I can kind of see Divinewrath's point Galactic civilization is sort of like really small island warface; except, that the influence expands really well. I didn't mind civilizatoins 3 version as much as I didn't like fours.

In 3 it still gave me an option to ignore the request, or all the right of passage did is not mess up the citizens location. I noticed that if u made a right of passage agreement and then surounded their cities, and then wipe them off the map the Ai never forgave u that is sort of like when u have a treaty and declare war on them in Galactic civilization2.

Let's not forget about a change in demographics for civilization 4 where u couldn't build a lot of cities. There they made the right of passage suck where u couldn't enter a territory without one.  If u had one u couldn't declare war for 20 turns after u broke one. There was no way I could sneak attack.

Another problem was that was the first thing u could trade for, so the Ai was but hurt when u wouldn't trade for one; even, when u where nowhere near.

I am definatly saying I woundn't want civilization 4's version; otherwise, go ahead and threaten me all u want while I sneak attack u or not I really don't care otherwise. I would like to communicate with the other Ai leaders anyways, but IF THE  game mechanics don't allow it I don't really care. I like the ship and starbase patrolling option. I could never inderstand the patrolling or guarding option in the game. It would let transports and enemy fighter go right by and invade your planet that I was trying to protect, so I couldn't use the guard or patrol option on the game. It didn't make sense.

That was to address where for some 'odd' reason my large armies are all parked otuside your cities. Just for... well 'military demonstrations'. Don't worry about it, nothing will happen, until army regiment No445 reaches Cairo that is... Functionally it was something the AI couldn't really exploit like players could. Creating an instant dom victory possiblity by exploiting the fact that armies could simply camp outside cities for no reason.

I like the idea of country borders around your planets and your star bases and which are not identical to your influence borders or scan ranges.

Everyone could cross scan ranges or move through my sphere of influence (why not?), but everyone entering my borders needs a permission, maybe except ships without military or star base modules, so freighters can establish trading routes. If you negotiate a "open borders" treaty, the partners can pass the borders. Additionally, you could even block your borders to all ships (including non-military) of another civ when the relationship cools down.

Another idea: add cloaking technology and you could pass cloaked ships through a closed border with a chance of being spotted depending on the tech level of the space's owner.

In a nutshell:

1. Borders aournd planets (and starbases?), default all non-military ships can move through (including colonization)

2. You can explicitly forbid somebody to pass even with those vessels.

3. You can give a free passage right for all types of ships (better: negotiate a bilateral treaty for both sides to pass through each others space)

4. you set the radius for the border around a colony (the idea of the united planets to make a international standard is nice, but somewhere I read that there won't be united planets anymore in GC3 - not suprising given the galactic situation in the game setting)

5. You can sneak through closed borders with cloaked ships, possibly provoking a war when cought.

6. You can openly voilate borders, provking a war or at least cooling down the relationship towards the civ in question.

How about a game feature where you can deploy a new type of space object called "Mine field" around your territory. These would incur a cost and would need a certain level of technology to develop. You would need to place one at each grid's point (i.e. 4 per parsec or tile - one for each corner). Then if any ship wanders into any tile so protected, it would be destroyed or at least take severe damage. This would affect all ships - friendly or enemy, although this could be a selectable option such that only races at war with you would be affected. Of course, your own ships would not be affected.

In this way, you could also set up mines around your planets and star systems in such a way that there would only be one safe "conduit" or pathway into your systems by other races, if you wanted to exert such territorial control.

These minefields could be upgraded and should incur a per turn cost (much like buildings do), so they might only make economic sense during certain periods of time in the game. Also, as civilizations advanced with better ship defenses, the amount of damage taken when wandering into these minefields would be lessened (unless the mines were also continuously upgraded as well). Also, each time a minefield destroys ships, there should be perhaps be an additional one-time cost to replace mines lost due to this - over and above the normal maintenance cost for each game turn.

Minefields should not be capable of being destroyed - they would have to be deliberately removed by the race who built them (i.e. like making them obsolete - like can be done for ships). If that race happened to be totally destroyed by a means other than being conquered by planetary invasion (like the Korath's spore ships, or a Death Star blowing up their star system), then the minefield would be left over as a space navigation hazard to all races. If the race was conquered by another, then the minefield would become part of the conqueror's assets.

1- We should be allowed to destroy ships freely, even when not at war. So you can freely get rid of certain... interlopers who you dislike coming close to your territory.

2- The notion of "territory" is, always, ever, SUBJECTIVE. You shouldn't have "territory" spawning on its own. Borders has to be agreed upon by your neighbors.

For example, you could get into an agreement with your neighbor that you will not blow their ship outa the sky as long as they do not trespass on your territorial claim XYZ. The game should allow you to manually select the territory of your choice.

Obviously, AI and diplomatic options should be allowed to discuss your grievance ("you blew up our ship without reason!!", "You violated our treaty!!").

You could even grant right of passage to other races, as long as the ships they send are relatively unarmed. BAM, you just justified the existence of defenseless freighters/traders, and also created potential "pirate zones" (because no military ships can confront them without provoking an interstellar incident)

None of those solve, or even come close to balancing, the indestructibility issue. There needs to be a way for an aggressor to eliminate them permanently. A mine sweeping module would be best; a hard cap on the number of mines and having heavily armored ships "soak" them would work. But once gone they don't magically reappear.

For that matter, they shouldn't magically appear the first time, either. They would need to be emplaced one hex at a time, by a specialized ship, so there is a significant opportunity cost to building them. If you want minefields, you need to build the ships to lay them and tend them - ships you have to build instead of regular combat ships.

Well for the sake of argument and to add a few more good ideas to a minefield that I came up with:

1) So you want a way to destroy the minefield, well lets take a few lessons from actual "Earth History". Think of these mines as if they were in an ocean (of space). How did the Navies of the world get rid of them? Minesweepers. So to get rid of mines, you need a new ship type or a constructor with a mine-sweeping module. This could do the trick. However, there should be a penalty for using these - the penalty is one of speed, which I will explain below. If your fleet approaches a mined area, it could employ a couple of tactics:

1) Go through the minefield and take the damage. I would suggest that for each round or turn a ship or fleet spends in a mined area, they take damage. So the faster the ship can travel, the less time it spends in a mined area, and the less damage. I would submit though that at a minimum, no ship could ever fly through a mined region without taking at least 1 round or turn of damage - even if they can cross the entire mined area in a single turn.

2) This would introduce some interesting "nasty" things you could do in the game. For example, you could have a mined region, and then build a military satellite in the area with some of those speed-reducing modules on it (like the -2 Warp Field reducing module). This could act to keep an enemy fleet longer in a mined area and thus let them take more damage. How evil is that?

3) Going back to the minesweeper - if you have these in your fleet, then they could effectively clear a path or possibly even remove a mine field, but at a cost or penalty of limiting the movement of the entire fleet to 1 parsec per turn. Hey, it takes time to clear out a minefield! So it could take 10 game turns or more for your fleet to get through a single square or hex of space to clear the minefield - sort of like what happens in Galciv2 when you enter an asteroid field. Your speed is slowed to one movement rate per turn until you get out of the asteroid field, or like when you enter the YOR controlled space - your ships move at a very slow movement rate.

4) Alternatively, you can always fly your fleet AROUND the mine field if it doesn't completely cover your area of attack interest. This way minefields could cause enemy fleets to have to travel a longer route to get to you.

The advantage of introducing delay like this with respect to minefields is that it could buy time for your civilization to build a couple of extra ships or reach that next critical technology that could make the difference in your upcoming battle. Plus if the enemy has troop ships coming, you have a couple of extra rounds to get your ground defenses ready for the upcoming ground assault that is to follow.

By the way, thanks for nitpicking at my ideas around this minefield concept - its given me some extra creative insight around how minefields could actually be used in a game for strategic purposes. Its also good to explore the strengths and weaknesses so that maybe this could be a workable idea or concept for the game.

Invisible force field? What?

Borders are enforced by the presence of military, of border police, and diplomacy. Anyone can violate borders as an act of military aggression, but you should be able to tell other empires to back off if they do not want a war. I mean, in GalCiv2, the non-player empires can tell you to get out of their territory, but for some reason I don't recall options to tell them to leave. 

A guarantee you get through no - but it can, and usually is made highly improbable by the pattern of the mines you lay. They are laid so there is not an immediately discernible pattern as to where they are in the minefield, a mix of different types, and you need a map to find your way through. You have such "gaps" to enable patrols and and possible future advances by your own forces. Minefields are a two edged sword, they can and do protect you, but later can be a severe hindrance to future "Friendly" advances. Of course you can and do (nost times) lay down "safe lanes", but they must be covered by weapons fire to prevent such gaps being a danger. Unattended minefields are rare.

At the same time, a set of complex lanes through them can provide the needed routes for patrols and future advances - hobsons choice, there is no easy clear cut "solution". Minefields stop you as well as "the enemy", and can be a major barrier to future friendly Offensives on your part.

In a GalCiv sense, they could be a Game de-stabiliser if the barriers become impenetrable. Difficult to get to that granularity level in a game sense for GalCiv which works at a Strategic not Tactical level. If they did get implemented I would see some kind of XML difficulty factor built in allowing penetration by opposing forces, but the "fudge factor" in the XML making it more difficult for the bad guys to traverse the minefield area - probably by random software-dice throws of the dice - many ways it can be done.

In the Real World, minefields are carefully planned, as they can be a two edged sword, they hinder as well as help you. In a Game sense that's overcome by random "software dice" throws, and other mechanisms to retain game balance, but do not over-simplify this, minefields have many ramifications - for real and in a Game sense, its not as easy as it sometimes looks at first sight.

I can't recall a game with mines in space where they weren't either pointless, annoying, or tedious to deal with. It's just not a mechanic that works well in space.

1. Minefields in space, especially in deep space, are a completely ridiculous notion. If you wanted to place even a single line of mines across 1 map tile in GCII, then you'd need 3X10^13 mines if they were spaced 1 km apart. If we want to fill a cube 1 parsec on a side (basically, the tile of GCII extended to the third dimension with height equal to the base dimensions), then you'd need about 3X10^40 mines, again with a 1 km spacing between mines. This is inadequate to give a reasonable likelihood of hitting anything smaller than the largest two classes of warship in GCII, and would require an excessive commitment of resources for something that can be bypassed merely by flying around it, nor is there any reason why a ship which is capable of destroying craft similar in size to itself should be incapable of destroying a mine which is in some sense stationary unless said mine cannot be detected with sufficient accuracy for targeting; however, we're talking about ships which can carry defenses which can shoot down high-speed missiles in a high-noise environment, while mines are likely to be larger (especially with the spacing given above, because if you have such a coarse net you want every hit to count) than the missiles, will not be moving, and the environment will be far less noisy, meaning that the sensors should have a much better chance of locking onto the target.

Orbital minefields are somewhat more practical, as they are in a position where you know that enemies are going to pass through or want to occupy for blockades, orbital bombardment, and invasion, and conveniently enough you have a whole planet nearby which can provide sensor jamming, deter minesweeping activity by means of more standard orbital defenses. On the other hand, the numbers required for such minefields are still enormous (though not to the same extent that the minefields described previously are enormous), and there's still the problem of if the enemy fleet has local space superiority you won't be able to replenish the minefield easily, meaning that if the enemy wants to spend enough time doing so, they can break the minefield. Additionally, such a minefield is reasonably likely to get in the way of your own activities, and would be a convenience for a blockading force - since most minefields are indiscriminate area denial tools, putting one up would just mean one less area of orbital space that the blockade fleet needs to keep watch over.

It's also completely unreasonable that I would be unable to clear a minefield if I decided to commit resources into doing so, unless I was unable to obtain sufficient superiority in the local region to prevent (or at least significantly hamper) minelaying activity  performed to restore cleared parts of the minefield.

2. I really dislike the whole "borders are walls that cannot be crossed without the express permission of the owner of the territory" thing. Borders are imaginary lines drawn on land, in the sea, or in space, and only sometimes correspond to actual physical barriers. It's only because most nations don't want to provoke international incidents or start wars that borders are normally respected, and nations which don't particularly fear their neighbors have been known to violate borders and ignore the resulting complaints, which doesn't always result in wars (at least technically), especially when there is a significant disparity in the military strength of the nations involved and the stronger party doesn't really want to go to war with the weaker.

Borders should only be inviolable in the sense that if you cross someone's borders without their permission, it hurts your diplomatic standing with them (and probably their allies), and gives you a bad reputation. If you ignore their demands for you to leave their space, it hurts your diplomatic standing even more; same goes for if you use your violation of their territory to move forces into position for surprise attacks. And if you accept the demand for your fleets to leave another nation's space, then they should be given flight orders to the nearest point on the border (preferably a shared border between you and the violated nation or the violated nation and international space) rather than this nonsense where things magically teleport out of the area when you say you'll withdraw. If you want to ensure the player gets their ships out if they say they'll withdraw, then force the ships into autopilot or teleport up to the maximum distance traversable by those ships in one turn and keep doing so until those ships have left the violated region of space, and deduct the movement points required to make that movement. Moreover, if I decide to ignore the 'get out of my space' order after all, or declare war before the ships have left that nation's space, then I should be able to override the movement orders if I want to do so (preferably with a significant diplomatic penalty for having ships in enemy territory at the time of a declaration of war - after all, that indicates premeditation). Laws like the one from the United Planets which require that no military vessels be present in the space of the target of the declaration of war should also be something you can choose to ignore if you so desire, but once again at a significant penalty to your relations with other nations.

Glad to help. Ready for more?

While it seems that time in a mine field could have an affect on the amount of damage, it seems to me that the number of mines you encounter would be a much bigger factor. Each mine would be capable of a certain amount of damage, but could not inflict that damage unless a ship came within range of that mine. One tactic, IIRC, in avoiding damage in mine fields in WWI and/or WWII was to go through the field very slowly, spotting each mine, and either diverting the mine away from the ship until the ship was past the mine or blowing the mine up at a distance (shooting the mine, throwing junk at the mine, what ever worked). Like you said in your item 3, this would slow down your progress, but perhaps it dosn't need to be slowed all the way to 1 tile per turn. Perhaps there could be techs for different levels of mine removal, or even techs for different methods of removing mines?

As to other poster's comments about whether "mines in space" is a valid or ridiculous idea, lets remember that this is a game. Does physics make it impossible? I don't know, and I don't think there is anyone that truthfully knows (i.e., has anyone really tested it out? and what yet undiscovered tech might make it possible?). Nor do I think math is a way of showing how impractical it is. In a game, such as a space game, where scale is such a factor, saying that you have to plant one mine every 1KM fails to take scale into perspective. The game can always envision "one mine unit" to mean as many mines as it takes to effectively mine a tile. This solves the scale issue and allows us to buy into the concept, and removes the need to apply math to the practicality of an idea.

A huge waste of resources? Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn't make the idea a bad one.

And guess what. I like your idea as well.