Some of the messages regarding influence starbases have been pretty twitchy for me. I'll have a minor race or a race that I don't even have borders with call up and complain about influence bases when my nearest one to them is 3 or 4 sectors (not parsecs) away.

-Dewar

Agreed.

Haha... I have to say they are a tad too twitchy. I got a message like that from some minors when my warships and transports were passing by, I was at war with another major race and taking those worlds. Result. New war declaration and resulting insignificant world conquered and enslaved. All because they complain about a passing WAR Fleet. If they said nothing and let it pass it could've worked out different. But it didn't. When an opponent does that I paint a target on their collective foreheads and goto war.

On a side note I've made efforts to be sneakier about this. I still line up transports and escorts and form fleets but I do it in areas that are purely my own. I send in a wave of attackers to fire the first blow well before any transports become involved and declare war. So a lot of the time I don't get that. I do get some sorry minor civ getting all uppity with me when they're in the next sector over though.

The initial impact of this was a good laugh. After seeing it more often I'm starting to get annoyed/don't like that message.

Sometimes it's accurate to a certain extent, but makes little sense logically. I had a system with two big, juicy planets and a pretty schmucky rock. Grabbed both big ones and turned them into powerhouse deployment planets. Along comes another race and takes control of the piddly 4-pointer. Meanwhile, I'm using my two production planets as a staging area for my big invasion, so shortly after my new neighbors move in they're complaining about my warships nearby.

They should've scouted the real estate first. Don't move in next to a military port o'call and then whine about the ships and noisy sailors.

I've had minor races declare war on me for having transports that were too close to them, despite the fact that transports weren't anywhere near them. In some cases I might not have even known where their homeworld was.

Me too. In my last game, two minor races declared war because of transports that were whole sectors away, when I was at war with someone that was closer to me.

Hehe I've had this happen to me too. The Akilians, whose home planet had het to be explored, parked an influence starbases in the center of my empire, right next to Earth and my two biggest production planets. All game long, they kept calling me as I moved fleets back and forth. I mean... they chose to put their stupid starbase INSIDE my territory, did they think I wasn't going to be moving ships around MY EMPIRE?

So, I went to war, destroyed their starbase, made peace, and all was hunky dory from then on. What did they do next? They built TWO more influence starbases in the same spot!!! I'll never understand the AI sometimes.

I was playing a game on Challenging yesterday, and when I was at war with first the Drengin and later the Yor, I had the Akilians declare war on me 3 times for that!

They would dial me up and say "we're not stupid... we declare war!" when all I had was a fleet and some transports en route to Drengin/Yor space.

The first 2 times I spoke to him and he agreed to peace immediately without any concessions. The third time I got tired of it and just wiped the floor with them

Something I've noticed is that the minor races are EXTREMELY aggressive with influence starbases... even when they have no planets nearby. They surrounded Earth with 3(!) upgraded influence starbases when their home planet was literally 10 sectors away! (I was playing on a huge map). Methinks the AI is a little *too* aggressive for the minor races when it comes to starbases... Also, in my game the Scottlingas and Akilians were conquering planets left and right! I thought minor races stuck to their own planets...

Sounds like the triggers need to be refined a bit.

They may even be pulling data from the wrong people (i.e. you did X and Y they don't like getting a weight of A, and another race did X, Y, and Z, getting a weight of B, so A+B = C which means they should complain, and because you're the human, you get the noise).

Not saying that is what is happening per se, but that sort of thing is what causes problems with games.

i've had this happen once with a minor race as well