That completely depends how you view it... bases can very well be represented by private or semi private businesses that venture into space and set up shop to earn money.

Who gain the tax or control/influence over the base is another thing.

The other is that influence borders are not considered political borders so you should not view them as such. The only thing I would like is for colonies to exert a short zone of control where no enemy can build anything in the same way you can't build two bases too close to each other.

It is really up to you.. the player... to seize resources in your vicinity and then defend them. If someone establish a base you really like or consider as a strategic point I suggest you trade for it or you go to war.

Likewise if you build in their space they might be upset... so you either gift them something to get them in a better mood or simply trade them the base for something valuable (like the resources it produces).

In my opinion it is OK for the AI to be upset, after all you are quite upset when the AI does it to you...

Reminder: your areas of influence are NOT political boundaries Even though aliens and humans act like it is. Between human players and AI players complaining about trespassing I am glad we made it a United Plantes proposal (what you want is one of the UP proposals in game).

To be perfectly honest I find it alright for everyone to view their area of influence as their space even if there are no legal bound to that idea before the UP resolution. Your area of influence are no more yours other than your Diplomatic, Trade or Military might behind your words.

And declaring war and destroying any influence starbases anywhere near their territory is a tried and true method of preventing the loss of all their worlds from culture flipping that the AI SHOULD use.  I know that I would mostly certainly blow up any offending starbases planted in, or even near, my territory; and I WANT the AI to be smart enough to do the same.  Of course that would all depend on the AI's "personality" somewhat also.  A benevolent race might just lay down and let themselves be consumed by another civilization, rather than defend themselves with force from an obvious takeover attempt.  But pragmatic or malevolent civs?  Pragmatic might give you a warning once before deciding to start destroying your influence starbases near them.  Malevolent I really don't see even thinking about attempting to open a dialogue; if you attempt to culture flip them, they should probably just go straight to trying to annihilate everything that you are or ever will be

I mean if you are attempting to take over another civilizations worlds, whether by culture flipping with influence starbases or invading with troops, that IS a declaration of war on your part.  Just because culture flipping is a "bloodless" war does not make it any less a war.  And the AI should not be so stupid that it doesn't recognize that.

Just my opinion

It being a UP resolution is fine, but it's the current lack of diplomatic actions that can be taken by the player prior to that, that is disturbing.

I want to be able to say this to the AI:

"Remove your starbase at once from our area of influence(within the next 10 turns), or we view your discretion as an act of WAR!!!"

10 turns later I get a notification(X Faction has not removed their starbase. Shall we DECLARE WAR?) --> "Yes, we shall beat the heathens back!!"

AI realizes why we declared war due to their own infraction. If starbase is destroyed, and we then declare peace a bit later, they hold a very small grudge that doesn't last longer than 10 more turns.

----

The problem with the current system is that if you keep declaring war on every faction due to starbase creep, then you end up with a terrible relationship with everyone.  Which is sad because you weren't the one making aggressive actions in the first place.

The arguments over ZOC are humorous and interesting. It reminds me of real life situations where a neighborhood is up in arms because some "unsavory" element has opened a business that you believe brings down real estate value. Another bad analogy (they're all bad) is the fishing infringements that got a lot of press in years past. Bottom line, it happens. The only one that really pisses me off is when, (even with open borders) the Drengin park a Ravager right by one of my planets. Even this is understandable since I have them trapped in a non-aggression pact and they hate me.

It doesn't matter to me if they tighten it up in the game. It won't change much in my game play. On the maps I usually play the AI always ignores enough resources to allow me all I can manage. I have yet to see a situation where I can't squeeze in a econ base. If I did I would deal with it.

I can appreciate that, for the players who build multiple star bases around their planets, this would be quite irritating, but that is not my style of play 

Also you may not be able to take every offender on in a straight up war. However, you might be able to pay someone else to go to war.

In GC2 you can pay another faction to go to war with someone and also supply them ships that you positioned near resource-starbases. Sometimes they use those ships to destroy those resource-starbases - and if you also positioned a constructor there, you could secure that resource without going to war yourself.

And you can do that in GC III as well, though I am uncertain as to how the mechanics exactly works.  The perils of playing exclusively on Insane maps, I suppose.

Quoting aerez4546, reply 29

And declaring war and destroying any influence starbases anywhere near their territory is a tried and true method of preventing the loss of all their worlds from culture flipping that the AI SHOULD use.  I know that I would mostly certainly blow up any offending starbases planted in, or even near, my territory; and I WANT the AI to be smart enough to do the same.  Of course that would all depend on the AI's "personality" somewhat also.  A benevolent race might just lay down and let themselves be consumed by another civilization, rather than defend themselves with force from an obvious takeover attempt.  But pragmatic or malevolent civs?  Pragmatic might give you a warning once before deciding to start destroying your influence starbases near them.  Malevolent I really don't see even thinking about attempting to open a dialogue; if you attempt to culture flip them, they should probably just go straight to trying to annihilate everything that you are or ever will be

End of aerez4546's quote

Sure.  But the AI, just like a human player, should take into account the strength of the other player.  They should calculate what will happen if they DoW.  Will they get their head handed to them?  Will the people who like the human player take umbrage?  Will they care about being seen as a Warmonger?

In fact, maybe the AI should go as far as to see if I am intentionally baiting the AI so they take the diplomatic hit for starting a war. That's something of a Level 2 tactic for Warmongers who want to keep their Diplomatic Rep high.  

Of course, a truly pissed off AI who is comparatively helpless to me should always have the option to try to goad others into attacking me.  That was a favored tactic of the AIs in GC II for dealing with emerging "runaway civs".

All of this is preferable to a blanket "Settle a Starbase somewhere and a war starts automatically" setting. If someone wants to play that way, that's fine.  But allowing options is what GC is all about.

Worse comes to worst, buy the wretched thing off the AI.  Don't think of it as giving money to a hated enemy.  Think of it more as the AI using that money/time to build things for you on the planets you will eventually conquer.  

Yep! I agree. There should have to be an agreement between factions to allow SB construction in foreign territory.

Perhaps 1 thing that could be done to cover expanding and contracting boarders is to have "in territory priority". So if you have SB's from different factions in the same location and all are within range to harvest particular resources, then the SB that is in home territory should take priority and only that SB will harvest the resources.

If the territory that resource is in changes to another faction who have or can put a SB there, then their SB takes the resources instead. 

except i could build a starbase to mine a resource in my territory trade it to an AI/player who will value it highly because of the resources it offers and then build a second starbase and gain back the resource

what would be nice is if i could have an ill pay you to destroy Unit XXX (specific ship/starbase) dialogue option either with the pirates or with another race

 I don't think I follow what your are saying. You could potentially sell a resource that your mining in your territory, then later that resource becomes in the territory of the player that you were selling it to and then they no longer need to buy it from you, granted. But it won't matter how many SB's you build there after, if the resource is not within your cultural boarders, you won't be able to access it.

 Edit; I suppose you could build another SB there and focus it on culture, thus expanding your boarders back over the resource to get it back.

While True, I would argue that the region right around planets should be considered "sovereign territory". If the AI's starbases are preventing me from putting down starbases that effect my planets....than that is an aggressive action pure and simple.

Perhaps in an expansion human and AI players could agree with other players on existing political borders, boundaries of settlement, etc. Violating such agreements with other players would give a relations penalty and when done repeatedly constitute a legitimate casus belli.

The game could be changed so that declaring war isn't needed for destroying starbases. It would cause a small diplomatic hit only. I think another 4x game uses this mechanic.

Starbases being destroyed would add the feel of low level conflict happening all the time. Declaring war would be needed to go after planets.

You would want to station ships in a starbase to prevent it from being destroyed. If no stationed ship, then you would have to beef it's defenses and hope for the best. It would be much more risky to have distant starbases. Minor races would be put in their place.

Endless Space used a "cold war" mechanic. Inside your borders, vessels in cold war with you could be shot with no penalty. Only with formal peace were the borders locked down.

Reminder: your areas of influence are NOT political boundaries Even though aliens and humans act like it is. Between human players and AI players complaining about trespassing I am glad we made it a United Plantes proposal (what you want is one of the UP proposals in game).

 

Well, that's an answer which describes how the game works now, not a proposition of a solution to the problem that was precisely described by the original poster of the topic. The problem IS how the game works now in regards to frontiers: there are no frontiers.

So all the strategic layer of frontiers is moot for now. It doesn't make the game more fun or strategic to play, it's just another incentive for the rush to planets and ressources. You can't protect frontiers, ressources, assets without declaring war, and that's particularly problematic in a strategic game. You should have OPTIONS (diplomacy, blockade, preemption by extanding frontier, frontiers negociation etc...).

And frankly, waiting for your influence to "flip" some things for free, is not the same thing (even if if the "influence war" by itself is an interesting concept).

the point was

if there are multiple starbases trying to mine the same resource the person with the most dominant culture gets it ( this is what i understand from your post)

then if its in my territory i can build a starbase, mine the resource and then sell that starbase to an AI who thinks that he will get the resources as well so that he will pay me a lot for the starbase.

then i can build a second starbase and effectively steal the resources back since it's in my territory and building a starbase will revert that resource to me

Honestly I actually do not think this will be a problem once the AI's cheating in terms of map knowledge is fixed. Currently the AI b-lines directly towards all resources and habitable planets via direct paths ignoring the fog of war, so obviously when playing against gifted opposition I was finding every system I scanned claimed already as my search for such places is entirely manual while I had the constructors and colony ships ready and waiting for deployment I literally could not beat the AI to them as they auto path to them from the beginning of the game.

The problem that I have with this is, I usually opt out of mining these resources. I don't consider them worth it. When these resources are so damn close to my planets, which I like using my economic starbases on, I have to choose if I want to use my economic starbases or mining starbases. Mining starbases usually lose, but the AI seems to think that these resources are the best thing ever. Hence why my space got spammed by starbases in my last game.

A quick fix might be to return GalCiv 2 asteriod mining, or return GalCiv 2 galactic resource mining. Asteroid mining were not counted as starbases, and GalCiv 2 mining starbases didn't count towards the sector limit. As it stands now, I can't build starbases in my own territory (let alone an optimal location) where it might be useful because such space is already occupied by a starbase belonging to someone else.

Political boundaries and exclusive economic zones should be definable either by treaty with other civilizations or by United Planets resolutions. They should not expand with cultural borders, which represent only the spread of culture, not politics. Violation of EEZs would be legitimate cause to remove or occupy the offending starbases, while violation of political borders would create a diplomatic penalty and could cause war. The Open Borders treaty would nullify the diplomatic penalty within previously agreed political borders, while concessions to build starbases in one's EEZ could be sold through the diplo screen.

Political boundaries and exclusive economic zones should be definable either by treaty with other civilizations or by United Planets resolutions. They should not expand with cultural borders, which represent only the spread of culture, not politics. Violation of EEZs would be legitimate cause to remove or occupy the offending starbases, while violation of political borders would create a diplomatic penalty and could cause war. The Open Borders treaty would nullify the diplomatic penalty within previously agreed political borders, while concessions to build starbases in one's EEZ could be sold through the diplo screen.

What you describe would be an excellent solution: maybe the ideal solution to have both the influence game to play and the borders game. That would introduce a lot of finesse in the way we deal with ressources, frontiers etc...

But i doubt you will be heard .

Thanks for the support. I've always felt that GCII (and, later, GCIII) were sorely lacking in the geopolitics aspect. Adding new border mechanics would greatly improve the game and give it an edge over other franchises like the Civ series. Players ought to be running galactic empires, rather than being subject to ridiculous mechanics.