well, i'm not so sure. it's a subtle argument. your initial point was for a rationalization based on realistic physics and practicalities. locutus up there pointed out that there are a number of unrationalized game mechanics.

he didn't argue against your original point, no, but i think his un-articulated meta-argument is that this is a strategy game, not a simulator. if your demand was for a strategic rationalization of the new game feature, that'd be a different matter.

on an unrelated note, perhaps this new game rule would be a wonderful opportunity to introduce cloaking technology...

I'd be happier with an in-game technological implementation of speed limits than a hand-wavey rationalization for them.

Good point. Clocking technologies would allow ships to move through the territory of other races without any movement penalty. Will clocking make TA or will it find its way into the next expansion pack (I reckon there'll be one more at least  )? I guess that it really depends on whether it can add enough uniqueness to gameplay / strategy to justify the effort to implement it into the game. We can only hope...

Will Minor Races ever be able to do some amount of colonization?

and now you're on borglocutus's terms.



perhaps it's the sort of thing they'll evaluate after setting the stage for it.

They do occasionally, actually. However, I would like them to stop building useless influence starbases...

Will the right-of-passage effects just be for ships with weapons? Will a freighter take forever to get across the galaxy? And if my survey ship gets zapped through a wormhole will it ever be able to make it back, at 1 pc/turn it'll be practially out of the game since it'll never get to another anomoly.

I guess the resturant of etenity (if it still exists in the game) will be HUGE.

Hmm... maybe there could be two rites of passages: one for military and one for non-military ships... The non-military ship one is given to all other Civs by default (to prevent the above problems), and can instead be taken away/given back, similar to a Trade Embargo, in a way...

Of course, actually being at war with the Civ wouldn't affect the speed of your ships, military or non-military... whether or not you had either rite of passage.

Just some thoughts.

Just an insert: If you have no right of passage for a certain AI, you can't upgrade ships in that AI's territory. Also, you should get rights of passage free with Alliances.

It seems cultural influence will just be too important. Terrans will have better fighting ability within their own territory, Yor will be slowing others down within their own territory, the UP has various laws about territory, now you have right-of-passage treaties, blah, blah, blah.

The colony rush, cultural buildings, population, influencer starbases and influence resources, the Xenophiles/Xenophobes events, and Restaurant of Eternity will all become more powerful.

And the Arceans not having engines sounds... weird. Why wouldn't they have engines? What oddball storyline quirk is that? It seems the Great Galactic Losers will now have to spend precious planet space to make their ships go faster... that too, only in their own territory.

IMO, the right-of-passage thing is just further, severe nerfing of speed-increasing systems. Each expansion pack just keeps making ships slower, and slower, and slower, while galaxies keep getting larger.

the right of passsage is not intended to make all ships go slower. it is intended to help secure your "borders" which i guess is going to coincide with your influence range. or maybe it can just be a range from individual planets. i think that may work better. how far? i dunno! maybe they multipley for planets near eachother. But that vast empty regions should go to no one.

a few people have asked for this in past threads, more to stop the AI from litering your space with their ships. since there was no way to ask them to leave, they now have to ask your permission to enter. And i assume that you can give and get more than one at a time.

I hope the AI will be proactive in trying to secure these treaties so its not one sided for the human player. I have much confidence that it will work well.

Now lets let the Beta testers get it tweeked

I liked the system in Europa Universalis 2... you couldn't go through enemy territory without permission, or declaring war. You also couldn't declare war while you had military access. However, that wouldn't apply to traders (the trading system was different anyhow) Basically, it made being far away a big anti-war argument, because you would need access through the middle, or need to declare war on everyone between. But, that's land, and this is space. Space is all no-man's land, as far as I can tell. Like water in EU2. You fight for it when you have to, but it's never really yours. I can't say it makes sense that being in a certain sector would slow a ship down. But if someone doesn't have military access, there should be a much smaller penalty to declare war.

They are trying to make cultural borders actually mean something in game play terms other than the occasional acquisition of another planet via culture.

I'm all for the principle of what they are trying to accomplish (making borders more significant & making cultural starbases more useful aside from just building one outside of an opponent's planet). How well this particular implementation will work remains to be seen.

Also, it reminds me of a seemingly small but rather significant difference between Civ III and Civ IV, and that was that you cannot not declare war on someone while in their borders in Civ IV. (Well, you can, but all of your units will be moved outside of them.) In fact, you cannot move into their borders, period, without either having their permission or declaring war on them. Sure, it might not all make a lot of sense from a realism standpoint, but it is much better for the GAME, in my opinion. Whereas in Civ III borders meant little at all (in hindsight anyway), in Civ IV they actually are very significant. That said, some people actually like Civ III better, which to me is rather baffling, but I suppose you'll have that in any series where they change a bunch of stuff.

On that note, if would be nice if treaties actually meant something in Gal Civ 2. I mean, you can declare a treaty, maybe even get paid for it, and then just attack the next turn anyway. That makes them rather pointless from a game balance perspective in my opinion.

I've seen minor races do quite a bit of colonization as it is. In a few rare cases, I've actually seen them get as large as some of the smaller major races.

In my opinion, it should be the case that ships moving into foreign space where there is no right of passage have to slow down. However, it should be at the discretion of the foreign government to allow that ship to move at a certain fraction of its full move, depending on how close it is to an inhabited planet or base. You could say that the ship in question is being escorted to avoid any potential 'misunderstandings'. The moment the ship makes a wrong* move, it is once again limited to one move per turn. When it turns and assumes a non-threatening course again, it may be allowed to move more quickly. Taking a shortcut through an uninhabited part of another civ's territory without right of passage may be slower than with a right of passage agreement, but faster than trying to fly by an inhabited world.

* Some manoeuvres may bring the ship closer to an inhabited planet or base than the alien civ would like, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's going to attack.

That sounds like too much micromanagement to be able to set the speed of individual ships within your sphere of influence.