Allowing colony ships into your territory

well i have a few ways to get around this...

since i normally am in no position to kill a civ early on.

1: surround planet with ships
2: block the colony ships path! (if pos)
3: fit more and better engines onto the colony ships!

Its an odd situation and more of a game design question. Galactic ettiquite is to race them to the planet, or manually shoot their ships. Nobody has respect for your territory.... or is it sphere of influence?

Anyone can travel in anyone's area without causing war, which is different than the civ games. But no less correct.

there should be a diplomatic option "get out of my influence sphere" which the AIs may chose to ignore if they are more powerful then you and which they will obbey if they are afraid you risk a war or if they like you very much (ether they fear you or they respect your privacy coz you are freinds)

The "get off my lawn" of interplanetary diplomacy. LOL

It's a race, so unless you want to constantly be at war, or surround the planets with ships to block other races (ineffective, since you can probably build a colony ship quicker than 8 other ships), you have to treat it like one.

I advise a few things:

1) Never use the core ships, except the starting one you are stuck with. You should be able to build one that can travel 3 parsecs and have extended range (using 2 basic life support) right from turn 1. Constantly upgrade your colony ship design as you gain tech.

2) Start with Stellar Cartography, so you aren't sending colony ships to unexplored stars with no planets.

3) Buy your first three colony ships immediately so you can get them off and running as fast as possible.

4) Colonize planets (within your range) in the outer regions of other races territories first, then work on ones at the limit, or out of, their range. This will slow them down and give you a headstart.

This one is really a matter of how you want to play the game. If you set your victory conditions so that you have to win by alliance, say, well then this becomes more complicated. Generally, even in territory under my influence, I tend to ignore any planet of PQ < 8 initially, while I look for juicier fare. If I see my leftovers about to be colonized by a rival civ (espionage is important here), and I don't already have control of a superior planet in the system, I will see if I have/can buy a colony ship within range to beat them to it. If not, I will build a couple of contructors to start that ISB project and eventually clear them out.

As for your tactic of picking off colony ships that are looking to set up shop inside your influence, thats an equally viable strategy, as it saves the cost of ISB building which can get pretty spendy. If you have the cash/tech/etc. to placate the civ and keep the peace, then you are golden. If you are working on the Conquest victory, then face it, you are gonna have to shoot someone eventually.

Thats why its important to monitor all aspects of your empire, from Finances and Trade to Social and Military production to Research. You can't get behind in all of these and expect to win easy.

I think the key is: Don't let them get the choice planets (PQ 10+) and don't worry about grabbing all the planets in a system at first, but make sure you grab the BEST one. In a later colonization phase you should try to settle the lower PQ planets.

It's tempting to treat the influence boundaries as borders, but the game doesn't really treat them as such. The AI will gladly colonize an open planet even in your home system, if you don't get to it first. (The Thalans colonized Mars on me once when I ignored it in favor of colonizing better quality worlds elsewhere in one of my first games)

So on the plus side, that means
1) you can colonize planets in their sphere without provoking them
2) The planets they colonize in your sphere are ripe for influence flipping. You can think of it as the AI is colonizing those planets for you!

The Thalans colonized Mars on me once when I ignored it in favor of colonizing better quality worlds elsewhere in one of my first games

That happened in my current game. Poor AI, doesn't it know that it will be the first planet it will lose.

A lot of good points.
- Use custom ships
- Buy colony ships right off the bat (I do it until my cahs is down to 1000 - 1500bc)

It would be interesting if being in someone else's "space" would case you a penalty of some sort - unless you had a counter tech.

This is a diplomacy problem. All the information goes one way. They can scream at you but you can't warn them.

The diplomacy in this game is really not diplomacy but just business transactions.

Trade techs
Make alliances
Attack so and so.
etc.

and it even turns green when the deal is acceptable for you

No give and take with dialog.

When they yell at you cause you build an influence starbas near one of their planets but you cant make em stop building their sb into your territory something is wrong there

a warning function in the diplomacy would be nice

Yet another suggestion for 1.2 perhaps?

I ignore planets that are below 7, since at that point they are still usefull for building smaller ships, like fighters, and exerting your influence across the galaxy. When the ai comes in to take the crappy worlds I just build an embassy on the world I have in the system and wait for it to rebel. Its especially working against the Torians in the map i'm doing now. Its a waste of expensive colony ships to worry about the rejects. Just keep your Engine research up and watch your economy so you can buy/build colony ships at a decent rate and you'll be fine.

You have a sphere of infuence that looks like a border, but you don't really have territory. It's not your sector. Uninhabited planets within your sphere of influence aren't yours until you colonize them.

The easiest solution is to colonize the planets you want before someone else does.

I have mixed feelings about the way this is implimented as I'm a huge fan of the cultural borders of Civ IV or the border system in Rise of Nations. However, it seems rather odd that you'd be able to lay claim to or establish borders in outer space.

I always let the AI have low-class worlds in favor of better ones. I never bother to colonize my "Mars"; I'd rather let some AI do it, so that my influence will eventually subvert it.

I tend to go for better quality planets, if there is a batch both AI's and i am racing for i take over the highest PQ's. Higher PQ= more population and influence which means i get those planets eventually anyay and everything built on them.

The tough part is when you don't solidify your planet claims near THEIR eventual borders. Then they like to play the influence game on you. It is annoying for them to colonize Mars, but it isn't much of a loss. Although I wonder if it'll hurt relations later ("our borders are so close" -- yeah, you took a little planet in my home system, duh!)

i let them colonize the garbage planets in my influence. then i research all the influence techs and flip them at my earliest convenience.

It would be interesting if being in someone else's "space" would case you a penalty of some sort - unless you had a counter tech.

It does, but only if the UP resolution regarding colonies in someone else's territory passes.

However, it seems rather odd that you'd be able to lay claim to or establish borders in outer space.

Why is that any odder than historical colonialism, where nations were claiming huge parts of North America from far across the ocean, when people were already in N. Am. long before the colonials arrived?

I am never in a position to attack colony ships anywhere near the start but then I only play up to medium maps currently.

Chasing a 3 move AI colony ship with a 2 or 3 move attacker would seem futile to me at the start since I cant see very much of anything (we are talking the start here). So they are likely to already be where they are going when I notice them through the fog.

And if i did build an attacker with the 1st weapon available? Well, then i'd be doing that 3 moves v's 3 moves chase thing again and if I caught one I'd be at war(s)! I got so many things to be achieving at the start I dont need to start a war over a colony ship. Considering how long I take to get Invasion its not a good idea to me.

I let the AI take what it wants at the start while I play my game. Its irrelevant which planet the AI thinks it owns, they are all going to be mine sooner or later...

Helo,
Two suggestions for you that I find helped me out a lot:

-Build a "Mk 2" version of the colony ship. Throw on only one colony module, and as many engines as you can. Do this before you even hit the turn button the first time. Then churn these babies out...they'll be faster than the AI's colony ships usually Or atleast -as- fast. Researching Speed techs on really big maps can also help here.

-Ignore the second planet in your home star system. Send your ships out to grab the far planets, best ones first if you can. Colonize this second planet later if you get the chance...but otherwise, you can very easily let the AI populate and build projects on it, and then steal it for yourself simply with influence I find this method very useful...you don't have to build a colony ship or send out your own people to colonize a crappy Class 4 planet, and you save on resources since you don't have to build stuff on it.

If I'm going for a culture victory, I do this with a lot of other planets too...just be sure you'll be able to push enough influence to 'capture' them.