Neutral Ground and Minor Races

It probably isn't, but I'd consider them defenseless because they have a single farking planet and are considered "minor races," not because of some UP law.

I'd consider that a bug in the UP resolution, though.

This situation takes on a lot more importance when the minor race in question is the Jagged Knife and they have Doom Rays against your Laser IVs. Declare war and poof! their navy disappears.

Considering that minor races don't have influence, I don't see how so.

Minor races aren't part of the UP.

If that were true, their ships wouldn't be towed out of your influence zone. I'm assuming they have some sort of second-class membership (or possibly designated as protectorates or something), because they are subject to UP laws, but have no say in making them.

Yeah, that doesn't seem consistant.

It's probably been mentioned before but it'd be nice in GalCiv 3 if the minor races had more of a role in the flow of the game. In certain games i've played one or two minor races have become powerful enough to last through to right near the end.
I've noticed, though never done it, that the player can leave the UP (and thus not be affected by its resolutions?).... wouldn't it be cool if a minor race could become powerful enough to be able to join the UP? Allowing for them to be not almost completely useless as they are at the moment.

The current game i'm playing had my spies working with the Lentzlandian gov. to steal techs from other races... problem with this was that i hadn't met the Lentzlandians nor did i have spy tech at that point in the game.... It was obviously some sort of administerial error

Or perhaps that's the bug - they are being treated as part of the UP when they are not. I mean, after they [edit: meant to say "after the Jagged Knife"] snag all those planets which member races would be voting for their inclusion?

The bug is that the Minor's militaries are being moved AWAY from their systems, instead of back towards them as the UP resolution appears to be intended to do.

It's not a bug - it's working as designed, if not exactly as intended.

The resolution moves ships outside enemy influence when war's declared. This just happens to move minor civ ships away from their homeworlds when they're in someone else's influence.

Except, like I said, minor races are not part of the UP.

Last I checked, Islamic Law doesn't apply to me because I'm not part of an Islamic country.

Hmm, the UP doesn't allow trade routes with non-members, either, and you can set up trade routes with minors.

I get the impression that all minors are considered to be subject to the UP, and have been since GC 1.

Oddly, some of the more militant adherents would disagree with you on that.

But on topic, if you want to go for an extreme solution, try this - if your influence covers the entire map, no one's ships get towed anywhere when you declare war. Since there is no where to tow them, everyone's ships stay right where they are. Just don't ask what I was doing when I discovered this  

Considering they can trade with you, I'd rethink that statement. As I recall, if you leave the UP, you lose the ability to trade with other races, correct? Therefore, the minor races are clearly a member of the UP, except they don't actually get a vote in it. Probably because they have no influence, at least as far as I can tell. Heck, one time I actually got a minor race that had his homeplanet literally within 5 parsecs of my Homeworld, and I don't recall my homeworld getting affected by any foreign influence on the planet info tab.



Best as I can tell, you've got it completely right.

This may not be a bug.


But the minor races ships should be moved back to their home world or one space off from it.


I have also said this in the past. Minor races should not be considered part of the UP unless they have some kind of collected vote in it. Also Jagged Knife and the other one that takes planets away from the majors should not be minor races. Just because they have dumped their respective governments doesn't mean that they have given up on all of their ideas of a galaxy wide empire. Specifically the Jagged Knife on this one. Since that is what they are trying to do in the first place according to the description of the event.

For that matter, I tried leaving the UP in one of my current games, and broke trade routes with a couple minors.

So you don't like how minor civs are exploited and dominated by the spacefaring civilizations, where they're subject to social structures and laws that they have no say in?

This never happens in the real world...   

if your talking about the UN no. the 7 perm. members have veto power but 9 of the other members vote on the same items as the 7. no veto power.

I'm not talking about the UN. I'm talking about what the more powerful nations do to less powerful nations.

For example - and I'm not trying to start an abortion argument, just pointing out a real example - the Bush administration gives aid to clinics in Africa under the provision that they not offer or even mention abortion. If they offer abortions, they lose the aid from the US. This has an actual impact on those nations, for good or ill.

There really is a lot of stuff that's abstracted in GalCiv, but it's entirely realistic for the minor civs to face real consequences if they don't play ball with the UP, and that kind of thing is easily abstracted. Sure, they can hold their own sometimes, but they only have one world each and it really would only take a single civilization getting a burr up their butt to wipe them out.

Anyway, I agree that minor civs should return to their homeworld rather than be forced away from it when war breaks out under the neutral ground law. I just don't agree that the current behavior is a bug.

Bug, design flaw, oversight, unintended consquences . . . whatever label you put on it, it's still something that needs to be changed.