A diplomacy hit sounds appropriate. The penalties could be made to snowball for repeated offenses.

I like to see some UP penalties as well ranging from a ban from voting on UP issues to expulsion.

~SDC~

Well, I managed a tiny maso tonight without any problems, so I guess that one must have been a fluke.

I generally get way far ahead in tech and do buy most of my early game military from the AI. (since I can't get money for the tech, I figure I'll get something) That generally keeps my military rating decent enough to keep them happy with me.

I've only noticed that I can sell to tech to the Alexians and any of the AI that randomly spawn later in the game. Sometimes I can sell to the others but its like a zillion techs for like 10 bc, which is pointless.

Suggestions from the peanut gallery .

Breaking an alliance and attacking a former ally within a predetermined time limit allows that AI race to call an emergency UP meeting where they can plead their case. Perhaps strength differences could determine what action is taken: suspension of offending race, explusion of offending race, immediate peace, peacekeepers, no action etc.

As for attacking "close" or "friends" well that depends does it go both ways?

I get attacked by my AI 'friends' sometimes too. I have connected this to either having transports out in space (no threat to them mind you). They get nervous and attack, or move orders that don't clear and seem to have them moving on to my ships/stars.

Currently it seems to me if you attack a race their friends seem to get upset and their enemy's pleased, if that is the case perhaps increasing the amount this effects them could help.

~SDC~

As an idea, attacking an ally - or for that matter, bribing a third party to go to war with an ally - should really bring a hit to your morality rating, as well as a diplo penalty.

That way, someone who's already Demonic would suffer just the diplo penalty (as in, yes, Netro Mancer, the humans DID shoot at us - but what did you expect when you formed an alliance with evil hooligans?), while it would be impossible to get the benefits of being Saintly while backstabbing.

I know this moves away from event-driven morality, but orchestrating an attack on an ally is really BIGGER than an event that affects only one planet.

Maybe a Morale hit, which could be bigger if you have a higher form of government.

I have seen in he Relations screen the possibility of Peace treaty right ? Is it implemented or not ? Because I have never seen one :notsure:

Instead of sueing for "peace" you could sue for a truce of a fixed length (1 year, 10 years,... why not unlimited). Breaking a truce would be a disaster for the offender's Morale.

Tying forms of government to the ability to wage wars would be nice. A couple of other games have that.

Currently, it's a no-brainer to upgrade your government as soon as the tech is available.

~SDC~

True that.

I don't know about tying the government to warfare, though. For one thing, when wars are declared on you, without your consent, if the game snows you under with meaningless penalties, it won't be much fun.

In my first 1.12 game (Medium Rare) the UP kept voting on a tax against civs at war. It claimed it would be a permanent tax, so I'm thinking it wasn't supposed to be revoted several more times? Anyway, that tax could be up to 20%. YIKES. Not a problem if you embrace it willingly, but nasty suckage if you get waylaid. And flip that around, too easy to bribe AI's into suffering. What you pay them won't even make up for what they will lose from the tax!

Penalties for backstabbing would be appropriate, but it would have to be done carefully. I'm not a big backstabber, but I just did my most heinous move yet in any GalCiv game: the Caris got that event where they "steal all the tech" of the first place major. That included Dreads, Rangers, and four other techs in that region of the military branches. Cari only had one planet (rare map, remember). So I traded them about eight trade goods and twenty or twenty-five techs for their six -- all but three of my techs! -- and then immediately declared war and wiped them out on the same turn. The other majors had targetted them and would be taking them out soon anyway, so it was just too good to pass up. I essentially got six big techs for absolutely nothing at all -- but only because of that event.

Bribing the AI's to attack one another is a valid move to be in the game, but I've never really abused it. I bribe one AI to attack one AI, or in the occasional desperate situation, I may bribe two or three times. I have never had all the AI's at war with all the AI's, and me getting all of everyone's trade. That sounds broken to me.

Yet I fear a "tech victory scoring nerf" style "cure worse than the disease" if they try to mess with this. I'm not abusing it, so closing out the abuse wouldn't affect me -- unless they hamstring the option entirely or break it, in which case my gaming would be diminished. I'm afraid to call for a fix. "Be careful what you ask for".

Diplomatic penalties are the same kind of issue. What happens too often when trying to close loopholes in the rules is that other loopholes remain, so the loophole hunters and exploit users see little change, while regular players suffer a nerf or lose options. Leaks CAN be plugged, but it is delicate work, sometimes tedious, and always requiring extensive testing to make sure the fix works as intended.

I don't even view the GalCiv governments as "government". They are merely economic and production boosts. I've lost control of the senate one time in the last couple dozen games, and that was purely from inattention. With population growth tied in to morale, with Bad Things that can happen from random events or (on large maps) flips to the I-League, there's plenty of incentive to keep morale high. I have yet to figure out what "harder to maintain control of the senate" is SUPPOSED to mean. Looks like a red herring to me.

Weeks ago, I proposed that the "senate vote to authorize war" be used to regulate sneak attacks. The senate should simply NOT allow war to be declared on any ally. Break the alliance first. AI's should have options to break alliance with you, too. The Senate should have big penalties attached to sneak attacks if you are good, and be less willing to go to war in general if your alignment is good. Conquest while good should still be quite doable, but some of the usual exploits and ridiculous moves the game code currently allows could stand to disappear for good alignments.

Then there's the issue of all-the-same alignment setups. One would think those would be the hardest, if player leans AWAY from the pack. They surely become the easiest if player leans toward the pack. My first two "random" alignment games were a cakewalk, because most of the civs rolled good and I leaned their way. Currently the game is not sophisticated enough to discern when player leans toward the pack when it counts, then later moves away. The only way I see to close that out is to score maximum for the default alignment spread, and score LESS for any spread that leans one way or the other, or has its polarities closer together. Yet can a formula be found that scores low for an all-good, all-neutral, and all-evil spread, yet is still fair to random and default games, or oddball arrangement? Ideally, the game could measure your alignment over time and score you according to where you sit over time in regard to the AI's. Then the real difficulty could be measured. Not sure how they could pull that off, though.


- Sirian

We have that already, Sirian.



Personally, I don't think it is working properly. You can try playing a Pure Evil game with all AIs set as Pure Good and you will know what I mean.

~SDC~

If the government is Evil you just stick the heads of a few Senators on pikes and call for a new vote. Only under Imperial government you say? BWAHAHAHAHA!!

see? its much easier being evil LOL