Well, you can try to ask for a peace treaty in diplomacy, but unless your opponent is losing or you're willing to give them alot, they probably won't agree. I've had situations where I offered everything I owned and they still refused.

What you probably need in this case is a good defensive strategy. Build military starbases along the areas where you are being attacked from. Add defense assist and attack assist components to it, which will provide offensive and defensive bonuses to your ships. Just note that only ships that have a weapon of some type will be able to get the offensive bonuses and similarily, a ship must have a defensive component of some type to get the defensive bonuses.

My own initial ships have a laser and some very bad armour. It's enough to allow me to make use of the bonuses that military bases can provide and as such I can defend my territory with very little, while I spend more money on research and other development projects.

You just have to beat them down a bit. Invade a planet or two and persuade a friendly race to attack them by giving them money and tech.

Be sure to use some espionage and check which planets are their manufacturing planets. Get those down ASAP. Also, if you aren't already, check their ships to see what types of weapons they're using and counter it with a good defense against it. You usually don't have to sacrifice speed if you just put full defense against their weapons instead of spreading it out.

If you're still relatively low in weapons research, I recommend doing some big research into the same weapon and armor type, ie: beams and shields, missiles and point defense, or ballistic and armor. This way, if you're fighting someone who has some decent weaponry against defense you don't have, you could always trade them your most powerful weapon, which they'll equip newer ships with and you'll have plenty of protection to keep them off.

But as the above poster said: prevention is easy. Just produce some weak military ships and that'll keep them off your back for a while.

Preventing a war really isn't possible. Eventually an AI will decide that you need to be smacked down, and it will declare war on you. Then it just becomes a point of SURVIVING the war.

You can, however, delay the war.

First off, have lots of trade with the AI in question. When you go to war, you lose all that trade, and the AI takes that into account. In fact, in the Civ Manager screen, you will sometimes see a + trade with a race's relationship to you. This means that it considers its trade with you an asset, and it will need more - points in order to declare war.

If you notice a civ that's far outstripping you in military power, give it some cash or influence points, or even some useless techs (the ones that he can't use to beat you down with). If he's friendly with you, he won't declare war as often.

Create alliances if you can. An AI won't attack you so readily if you're allied with other AIs who could beat it. Ofcourse, an alliance also means you can get into war with other aliens who don't even care about you, and be careful about breaking an alliance. The AI with whom you just broke the alliance is going to hold a grudge for a LONG time.

Finally, build some ships and have them in orbit around your planets. Some heavy fighters preferably. An AI only declares war if it thinks it can win. Some heavy fighters go a long way to forcing it to really outgun you before declaring war.

As for surviving the war, there's a few things you can do :

1) Ask for help. Won't always work, but your diplomacy skill really comes into its own here. If you can get another race to declare war on the aggressive AI, suddenly he's fighting a war on two fronts.
In the same vein, if you and another are fighting against a particular AI, make sure to trade effective weapons and shields to the AI that's helping you.
For example, you and the terrans have an alliance, and are fighting the drengin. The drengin are using mass drivers and armor.
Give (or trade) armor and a non-mass driver weaponry technology to the alliance to make life tough for the drengin. Suddenly his ships won't be so good anymore, and he'll think twice about the war.

2) Build fast ships and do not wait for him to attack you in orbit. Send some fleets outside, and make sure that YOU attack first. Attacking first is a big equalizer in a battle, especially if you use hvy fighters with a ton of weapons. Five hvy Fighters with an 8 in beam rating will kill a LOT of ships on that first free attack.

3) Military starbases are killer. And as far as I can tell, they don't cost anything. Just a few constructors. Have some planets do nothing but build constructors, and keep upgrading that starbase. I've had starbases that added a total of around +9 to ALL stats. Needless to say, a fleet with that in place is practically invincible.


I would never try to buy a declaration of peace. If you're so weak that that's the only way you can stop him, he'll simply attack you again within a few months anyways. I know I do, it's a great way to strip minor races of all their money and influence. I typically dominate the UP council by 60% or more, most of that by trading for influence.

If you're offering everything you have, and the AI still doesn't want to make peace, why not take that entire offer to a different civ, and see if you can get a few cruisers or something for it?

Finally, don't be afraid to mortgage your civ if it looks like you're getting beat. Sure, 2000bc credits + 100bc for 150 weeks is a terribly shitty deal, but so's dying. Five of those ships may cripple you for two years to come, but they can also save you from getting wiped out. Look at it this way, if you die, nobody's going to bug you for the mortgage payments

Creston

Sorry in advance for the long post....

Three tips:
1) Research federation governments. Production and research goes up massively.
2) Research planetary defenses to get orbital fleet managers and planetary defenses and put both on EVERY PLANET. Even if that's ALL you can put on them, put them there. Otherwise, ships in orbit can only fight by themselves, even if you have eight ships in orbit.
3) S T A R B A S E S

Now, let me tell you one of my war stories...

The randomizer thingy screwed me by putting nearly all the other races close to me - in a galaxy set to "gigantic" - so I didn't have very many planets to pick in the beginning. So that hurt me right off. I did get one nearby star system with three very good planets, plus manufacturing bonuses.

I built three economy starbases around Sol and the other star system with the 3 planets and upgraded them with every module available, military and economic. Even though I only had a few planets, most of them were industrial powerhouses and could turn out massive numbers of starships.

At one point, the United Planets decided that all races should operate as a federation, so production rates skyrocket. One of my planets could turn out a constructor every 2 weeks, so I did that. I built three military starbases around every star system and upgraded them each of them with all possible modules.

I also designed a custom fighter, with pretty good shields and plasma cannons and I could turn them out in huge numbers. I put six of them in orbit around each planet and built several fleets (only 3 per fleet unfortunately - logistics was years away on the research tree).

Things are rolling along, when suddenly the Drengin start demanding tribute. I gave them the finger. This goes on for a while. One of my star systems is cut off from the rest of my empire by the Iconians, who got to another star system between it and Earth before I did. It's right next door to the Drengin. That's obviously where they would invade first, so I moved all my fleets there, just in case.

I sent some scouts into their territory to see where their fleets were. Unforunately, I didn't have much range, so I didn't see everything they had.

I noticed they were killing off the Drath Legion, so I built three fleets of my little fighters, sent them to Drath and handed them over. I figure if I can keep the Drengin busy with the Drath, they wouldn't bother me.

Didn't work. The Drath got pwned. At almost the same time, the Drengin conquered the Torians too.

Suddenly, the "all races as federation" law ends, I go back to being an empire and production drops. At the same time, there's a recession across the galaxy, so I could barely afford to build or research anything at all without going into debt.

The Drengin pick that moment to declare war.

I'm all cocky and arrogant. I figure I'll slap them around for a bit, maybe take a couple of planets and then sue for peace. So I invade into their territory and attack some of their fleets. Total pwnage - at first. I didn't notice that the Drengin had already begun building battleships.

A Drengin fleet pops in from outside my sensor range and jumps one of my fleets - a battleship, two frigates and some fighters. I got sodomized.

I lost four more fleets and decided "screw this". I sent all my fleets back to my border system and put them under the starbase's protection. I figured I would force the Drengin to fight me on my terms, smash a few fleets and then sue for peace after they've lost a bunch of warships.

Unfortunately for me, the freakin Arceans decided I was weak and also declared war. Suddenly I have a war on two fronts, my economy is in the crapper and I can barely afford to build any new ships.

I beat off the first Arcean invasion fleet. And the second. And the third, but I'd lost a bunch of ships by then. Then SEVEN MORE FRIGGIN FLEETS move in. Rape and pillage time. They smashed the one fleet I had left in that area and invaded the one planet close to them.

Now it's time for the Drengin to move in. They invaded my border system. And I got to witness the awesomeness of a fleet supported by multiple starbases. My little fighters - in fleets of only three - smashed fleet after fleet after fleet. Battleships, frigates, cruisers, fighters - all of them were smashed into dust by my little fighters.

But they just kept coming.

I know they say the AI doesn't cheat, but there is NO FRIGGIN WAY the Drengin could have built that many battleships. Eventually they wised up and started attacking the starbases. They lost several DOZEN fleets, but eventually they killed them. Then they killed my fleets. Then they took the planet.

Same thing with my hugely productive star system with the three planets. The Arceans helped them. Then they came for Earth. I fought them both off for hours, but they just kept sending massive invasions fleets and eventually I was forced to surrender.

So, I lost. But if I hadn't been screwed early on by being surrounded by the other races, I would have been able to win that. The abilities you get with a starbase are unbelievable. A crappy little Defender can slaughter a fleet of battleships, with starbase support.