Blockades and Stupid AI relations

from Stardock Forums
A technique that i've found wonderful for when two races that are friendly towards you are at war with each other and the stronger one refuses to back down is to blockade the weaker AIs planets.

The first time i tried this the Drengin were exterminating the Altarians. For some reason the Drengin though i was just wonderful (probably due to my huge fleet =) but i couldn't get them to declare peace with the Altarians. I tried giving ships to the Altarians, but that didn't work too well because they didn't use them very effectively (even though all the AI were on normal intelligence) and because the Altarian's didn't have control of any combat resources, so as soon as i gave them the ships they would have an instant drop in power that would make them relatively ineffective against the Drengin ships.

So after a couple failures along that line, i just started pumping out Corvettes, and had them surround all the Altarian planets. The Drengin weren't willing to declare war on me to get to the Altarian planets, in fact their relations meter didn't move at all, it's like they didn't even notice what i was doing, they just circled around my fleets looking for a way in. Then i started building culture starbases in those sectors and giving them to the Altarians, and soon the Drengin planets were getting assimiliated by the Altarians.

The Altarians didn't once complain about the presence of the ships, and at the time i thought it was because we had good relations and they were at war with someone, but apparently it wasn't just that.

I tried the same tactic in a later game where it was just me, the Altarians, and the Torians left, and the Altarians were exterminating the Torians. I put a blocade of corvettes around their planet, built them some starbases and protected those too. However they keep complaining about troop buildups! We started out friendly, and the starbases and tech i was handing over kept it that way for awhile, but now relations have become hostile!

The Altarians have abour 40 or 50 ships in the sector (the Torian's _last_ sector left) and at least half of those ships or Dreadnaughts or Overlords. The only thing stopping the Altarians from wiping out the Torians are the 40 corvettes i have on blockade duty.

True, maybe I'm planing to stab the Torians in the back, they don't know that I have good intentions, but you think given the situation they'd be a little more trusting. They're already at war with a race that has at least 20 times the military rating they do. Why do they want to get in a fight with the other race that has 40 times the military rating they do?

The way it's going now, it looks like they're going to eventually declare war on me, and their 6 Dreadnaughts (half of which were a gift from me) are going to punch a hole in the corvette blockade, at which point the Altarians will start streaming in...
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
aha! the little used but often effective REVERSE blockade trick. I hadnt thought about using that strategy. thanz for the tip!!
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I actually did something similar (albeit on a smaller scale) in my last game. The Yor had colonized a less-than-desirable system in the same sector as Earth; I had a trade route going between the two systems and had saved the game just as the Drengin (who were at war with the Yor but not with me) were moving in to attack the Yor system. As it turned out the first thing they did was to attack not the Yor system, but the Yor freighter going between that system and Earth. There went one of my trade routes...

Fortunately I had two fleets of about ten ships each in the sector, so I re-loaded the saved game and re-deployed all those ships to completely seal off the trade route between the two systems. I did leave the Yor planet unprotected on one side (otherwise they would have been unable to launch their own ships to fight off the Drengin), but even though the Drengin completely outclassed me militarily (they had dreadnoughts and my ships were mere battle cruisers and corvettes), they decided they weren't willing to risk going to war with me just to destroy one lousy trade route.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes, you can do some quite cheesy things with lots of scouts in the early game as well.. get 8 of them to surround a resource spot and unless the AI goes to war, that spot is yours... even two scouts can slow down a colonizer in the early game enough to let one of your win the race.

The AI does not seem to understand this blocking tactic, and thus it doesn't affect relations.

~SDC~
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
O.K. there are always loopholes in all computer games and you can try to fix them as a developer or say if the players want to abuse them fine...

On the bright side. Seeing that the players are forced to use these cheese tactics to win shoes me that the computer is already quite compent in running his empire.IMHO

(the only way I can think of to prevent this paricular cheese is: Three ships near one of the computers ships will be regarded as an agressive act and lead to a drop of relations eventually leading to war...)Drawback is that you would have to withdraw your forces out of the way of the computer ships / high demand on the computer to compare ships positions etc.) A routine for the computer if it is not able to find a clear path to a selected destiny for his ships demand the withdrawl of ships for planet x or face the consequences)

Actually there are for me much more serious game balancing issues right now in the game . Party palaces spreading influence immeadiatly and planets changing ownership before the computer can´t even react, human starbases everywhere, computer not learning to take out military starbases first ..., "suicide" attacks of the computer wiping out his whole armanda in just three turns etc...)
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I don't think this is such a cheezy tactic... A better aproach would be to get the AI to do something similar... To send out low cost (or faster) ships to claim systems until more expensive (or slower) vessels can arrive... It would force all sides to make earlier choices about fighting...

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Midnightsun:

I didn't need to use those cheese tactics to win, I'd already clearly won. I was just trying to preserve all the good races until i could win the game through other means than conquest. In one case i even helped the Yor out by building them some starbases.

And my only complaint is that the person i was trying to protect was getting pissed off at me in one case :)

If i was going to try to come up with a solution, well, it would be complicated. If there were two civs at war, and they both had a large number of ships in the same sector, and you also had a large number of ships in the area, then the AIs should check (depending on which is easier for the developers) A: Is the reason the pathfinding algorithm is failing because of the human ships, or if that's too hard, B: Has X number of turns gone by without a fight even though they're trying to attack the enemy ships?

If those conditions are true, then the AI whose home sector it is should have their relations with the player improve, while the invading AIs relations decrease. (And if it's not anyone's home sector, then it should be based on who has the weaker or stronger military, since the only reason you'd normally want to use this tactic is to protect a weaker AI)
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I think the Torians were justified in being upset with you. If someone who isn't your ally builds up a bunch of ships right outside your planet, you should be upset with them. :)

Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
@DaetrinnSorry, I didn´t try to insult you or somebody else.

I tried to explain my point of view.

I play GalCiv as I would play it against other human players. A human would would tell you: Go away or its war between us....

There are many other loopholes out there. I believe sometimes it is up to the player to decide if he uses tricks to have fun or not. On the other hand I would like to see other things patched with 1st priority because the AI should act more "intelligent". An example is 1the battleship per turn attacks on one of your planet. OR when he blasts away the defender he has no troopship avaible to conquer my planets... etc. Using starbases to help conquer planets... Blasting away my defense bases :)
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
I wonder if it would be effective to have a BLOCKADE button on the ship command list. Then, whenever a ship attempts to move through that sector, it could ask you whether or not you wanted to allow it, and answering NO could alter that empire's opinion of you.

Still, I haven't played enough high-AI games to know whether this would even be necessary. Still, embargos would be neat.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I like hotcoffedude's idea.

To be able to choose whether opponents can go by you affecting relations.

You set your ships to allow or not allow this or that race to go by.(no need for them to be "pack bros/sis" or something) Those races forbidden to go by would have to attack and declare war if they really want to pass. Those races your not allowing to pass slowly getting pissed at you.

As far as build up at the borders.. The AI could work where some build up makes the AI nervous. But if your military influence is greater then that AI's and you've been there long enough that the AI can be certain its not a attack then it relaxes and the negative relations points you gathered from the build up go away.

Also there can be a negotiate peace option. This will allow you to work out a war. Threaten or bribe one or both sides of a war that has nothing to do with you. Work out the details of why they fight.

If one side agrees to peace but the other doesn't then you can tell the aggressor.. "look, attack that AI and it will be like attacking me. This AI is under my protection"