Matrix Games Forums

One of the cheats of the game can be easily fixed. The cheat is to move large fleets into a non warring empires territory (for example, right outside the capital) and then declare war before the empire can react.

Or an alternative cheat is to invade rivals planets without declaring war. It's easy to do and can be exploited.

There's a quick fix. The presence of military fleets within the territory of another empire *without* a defense treaty or refueling treaty, should have a heavy negative status. The larger the fleet, the heavier the status cost. The negative status should also scale with the proximity to the capital or nearest large colony.

Invasion without a declaration of war should trigger a war declaration for any rival empire that is of comparable size. For example, any empire at least 1/3rd the size of the invaders should immediately declare war. Think Russia vs Ukraine or 2006 Russia vs Georgia.

I think it would be simple to implement.

I support both of these ideas.

Since DW2 doesn't really feature a "closed/open borders" policy, it makes sense that the implicit system would be more commonsensical. While you can't officially declare a "closed border" policy, logically, any large military presence of an empire that isn't an implicit ally - especially when that force is standing off one of your population centers - should trigger a heavy and steadily maintained diplomacy penalty. Fleets passing through such space without stopping would only incur a minor penalty that would quickly restore once the border is cleared.

And yeah, why anyone should be allowed to invade a colony without immediate war repercussions is conceptually crazy. The fact that the AI might be weighing the decision in terms of how much losing the invaded colony might alleviate economic burdens only serves to reinforce the non-immersive game-y-ness of the system. Even the poorest nations would be up in arms if their neighbors started annexing their area without consent. Taking populated resources by force should absolutely incur much more than a diplomatic opinion hit.