I agree. The AI doesn't seem to be very good when it comes to dealing with culture in general. It doesn't understand how to culture flip planets. It builds influence starbases, but the AI rarely places them close to planets that it could possibly flip, and it never upgrades them enough so that they could pose a threat.

If you have read the forums for a while, you've probally noticed that most players usually capture planets instead of culture flipping them. That might be the reason why the AI isn't good with culture. The AI has to be programed to fight wars, otherwise they would be push overs for most players.

Perhaps the AI could serve diplomatic notice that the cultral starbase be destroyed or war will be declared. War should be declared quickly if the power under cultral attack is matched or superior militarily with the cultral aggressor. If not they should try to get someone else to attack the cultral aggressor and give them ships near to the cultral starbase(s) in question to attack it. Also they should be building up miltarily meanwhile and possibly building counter culture starbases.

Thats what id like to see anyway hard to code no doubt...

To me it would seem that not only should the AI be smart enough to attempt to culture flip your planets, it should defend itself - culturally - when you attempt to do it, by placing "counter-culture" starbases to thwart yours, creating cultural improvements on planets, etc. That's what I do when I don't want an outright war with a race that starts plonking down Influence starbases; I put out my own.

Depends on the AI setting I guess. I would think that at "Challenging" and above, the AI would not only recognize cultural takeover attempts, but, also, take steps to counter them.

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Of course, there's nothing that says you have to use a Cultural takeover strategy. I do use it myself, but only to soften up the enemy race before I launch a big military campaign. I'm just starting to post to the Metaverse, but from what I think I've read, you get the big points for military takeovers, not cultural.

Rather than just trying to adjust the ai's rection, which is a tough balancing act, why not add some real negatives to a flipped planet too?

- You lose 2/3rds of the pop. Civil war and all that.

- Random improvements are destroyed.

- A 3 month, or 6 month or whatever balances out, penalty on manufacturing/research production, colony maintainence costs, etc.

-Give the original owner a free spy or two, Immediately, to use against the new owner. Make the chance that the aI will steal a Tech from the new owner fairly high on the first few turns after flipping a planet ... Quislings in the new Government.

- The civ under Culture attack has a permananet percentage gain in loyalty each time it looses a planet ... getting rid of all those malcontnents, so it gets a bit harder to flip the next planet.

- The aI's don't seem to use Trade embargoes much in my experience - if one starts a cultural war, have the aI be more likely to do this.

- If someone is embarking on a Culture War, make use of the UP....have it call an emergency session to invoke sanctions...and halve the vote total of the agressor. (All civ's should be allowed to call 1 or 2 emergency sessions at any time during the coarse of the game if they feel they are being attacked in a major way...have some separate UP events that address each type of agression...war, cultural, or technological)

Just some food for thought.

I definitely agree that the AIs do not respond well to influence starbases. I also understand Draginol's concern about wanting to provide the player a "non-military" way to expand. It think working on AI influence base usage should be a priority to solving both these problems. I'd be thrilled if the AI would build (and upgrade!) some influence starbases to keep its planets from being flipped.

I wonder if some of the problem comes from the way the AIs choose which techs to research. Is there some kind of decision tree in the AI programming that says, "huh, we're getting overwhelmed by influence, we'd better research those influence boosting techs".

On a related note, does the AI programming contain routines could lead it to "embarking" on cultural conquest? Or does it simply react to its overall influence situation turn-by-turn?

In Dark Avatar 1.5X (the internal build) the AI keeps track of how many planets have culture flipped and now takes that into account in its relations very very strongly.  It only does this at intelligent or higher, however.

That's fantastically good news, thanks for letting us know. Are the AI's going to be better equipped to wage their own culture wars as well? I don't think I've ever seen a computer opponent wage an aggressive influence campaign.

Selling crap food that kills people to other country should be considered an act of agression   

Some would definitely consider it an act of aggression - heck, we see that right now. Especially when those in power see their people starting to like the foreign ways better than the traditional ways. They are often part of those traditional ways and they will act to keep them in place. They aren't going to say flat out that they are breaking off relations because their people are starting to like another nation better, of course. They will talk about "poisoning the minds of our youth" or some such. But they will take action. Maybe even violent action.

Another point on the A.I. - when you do take over a planet (at least on Normal difficulty), the ships that were on that planet get the boot. Then they just sit there. Forever. The AI never even bothers to scrap them for some quick BC. (A rather scary thing when those ships are troop transports.)

Well I agree with you guys, there should be some kind of reaction, but there is a case where no reaction would be better. If a military victim of you surrenders to a third race, then there are usually a couple planets left of the former victim that are now in your newly conquered space that will flip. It is unlikely that new civilization would get upset when their new planets are flipped.

If there is always a reaction it is the pathway to a new way to cause wars. If you own a planet that is about to be flipped (and you don't want it anyway because it a low PQ) gift it to another AI and it will ruin theit mutual relations.

It'd also make sense if the animosity scaled by how deep in foreign territory the flipped planet is. It would suck if you wound up at war just because the AI had decided to colonize Mars, then got all upset when it inevitably flipped.

okay, i haven't read this whole thread. i just thought it made sense to relay this anecdote.

i had the terrans starting a small but prosperous civilization. i wanted a compact and easily defensable position, so i stopped colonizing at 12 systems in 5 sectors, but the drath managed to grab one of the colonies i wanted. i proceeded to build an influence starbase, and their world starts to rebel. suddenly the yor contact me to let me know that some mysterious power wants me dead, which i assume would be the drath.

so the AI does take note of it, and does get pissed off about it. they usually don't jump up into arms, though, at least not until it's too late.