Influence wars - a few suggestions

Devs? hello? oh well -

things that go *Bump* in the night

Flemming-

1) not an act of war I hope but definately something that would damage relationships where your culture and theirs conflict (McDonalds in Bagdad)

2) scull and cross bones and also messages do pop up warning of defections

3) Nice idea - implications from teh enemy political centre to defections of 'frontier' planets. At the moment the races accept this assimilation a bit too easily perhaps?

Steve,

well, when I place my Starbases in the middle of enemy territory, to cover as much as possible, and start broadcasting how good the human culture/race is, I'd damn well take it as an act of war if I was the enemy.
Of course, it could lead to diplomatic repurcussions instead, i.e. no diplomacy deals with that empire, trade embargoes against humans, alliance's break off, relationships cool and so forth...

sorry Flemming you mean when you are already at war? if you are already at war building a starbase in enemy territory is aggressive, when you are at peace it is strategic and, like Cuba could cause political repercissions, but i would say not automatically a war. It probably would cause one if the opposing race was culturally opposed (good v bad etc)

Hi Steve, or is it Steeve?

Hmm, no - I mean I build a starbase in the middle of alien empire sectors, and I do it with the sole purpose of gaining more cultural influence, since I've discovered to my horror I seem to be a cultural Imperialist and loves to win via the cultural victory.

So,, since that is the sole purpose of doing this (building the starbase either at fringe or in middle of alien nation empire) is to win their population over, I would think it DOES constitute an act of war.
Just as most alien nations aren't to interested in trading too much, for exactly the same reasons, they shoulndt be interested in me building starbases on their territory.

And yes, probably diplomatic crises like the ones I described above would be cool to implement in the game

/Flemming

Hmm interesting.

This is to do with the 'perception' of a Cultural victory as a tool of war in GalCiv. This 'mechanism for winning' is quite unique in a computer game and isn't war I don't think. Although it could be a precursor to war. Let me explain what I mean (I could be wrong of course)

Many countries are assimilated by cultural influence from other races to become essentially extensions to that country, take USA which is culturally/influencially powerful - the Phillipines, Hawaii, UK , Italy? and many other nations are culturally assimilated into the USA's sphere of commercial and political influence without overt warfare and often without the population even being aware. Perhaps I could have picked a better example.

However sometimes the political elite or even the population reject the 'foreign' cultural influence and war results. A place in SE Asia springs to mind.

You'r right!!
It IS a question of perception and I can tell now where we went beside each other, hehe.

I'm looking at the influence wars from a somewhat nationalistic and dictatorly(is that a word?) point of view - i.e. foreign influence threatens my rule/dictatorship.

Of course, If I was a benign leader (HA) I probably wouldn't mind, because peace and unification would lead to greater glory of mankind and ehm - alienkind LOL

/Flemming