That game was on challenging, but I did the same thing in my last game on Tough. This is on DL too, BTW. I hadn't noticed any previous posts indicating that the AI had improved much on this problem.

I can see that, but I can also see why Stardock did what they did. Because a) you don't want to turn Galciv into a Civilization wannabe, and it's space. Space doesn't particularly have borders. I think I heard someone (Brad, maybe?) say a long time ago that the planets are the borders. In other words, that's just your sphere of influence. The political borders are the planets.

Re: Borders.

Why not have a 'morale' factor for your ships that are stationed in foreign spheres of influence. The longer you keep them there while not at war, the worse their morale gets - and thios causes a decline in their hitpoints. After all, no country will keep their Navy in foreign waters indefinetely - because the crews will eventually lose effectiveness, and maintainence will slip, thus leading to a decrease in combat readiness.

There could be a limit - say 5 or ten turns without a penalty, then the penalty starts to accumulate. Returning the ship to Neutral space would stop the decline, and returning it to Friendly space would cause the ship to start to regain hitpoints at the repair rate. Actually returning to orbit, the hit points would be restored the next turn.

This, combined with the new movement rules, would perhaps cut down on the 'invasion cheese', and allow the aI a tiny bit of time to evaluate a response to a 'surprise attack".

On Edit: This would not apply when you are at war with the particular aI whose sphere you are in ... boredom and longing for home would be trumped by patriotism. Only apply it to Empires you are at peace with.

JMHO.

Here's a couple of suggestions (off the top of my head) that could somewhat ease the whole "AI can't handle surprise attacks" problem that wouldn't require excessive AI coding and so forth:

1) Moving next to an AI planet with an armed ship or transport is considered a declaration of war (unless you have an alliance).

2) Moving next to an AI planet uses all remaining movement points for a given ship.

This would at least give the AI a turn to respond to a sneak attack.

Cheers

h

a) you don't want to turn Galciv into a Civilization wannabe, and it's space. Space doesn't particularly have borders.

Civ is a good game and just because Galciv could be labeled a Civ wannabe game is not enough reason to not include part of great features from a great game.

Also since the "space" in GalCiv is 2 dimensional there is no reason what so ever for not having borders. It adds a new dimension to the game and helps the AI defend his planets more effectively.

Why not have a 'morale' factor for your ships that are stationed in foreign spheres of influence. The longer you keep them there while not at war, the worse their morale gets - and thios causes a decline in their hitpoints. After all, no country will keep their Navy in foreign waters indefinetely - because the crews will eventually lose effectiveness, and maintainence will slip, thus leading to a decrease in combat readiness.

Thats one idea but wouldnt it make more sense that the more time you spend in a foreign empires space then the relations between the two would degrade aswell? If the russians kept violation US air space I would think the relations between the two nations would get significantly worse.

I even recall an incidence in the past where the Soviets shut down a civilian aircraft because it violated their airspace and, part from some international protests, there was no consequence of that attack since all nations has the right it protect its airspace.

Should be the same in GC II. If an empire, not currently in a non agression pact or alliance, violates another empires space then that empire can destroy those ships without war being declared. They are just protecting their air space.

Wow, just did a test game and your right it's true. Very suprising. Did Stardock intend this I had thought previously it just affected the planet it was built on.

On larger obscene and suicidal maps I guess evil may be the right option purely because of this wonder. On obscene and suicidal your going to be playing catchup a lot and 100% eco bonus will certainly help to catchup although it will take time to get. On most maso maps I find it easy to outcolonise the AI so am never really playing catchup so neutral is prob the best choice then as its benefits come much quicker.

Hi!

Problem are false positives.
Like you moving your ships to help Torians fend off an attack of their neighbour, but they calculate those ships as a threat and declare a war.
Or even less obvious: you're trying to do a sneak attack of one of your neighbours, and discover an influence starbase of the Drath close to the target planet. Drath sees your fleet closing, calculates a false positive that it will attack his starbase, and declares you an enemy.

BR, Iztok

couple inspirations taken from this thread, thanks everyone!

as someone suggested the ai should detect which weapon and defense techs you are researching. to make it interesting there should be a diplomatic option to limit what kind of techs you research or implement in your ship designs, like an embargo: no missiles on your ships else lowering diplomatic relations or worse.

then something like a skirmish: for example if you attack and destroy someones ship in your space it does not become a war directly but just lowers relations and you are not seen as agressor. of course if relations are already low it will not be tolerated and war is declared. even more sneaky would be to have a diplomatic option saying you accidentally destroyed someones ship anywhere in space or close to some other conflict - reaction depends then on diplomatic relations.

the border could be a close limit around your planets (just a ships range or less) but you choose whether to enforce it or not, having for example trade penalties if you set up a very restrictive limit but bonus in terms of restricting someones influence. or you could even choose to have it as border starbases or starbase modules. something like a border or customs module or base which allows you to set up borders and claim space and then decide to do levy customs on freighters, limit influence, etc, all with realistic malusses associated of course. or it could have possibilities to control other ships access to that space, with possibilities to warn ships/races against infringement, or even being able to force them to move out. or having it as a ship module where a ship can make another move out of the space and if the infringing ship does not follow it becomes an attack -> diplomatic situation -> war?

probably all not easy to implement well but imo additions to better represent cold wars, diplomacy, politics in general and to give more options - taken from real life

ps.
dirty weapons? massively destructive but with diplomatic consequences, embargos? conventions against them? rogue civs?
add more shades to it all!

Well the AI should only react if you enters their space (the colors on the map) so if you want to do either of the things you mentioned you need to stay clear of their space.

I mean if US wants to invade country X and by doing so it will violate country Ys airspace, which is not at war with US, Im sure they will first ask permission before they start sending bomber planes above country Ys cities. For example, when US invaded Iraq, they asked permission from Turkey to send troops etc through their space. Same should apply in GC II.

And how, exactly, would I ask permission? They would have to do something like add an option on the trading screen that says "let me move through your space". Of course, once that was available, a human would just find a way to get the AI to agree to let him go through its territory, move in his transports, and then sneak attack anyways, putting us right back at square one. That's a whole lotta work on the devs' part to slow down an exploit by three or four clicks.

Read my first paragraph: "..you need to stay clear of their space.". So the second paragraph was just an analogy, not a suggestion that they should add an option to ask permission, even if that would be nice.

Also, I dont see doing a sneak attacks on the AI being an exploit. It's rather the AI being... ehm the AI by being stupid.

Ok, let me give you a scenario:


You have the Drengin on one side of you, and the Korath on the other. The Drengin and the Korath go to war with each other. Drengin ships cross your border headed for Korath space, and vice versa. Do you, as a player, immediately declare war on both of them, despite the fact that they don't care one whit about you and would probably beat you senseless if you fought both at once?

By your statements, you're saying that yes, you would declare war on both the Drengin and the Korath, immediately and automatically. Doing otherwise would be stupid!


Here's another one. You have the Torians on one side of you, and the overwhelmingly powerful Yor on the other. You're allied with the Torians. The Yor attack you, triggering the alliance and dragging the Torians into the war. In order to help fight the obscenely strong Yor military, the Torians send their ships across your border. Do you, as a player, immediately declare war on the Torians?

By your statements, you're saying that yes, you would declare war on the Torians, immediately and automatically. Doing otherwise would be stupid!


Sarcasm aside, I hope you can see why programming the AI to be paranoid nutjobs with a hair-trigger "declare war" button would probably just make them even more stupid than they are now.

On your first scenario, I think you've got a point.

My point is just that it's space. You can be well into a civ's "sphere of influence", but you're still light-years away from the nearest planet. Having these borders that encompass millions of light-years^2 ... nah. This isn't Civilization. The Korath and Drengin could do war in your "territory" all they want, it won't affect you one iota.

I have not said that, thats your interpretation. I meant that the AI is being stupid when it waits for all your transports to position yourself just outside their planets, then declares war and then after you already invaded all his planets he starts to react. So its not that the AI should declare war the moment one player ship is in his space.

Also your comparison to what a player should do in the same case is invalid because we know how the AI works and we know that it doesnt do surprise attacks as the AI is very predictable by first declaring war and then starts sending his ships to attack you. Since the AI will not "know" what a human is doing there should be coded in the AI to look for signs that an attack is coming.

So the AI shouldnt be coded to respect other empires space since its already predictable enough to first declare war before starting to invade so there is no need for such mechanism.
But to protect the AI from cheap sneak attacks from a player, if the AI sees a great number of player ships in its space then he should first warn, and then if they are still there it should declare war and react. Or atleast react by having ships ready to defend his planets (besides the sitting ducks in orbit without orbital fleet management). This should give him a couple of turns to prepare for a possible invasion. Just as a human player would do if he was playing against another human player.

In your second example, as Ive mentioned, since you are allied with Torians then this violation in your space should be allowed. There should be some kind of thrust between two allied parties.

I like the suggestion earlier in this thread that entering within striking distance of a planet, especially with a transport be considered a decelaration of war. I would add the condition, however, that this only apply to civilization who have used this tactic once before, i.e. that the AI become automatically more hawkish about players that were able to seize one or more planets within one turn of a war declaration; this would cut down on the false positives and would inordinatly effect advances human players without breaking the 'cheat rule', and make frequent use of this tactic a way to contribute to a 'warmonger' penalty.

Further, I would give substantial diplomatic penalties when a war declaration breaks an alliance, cumulativly.

You have to see it in the terms of "turns to get to your planets" rather than "millions of light-years". When speed is extremely high (as in this game) then extremely long ranges really means nothing since an enemy can pass through that in one or two turns anyway.

I belive this is already in the game as Ive had the AI declare warn on me when my transports was close to his planets. Problem is that for one, the declaration of war is too late and two that the AI wont attack until after it has declared war. Meaning you can invade his planets before he starts to react.

And if the player gets dragged into a war by an ally, and the only way to help is to go through that ally's territory? "Why thank you for helping me, but I'm afraid I have to declare war on you as well since your ships are close enough to help me."

What if the player's empire is split into pieces by an AI's territory (i.e. a "pocket" surrounded by the AI and possibly map edges), and the Korath declare war on the player? Gee, guess that "pocket" is Spore-fodder since the player isn't allowed to move ships to protect it without their AI neighbor declaring war over it.

And even if you DO give the AI a hair trigger, a human player will find a way around it. That's the big problem. No matter what you do, the AI will be unable to defend itself from a sneak attack because the human player will find a way to either get around the restriction or, even worse, use it to sneak attack anyways.


This pretty much admits that there's nothing a player - human or AI - can do to stop a sneak attack without being a paranoid psychopath.


A perfect exploit, then! Build up an alliance, then sneak-attack when they least expect it!

ANY leeway the AI EVER gives a player is an invitation to exploit it. Every measure you implement to do away with false positives just opens even more doors to get around the safeguards and do what you were going to do anyways.



The ONLY way to make the AI able to react "in time" to a sneak attack is to declare war the instant one of the player's ships - ANY ship, even unarmed ones - gets within two turns' move of the AI's planets even if they're still in the player's territory. Anything less, and the player WILL find a loophole, period. But frankly, if the choice is between a bit of naive trust vs. being a foaming, raving psychopath, I'll take the naive version of stupid over the blood-crazed moron version of stupid any day of the week.



Edit: Just for the record, I'm not arguing that they shouldn't make the AI better. In my opinion, the better the AI is, the more I like it. Good AI = Good Thing. What I'm arguing is that it is NOT as easy as "just make the AI do X"

Yamota, you didn't understand me. I meant that close proximity to a planet would count as a declaration of war on the part of the offending player. This is key, because as it currently stands, the ai has to declare war, and thus get the warmongering diplomatic penalty. I believe such a penalty should count against the offending player not just with the AI about to be assaulted, but against all AIs. This would mean the use of this tactic would illicit a larger number of wars as the game wears on, making it more likey that the AI is prepared next time your transports get within striking distance.

And I agree with Legacy, Yamota. You're suggestions simply aren't at all practical. There is no AI that would be able to out tactic a human player without some sort of rule change.

I would also say some sort of (perhaps temporary) morale penalty for declaring war on an ally (standard penalty * number of treaties) should probably be considered. This would penalize the backstabbing player decently.

There have been a number of real-life scenarios where countries have backstabbed allies without morale penalties. Nazi Germany on Russia, Israel on Great Britain, Italy on Nazi Germany (well okay maybe that one had morale penalties), Russia on China....

Be that as it may, any reasonably democratic society usually frowns on 'unjustified' wars against allies. If you really care about realism (as oppossed to a realistic justification), make this one of the downsides to non-imperial governments. Some sort of penalty should be attached, though to balance out the huge, obvious advantage it gives to a player while still retaining the mechanical relevance of an alliance.

Generally I think the AI plays well. The only exception to this is when I am invading his worlds. Without fail there will be a ton of ships stacked at his planet that, were they combined into a fleet and launched, would repel my invading ships. Yet every time the ships stay in orbit for me to pick off one by one. Not the brightest strategy really.

I would agree if this were Civilization, but Galciv is its own game. And we're talking about aliens here. Like the Borg, they LOVE allies. Oh yeah. Assimilate them all!

I do think it's perfectly reasonable never to get another ally again, though. If you backstab one of them, you just get redded out on the diplomacy screen with some message like, "you don't have a good track record with your allies, I don't think I'd want to be your ally".