Influence Observations

I've also found that having the #1 military is the key to survival. It's the only way to guarantee that you're not going to be invaded, which, imo, is very very important

Hmmm..

Strong Military = Cultural/Political Survival

One of the oldest and most basic lessons a leader must learn if they are to survive the test of time.

I have had very good luck building *NO* military. I even put off researching the military tech tree as long as I can help it, opting for the diplomacy techs instead. When the AI thinks you're weak, he'll sell you military techs. I always have the production capacity to crank ships if I ever need it. And if I'm ever attacked, I can always just go to another AI and trade for the techs I need, and on favorable terms beause I researched diplomacy. Sometimes when I'm on REALLY favorable terms, with Galactic Bazaar and all, I can even trade for their ships. Which are usually crap, but not when you've got a military starbase up.

I think the reason I don't get attacked is because I colonize the heck out of the galaxy at start, which grows my production capacity. If I had to guess, the AI looks at your production capacity as well as military before deciding to attack. But what I know for sure is, I have zero military and I'm not getting attacked. I've even played as Altarians, and the Drengin are sending me lots of freighters.

You may be right about production potential being very important in whether the AI decides to attack. It would make sense.

I've also noticed that on the "lower" difficulty levels the AIs tend to let you live in peace, even if you have a very low military.

From what I've noticed, whether the AI attacks you has mostly to do with (somewhat in order):

1. Military Strength
2. Trade
3. Diplomacy Skill
4. Alignment (ie: if its the same as yours=less likely to attack, if not=more likely to attack)
5. Other factors (ie: "I know what you are doing" "Alarming Influence" etc.)

You can find these stats in the Report window of the Foreign Relations screen to see what is making other races like (plus sign) or dislike you (minus sign).

With high diplomacy stats, you can easily avoid wars. If other races get wary or hostile, you can pay em off to keep em off your back for a few turns till you can cancel out the negative factors. And since you have good diplomacy you can do it fairly cheaply. Don't forget, good trading can cancel out a weak military stat. I've played with almost no military ships to speak of and have avoided war until I decide to start something (All intelligent AI and higher).

I just won an influence game using the "speak softly and carry a big stick" strategy.

I initially made a big blunder though and sparked a war with the Arceans because they built an influence base right next to mine, they also had an influence resource I wanted. Unfortunately they took two of my worlds about 10 turns later, before I even got to the resource, so I decided to back up and try a different tactic. The second time I just moved a constructor and fighter into place ahead of time, attacked, built and then bought peace.

After that I ramped up my military while spamming the galaxy with influence bases. The only other time I attacked anybody was to clean up the Drengin who were very weak and right next to me. Oh and they had the other influence resource. Couldn't let that slide.

Once the Drengin were gone and I had both influence resources I teched to capital ships before anyone else and built about 3 at each world to keep my military rating up near the Arceans and Altarians, both of whom were very aggressive against the other races. I maintained my good standing by occasionally gifting techs to them while researching up to Cultural Domination. The end game was a mad constructer rush to place and upgrade influence starbases anywhere it was needed.

In the end it was a satisfying strategy, I kind of enjoyed being the galaxy spam king. In a way it was the ultimate capitalist victory.

I'm playing the no-military strategy against Intelligent AI's right now, giving myself sucky starts. I would assume no-military would work equally as well on Painful with a better start, since the AI is supposed to be the same.

I'm playing the no-military strategy against Intelligent AI's right now, giving myself sucky starts. I would assume no-military would work equally as well on Painful with a better start, since the AI is supposed to be the same

I had assumed the same thing, but it is apparently not the case. I have now played three games at 'painful', and have lost them all as everyone declares war on me quite quickly. Next game I'll build up some defense-only ships as soon as I can to try and keep myself from being overrun.

Having top military is key even if you want to try to win thru more peaceful ways.

I have been played 2 games on Normal difficulty, large maps, and every civ possible. Both times, the computer tends to haul ass and get alot more planets then me, but I manage to get a handfull of very nice planets.

I tend to hold off on the military techs, and go after diplomacy early. I also manage to keep ahead as far as cash and economics go since I do alot of tech trading, buying a given tech from one civ, and trading it for cash and other techs. I managed to get a decently strong military despite almost never researching any weapons, logisitics, or ship building tech.

I tend to hold off building a military as long as possible, since I dont like being saddled with a large number of crappy ships. I manage to avoid being crushed by my neighbors partly by ass kissing, and partly by paying off my nearest neighbor to go to war with someone else. My production is usually good enough that when lacking a strong military becomes an issue, I can ramp up pretty damn fast.

The nature of the game pretty much demands that you maintain a reasonably strong military, but it is good to know that the game is flexible enough to let you skip by that when you really want to.

END COMMUNICATION

When i started playing gc2 i used to go the peaceful way against normal AIs on a huge map, getting as much planets as possible in the beginning, then going after economy and influence/diplomacy techs, my population, economy, production and research was way ahead of the other races, but i always got listed at very low ranks in overall comparison to the other races because i had absolutly no military, i could have conquered the whole galaxy without building a military ship because all of the other races planets rebelled under my big influence and by the time had about 60% of the galaxy i had the researched ultimate weapons and defenses, nothing could stop me now, only a few civilizations were remaining and my military was now stronger than theirs put together, that was the point were i thought: "well, nice, i won but that is quite boring".

So i decided to play a new game on a large map with intelligent AIs, at the start i got some good planets but my territory was one of the smallest, i tried to keep my research balanced and i started building military ships as early as possible, somehow i got to research xeno ethics quite fast and aligned with neutral(because the instant PQ upgrade is very nice), somehow the other races were always ahead in technologys and i could only keep up by trading techs with minor races. Then the shock, being almost surrounded by drengi and yor both of them declared war on me the same turn, a few turns later the korx declared war on me as well but didn't atack me because they were probably to far away, so what do you do when being at war with 3 races at the same time and noone is going to help you because your diplomatic skills are not sufficient, well i tried to pump out as many ships as possible and i got forced to go after the weapon and defense techs. Well not enough the torians which were also right next to me surrendered to the terrans which were now the most powerful race, but they were not going to help me against those evil guys, instead they spread their influence wide into my territory by building 5 influence starbases there, while also having 2 low quality planets in my territory(from the torians), my best planets were now lying in the blue territory, damn, i had to do something, so built some transports and invaded both planets in one turn where i also destroyed all the influence starbases, now i am at war with 4 civilizations and none of them will make peace until i got terminated the only way that i could hold off all the attacks was by building military bases, now i'm stuck, i can't get ahead by research nor by influence or by production, since i got only 3 planets capable of building ships fast enough, the other planets are needed for research, because if i give up the research the other civs get an edge on me there and i'm lost, the yor which are right next to me have only a few planets which could be conquered quite fast but i cannot defend myself and at the same time start an invasion on the yor and defend the conquered worlds against the other enemies, i managed to make peace with the drengi to get some time to breathe but they declared war on me again only a few turns later. This game is freakin me out, i'm able to hold off all attacks but i'm not getting forward. I did not finish this game yet but i'm eager to do so. By the time i had produced a fleet that would be able to invade the yor homeworld my ships would already be antiquated and overpowered by the yor. geez...

Hang in there Juice! ... Good read btw ...