Well, it's not an actual border, as in nation, in GalCiv3. You have an area of influence.  If an AI grabs a colony within your area, they run the very real risk of losing that planet to your influence.  This is the consequence of colonizing within someone else's area of influence.

Once you have 2x influence over their planet, the timer starts and there's an increasing chance that you'll annex the planet.  I like it, since it's a free planet that's usually built up by the time I get it.

I am with Erischild on this one. If you can do it in Multiplayer the ai should do it and more so. 

Eh, not so much.

I wouldn't mind if the AI was doing this as some sort of cunning plan. Some players may even fool themselves into thinking it is. But it isn't. 90% of the time, it'll colonize a planet that is instantly flipped. It doesn't take a planet in your influence and then think to itself 'ooh, I should turn this into a big culture planet'. It just treats it like any other planet, and so inevitably gets drenched in culture. That's not the AI attempting to put influence pressure on you; that's the AI giving away resources by being too damn stupid not to.

Until the AI is actually bright enough to pull off something like this, it should respect cultural borders for it's own sake, never mind for the player's.

that was what I didn't. Like in galactic civilizations 2 is the Ai couldn't. Colonise fast enough. If you can't. Plan then Ai succeeded. If the Ai is slow at colonizing, and I roll all over them that's. Not fun either. Here's. My answer play better. If the Ai can't. Expand, and specialize it doesn't. Stand a chance against me, and that ruins the game more than anything. Please don't. Nerf colonizing that hurts gameplay more than anything. If you do need colonizing then plan for imfastructute that can keep up with a really huge empire. I do think that there needs to be two ais one for bigger maps, and one for smaller maps. This could be an option to nerf colonization.

sigh....yeah, my take was fairly toasty, so I'm responsible for that. However, none of these replies appears to be getting the complaint.

Up front the "play better" response I'm just crap-canning for being pointlessly aggravating.That means you, Wilber.

I'm not complaining about the AI taking advantage of an open planet. I *am* complaining about the move being treated as benign when it shouldn't be.

As some other posters discussed, if there is no such thing as a Zone of Control (ZOC), then get rid of that concept of influence in your game entirely.

There's something else missed here: the AIs own rules recognize a form of "trespass" as an act of hostility--you know this when you look at the civ screen and look at the pluses or minuses.. When you're in their "space", they're not happy about it. And that's great,, because they shouldn't be. But that rule needs to be applied to their behavior as well as yours.As things stand, friend are enemies and enemies friends because there's no playing style distinction between them. That's  a design fail IMO. If the Drenghins took the planet, that would be consistent with their character. It wouldn't bother me then. I also wouldn't be punished for responding, either. But turning on an "ally" is a whole different dynamic.

So here is where you can tell the differences between playing styles. Instrumental players don't particularly care about rule sets. Its a series of actions and reactions. AI takes planet, you take it back. Everything else is superfluous or secondary.

But other players have race traits that they are committed to playing, and when you're being forced out of that "role'--and to play more aggressively than your race is set up for--diminishes that choice for the player. You either get that or you don't.As I said in my OP, sure I could go take the planet back, but that turns me hostile, even though the offending action is not perceived that way.

Keep the rules consistent or dispense with the fakery of ZOCs altogether.

In any event, thanks for responding and hearing me out. This stuf has been a pet peeve of mine for a long time...

What if there were some sort of "settling in" period where you could harass and destroy the offending colony with normal starships? Making it so they would need to defend their newly settled colony if it was in hostile space. You should be allowed to do that without DoW as well, and just get a diplomatic penalty. (this is how diplomatic messes are created) Then you could code hostile settling into expansionist/aggressive races only and get some variation, and actually add depth to something in the game already lacking. There are a lot of unexplored possibilities here that could work.

Given the engine technology of GC, I would argue any empire would reasonable want all enemy ships to stay out of basic 1 turn engine range to prevent blitz-like shenanigans. And since apparently, our sensors RULE and there is no strategic stealth... empires are quite capable of monitoring and abiding by this.

Real borders (smaller than the influence remember, and in addition to them) could have some interesting fun if strategic stealth was a thing (which could violate those borders with impunity).

Also, Colorado is a very bad example of borders, as its a state of the United States and its borders weren't really dictated by the same sort of pressures that nations have. Typically, a border is heavily influenced by terrain, in space, this is as simple as a certain threat range around one's planets. For a better example... look at say... oh I don't know... France and Germany lol. 

here's. One idea that you could do, not saying this is a solution, but a workaround. Customize a bunch of species with colonization with a lower priority. In the custom screen, and play only with custom species.

I forgot to mention above that if you colonize or build star wars in someone's solar system that already owns a planet, or resource that would give a diplomatic penalty to who was there first, and the penalty should be more if they are your ally. This would probably affect those who don't. Like you, but if their okay or like the offending empire then maybe that should be a plus for them.

Actually, you might be onto something here. The game isn't consistent about how it treats influence borders. Sometimes it's just influence, sometimes it's more like a real border. So, no wonder it does cause misunderstandings and frustration...

Elaborating on your suggestion and trying to keep this very simple, would this work:

The command "guard" can be applied to ships stationed in a planet. These ships will now watch for, scramble, and intercept foreign ships. The new thing is that instead of waiting for the enemy to strike the planet they are guarding an area centered on the planet with a range equal to the movement of their slowest ship. If any foreign ship with attack more than zero tries to move closer to the planet than the intercept range, it results in a battle between the violating ship and the planetary fleet. Of course, a human player would get asked whether he really intends to attack and the AI would calculate it the same way it calculates whether to attack a planet or not. This way the foreign military ships can fly through your influence space but not through your controlled space unless they want to fight for it or they have an open borders treaty.

Essentially, it would be analogous to the real world distinction between international waters and territorial waters.

It would also be quite traditional as it resembles the "original definition" of national sea borders that was "the range of our guns"...

You should probably also have some kind of maximum intercept range regardless of your defense fleet's speed to prevent clever human player from creating ridiculously large intercept zones.

It would need some work to implement but not that much, I think, as the core mechanic would simply be a distance trigger causing a battle. The AI path finding would need modification to take the new intercept-ZOC into account but that would essentially not be any different from circumnavigating a black hole.

Quoting erischild,

reply 21

I stand by the point that borders are what you can enforce.  In land based borders there is often terrain that looks obvious or was obviously enforceable.  In open water, all borders are arbitrary.  In space, it is more so. "This bit of vast empty nothing is mine!" is an inherently illogical statement and therefore becomes a fiction of law and diplomacy.

Whatever is worked out, what I don't want is for some game mechanic to forcefully enforce all this.  I don't want a magic shield that prevents me from entering opponent space.  I don't want my ships magically transported out of their space when I declare war.  While I fully understand why that was in place in GC2, it was the one mechanic I had real immersion objections about. 

What I do want is a UP proposition that says declaring war while within the opponent's  borders makes you an enemy of the UP and all members declare war on you for it.  Get your ships out of there yourself or be in trouble.  You will probably want to exempt unarmed ships from all this.  Many players will hate it.  They may be right and it may be one of the good reasons for implementing it.  It can seriously affect vicious warmongering.   But, if sneak attack isn't prevented/discouraged by game mechanics, you need a very strong diplomatic mechanic to provide some replacement for that.

I hear a lot of demand for the ability to say "Get out of my space!" through diplomacy.  I think that does need to be added, for roleplay if nothing else, and it needs to be expanded.  If you have open borders and have a mega fleet hanging out by their planet, they ought to be able to object to that.  Maybe they can cancel their open borders treaty.  Maybe they can drag you before the UP and get you condemned.  Obviously, that won't even slow down the evil decision process for some of us, but it may be a controlling inconvenience. 

THIS^^^, Leave it alone as it is now. I absolutely favor the diplomatic destruction of yourself if you choose to sneak attack INSIDE another's borders. Also if you are the ai or a player and send a constructor to mine inside my 'cultural area of influence' then we should also have the opportunity to flip those starbases, the problem is dropping a cultural starbase next to the ai worlds. While not directly attacking, the ai already gets really uppity if  you plop one down next to him. I feel we should have more UP resolutions to deal with this type of player actions and that UP election/resolutions should be immediately triggered (optional of course) for actions like this. 

I bet if "real borders" were introduced into the game, there would be tons of threads of the theme "Why can't I go there? Why do my ships travel such weird routes?"

Keep in mind, the freedom of movement is a key part of GalCiv. With any kind of impenetrable borders there could be situations - especially in mid-game - where the galaxy would be a mosaic of open and closed space. Ships would have to fly a zig-zag-path like the pilot is drunk. There also could be situations where some factions are totally cut off from certain parts of space.