The  point you make about planet sensor range and defences is a really good one. As you put it - you defend with fleets, so planets should  able to build buildings that bolster fleets in orbit. Or even add to them with fighters etc. Also mYaybe the best orbital defence you can buy is a good sensor system to see fleets coming a loong way away and respond accordingly....

The GC series has always had a huge problem with starting position being way too important. I mean, fine, the AI is still terrible. You can still win even if you start off at a huge handicap. I mean, that's basically what all higher difficulty levels in 4X games are anyway, right? But you make the *choice* to up the Cheater Meter. You don't make a choice to start off in the corner of the map with only one colonizable world within reach while the AI gets six colonies and a space pony.

The viability of a "tall" game needs to be amplified pretty significantly if those bad starting spots are going to feel like something that forces you to change your strategy, rather than just forcing you to play a more difficult match that you didn't sign up for.

The whole tall/wide problem links in pretty well with another post I just made in another thread about the problems with playing a peaceful game under the current ruleset. Basically, peaceful victory is a sideshow that's never going to feel balanced. Either it's an easy to way to do an end-run around the AI, or it's useless because it can't overcome the baseline "spam colonies and ships" route.

Tall, peaceful empires should be a thing - the ivory tower of pure research, the centralized bastion of peace and civility, the trading hub whose sudden destruction would bankrupt the galaxy. All are great templates for tall empires, and none of them are really possible right now, for the reason I just mentioned.

Tech trading needs a lot of UI work at a minimum. Some substantive decision should probably also be made about how the choice-based techs interact with the trading scheme. But in terms of tech bloat, the only solution I have at-hand is the one I already talked about in my other post: make all diplomatic actions cost something, give peaceful players ways to accrue that resource, make people actually think about what it's worth to them to swap all of the techs amongst all of the races. I mean, if the AI were less bad that last consideration would be more pressing anyway, but I don't think that's the whole of the issue.

Isn't it possible to use starbases to defend planets? If not the game should be changed so that any starbase within a planet's area must be destroyed before any invasion can begin.

So things have been changed? Because I am pretty certain that in the past the AI would just ignore bases and go straight for planets.

I don't see any such starbase modules in my tech tree...  Not sure which tech you are talking about?

Maybe it's only in certain race's trees?

+25% isn't going to do a whole lot.  That doesn't really solve planet defense.

They really should just make it so that any starbase within a planet's zone of control must be destroyed before any invasion can begin.

What if you have 2 starbases for the same planet?

Does that mean I have been wasting stations when I gave some of my planets more than 1?

That's not what I meant. Putting starbases close to planets gives them a boost correct? So it's possible to boost the same planet with more than 1 starbase correct?

Interesting. Does this mean it's possible to spam the same kind of starbase over and over to give a planet huge stats? Or can you only use each type once? (one economy, one research etc). Surely there is some limit to the number of starbases you can use on a planet?