Is there any way to declare war without opening fire?

Sure, sell/gift a Attack contract (on your side of the trade screen) to any AI willing to buy/accept. It has a great side effect of avoiding the senate approval.

Now that part I did not know, hehehe.

Not that I've ever had a Senate war block but once, but damn was that annoying.

And would declaring war cancel my outstanding debts? Do I resume paying if we make peace afterwards?

No - you still keep paying them.

lol, till they are destroyed....

WTF? You keep paying your debts to a country you are at war with?

The way I understand it, this was designed as an anti-exploit feature. Players could have this nasty habit of buying tech or whatever from the aliens on a long term deal and then declare war to erase the debt while being able to use the new goodies immediately. So it was decided to basically make all the contracts iron-clad. Nothing can break the deal.

And this is news to you because?

GalCiv was designed first and foremost to be a *game* that plays well, not a simulation. Is it realistic that every agreement is through some omnipotent galactic escrow system? Maybe, maybe not, but for the reasons Gerakken stated, Brad has stated, I have stated, and a gazillion others have stated, that's how it works.

In spite of your childish 'WTF', the game is much better playing this way than it would be if it worked the other way.

Although I'd agree, there are still ways to exploit the anti-exploiting feature. Just kill the initial Drainol ships, demand 130,000 BCs for 50 months in exchange for peace, and attack.

There are suggestions already out there...

"In spite of your childish 'WTF', the game is much better playing this way than it would be if it worked the other way."

Thank you for a condescending and insulting response to an honest exclaimation of surprise. I feel the world is a better place because of people like you. Sir, I salute you.

Some minors have a huge amount of money and one planet. I get into a war with them, and then ask for a peace treaty.

I usually take their one planet and all their money, but it's possible to take their one planet and all their money for 50 turns. Sometimes this amounts to over 200,000 bcs.

My philosophy is to search to see if things have been answered before I ask. This is an old, old, old topic that's been beaten to death and a glance through the older threads would have revealed it to you (or a glance at your economy screen for that matter).

The problem with that is that many of the answers in the older threads are just that: old.

For example, at one point I was wondering if you could simply make a kajillion starbases in one sector and boost the production up to an astronomical level. From what I understand, this used to be the case, but was changed fairly recently. I just wanted to be absolutely sure, thats all.

For what its worth though, I do agree with your philosophy.

*suddenly has an urge to quote Voltarie*

P.S. Hopefully this question will not further enrage anyone: I am aware that they made it so that you got diminishing returns if you make more than one starbase in a sector, but what if I make a large chain of starbases along the path that my freighters are taking (to a distant alien world)? If I only have one starbase per sector, does that exempt me from the diminishing returns rule, or does it not matter since they would all affect the same trade route? What if the starbases in question are all in the same sector?

AFAIK the build starbases along the trade route thing is fine. I think the diminishing returnes only applies to planet production. Anyway the flipside of huge planet production is you actually have to pay for it, well 66% of it. So it makes alot of sense to find a sector with say 4 nice planets in it, jack up the production to saturation values, and that's it.