I was at war with the Sower and I took their home planet Qarius. After taking it, they offered me a truce for 15 turns. I accepted. From the picture, you can see the system Ying is trapped between my influence area. What the picture doesn't show is that I recently had 3 large fleets parked at Qarius.



Now the Sowers are at war with the Cravers (Orange Color). The AI decided to use Ying as it's next ship production system. I noticed that the AI was stacking 1-2 ship fleets at Ying. Their fleets were now stuck because I accepted a 15 turn truce and because I had 3 fleets on Qarius. If their ships would have stopped at Qarius at anytime, they would have broken the treaty and had to attack my ships. Granted they could have retreated to save their fleets, but they just built this huge stack. Even I couldn't move my fleet to attack the Cravers. I could only move my fleet back into my influence area.



Now the Sowers do have 5 planet systems under their control and I'm not sure why the AI decided to use Ying as ship production system. Especially if it was unable to move any units because it would involve them passing in my system Qarius.



This needs to be fixed somehow. The AI is creating 1-2 ship fleets, that's ridiculous. There needs to be a string added in the AI code that checks the need to produce ships. If being invaded, then ship production is priority number 1. If AI owns planet, check to see neigboring systems block paths while in cold war or truce, otherwise find new system for ship production.



The AI should be limited to producing large number of ships to the heart of their empire. Ideally surrounded by at least 3 owned systems, unless invaded.

this kinda thing was fixed before the expansion and something in the expansion seems to have brought this problem back again , also i noticed that it seems to be occurring with ships dedicated to system invasions more than combat ships

My understanding is that this was the first game designed by Amplitude. If so, keep at it. As long as they keep making strategy games, they should be able to learn from previous mistakes. Once you're able to nail the AI dilemma, you'll have a great template to use for any future games. Look at what The Creative Assembly has done with the Total War series. They build one title to build on next title. All the mechanics are the same and they've been working on so many titles using the same template, it only comes down to minor bugs and balance issues.

Just an update, that stack is still sitting there, probably due to the Cease Fire. But on my other front, the Sows had an Alliance with the Pilgrims and when I agreed to the Cease Fire with teh Sowers, it put me in an automatic Cease Fire with the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims are free to invade my systems but I can't go anywhere near them. I'm completely trapped until this stupid Cease Fire is over with. Something's terribly wrong.

Are your systems covered in their influence?



During a cold war you cannot enter an enemy's influence, but that doesn't prevent you going into uncovered systems.