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?
They're spheres of influence which different races, to varying degree,try to claim are also political borders.
Thanks for the official clarification, Brad.
It looks like these three UP proposals violate Brad's reply above "They're spheres of influence which different races, to varying degree, try to claim are also political borders", and maybe they should be removed or reworked for GC3. While these are UP proposals it could be claimed that they fit the second part of Brad's clarification. I have to wonder how the code in GC2 treats these UP issues, especially the IA code for the other races. But, please, no speculations, I am only curious about the way the code was coded. My suspicion is that this kind of nuance was not even considered.
Wow first I'm going to deal with closed borders; honestly I wouldn't mind it in a soft form. That means if I tell you to get out of my territory you have a choice to refuse. If I have the military to force you out great, but if I don't I can't do much about it. I only want open borders treaties if that doesn't prevent me from physically entering your territory; otherwise it is game cheesy. This concept never improves a game. Sorry if the colony rush is to much for you. learn how to play the game. If you want closed borders where I cant enter for anything unless I declare war then I'm 100% against this. Still at it no backing down on this issue.
Now from reading this I can find three ways to define borders. First there is culturally this should not directly cause flipping. Though I can see people being culturally loyal, but lets not remember this is also caused by being the same species. Things that affect this is also how you are being treated by your leaders. Now as far as influence flipping it would be more probable that the planet will declare independence first, and then maybe depending on the relationship with the other faction join them after awhile, and then if the first nation didn't recognize their independence. This would cause tensions between the other factions. This is like the history of Texas in the United States of America. If the planet was recently conquered. Also the galactic council can set borders for your nations. This should be allowed to be voted on by all the members. Not just once, but if need be several times. This is also probably used to set neutral territory not owned by anyone, but will or will not eventually be claimed by some one. Third you should be allowed to set your own borders even if you are the only ones to recognize them. Your friends will probably respect this.
I do think that their should be act of war, war, cold war, and a policing distinction on the game. The only to make this fair is that the policing part should be sent out to all the players. How the Ai will react is up to the devs. What I'm trying to say hear is that if you have announced interstellar to the galactic council how ships may enter your space then you should be allowed to police borders. This would incur a diplomatic penalty except maybe amongst friends. No one has to listen if they have the force to back it up. Hopefully the game will give as many treaty options to this as possible in the diplomacy screen. This could be an option to shut this off.
i could agree with this on condition that if i had closed borders and you violated those borders without declaring war i could destroy your ship while its in my space without having to declare war
or possibly capture it , reverse engineer any parts out of it i can, ransom the crew and ship back to you, then load the crew in send it home, and destroy the engine
I think those proposals are exactly what Brad was talking about; they're attempts to treat spheres of influence as political boundaries. Each one is a way of stating "what's in my sphere belongs to me, so you need to back off". The only inconsistency is that they're coming from the UP instead of directly from the various races, but presumably that can be attributed to one particular race pushing for that issue to be voted on in the UP.
But if you do such a thing to any of my ships, I'll declare war on you. No matter my power at the time. Thereby defeating purpose of capturing / destroying my ship without declaring war.
It boils down to should there be automatic declaration of war when attacking ships. The typical answer to these things is yes war must be declared, but to do otherwise would force the Player or AI to declare war as a separate measure. The ability to attack without war repercussions opens a large amount of diplomatic options that the game could utilize. But this would be a lot to consider.
Nonsense, getting YOU to declare war is the entire point of the exercise. In diplomatic terms, it makes you the aggressor and various treaty agreements are enforced differently if you declare war on him rather than he on you. In GC2 terms, your allies won't support you if you declare war on him, but will if he declares on you. And hey, there's always the chance that you won't declare war, however remote that chance may be.
Besides, in real diplomatic terms, violating someone else's territory with a warship is itself a casus belli. The power doing the trespassing is committing the first aggressive act. In historical terms, the 22 mile limit was loosely based on the range of a battleship's guns when that limit was established - meaning a hostile power getting a warship into gun range of your shore gave you the right to get rid of it any way you saw fit, without bothering to declare war. Of course, the power losing the ship would generally see it as an act of war and respond as such, but it still put them in the role of the aggressor rather than the power that defended their own territorial rights.
As you might imagine, there are several examples of wars starting where one power does something that is not truly an act of war, but the victim of that act treats it as such and declares war. Examples include the oil embargo that kicked off the Pacific front in World War 2 and the blockade that started the 6 Day War. In the 6 Day War instance, Israel had announced that a blockade would be treated as casus belli, and Egypt went ahead and did it anyway, so it's hard to fault Israel for declaring war.
Careful parrottmath. Willy just loves baiting people.
Don't you mean the 12 nautical mile, ~14 statute mile, or 22 kilometer limit?
And yet in the real world it isn't usually accepted for a nation to claim the waters around some foreign nation as their own territorial waters, and in fact making such a claim would be considered at the very least provocative. Nor does the 12 mile limit apply universally to all tracts of water; nations with regions of coastline which have regions of coastline which would create regions of overlapping territorial waters typically dispute the region of overlap or settle the issue by agreeing upon a treaty, and while a warship sailing in disputed waters is a provocative act, it is not an act of war. Sinking that warship, however, is an act of war, and while I would agree that the sinking was not unprovoked I would still count the side which sank the ship to be the aggressor, as they escalated the conflict beyond just rattling sabres.
This is in contrast to Galactic Civilizations II, in which it is not only accepted but even normal for spheres of influence to fully encompass foreign territory, and now we're told that spheres of influence to one degree or another represent a territorial claim by a nation - territorial claims which can be recognized and accepted by the international community, as shown by the United Planets laws which require nations to pay rent on their colonies and starbases which do not fall within their own sphere of influence. This is, for all intents and purposes, legalized (and legally mandated) extortion, especially in the case where the sphere of influence did not originally contain the foreign colonies but has since expanded to include them for one reason or another. I can accept disputes over who gets control over recently-settled regions where the colonies of various factions are intermingled, but I do not consider it as anything but naked aggression for one nation to make a claim to having territorial rights to another nation's well-established colonies in regions which did not fall within the claimant's sphere of influence prior to the establishment of these colonies. Yet the fact is that the United Planets will not only recognize these claims but also provides tacit support for them, as evidenced by the laws imposing a tax upon the colony owner.
Laying claim to a region of space which includes preexisting foreign colonies is a much larger act of aggression than the owner of those colonies "violating your space" in the region around those colonies with warships. Blowing up those warships which are "violating" your space in that manner is such an open act of aggression that trying to defend it is utterly ridiculous, and the idea that a faction should suffer diplomatic repercussions for declaring war in response to such an act is nonsensical. It is a somewhat more defendable position to take when the colonies in question were established in a region after you had laid claim to the region, though this is still rather debatable given that there is no concept of claim history or disputed claims within Galactic Civilizations aside from having colonies within the sphere of influence of another faction, as if I lay claim to a region and then you make claim for the same region somewhat later on, and then I establish colonies or build starbases within that region, or deploy warships to the region, this is an escalation of a dispute that you caused rather than an act of aggression on my part. The act of aggression was you claiming an area that I had already laid claim to, not my response to you making that claim. You may consider my response provocative, but that doesn't make me the aggressor. Galactic Civilizations fails rather badly when it comes to recognizing the existence of competing claims, however, and only recognizes the claim of the faction with the greatest influence in the region, whether the difference in influence strength is 1 influence or 1000, and does not track claim history except, to a degree, for planets controlled by a faction.
Correct. I mixed my units.
As I pointed out later in my post, there are plenty of examples in real history where countries disagree as to what constitutes an act of war. One country sees moving a warship into disputed waters as normal practice or defending its claim, the other sees it as moving into first-strike position. And both can be completely correct in their assumptions; the only difference is intent, which cannot be proven. If one country declares that moving warships into a disputed area will be considered an act of war, and the second country moves the ship there anyway, the second country has indeed knowingly committed an act of war, even if no shots are fired.
There is a very distinct difference between "an act of war" and casus belli. An act of war is literally the sort of thing that happens in a war; ships sunk, targets bombed, etc. Casus belli is "cause for war" - an act that, if you do it, I will respond by declaring war. Acts of war are almost always casus belli, but a casus belli does not necessarily have to be an act of war. The embargo on trading oil to Japan, for instance. Not an act of war, but definitely a cause for war.
This is where the real world analogies break down, since territorial claims in reality don't magically spread on their own. Nor are we starting with essentially blank maps; whereas in GalCiv even "established" claims are only a year or two old. Also, there is much less in the way of persistent national identity for the citizens of each individual planet. Culture simply doesn't work that way in the real world; think how likely it would be for Vancouver to one day decide they want to flip and join the US, yet we accept that sort of thing happening frequently in GalCiv. It's an entirely different world view. Under those assumptions, you maintaining a forward base inside my territory actually IS a hostile act, since by nature it should tend to flip to my control. Regardless of who originally claimed it and when, you're maintaining control against the collective will of the populace (since, of course, if they wanted to be under your control your influence would be higher in that area).
At some point you just have to accept "game mechanics". But the conceptual problem is trying to apply modern era planetary territorial rules to interstellar space. In that kind of environment the hybrid nature of influence and political makes sense. I can setup a starbase deep in your territory and, if my people largely hate your people - especially those on said starbase - the likelihood of them changing sides peacefully is going to be slim. Its like a welcome, or unwelcome, embassy.
Side thought - fleets of sufficient size could project some kind of "influence bubble" as far out as one turn of movement. The fleet could maybe be required to designate a flagship upon which the bubble is centered. Any ships attached or near to the flagship could contribute to how much power said projection has. Automating this mode and making it so every ship has influence would be necessary for the next thought...
Generalizing from the above: the more unresolved "influence power overlap" there is between two civs the more tension there would be. negotiation regarding specific sources of influence could then be made to "resolve" the overlaps in some manner.
I suppose your right in presenting the case where you have defensive treaties where if war is declared on you your allies would join the fight. In the aggressor, non-aggressor the idea of the territorial boundaries in space are all speculated anyway.
We cannot forget the right of innocent passage through territorial waters. This allows ships to travel through another nations territorial waters without being seen as an act of war. Of course, the details of well established trade routes and traveling through particular lanes in space are a little extreme to determine, but in either case the assault on another vessel that has shown no aggression in your territorial space is an act of war and you would be deemed the aggressor, even considering the territorial waters agreement signed by the UN in 1982.
There is grey area in this agreement, but passage through territorial waters by warships is acceptable when going through trade routes. But if no trade routes are established, the grey area comes into play whether warships are any ship has right of innocent passage. This diplomatic grey area doesn't give the right of nation owning the territorial waters to assault any vessel.
I would like to see well established smaller boundaries that are more diplomatically set. But I also do not want to change the way the game plays too much with all this diplomatic back dealing. The depth is great for diplomacy, but can really dominate the entire game.
Having read all the above, I still think this area of the game, "Influence", and its corresponding Influence Victory, is inevitably badly implemented in the Game and should be completely scrapped wholesale. The whole political versus cultural borders dispute is then resolved in favour of political borders being based on a specific number of Hexes around the planet you colonize.
yes I'm canvassing for support of this idea and trying to Influence the way the game develops with a thin veneer of unintended irony.
I would support a fixed number of hexes around each planet, that can be extended via star bases.
An idea I posted in another thread Which also belongs in this thread :
. . . starbases were frequently used just to expand the travel distance for discovery and trade benefits.
Personally I'd like to see the whole Influence mechanic scrapped and the Trading system overhauled and enhanced, at least enough so that the above objective could be achieved with a *Trading Starbase* [built from constructors of course). Then you could , say, trade with planets within a radius of X, Y or Z hexes dependent upon Galaxy/Universe size as well as using it as a stepping-stone to other races.
In other words, scrapping the *Influence* aspects [all of them] should be replaced by an enhanced, revamped and utterly upgraded Trading System worthy of it being a game Victory objective in its own right.
As someone who usually went for an influence victory, I have to object to completely scrapping influence. Finding a way to make it more interesting is a much better idea imo. Civ 5 did this with Brave New World. The specifics of how they did it don't make sense for GalCiv, but the general idea of making culture/influence something more than building improvements in cities and starbases near your enemies is one I support.
hit quote rather than edit button, sorry
IMO the territory of a player should extend to the planets, asteroids, and star bases of the player. There should be a three-tile exclusive economic zone surrounding each planet but no more. As I have mentioned earlier, planetary influence should be spread by trade to other planets.
I must be weird. I seem to be the only person who actually enjoyed and agreed with the Influence mechanic and concept in GC2.
I enjoyed it as well, but then I spent a few dozen hours digging into the math and the modeling behind it. And came up with a few insane cheese tactics to use it. I suspect those who were unhappy with the mechanic either didn't know some of the tactics or wanted somewhat different cheese tactics to be viable.
while i diddent dig into the math i played a super isolationist colony that focused on culture projection and a wall of starbases
-2 enemy speed for bieng in your influence -2 for being near your starbases +movement of your fleets and finally that UP proposal that pushed all your enemies ships back out to beyond your borders
The Super Isolationist ability doesn't reduce the speed of enemy ships by -2, but sets it to a maximum of 3 pc/wk. Also, the Slow Enemies starbase modules don't work for Super Isolationists. At least, not anymore. They used to, but this is no longer the case in the latest version of TotA.
I don't dislike the influence mechanic of Galactic Civilizations II. What I dislike is how influence borders are, to a great degree, treated as territorial boundaries, and to a lesser extent that the game doesn't really recognize competing influences, only the greatest influence.
i could have sworn it was a -2 oh well even being reduced to 3 is still quite handy along with a large sphere of influence
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