Reputation question

[Uncle Lumpy]

Hi all. I have a question regarding reputation. I'm playing Human on the latest version of the game. I am currently playing with Way of the Ancients as my government. Suddenly I've gone from Satisfactory to Dubious and I can't see how/why. I invaded one Independent colony right after I switched to Ancients and went to straight to Dubious. That was ten game years ago and I have been at Satisfactory for the last seven. I've been prosperous and in no conflicts with any other empire. My only military "combat" has been with space creatures a couple of pirate ships. I'm the largest empire/military in my galaxy and have free trade agreements with five of the other nine races, and I trade Loris fruit with seven of them. I have used intelligence agents to steal some tech from several of the other races. I do not use pirates for any attack missions, I have not initiated any trade sanctions, and I've only sent one warning to remove military ships from my space. Now two of my closest trade partners are turning angry and when I checked to see why I find I have a Dubious reputation for some reason!?! Can anyone please explain?

[Bingeling]

Invading an independent probably won't help. And having intelligence activities being detected is also a likely reduction in reputation.

Accidentally (or on purpose) attacking someone when not at war puts a huge dent in your reputation. Conquering during war, and bombarding reduces reputation, but that seems to be ruled out in your case.

The general way to improve reputation is to kill pirates.

Sadly there is no way to see what influenced it in the past.

[Uncle Lumpy]

Hi Bingeling, I appreciate your comments and insights. I'm puzzled because after the invasion ten game years ago my reputation rose from Dubious to Satisfactory, remained at Satisfactory for so long, and now has suddenly switched back to Dubious. Since the invasion I have not attacked (on purpose or accidently) anyone other then space creature or pirates (yes, I would happily hunt all pirates down, but I've pretty much taken care of all the close ones, and the remaining clans are too far away to reach). Of the handful of spy missions, only one was detected (and he escaped). My reputation did not change after that incident four game years ago, and the Race I attempted to spy upon never changed their regards for me (Friendly 2K). I simply don't understand how/why my reputation changed so suddenly without my doing anything even remotely questionable, much less deliberately nasty.

[Uncle Lumpy]

Since my previous post I played a couple more hours of my game. Yesterday when I ended play and saved my game I was dubious. Today when I loaded my saved game and resumed play I was now satisfactory!? Perhaps there is a glitch?

[RiftHick]

Being the primary side to Declare War, Not honouring pacts and treaties, unprovoked attacks, invading independents, bombarding planets, destroying planets and having your intelligence agents either get caught/ foiled/ intercepted will cause you to lose reputation for a period of time. Naturally if your are doing these things often then you'll spend a good amount of time with dubious reputation.

[Uncle Lumpy]

Yes, I understand RiftHick. All you stated is plain, logical, and obvious, even to me. [:D] Which is why I am so puzzled this has happened, because none of what you stated has applied to me for at least four game years. I have had a reputation of Satisfactory for the last seven game years. In that time I have had only Mutual Trade agreements (no Defense pacts,) all honored, none canceled, and no Trade Sanctions; I have not Declared War on anyone in this game (I've only Declare War once in one of my earliest games-I discovered other races are eager enough to declare war on me that I have no need to initiate it); I have only attacked space creatures and pirates; I invaded one independent ten game years ago (in the process of invading when Way of the Ancients was discovered-kind of late to stop the invasion), since that time my reputation returned to Satisfactory seven game years ago; I have not used Bombardment since my third or fourth game this past January; I have no capacity to destroy planets; only one agent was Intercepted four game years ago, and my reputation did not change from Satisfactory then. So, no, I really do not do any of these things often, or even at all. Yet, I still went from Satisfactory to Dubious!? And then when I resumed play the next day I was magically back to Satisfactory (all I did was end play one day and resume it the next). So, unless someone can explain why my reputation changed without my doing anything to warrant it, I'm guessing I'm experiencing some sort of glitch or bug.

[RiftHick]

You aren't going to get what you seek then as the rest of us can't see for ourselves what is entirely going on in your game, we only have your word for it (no offence) I'm sure if we could play your save file to see this we'd have some better insight though. Regardless reputation seems like it is largely a nerfed or relic statistic the more important things are the race family bias (Humanoids strongly hate Bugs, Bugs strongly like other Bugs...etc) and the individual (specific) bias for each race and government. Reputation can be dealt with by "petting the dog" or doing nothing negative (intentionally or otherwise), to give you an example if you play on max game-play speed in the time someone went dubious due to a captured agent you would have to do whatever you are going to do immediately or by the time the fruits of your retaliation occur their going to have satisfactory reputation and your own retaliation could very well be perceived as being unprovoked. I remember bombarding 3 colony completely to dust and in less than about 2 years I was back to satisfactory. That said, in your first post you specifically mentioned that two close trading partners where getting upset with you, because of this I think there is something going on between your empire and theirs it might just be them whinging about your larger strategic value or them wanting your stuff due to touching empire boundaries and all of this may or may not be separate from your reputation concerns.

[lucos]

Hi! Actually, I had a similar experience in my last game. It happened 2 or 3 times until I found out the reason: one of my automated military ship was attacking an empire I was not in war with..
This empire had some military ships in my system and my automated ship tried to attack it. But while jumping, the other ship flee back to his own system and my ship followed it and attack it in their system. In my case, its what make suddenly my reputation to dubious.
Don't know if it's the same for you but you might want to check your automated ships.

[Uncle Lumpy]

Thanks lucos. That was part of the problem/solution. I actually successfully completed the game a couple of weeks ago (my daughter was married since then, so my attention has been else where [:)]). Won the game without ever going to war with another empire. Which brings up the other part of the solution: I became too large for any other empire (or alliance of empires) to challenge me. Once my empire became "the 800 pound gorilla" in the galaxy, it didn't matter what my reputation was. I believe reputation really only matters in the early part of the game. When I need trading partners to trade their technology with me. From reading what others have posted in past threads, I've found if I can concentrate my research in certain key technologies, my empire can become very powerful pretty quickly. By doing so though, I need to trade technologies with other empires to "round out" my empire's development. This is why it was so frustrating to have my reputation drop for any reason in the early stages of the game (one minute I can trade technology and the next I can't because, for whatever reason, my empire's reputation drops, and I can't). So now I pay much closer attention to which boxes are checked or not, and what individual military ship might visiting which other empire. A bit more micro management in the early game, but there's less to manage then too. [:D]

[DeadlyShoe]

Thanks lucos. That was part of the problem/solution. I actually successfully completed the game a couple of weeks ago (my daughter was married since then, so my attention has been else where ). Won the game without ever going to war with another empire. Which brings up the other part of the solution: I became too large for any other empire (or alliance of empires) to challenge me. Once my empire became "the 800 pound gorilla" in the galaxy, it didn't matter what my reputation was. I believe reputation really only matters in the early part of the game. When I need trading partners to trade their technology with me. From reading what others have posted in past threads, I've found if I can concentrate my research in certain key technologies, my empire can become very powerful pretty quickly. By doing so though, I need to trade technologies with other empires to "round out" my empire's development. This is why it was so frustrating to have my reputation drop for any reason in the early stages of the game (one minute I can trade technology and the next I can't because, for whatever reason, my empire's reputation drops, and I can't). So now I pay much closer attention to which boxes are checked or not, and what individual military ship might visiting which other empire. A bit more micro management in the early game, but there's less to manage then too.

this happens a lot in games with tech trading, the player is just better at leveraging it than any AI possibly can be.

personally, i prefer turning tech trading off. i find the main downside to this is a relatively low tech level when certain endgame events occur.

[HerpInYourDerp]

I keep tech trading on for that very reason. I end up having to gift various QoL research and even some weapon techs to the AI just for them to keep up. Otherwise it's literally just me+1 vs the other guy when that happens and makes for an awfully boring end.

[lucos]

ORIGINAL: Uncle Lumpy

Thanks lucos. That was part of the problem/solution. I actually successfully completed the game a couple of weeks ago (my daughter was married since then, so my attention has been else where [:)]). [:D]

Congratulation for your daughter!

[Uncle Lumpy]

Thank you, lucos.