It's an ok idea, but still artifical. It's not so much the sneak attacks I worry about.

My suggestion. Ships can attack ships that don't have right of passage, including freighters, without declaring war. Would be just a diplo hit. I think the AI could handle that.

A diplo hit for having ships without permission that are spotted (but not in sectors where the civ has influence to prevent stupid situations) would work as well. (Thinking of the scenario where a planet is being flipped and a ship heading there would cause a dip hit)

I think that's more realistic but would have nearly the same effect.

I love anything that eliminates the need for engine nerfage. Requiring the player to declare his intentions is a very reasonable thing to do.

I do have a couple of questions/assumptions though. One is when you declare war against an opponent I would assume it's only the ships in that opponents zone of control that would be moved. It doesn't seem reasonable to require that all ships in otherwise non-combatant ZOC's be moved to your own ZOC.

Also when your ships are moved out of your opponents ZOC are they necessarily moved to your nearest ZOC area or are they merely moved out of your opponents ZOC and perhaps into a nearby non-combatant's ZOC. I can think of arguments for both methods but certainly one way or the other must be chosen.

I would assume that this works both ways where an AI's ships in your ZOC are removed when they declare war on you as well. But what happens if I declare war on an AI are his ships removed from my area? Not sure if they should or shouldn't. But then what happens in the case of alliances where I declare war on one AI and his ally AI declares war on me. I would assume that the one that declared war on me would have his ships removed from my ZOC but not necessarily the one I declared war on. Starting to get kind of confusing here.

Although not directly related some mechanism for a player to demand the removal of an AI's warships, transports and possibly influence SB's from your ZOC is something that's been needed in this game for a long time. An ultimatum that gives the AI some minimum time to respond which if they don't comply then a state of war should exist. Also if war happens in this manner then it should be considered mutual and not require my ships to be expelled from his ZOC or if they are then his ship also be expelled from mine.

I would also assume that this movement of ships only applies to warships and transports and doesn't apply to non-combatant ships (how are SB's treated?).

One final issue that may have since been resolved that relates to this is the issue that the ZOC is not immediately recalculated after a reload which results in your ZOC most often being taken as much smaller than it really is. I've had wars declared on me simply I've had ships well within my own ZOC that I've saved only to have these ships be in enemy territory for the turn immediately after reloading the game. In DL v1.4x the ZOC isn't apparently recalculated until someone captures a planet or upgrades a SB so I've had the initial default ZOC persist for many turns. If it isn't already then this certainly needs to be fixed or otherwise accounted for if this option is implemented.

To summarize I think this is a wonderful idea, but there are many details to consider which could make or break this idea as an overall benefit. The fact is that I haven't yet played DA even though I bought it during the Beta period last year and the primary reason is my preference for large games and the logistics nightmare I believe that engine nerfage would cause. This change would be greatly appreciated.

One final caveat and this relates to the large game performance issues that exist in the game. You need to be sure that this stuff works with large numbers of ships. I would recommend that this functionality be tested with a minimum of 25,000 ships in play (preferably all on autopilot) simultaneously.

I think the point is the AI is worried about *your* sneak attacks on it and not the other way around. This was the stated reason for engine nerfage in the first place.

The first thing that pops into my mind is that sometimes my planets are significantly inside enemy space. So, I have the same problem that I have with the UP treaty, my fleet leaving my planets undefended because of this. I can solve it partially by orbiting my ships. It also becomes very exploitable in reverse. Not only can I force the non-orbited AI fleets to abandon everything, but I can predict where his ships will be located and ambush them, by figuring out where they will be placed when they get moved...And this works under the UP event.

The basic problem here is that influence is not a border and it shifts regularly. In RL, you wouldn't shift a border simply for cultural influence reasons. For this to work right, you would have to make it tie back into the distance you are from owned planets/stabases etc. and it would probably get pretty complicated. I think to make it really work, you would have to have shared or disputed areas where more than one civilization has a claim (close planets, etc) to the area and both can use it.

In addition, you would have to fix the influence borders being different on load issue. This was actually a real problem in my last game when fighting against the Yor. The borders would shift dramatically on load (moved back 6-8 squares) leaving my ships deep in Yor territory, when they were in my territory when I quit the game....Even then, the borders were different on the second turn than what they were on the last turn before saving, so I had to do a lot of guessing about were the borders where going to be after recalc.

Mumble, they will get move to the nearest ZOC that isn't yours. They have to do this in those cases where the AI doesn't have any ZOC. Meaning sometimes you can punt a runt AIs ships halfway across the galaxy on large maps.

Make it a relationship hit with good civilizations to pull a sneak attack - ie, if you're flying in enemy territory, they are offended by your dishonorable sneakiness beforehand.

It should only apply to fighter ships, and it should be based on how many you have in their territory, and how close to planets/starbases you are.

Slowing ships doesn't make sense, and outright denial of military access doesn't make sense.

However, I do want that Declare War button! I like Europa Universalis 2's peace treaty system, for the most part - if you take a province in the war, it is worth some points. At the end of the war, you can take one province permanently for every two you took, roughly. If you take all their provinces, you can annex the country.

It seems in GalCiv, as soon as you take a planet it's yours, you're not just occupying it. That allows for you to turn around a build stuff out of that planet, which may or may not make sense. I've never taken over a planet before.

However, the military access in EU2 works because it's divided into provinces, and territory is clearly owned or not. In GalCiv2, I found that I colonized a planet in Drengin territory and it remained Drengin territory. If I needed military access to go through my own planet's sector, I would be pretty pissed. Although in EU2, you can have a cut off province that you can't get to. So, I don't know what to do about this.

Why do we want to prevent sneak attacks, anyway?

It would work the same way as the United Planets issue in Dark Avatar.

Both your ships and your new enemy's ships are moved out of each other's space.  Starbases are not moved ever.  Only warships are moved. Ships with attack values, spore ships, and transports.  They are moved to the closest tile not blocked and not owned by the the other side.

 

can the ai handle doing a sneak attack.

Well, each ship has a home planet, the one where they were built, or the one that was assigned to them when they were traded from another race.  I could move the ships back to their home planets, which avoids the problem of it being predictable where they're going, and leaving AI planets undefended. 

The advantage of the UP neutral space event is that if you want to sneak attack in spite of it, all you have to do is quit the UP. The current proposal on the table appears to take away that freedom.

Good point, shiva! I think that reinforces that you have to work with relations instead. By the way, how do you explain ships sudden ability to move 100 parsecs?

Jythier, how do they explain it in Civ4?

It is, ultimately, a game, and realism isn't always fun. 

Ships being flung throughout space due to some fluid barrier that doesn't truly exist isn't always fun, either.

I've never played Civ4. So I don't know what they do there.

How about attrition damage to ships in hostile territory, like Rise of Nations? Again, you'll always have to make an allowance for being within x parceps of an owned planet or an owned starbase. If you have military access, you can go through without damage. It doesn't make sense either, but it goes back to the military access idea without slowing ships down.

But if a planet has built more than ten ships...? How about moving ships into orbit around the nearest friendly planet most powerful ships first, then cascading to the next planet when that orbit fills, etc., until non-enemy space is the closest destination? That would certainly help the AI protect those planets it likes to grab deep within your influence area.

With something like this in place for all races, not just members of the U.P., what a fantastic opportunity for a new super ability: Super Ambusher! The Drengin ability is rubbish, everyone agrees - let them be the only race that can sneak attack, instead!



Um, the U.P. is made up of Guild navigators? And that's also why the U.P. exists before the player even encounters another race?

You can sneak attack in this manner but you still have engine nerfage that mitigates your ability to take over an enemy in a single turn even though you may start well inside his space.

I assume from the wording of the OP that implementing this option would allow at least a reduction in engine nerfage that in effect has been differentially more unfair to the large galaxy player versus the small galaxy player. At least I hope this is a reasonable conclusion to make.


Ah good. So declaring war also forces his ships out of your ZOC as well. That's probably the simplest way to deal with most of the questions that I brought up. However, the issue of the variablity of the ZOC that both Purge and I mentioned still needs to be addressed.

BTW what version of the game is this being considered for? DA v1.7 final, TA or hopefully both?


It is a science *fiction* game. All things don't need to be fully explained particularly if it increases the overall playability of the game. Some ability to suspend disbelief must be presumed.