I recently started a thread about building starports outside of your own zone of control and it raised another question that I want to address without derailing the original thread:
What does zone of control mean in your eyes? To me there are 2 possibilities and conflating them causes some problems.
1) The represent political boundaries and function basically like national boundaries in present day society. This means that the controlling entity has the right to govern all the land and people within their borders. Everyone within the borders are subject to the laws and taxation of the government of the controlling body. Foreign commercial traffic is generally allowed, but may be taxed. Foreign military traffic is generally forbidden unless specific arrangements are made. Once an area is within a specific country’s borders it can generally only be changed by military action or uprising by the people in that area. Of course those uprisings may be orchestrated by foreign powers (see Crimea).
2) They represent a sphere of influence. This is a much more nebulous idea, but again can certainly be seen in the modern world. In this conception, your zone of control is the area in which yours is the dominant culture. Within this area your country’s arts, literature, media, and entertainment are pervasive, as is most likely your language. Through these outlets your ideology, values, and morals also come to be dominant. In extreme cases, especially if the government in an area has opposing values and ideology, this may result in popular uprisings. More commonly it reaps economic and political benefits: money flows into your country as other’s consume your products, and local governments are more open to trade and other interactions.
One of the issues with the borders in GalCiv II is that these two distinct ideas get muddled. For the most part, the game mechanics seem to adhere to #2, though there are notable exceptions; but the map sure looks like a modern political map, suggesting #1.
I don’t have a good answer. At first pass, political borders seem more clear and easier to deal with, especially when it comes to your internal narrative for your game. On the other hand, in a game where influence is an important force, influence borders can be super important, and often more significant than political borders.
What do you guys think? Should the borders in GalCiv III be politically or influence based or something else? What would you like Stardock to do to clarify what zone of control means in GalCIv III?
I want separate cultural and political borders, none of this BS with culture equating to territory control. Our sphere of influence should be as large as the players make it so., not dictated by some crummy equation(s) Of all the things in GC2, this is the one thing I actively disliked.
ZoC should work as 1).
Within the scope of the game, i think a ZoC is defined as the space in which you can deploy starbases and military ships without asking anyone => therefore borders as in political borders.
In the ZoC of another empire, you should not be able to move in military ships, deploy starbases or even claim strategic resources or colonize worlds. In fact, even unarmed ships like colony ships and scouts should not be able to cross an empire's borders without permission.
And all this is a good thing since it brings more diplomatic options on the board, treaties like open borders for civilians ships (means unarmed), trading rights, mining rights, colonization rights, grant military access, establish military starbase and maybe more.
ZoC should be defined by colonies only.
Influence sphere, as ParagonRenegade said, should be separate and should represent how much Coca and chewing-gum guys on the other side of the political border drink and chew.
Spreading influence maybe a problem if as said before, influence starbases can only be build within ZoC but it makes sense, since i don't think ex-USSR would have authorized USA to open a USA Influence Consortium in Moscow or USA authorized ex-USSR to open a Communism Propaganda Center in Washington.
I think that before making an agressive influence conquest, trade and good diplomatic relationships must be established since with good diplomatic relationships, trade flourish and with trade comes influence. Good relationships can enable the creation of a influence starbase in the other empire's ZoC, therefore cultural conquest.
Espionnage could be used to spread influence as well, with backroom talks and similar subversive operations.
With territorial proximity, influence provided by an influence starbase could just cross the political border.
However, i must say that i don't think colonies should just switch from on side to another. It doesn't work like that in real life. Colonies should switch only if claimed by an rival empire (which is most likely a friend since it has influence based on trade, good relationships, see above) or if they ask for switching sides and are accepted by the rival empire.
But a colony switching sides should always ends up with a great diplomacy penalty (of course the losing empire isn't going to be happy to see its citizens tax leaving).
Reading this might make you think that military conquest would be easier and therefore preferred by players, which is not a good thing because having different, equals ways of conquest is a good thing.
Well i agree, but i don't think influence conquest should be simplified, it's military conquest that should be harder, especially in the field of keeping the military conquered colonies under control: there should be riots, sabotages and generally speaking, unwillingness to obey the new ruler.
It should translate in long-time maluses in taxes, production and research provided by the colony slowly decreasing over time (maluses even higher than 100%, meaning that an angry colony should costs to maintain instead of providing anything). A revolution should even bring the colony back to the original owner if there is not enough military forces to keep the system under check.
well i'll stop here since i probably went a bit far away from the question and that the game is most likely too much developed to include all this but anyways, since i write all this, i should as well post it!
Agreed.
This was already the case in GalCiv 2: DL. As stated on page 16 of the original manual: "Influence is not the same as the borders of one's civilization. In Galactic Civilizations II, borders go only as far as ones planet."Of course, this got changed, and the statement is now completely absent in any of the later manuals, like the ones for the Gold and Ultimate Editions.
I go for option 2. Your political borders start and stop with your planets. There are no other physical borders possible. You could possibly claim to enforce political borders in space, but it would be more expensive in border patrols than it would be worth. You end up with the same general unenforceable "my claim is better than your claim" chaos that defines current air- and sea-based border claims. (Then again, it can get immediately enforced upon declaration of war. That is an inconsistency I cannot reason or imagine my way around.)
Your influence is a calculated combination of factors based on economic and cultural pressures. How you exude cultural influence over vast regions of empty space is a little vague, but generally seems to indicate that if some errant space craft was passing through, this is whose subspace radio stations and talk shows they would be listening to. Makes sense to me, anyway.
And of course, a good military invasion trumps everything.
This is one of those situations where i really want a "partial war declaration" sort of thing, as in, i will attack your ships that breach my borders, but i will not attack you outside my borders sort of thing. Or some other similar option between full out war and not really being able to do anything.
This would be great combined with open/closed border treaties, where ships do not enter a closed border on automated orders, but if you order then to enter a border they will (with some confirmation box so you don't accidentally screw yourself). This could lead to surprise attacks etc, but not giving a formal "honorable" declaration of war will give you a bigger warmonger penalty with other civs. Or illegal scouting which could lead to some nice diplomacy stuff.
This would be even better if you could set a"hard" border and a "soft border", with soft border being more the influence/culture thing, which is only enforced if you have closed borders, and "hard borders" being something you can set somewhere to x tiles from my planets/military starbases. Hard borders would be the limit for a regular open borders treaty, and being friends or allies or some other treaty could be full border access.
Only problem then is trade ships either not being able to reach planets, or being able to be used as scouts.
i could vote for this
i think culture can influence borders but they should be separate systems
Like a cold war.
I don't think a diplomacy penalty is right. We players do nothing the AI wouldn't do and only then it should be ideology based.
This would be even better if you could set a"hard" border and a "soft border", with soft border being more the influence/culture thing, which is only enforced if you have closed borders, and "hard borders" being something you can set somewhere to x tiles from my planets/military starbases. Hard borders would be the limit for a regular open borders treaty, and being friends or allies or some other treaty could be full border access. Only problem then is trade ships either not being able to reach planets, or being able to be used as scouts.
Exactly.
This is interesting and I had never seen it or never noticed it before. If this indeed is Stardock's vision of how borders work in GalCiv, I think they should make it more explicit, as the way area's of influence are depicted on the game screen strongly suggests territorial borders on a political map.
As I said in the rest of my post, that statement no longer exists in the later manuals. The devs must have changed their minds, because they added UP proposals and events, which treat influence borders as political borders.
I see them more as cultural borders, in which one has political influence. One issue that Galactic Civ suffers is that the genre norm is fixed borders any intrusion must be seen as an act of war and thus the opposing player entering your borders must declare war first or have a treaty otherwise they cannot enter your lands.
This is no where near the way things should be done. If someone with an army enters your land, you can declare war on them, they do not need to declare war first. In space, if you enter my territory and I say, hey get out... what tools do I have to force them out... They don't have to listen without the threat or use of force. If you attack their vessels no matter where they are, that civilization will see that as an act of war. In fact, I should be able to attack their vessels without declaring war, it should be the responsibility of the opponent to declare war on me at that point.
It is a matter of perceptions. If I sent a vessel in the middle of hostile territory and they attack it, I don't necessarily want to declare war or be at war with that nation. I can choose to ignore the attack. This would change the mechanics of the game and bring diplomacy to a whole new level of discomfort. The idea of the "gray war", a war that is not declared by either party although past actions indicate otherwise.
I do not support this full change to Galactic Civilization as it would change the flavor of the game, although some aspects of this diplomacy would be nice to see.
I agree fully with Parrottmath's reply #10. GalCiv has never had a concept of fixed boarders beyond an empire's planet's atmosphere, and should not change this mechanic. I could see some diplomacy actions, as in GC2, where a leader would complain about your threatening his/her sphere of influence ("I see you are massing ships near my planets ...."), but that would not be a change either. And since we have not seen anything yet of what diplomacy is going to be like, ....
I am very much opposed to using influence boundaries as territorial borders. If Stardock wants to add in 'national space' as a game concept, then I'd rather that it were some fixed number of tiles around a colony rather than anything remotely similar to influence, with a reasonable rule for settling overlapped claims. Conceptually speaking, there's little difference between 'territorial waters' and 'territorial space' - both represent a region in which the laws of the owning nation are generally accepted to apply, rather than a fully-enforceable border. It also represents a limit to how close foreign warships can come to a colony without causing a diplomatic incident during peacetime, and would be an actually-reasonable region of space where you might have to pay a starbase tax.
This going to quite interesting in the future. SD needs to make a creative solution for this.
That's just the point. If you look at GC2 your influence can extend into sectors where other empires also have influence, making the "boarders" rather murky. In GC2 the sectors that get your empire's color are those where you have at least some influence and more influence than anyone else.
These are NOT territorial borders.
Except when they are. To give you some examples, here are a few of the UP proposals in GalCiv 2:
AnomalyOwnership01
"Throughout the galaxy, we've discovered a vast number of oddities. While many of them have little worth, others have proven quite advantageous. With that in mind, we come together now to vote on allowing territorial ownership of anomalies. Under the new proposal vessels with survey capabilities will only be able to conduct research on spatial abnormalities that lie within either their own territory or unoccupied space."
StarbaseTax01
"In an effort to keep civilizations from exploiting the goodwill of other races, we will be voting on whether or not to enforce a tax on starbases residing in sectors not controlled by their empire. This law would last 3 years and hopefully keep our galaxy from becoming overcrowded with the mammoth structures. How much do you feel starbase owners should be taxed when occupying another race's territory?"
NeutralZones
"The foreign buildup of forces before declaring war is a dishonorable and cowardly tactic. By allowing this 'strategy' to be used, we're actively planting the seeds of suspicion and distrust amongst our neighbors.\nWe come together today to fight for a more trustworthy community. Following a declaration of war, all active warships on both sides will be forced into non-aggressive territory. The use of neutral ground will prevent the surprise attacks that too often follow the buildup of troops."
In all three cases the game uses influence borders in order to determine territorial borders. For example, if the AnomalyOwnership01 proposal gets passed, only you may survey anomalies within your cultural borders, because that is your territory according to the game.
^It seems one of the only ways to do borders is via culture. If we had to claim every sector it would be a drag.
Gaunathor, you are right. I forgot all about these. All I can say is that these UP proposals are very inconsistent with the way the rest of the game treats the borders as displayed, something that should be addressed in GC3. Lets all keep a watch for inconsistencies as the newer builds come out.
DARCA, Agreed.
I suggest you take a look at the DiplomaticModifiers.xml. Several of the modifiers seem to indicate, that the devs intend to equate cultural borders with political borders.
Wow. That is quite a set of modifiers.
I think I would rather state this as "... equate cultural borders with political borders effect".
The best comparison to borders in space would be borders at sea. At sea most nations have a 12NM (22,2km) zone that is the nations territorial waters (TTW). State vessels/aircraft from other nations must request diplomatic clearance in advance in order to lawfully enter within the 12NM border. Some nations - often poor nations)chose to have only a 3 NM TTW for various reasons. If 2 or more nations TTW borders would overlap the principle of dividing in the middle is applied. Exceptions exist for straits where all ships have the right to pass through but not to conduct any kind of operations.
In addition to the TTW nation have an Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ) extending 200NM (370km) from the coastline. In that zone the freedom of the seas apply, in that all ships are allowed to pass through without requesting permission from anybody. The nation which has the EEZ is the only one allowed to exploit the natural resources in the water, on the seabed or in the underground - eg. fish, oil etc.
I think such a principle could be applied to GALCIV 3 where TTW (or TTS) extends a fixed distance from settled planets or claimed systems - other species should be able to enter this volume without permission - to do so would be an act of war.
Movement should be unrestricted in the EES but construction of space stations or other use of resources (perhaps even using a survey ship to look for goodies) should be prohibited. Violation could cause a hit in standing, a claim of reperations or constitute a Casus Balli - enabling the wronged nation and its allies to go to war against you - and leave you in a situation where your allies would not want to help you.
When you consider that a hex on the GC3 map is one hell of a long distance it is hard to justify extending a TTW beyond the tile that a planet is on. I can think of three reasons for this: First is that the expense in ships in a real life situation to enforce such a huge area would be prohibitive, second, the expense to install sensors to detect violations would be very expensive. And when you compare a TTW to the width or breadth of a nation on our earth today, 12NM is miniscule, perhaps analogous to the depth of a planet's atmosphere (or a bit more) when scaled up to the scale of GC games. Besides, the 12NM range of a TTW in today's world has been established by an evolutionary combination of treaty and custom, and is not automatically applicable to a future space age setting, let alone apace games.
As far as EEZs are concerned, in GC2, this is managed by proximity, that is, an asteroid field with a mining station or a resource being mined by a starbase establishes ownership, at least until another empire takes it over by force or trade.
IMO, equating either of these to the amount of influence (economic or political) a country enjoys does not have any parallel in today's worldwide culture. The amount of economic influence is determined more by trade and tourism than anything else, and political influence is sufficiently swayed by trade and tourism to justify its use in a space game.
Influence Starbases in GC2, when first implemented, were proposed as an analogy to trading posts, where products and cultural ideas could be exchanged. Why a country, or especially a corporation, should not be allowed to buy space in another country and build a trading post for trading products or cultural ideas or cultural performances (concerts, plays, displays, etc.) is beyond me.
It boils down to the military border you establish is only applicable if you are willing to fight for it. Thus, if the other nations intrude on this space, it is you who should declare war. They should abide by your set boundaries yes, and if you say that is an act of war for the entrance of those ships, then declare war on them.
The only natural borders in space are the planets themselves / any place you put a space station. These are the only areas which you have a physical presence and if you cannot enforce that border, there should be no reason why the "enemy" shouldn't be able to utilize this without a political declaration of war by the invading party.
I would like to see the war mechanics in a game change. The invasion of a planet is by all means a full declaration of war by the invading party. To physically remove your elements from your well established area cannot be anything, but be a declaration of war. The building of star-bases and maneuvering without conflict, follows closer to a "Cold War" situation than anything. This is similar to how the game runs with influence, a Cold War fight in general.
If the diplomacy in the game starts to adapt, where one can threaten war or political retribution against other parties, it will be impossible to force the modern society national territorial waters. The only reason to respect these boundaries is that they have full control and power to defend these waters against invaders or aggressors. The political community of the world tries to ensure that conflict doesn't arise out of such disputes. A similar implementation is required to force such a fluid border that we have in Gal Civ. (But we have to wait to see what diplomatic elements that we can have in the game.)
I agree with your reply with the exception that I would call this act an "act of war" instead of a declaration.
Yes, this would be an act of war, so diplomatically if war was undeclared it would (should) be declared by the aggressor.
There should be a diplomatic option "assert territorial controls" vis-a-vis a specific opponent. It would be possible to share these assertions with other parties and affect their opinion of you and the counter-party. Establishing a starbase or mining operations somewhere would be communicated automatically if someone is able to see the affect area otherwise you can share that knowledge explicitly. You can also lay claim to unoccupied stuff (asteroids, planets, sectors) - the reasonableness of which others will calculated based upon physical claims and relative positions/interests in the item. i.e., if I claim a planet 2parsecs away from my homeworld and the counter-party is on the other side of the galaxy they likely will just shrug; while claiming a planet next to one of their close friends/allies would anger both them and the ally being infringed upon - even I only make the claim directly to one of them the word would spread to the other.
Asserting control/protection over an area and then not enforcing that would embolden others and generally lower their opinions of you; though making clear why you did not intervene would mitigate that somewhat at the risk of outwardly looking weak. It would be interesting to be able to bluff in these situations - especially if the counter-party is already getting information second-hand due to not having sufficient intelligence.
--David Johnston
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