What level? Intelegent.

The point is that nobody did or WOULD call my bluff... When the computer thinks that I have 3 or 4 times the military that they do, they aren't going to launch what they think is a suicide attack. And all I have to do is monitor the relations screen and see how they feel about me. If for some odd reason the combination of + for diplomacy and ++ for military strength isn't enough to keep them off of me, I can bribe them with the cheap techs that I get from having amazing diplomacy. The way that the game worked out for me, even if someone HAD attacked, by the midstages of the game it would have only taken a couple of turns for me to churn out a technologically superior force to mop the floor with anyone. Could be a fluke, but who knows?

Anyway, I'm trying the same strategy on Suicidal now and it's working out VERY well. I'll have to be a bit more aggressive, though, since the computer has such an amazing economic advantage at the beginning and they end up colonizing about 2-3 times as many planets as I could ever hope to.

Anyone else notice that you are told when and where a race builds a Spin-Control centre too...
Hmm wonder what they are building that for...
Hehe

I found that combination to be incredibly effective even though I accidentally left tech trading off from the last game I played. Even without tons of techs to trade back and forth to stay on top the combination of perceived military power and diplomatic superiority was more than powerful enough to let me research and build up my infrastructure in peace.

Besides frequent gifts to make even the evil races like me, I only had to pay like 400 BC to keep all the other civs at war with each other. I even had 2 random events where friends went to war with me after the death of their leader (are they really random or is that someone manipulating them?) and I basically asked them to stop that turn and they agreed.

I was friends with everyone mid way through and could have easily taken alliance victory, but I decided to have more fun watching them destroy each other and surrender to my hall of empathy.

I think they are aware of the power of the spin control center, and that's probably why it was moved higher up in the tech tree and I think is being tested at only 2x bonus not the 5x it states in the description. (I'm using 1.1 Beta 4)

With the Spin Control Center less effective and harder to get to, I never had military dominance on the way up, but it worked all the same. It was fun to do once, but I agree that it was too easy, and a bit messy when cleaning up their poorly designed surrendered worlds was a pain.

Since they are supposed to act like civs and not like players though, I don't know if there is a reasonable way to 'combat' the diplomatic strategy. Unlike cultural pressure, why would they object to you giving them gifts and working with them towards common goals? The most I can think of is to make races harder to 'tame' and alignment differences to count for more. It's kind of fun, yet sad to see the Yor and the Drengin eating out of the palm of your hand, then surrendering to you since you're such a nice race of people.

I would like it if stardock could maybe rethink a bit how the ai calculates military strength. I had the yor declare war on me and attack me because the game said they had numerical supiority with their awesome military which consisted of fleets of useless fodder ships. I had made a few strong ships that annihilated their army in a few turns. I would have won in 1.2 with simultaneous turns as well, my tech was way superior and they couldn't scratch my paint.

Anyway my point is that the computer's military strength calculation is weird. Spin control centers should only make the computer think that you have a huge fleet until they get advanced espionage on you and can check the planet. If I can look at an AI planet, see the spin control center, and know that the ships are 5 times weaker on that planet, the AI should be able to do this as well. Or maybe overwhelming militaries should affect relations differently for different alignments. Having a huge military should earn the respect of the Drengin, but the Altairans should favor pacifism for example.

if thats a cheap tactic and u feel no satisfaction from doing that then dont use it, the devs will c this and will adjust the values of the spin control center accoringly so that this cheap a tactic wont work

Why adjust the values when you can adjust the AI with some lines of code to make it actually put two and two together. Lets say if a particular AI has invested a nice amount of espionage on you, they would be able to tell whether or not you have a Spin Control Center and on what planet. If it looks at the ships orbiting that planet, and your other planets, and they are all small hulled ships with 2 MD and 0 defences compared to their fleets of 20 Energy and 13 armour, they should be able to put two and two together and take the initiative to wipe your ass off the map, reguardless of what ever your "projected" military strength might be.

Keep in mind that not all the AIs will notice this, otherwise the concept of having a SCC is pointless. Just the AIs that are on a good intelligence setting and have invested in espionage towards your civ.

Well, fake ships tricked the Germans in WWII. The british owned them in espionage though. Makes a better case for setting the influence of spin control proportional to how advanced the espionage is.

I think I have to challenge the idea that no race would ever challenge you. I play on 'tough' and have customized my race for max diplomacy as well. I use this trick often just to cut down on my micromangment. I even waste a tile to put down an Omega Defense to boost it even higher. But the other races WILL on occasion call your bluff. And when they do you are in a lot of trouble. There are times when they just will not ally with you no matter what you do. And if you have anything approaching a high influence with a militirstic race on your border you can expect that race to probably call your bluff when you start flipping thier planets.

This is all very dependent on the settings for your universe of course. A crowded map will cut down on how much your diplomacy skill will help you.

Also turn off the tech trading. It will definatly make things harder on you, since it appears you need more of a challenge.

Hmmmmmm, someone has been playing Dr. Frankenthread.

Anyway I have only built one SCC, however I am thinking about using more since I moved up to "intelligent" opponents.

I think I have to challenge the idea that no race would ever challenge you. I play on 'tough' and have customized my race for max diplomacy as well. I use this trick often just to cut down on my micromangment. I even waste a tile to put down an Omega Defense to boost it even higher. But the other races WILL on occasion call your bluff.

Military strength is only one of the factors determining whether they will attack you of course, but it seems to be a very big one. Other factors like differing alignment, amount of trade, etc will affect that too. Also On higher levels, owning a Spin control center doesn't mean that you automatically have the top military, particularly if you don't make any attempt to keep up on weapon techs eventually they will exceed yours.

On maschoistic level, Spin control center seldom allows me to be the top dog in military strength , just not the bottom, and the top AI military empire still finds my military weak. So I have to work with other factors like trading...