomenalitic

Featuril, it makes me wonder. Wouldn't it be nice if you are at war, the Ai also uses the rate at which it loses ships and planets to determine if it should opt for peace? These diplomacy tweaks would make an already phenomenal game even more errr... phenomenalitic

I agree. It should be judging from "momentum" wether or not the war is going well for him. But really, he should get less fleets with better ships in them.

The worse part of that game, I was the one seriously lagging in technology and yet I had far more advanced fleets. They had the tech to put out some really nasty ships, yet they prefered fighters with 1/0 or 2/0. Blargh. And it was on intelligent too!

Note : The Yor eventually did put out a ship that, once fleeted, would have obliterated mine. However, they only started producing it when they had only 2 or 3 planets left and they were not produced fast enough to be a threat. So the AI IS capable of producing good ships. It just likes boosting it's military rating more, for some god-forsaken reason.

Well the pure military rating is a "best guess" on their power. Remember the 1st Gulf War? The military was talking about how huge the Iraqi army was. On paper it was a beast but in practice it was out dated and poorly trained. In game terms they would have had a huge military but as many of you posted, your fewer but more powerful vessels made short work of them.