Bravo!!   Good to hear. Look forward to 1.4.

great to hear, couple things I'd love to see ai do on the subject of range:

• build a starbase out in the middle of nowhere to extend range
• "I don't like this corner I'm obviously going to be wedged into given borders as they are & my neighbor's , let me go colonize  something way out that way"
• On that note, here are save games from turns 103, 147, 150, 173, 209, 215, 228m 242, 269, previous autosave, autosave, & 282 of an insane game with ilo 0.3.4 on insane.  
• The altarians & lythian expamse both asked me to go to war with terran sovereignity multiple times, I eventually agreed to join the lythians in it because as synthetic they are more likely to have useful tech trades than the altarians who ask for me to give them some new tech every few turns on a good day.  During that time the altarians have followed me and the terran sov ships around during the attack, but never intervene... seriously?  I don't know if the two ai's ever got in a fight with the terran sov's
• To be fair, the altarians did give me planetary invasion around turn 149
• The altarians are still upset with me because I refused to destroy"deep space starbase 1" on demand due to having NFC where it was or what it was doing... turned out to be doing nothing & was originally for range or something so I gave it to them for a song a couple turns later since I no longer needed it as a stepping stone to reach behind the terran sov
• with the terran sov's almost exterminated, the altarians are still making threats towards me rather than influencing my other neighbors

Good news everyone!

Thanks for the hard work I am excited about the upcoming patch. Your initial thoughts reminded me of a post I made that never saw a response and the thread appears dead so I have reposted it below. This is most in regards to what you think maybe in the future involving diplomacy and invasion.

"I know it's one of the major tenants of Galactic Civ games to utilize an AI that is competitive without the need to get resource bonuses, scripting, or other "cheats". However I feel like there are other parts of the game that would give improvement more bang for its buck than tweaking how the ai utilizes its planet resources etc. I would be fine with it getting enough of a resource bonus to make it be able to produce at least at comparable levels to a skilled human player and in advanced difficulty beyond that. But with the building as is I don't feel like the ai's use of its resources is the biggest issue that limits the challenge it provides or makes it uninteresting to play against.

The biggest issue with the ai to me is that diplomatically and war related it just does not do enough. Even at it's currently efficiency level an ai that stays active an busy would provide a far bigger challenge. I play all of my games at gifted level with up to 16 opponents and use a very similar and simple strategy. I just colonize as many good planets  and claim as many resources as I can early then build up my research. I basically just mind my own business and continue to increase my technology and build up my worlds. I occasionally buy techs from other races I cannot research myself. I use next to no advanced strategy and really don't even try to take over other civs. I keep my military level around the middle of the pack in regards the strength. Eventually their comes a point I start to inadvertently culture flip other races and the ai does not have any answer for me eventually assimilating them. It does not even seem to care.

The only interaction the ai ever initiates with me is to offer me really bad trades and threaten me occasionally. Every time the ai threatens me I tell it to pound sand because I know it won't do a thing about it. The ai does not actively pursue anything as far as I can tell. It does not try to create treaties or alliances with me or any of the other races. And every ai opponent seems to pretty much behave the same generic way and interacting with them is just not interesting. And the one time per game the an ai opponent actually declares war on me it never attacks me or tries to invade my lightly defended planets or starbases. The only time I have been recently attacked was by the new peacekeepers from the mega events who attacked my because the Krynn declared war on me. That was resolved in three turns however when the Krynn sued for peace even though I had taken no action against them and had my butt kicked by the much more advanced peacekeepers.

My suggestion is to make the ai more diplomatically active, aggressive, and give it more personality. It also needs to learn how to actually execute an offensive and invade worlds. Diplomatically diplomatic races should actively pursue alliances and ai's that have similar alignments that are both diplomatic and aggressive should form military alliances and work together. Of course if one of them is both diplomatic and aggressive but has a ruthless trait it will look for the first opportunity to back stab the other two for it's own advantage. Aggressive and xenophobic races should be nearly impossibly to culture flip and be hostile and warlike to just about every race in their path. The ai should gain advantages and also make mistakes based on its core personality and not take such a seemingly generic approach to everything. And for the love of god we need to option to accept or decline a culture flipped planet into our civs and should take a massive diplomatic hit with the race we flip it from based on its personality type if we do accept. Against races like the Drengin that should pretty much equal a vendetta and crusade for the entirety of the game. It would also be cool to see some complex diplomatic activity between the ai races themselves.

I greatly enjoy the planet building aspects of the game but beyond that I don't see much going on with the game at this time. Hope this does not seem like a negative rant but I am thirsting for some interesting civ to civ interactions and for the rest of the game to feel alive and engaging. I know you love games like Star Control and most of that is probably due to the complex and interesting races that inhabit those games. While I know Galactic Civilizations is a different kind of game it would really benefit from developing the ai races to have personality and give you the feeling your race lives inside and evolving story that you get from those games. Love the Galactic Civ series more than Star Control just FYI  

 "

Thanks

Thanks for the hard work. Excited to see what you've come up with!

Yeah.. i find it now a boring gameplay with all that micro management 

the AI does not attack, its ships are standing right next to mine instead of seeking its ennemies and it does not invade on larger maps, the map only moves via influence, not conquest.

I will have another bunch of save game posted on your support system by the end of the day.  Basically, the AI is not much better at this than it was in 1.3.  Planet-wise though, I have seen improvements since 1.0.

I have been at war with the Yor for 500 turns.  Zero invasion from them.  They attack me where they can, when I goad other AI to attack them, some of there ships will attack them, the Yor will attack their starbases, but there's zero transports around and lots of ships remain parked around my shipyards and starbases instead of regrouping and fighting the Yor.

I appreciate the work on the AI, but when will invasion mechanics be improved?

I'm not sure what is the reason why people are having varying experiences. I'm currently playing on an insane sized map, have 50 major races, and rare minors. Tight clusters, with common stars and abundant planets and things are pretty much playing out how I would expect them to.Other than parking next to my stuff, and most of them will move off once I bribe others near them to declare war on them. I do think that the settings one uses and the number of races and how big the map is and its' configuration will give drastically different experiences. I've been quite surprised sometimes by this until I found my own particular formula to get the type of experience I'm looking for. It's a very individualized thing that I don't envy the developers having to deal with because of all those different variables! Makes my head hurt just thinking about it...

Quoting Avatar137,

reply 20

I'm not sure what is the reason why people are having varying experiences. I'm currently playing on an insane sized map, have 50 major races, and rare minors. Tight clusters, with common stars and abundant planets and things are pretty much playing out how I would expect them to.Other than parking next to my stuff, and most of them will move off once I bribe others near them to declare war on them. I do think that the settings one uses and the number of races and how big the map is and its' configuration will give drastically different experiences. I've been quite surprised sometimes by this until I found my own particular formula to get the type of experience I'm looking for. It's a very individualized thing that I don't envy the developers having to deal with because of all those different variables! Makes my head hurt just thinking about it...

^^^^ So much this. The initial map settings will DRASTICALLY alter the type of game you play I was playing on rare rare and now bumped up a bit but reduced the over all number of total planets each star gets. This feels just about right. I changed from tight to loose clusters for more stars as well.

Insane all the way! 

Awesome job frogboy keep up the good work