quote:
Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
.... But it will still completely forget that it ever had a claim to a system once you wipe out its colonies. And it will still send fleets yoyoing back & forth across it's empire as it's priorities change from one turn to another, resulting in no attacks against any of the several threats it cannot decide amongst.
I have recently being playing some Europa Universalis. That game has the concept of the "core province" marker (a shield that appears on the political map). They mark the historic full extent of a country, not it's actualy current borders. They can also be added to and subtracted from by triggered or random events in the game.
For example take Russia in 1792. There are a lot of core province markers owned by other countries: Poland in the west, various Khanates in the east and south.
The Russian AI is always working towards acquiring all provinces marked as its "core". Therefore the AI maintains it's focus across decades of game time and multiple wars of expansion.
In SE4 terms any system where an AI has or had a colony would be marked with a "Core System" flag. There after if the AI lost a system it would remember and try to reclaim it.
In fact the claim system marker could be used for this purpose and the more agressive AI's could push their core system claims to the max.
[ 09 December 2001: Message edited by: Resident Alien 2 ]