I love anything that eliminates the need for engine nerfage. Requiring the player to declare his intentions is a very reasonable thing to do.

I do have a couple of questions/assumptions though. One is when you declare war against an opponent I would assume it's only the ships in that opponents zone of control that would be moved. It doesn't seem reasonable to require that all ships in otherwise non-combatant ZOC's be moved to your own ZOC.

Also when your ships are moved out of your opponents ZOC are they necessarily moved to your nearest ZOC area or are they merely moved out of your opponents ZOC and perhaps into a nearby non-combatant's ZOC. I can think of arguments for both methods but certainly one way or the other must be chosen.

I would assume that this works both ways where an AI's ships in your ZOC are removed when they declare war on you as well. But what happens if I declare war on an AI are his ships removed from my area? Not sure if they should or shouldn't. But then what happens in the case of alliances where I declare war on one AI and his ally AI declares war on me. I would assume that the one that declared war on me would have his ships removed from my ZOC but not necessarily the one I declared war on. Starting to get kind of confusing here.

Although not directly related some mechanism for a player to demand the removal of an AI's warships, transports and possibly influence SB's from your ZOC is something that's been needed in this game for a long time. An ultimatum that gives the AI some minimum time to respond which if they don't comply then a state of war should exist. Also if war happens in this manner then it should be considered mutual and not require my ships to be expelled from his ZOC or if they are then his ship also be expelled from mine.

I would also assume that this movement of ships only applies to warships and transports and doesn't apply to non-combatant ships (how are SB's treated?).

One final issue that may have since been resolved that relates to this is the issue that the ZOC is not immediately recalculated after a reload which results in your ZOC most often being taken as much smaller than it really is. I've had wars declared on me simply I've had ships well within my own ZOC that I've saved only to have these ships be in enemy territory for the turn immediately after reloading the game. In DL v1.4x the ZOC isn't apparently recalculated until someone captures a planet or upgrades a SB so I've had the initial default ZOC persist for many turns. If it isn't already then this certainly needs to be fixed or otherwise accounted for if this option is implemented.

To summarize I think this is a wonderful idea, but there are many details to consider which could make or break this idea as an overall benefit. The fact is that I haven't yet played DA even though I bought it during the Beta period last year and the primary reason is my preference for large games and the logistics nightmare I believe that engine nerfage would cause. This change would be greatly appreciated.

One final caveat and this relates to the large game performance issues that exist in the game. You need to be sure that this stuff works with large numbers of ships. I would recommend that this functionality be tested with a minimum of 25,000 ships in play (preferably all on autopilot) simultaneously.

The first thing that pops into my mind is that sometimes my planets are significantly inside enemy space. So, I have the same problem that I have with the UP treaty, my fleet leaving my planets undefended because of this. I can solve it partially by orbiting my ships. It also becomes very exploitable in reverse. Not only can I force the non-orbited AI fleets to abandon everything, but I can predict where his ships will be located and ambush them, by figuring out where they will be placed when they get moved...And this works under the UP event.

The basic problem here is that influence is not a border and it shifts regularly. In RL, you wouldn't shift a border simply for cultural influence reasons. For this to work right, you would have to make it tie back into the distance you are from owned planets/stabases etc. and it would probably get pretty complicated. I think to make it really work, you would have to have shared or disputed areas where more than one civilization has a claim (close planets, etc) to the area and both can use it.

In addition, you would have to fix the influence borders being different on load issue. This was actually a real problem in my last game when fighting against the Yor. The borders would shift dramatically on load (moved back 6-8 squares) leaving my ships deep in Yor territory, when they were in my territory when I quit the game....Even then, the borders were different on the second turn than what they were on the last turn before saving, so I had to do a lot of guessing about were the borders where going to be after recalc.

Make it a relationship hit with good civilizations to pull a sneak attack - ie, if you're flying in enemy territory, they are offended by your dishonorable sneakiness beforehand.

It should only apply to fighter ships, and it should be based on how many you have in their territory, and how close to planets/starbases you are.

Slowing ships doesn't make sense, and outright denial of military access doesn't make sense.

However, I do want that Declare War button! I like Europa Universalis 2's peace treaty system, for the most part - if you take a province in the war, it is worth some points. At the end of the war, you can take one province permanently for every two you took, roughly. If you take all their provinces, you can annex the country.

It seems in GalCiv, as soon as you take a planet it's yours, you're not just occupying it. That allows for you to turn around a build stuff out of that planet, which may or may not make sense. I've never taken over a planet before.

However, the military access in EU2 works because it's divided into provinces, and territory is clearly owned or not. In GalCiv2, I found that I colonized a planet in Drengin territory and it remained Drengin territory. If I needed military access to go through my own planet's sector, I would be pretty pissed. Although in EU2, you can have a cut off province that you can't get to. So, I don't know what to do about this.

Why do we want to prevent sneak attacks, anyway?

can the ai handle doing a sneak attack.

The advantage of the UP neutral space event is that if you want to sneak attack in spite of it, all you have to do is quit the UP. The current proposal on the table appears to take away that freedom.

Jythier, how do they explain it in Civ4?

It is, ultimately, a game, and realism isn't always fun. 

But if a planet has built more than ten ships...? How about moving ships into orbit around the nearest friendly planet most powerful ships first, then cascading to the next planet when that orbit fills, etc., until non-enemy space is the closest destination? That would certainly help the AI protect those planets it likes to grab deep within your influence area.

With something like this in place for all races, not just members of the U.P., what a fantastic opportunity for a new super ability: Super Ambusher! The Drengin ability is rubbish, everyone agrees - let them be the only race that can sneak attack, instead!



Um, the U.P. is made up of Guild navigators? And that's also why the U.P. exists before the player even encounters another race?

I'm against the idea. It's placing too many "fakey game" limits on things. Having it be a UP issue is one thing, but a game rule?? In my view that's crossing a line. Sneak attacks happen, it's a valid tactic, it's real, and i think if it's changed, it will make the game fakey. At least to me, in fact i outright hate the idea. I know there's a need to balance realism with game play, GC2 being a game after all. But the key is balance, and i think if this is implemented, it's crossing a line from being balanced to being Overly-gamey. For me personally, i'd see it as being FORCED to use a particular strategy in every game i play, instead of having options.

"I'm against the idea. It's placing too many "fakey game" limits on things. Having it be a UP issue is one thing, but a game rule?? In my view that's crossing a line. Sneak attacks happen, it's a valid tactic, it's real, and i think if it's changed, it will make the game fakey. At least to me, in fact i outright hate the idea. I know there's a need to balance realism with game play, GC2 being a game after all. But the key is balance, and i think if this is implemented, it's crossing a line from being balanced to being Overly-gamey. For me personally, i'd see it as being FORCED to use a particular strategy in every game i play, instead of having options."

That was the point I was trying to make, but failed miserably.

I like that idea, Purge, except that Starbases should affect the border as well. Then it really wouldn't make sense to have fighting ships within someone else's influence unless you were going to war.

I was thinking of just placing them around the planet instead of actually in orbit, so that it wouldn't fill up the orbit slots, thus stopping production. 

Well, I would be for a reduction in the current engine nerfage in DA, but that would be up to Brad.

The Right of Passage was intended for Twilight of the Arnor.  So whatever we end up doing will probably be just in TA.

The problem with something like this is that there are people on both sides of the sneak attack issue, and a good many of you in the middle who have your own ideas about how attacks should be handled.

Brad might consider making this an option, just as the mega events and super abilities are optional. I would prefer having something like this, and it being an option, than nerfing the engines with something like the Right of Passage treaty.  The Declare War button could exist whether the option was on or off.

The reason that we are discussing the Right of Passage treaty and my suggestion is because people were complaining that they can beat the AI even on the hardest difficulties too easily because of sneak attacks.

Uh Oh. This wording is starting to sound too much like how my wife sounds when she wants me to do some chore and promises some unspecified but never to be received reward in return.


I suppose that this could be the case, however IIRC the engine nerfage of DA did not occur because of some outcry from users that fast engines allow sneak attacks that the AI couldn't deal with and thus made the AI too easy to beat. Again IIRC and with all due respect, the engine nerfage was supposed to fix the issue of sneak attacks which was *assumed* to be the predominate method by which people were beating the AI at the highest levels. As it turns out that is not really the case nor has it really fixed the problem because of the further assumption that people have worked around engine nerfage and still been able to sneak attack by simply parking ships near all an opponents planets and thereby are still able to conquer an opponent in a single turn.

I have to stress, potential opinions to the contray, that my objection to engine nerfage and hence my refusal to play DA, is not based on an inability to beat the suicidal AI without using such tactics but on just the logistical nightmare that slow engines mean in gigantic galaxies. I'm perfectly willing to take on the suicidal AI in a straight up battle because most often I have more ships, stronger ships and larger fleets than the AI does and do not need to resort to sneak attacks to achieve victory.