Clicking invade should really trigger a diplomatic request to whoever is guarding the system, to let you have a crack at invading if they aren't already. AIs should always accept if they're friendly.

But at the absolute, absolute least, being friends with the pirate league while they guard a system you could easily take should be fixed. I spent much of the earlygame devoting my hacks and income to getting friendly with them, which seemed like a good solution given I was Horatio surrounded by 3 aggressive factions and 4 pirate lairs. The guard interaction seriously took the fun out of that strat.

It's also super frustrating when one of your allies poitnlessly siege orbits a pirate lair late game that sitting on your trade route to their empire and only take 20 manpower a turn, forcing you to help them siege rather than nuking it in a single turn battle...

I had a game where I was allied with a Vaulter AI that was besieging the last capital we needed for a Supremacy victory, the last capital sat with 85 Manpower for 11 turns with my entire fleet parked there because they were engaged in a "ground combat" battle and apparently kept stalling out. 

I eventually got tired of waiting, left the alliance and sacked both capitals in the same turn but seriously that was frustrating. 

I was in a similar situation recently.  Only this time around I was in an alliance with three other artificial idiots (ahem...  AI empires) and TWO of them were besieging enemy capitals simultaneously for several turns, seeping away the defenders by a mere 2% per turn.  Imagine my frustration.  My patience eventually ran out and I had to leave the alliance to destroy all three along with two enemy capitals.  Did cost me a small fortune but luckily managed to get a supremacy victory before someone else could sneak in an economic one.  

We really need a way to be able to tell our allies to stay away from an enemy system unless they can capture it within a few turns. 

I was thinking of a simple solution. Add a button to the alliance ping so that we can mark a system as "not to be guarded".

gkaytaz wrote:

I was thinking of a simple solution. Add a button to the alliance ping so that we can mark a system as "not to be guarded".

Yes, that would be nice!