About other civilizations settling inside my ZOC

from GalCiv3 Forums

If I remember correctly, in the last dev stream, Paul talked briefly about this, but I just want to make sure.

So, it has already happened to me countless times that the AI colonizes a planet in my zone of control (ZOC), and sometimes even on systems which I already have a colony on. Of course, culture flip means that they will lose the colony to me in a few turns. Souldn't the AI know that it shouldn't be doing that and wasting its colony ships on it? Besides, that is a problem from the roleplaying point of view: what if I want all of my colonies to be populated by my own species? Because, when a colony flips, it is basically only changing its allegiance, but the species which live there are still the same as before.

What I propose is that the chances for the AI to settle within your ZOC should be lower, specially if the system already has a colony of yours. And if they colonize it, then they should build some starbases around, to protect their colony from flipping.

19,501 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The problem with this is extreme worlds.  This was a common strategy of mine in Galciv II,  I would rush to the extreme world colonization types and start colonizing in their territory and culture flip them...  Right now influence (ZOC) is a little over powered, they seem to be doing something about it in Beta 5 patch 3 so we'll see what happens then :)

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

The AI is still being worked on but yes, Paul did say that soon they will make sure that this will happen less often as they get the AI to operate better over the course of the Beta and game.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Going back to GCII, I would usually leave Mars uncolonized because I knew it would be colonized by somebody and I would flip them. This was basically my strategy for all low quality planets.

As for being another species, I am not a racist and they are welcome in my empire :)  (this is just a joke and not a shot at the OP)

I colonize more low quality planets now due to the shipyard system, but I still don't mind flipping any AI silly enough to move in next door. I see a lot of conversation about OP culture flipping in GCIII but to me it is just as hard compared to GCII and maybe even harder. Frogboy commented that the culture buildings are over powered and this might be true. In the late game I do see very rapid expansion into the AI ZOC if I have been building (spamming) a lot of culture, but once you start enveloping them they don't flip any faster in GCIII than they did in GCII (IMO). On the other hand, in GCII culture star bases were very powerful. In GCIII not so much 

I think a lot of the conversation comes from a player element that hates culture flipping in principle and would like to see it out of the game entirely. That is okay, everyone has a right to their opinion. The same element complained just as loud in the GCII forums and some changes were made but not much. I think it is great that GCIII will be so modable. We will be able to tune the game to our own choices and for those not inclined to do mods, I am sure the mods will be available for download by everyone.

BTW, present company is excluded from my comments about hating culture flipping. I am referring to an element with much stronger feelings on the subject.