How to stay out of wars

from GalCiv2 Forums
Generally, wars dont start til after the colony rush, as the AI is madly building colony ships.

I dont build an any warships til my economy is rocking and my research is strong.

Therefore, I have to stay out of wars til I can mass produce warships quickly.

1) Keep a close eye on the diplomacy screen, a very close eye. I dont worry too much til the colony rush is finished but then its paramount as some AI empires are itching for a fight. My goal is to keep the AI relations with me at neutral at worst.

2) The AI gets annoyed very quickly if you have ships in their sphere of influence, particularly if they are stationary. This includes scouts and survey vessels, so dont linger. They get angry quickly if you have warships stationary near their influence borders, stationing troop transports near their influence border is tantamount to challenging them to declare war. Use fast long range warships/transports and station them well back.

3) Another way to get their backs up is to flip worlds culturally. I make an early grab for space resources, BUT I dont develope the Influence resources until I have a superior warfleet. I also dont research the influence research tree til Im strong milatarily..I dont want too many planets flipping all at once. My planet build normally includes 4 Stock Markets, which gives good income but also powerfully increases influence. As a general rule I try to colonise every planet I can, even the lower ones as if the AI colonise a low PQ planet amid my planets it can flip quickly.

When this happens, I rename the planets AA1, AA2 etc as they flip and GIVE THEM BACK(planets renamed to easily see them in diplomacy screen)...but not instantly, maybe a turn or two later. Buy a farm for it (its going to flip again and again, Im going to eventually keep it, may as well get some pop growing!) and give it back. Do this several times and the AI recognises you as its best buddy.

4) Establish trade routes, a positive (albeit small) consideration by the AI empires

5)If possible research the diplomacy tree quickly and build the Diplomacy wonders, this helps your relationships considerably.

6)Give them useless technologies. I normally give them things like the farming upgrades...they never build farms anyway

7) Give them cash as a last resort. You normally cant afford this early on to make much of a difference

8) If one AI empire goes to war with another, you dont have to worry too much about your relation with the 2 empires at war so long as you arent too aggressive...they are busy with themselves, but make sure you get back immediately on their good side if a peace is brokered.

Overall I find it easiest to give back flipped planets as the easiest method of gaining an empires friendship and therefore avoid war. You can actually set them up for this, leave a couple of PQ 5-6 planets empty amid a cluster of your planets, the AI will always colonise and it will flip reasonably quickly...because you grow your pop and build stock markets...the AI wont.

Do this in several areas to get all the AI empires colonising in the cultural trap.
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Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
good thread topic

i posted something like this for a noob that was having a hard time but i think you hit all the point i did so i won't try to track it down and repost it.

2) warships- transports seem to be MUCH more irritating than attack ships. if you buy transports from opponents make sure to get them out of his territory ASAP. getting them beyond his influence borders is NOT enough. make sure to keep them at least one turn from the border, minimum.

3) flipped planets- often a flipped planet will come with a nearly completed starship. turn this into a transport before you turn it back over and run off with some of his ppl. this will also make it flip back to you faster. think of it as removing those annoying dissedents for him so he doesn't have to .

4) trade routes- don't under estimate the effect of this. make sure you send most of your trade to the ones that are most dangerous to you. check your diplomacy report and find the guy giving you the the most -effects and throw him extra traderoutes(unless he is too wimpy to bother with).

5) wonders- also build galactic bazaar(master trade). this will magnify the effect of your trade(+50%), and gifts ARE trade. i am not really sure how much they value gifts, but unless they are all concidered equal this should help. grab Restaurant wonder too, but not necessairly at the expense of the diplomacy ones, they take priority.

ah, i see one you missed, sorta. starbases.

9) influence and military starbases in their territory cause conciderable friction. don't build these until you are prepared to fight. economy starbases are fine tho so you can pump up your trade routes if you like. go ahead and do mining starbases too. these make tempting targets so reinforce them, but worth the risk.

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well, one thing that could help you to stay out of war could be to build cheap defenders : Small or tiny hull, only equipped with weapon (if possible, at least 2 damage per ship). This will allow you to boost your military rating at a relatively low cost and avoid being marked as an easy target.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I found:

Diplomacy skill helps very slightly. It helps about as much as sending in a freighter to trade.

If the AI has a planet in your area of influence, they are instantly mad at you. I have not tried giving them planets, but giving them huge amounts of cash makes them happy for 1-2 turns if they amount is enormous.

The AI likes you purely if they fear you. Having a high military score even if just on paper makes them like you. I churn out cheap ships (highest size I can) on my manufacturing worlds--the ships generally aren't good in fighting and are impractical, but it looks good on paper so the AI fears you.

Then I can put influence starbases everywhere and the AI won't go to war. I tried winning a game like this but the last race stuck with 3 planets with my influence 100X their's and they wouldn't flip. Plus the game existed to windows every 3 turns (the longer a game goes, the slower the game gets, too) so I haven't finished but I waited and it wouldn't finish.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
hmmm i like the tips will try them in my next fight and i like the best buddy trick it could help defuse some situations in which a giant army is bearing down on me and all ive got is some defenders which suck THANKS!!!
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I tried winning a game like this but the last race stuck with 3 planets with my influence 100X their's and they wouldn't flip.

Well, there are some super project that avoid defection. And I am not sure about what happen when someone, like the Yor, have a very high loyalty bonus.

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
building the spin control center also helps cow down potential agressors, if you station lots of warships/ships with high attack rating there. military rating boost => "+ our military strength" diplo bonus
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have noticed that not researching planetary invasion tends to makes you less threatening. This is just an observation, as I do not have anything else to back it up.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
6)Give them useless technologies. I normally give them things like the farming upgrades...they never build farms anyway


what ya talking about? they do build farms, sometimes too many on a planet.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Also, pick your alignment to match that of your neighbors. I know that everybody thinks neutral is best, but alignment has a big effect on how much the AIs like you. Picking good or evil is worth it if it lets you avoid war with a powerful nearby civ.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
ah, thanks for reminding me of that one Meklar

10) keep your territory pure. if you leave the lil planets for them to grab THEY WILL. this leaves your territory looking like swiss cheese and them upset about your unsettling influnece. while it sucks to spend a colony ship on those it is necessary if your having problems with wars starting too early in your games.

also, i agree with you about the diplomacy having a weak effect. the things you can do WITH diplomacy tho can be profound.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I am aware of building alot of small hull warships helps build up your military rating and therefore decreases risk of war...but with my stategy, I dont build a single warship til the the third gaming year.

Porcupine, you can make a situation of having your territory looking like swiss cheese work for you, in fact its a real easy way to pick up planets cheaply.

Giving back the planets works well, but if you give them back immediately you get no diplomatic benefit. Try keeping them for one turn. Initially there will be a small increase in your relationship, but as more planets flip and you give them back again your relationship strengthens fast. Eventually you will be able to keep some of them, while giving back others and still maintain the realtionship.

The only long term down side of letting the AI grab alot of planets in your space is that most of them wont have all the extra tiles available you get from colonising as a Neutral. The PQ will increase but the number of tiles wont. For example a PQ 12 planet increases to a PQ 18 planet with 18 tiles when you colonise, but if you flip a PQ 12 planet it wont have all the extra tiles.

Smjjames, in previous versions the AI did build alot of farms, but in 1.2 its extremely rare. My last game in a gigantic galaxy, not a single AI planet had a farm after 4 game years..the only planets with pop over 5B were the homeworlds.
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
of course it's easy....if your not having trouble managing things. i usually let them fill those gaps for me in my games, but i have enough experience to manage things if they start getting squirly. i also know about how many planets i can allow them to colonize for me before it will become a problem. unfortunatly i don't think i can adequitely explain where that point is. i am viewing this thread as mainly something for noobs. for them filling holes is good advice, which i expect them to start ignoring as soon as they get a handle on things

yea, neutral gets hosed when they capture planets. i have been concidering putting off Ethics as long as i can tolerate, to see what happens when you go neutral with a bunch of conquered, fully upgraded planets under your belt. will you get still more tiles or will it account for the terraforming that has already been done? and is it worth putting off getting NLC's to find out, lol.
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I've been using most of those tactics except I never give up planets. Mainly watch the forgein relations and when one starts cooling down I might give them stuff to get my relations up. Simply buying their techs seems to help so I do that first. Setting up trade routes with the more hostile races seems to help. Keeping your military up is key. For instance, the Yor and Drengin will attack if you look weak to them. They usually give you some warning with a demand for cash or tech so if that happens you know you better get on the ball. An easy way to give the appearance of a strong military without a lot of expense is to take a medium hull and dump nothing but your strongest weapon on it as many times as you can. You couldn't do squat in an actual conflict with a ship like that, but they build fast and jack up your military level quickly. I just leave them in orbit and delete them as they get replaced by my real combat ships.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
When you pursue Xeno Business, Cultural Conquest, etc, your neighbors start to not like you very much. Lay off of pursuing influence enhancing technologies until you have the firepower to back it up.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Having a first rate military can keep the AI off your back.

Build 'dummy' warships. Cargo holds with nothing but weapons. Fill the sky of your secondary world with them, and then upgrade them all with new weapon tech whenever you get close to dropping from 1st place militarily.

At 'tough' level you can almost always keep your military at 1st place and thus out of war by doing just a few weapon tech upgrades of your dummy cargo holds. Dunno how well this works on levels above 'tough', but provided you are successful enough in your colony rush, it should work well.

Anyway, keep the AI off your back until you get spin control center by researching the last tech in the diplomacy tree, and build the spin control center on your secondary world.

Then you've got time to do your expansion/flipping. The AI doesn't mess with someone whose military is 3x his.