[couslee]

I appreciate the role-playing aspects, and do so to an extent. After reading about the MEE, I can appreciate that it is in the game. My main concern, was these two peacefull empires would use the benefits of my trade alliance to build a war machine to attack me. IRL, that is not going to happen. Using them as puppet attackers is a good idea, that way they can expand>>>>>> the other direction and irritate the other races. As I said before, in any of the other 4x games I have played, the AI views you as a MEE all the time, which is just silly. It would be like Togo (no offence to any Togoniese) saying they were going to take their one crop duster and attack the evil American empire..... and expect to have any other result than a good arse-wuppin. (just ask afganistan). The sad part, is the lack of coordination with the AIs. from what I read tho, ALL the AIs AT ONCE declare the war, which is fine. by the time I reach that point, the game will need something to make the mop-up more fun. The peck here, peck there is not a challange nor fun. There have been countless games of civ/smac that never got finished because of that, but if ALL the factions declared war at once, I might have been quite challanged.

I tried in other games to play the good guy super power, where I have even given fully developed cities/bases to help out the little guy, but they always turned out to be ingrates after a short period.

If you pass the MEE threshold, do "partnership" treaties also get canceled? I don't think they should, just as they should not be able to be canceled for any other reason. Deadlock2 was that way, a victory pact could not be canceled or brokien, and it had an impact on your final score. (shared points) If that is not the case here, I would like to see it in SEV or in the next upgrade/patch.

I hadn't thought of getting intel points from a treaty prior to being able to build the facilities. That certainly would explain why CI1 is there. kewl