Max allegiance? Probably not... Assuming that value is not the one that changes by distance from capital (in other words, it could cause issues if decreasing by 5% decreases ALL planets by 5%... If MaxAlliegance for a planet say 10 jumps away is 5, then it would, in essence, make those uncolonizeable... However, if MaxAllliegance for ALL planets is 100, and that decreases it by 5, then that's OK.) The big issue here is that with research (and abilities), the AI doesn't seem to be capable of seeing or understanding negative effects. They love to spam abilities that *may* give them debuffs as well as buffs. This is where we get the AI killing itself off from... Volley fire for instance is a perfect example. The AI sees "YAY DAMAGE & ROF increase!" and doesn't see "Uh Oh! Shield regen decrease!" This is why the debuff from those abilities is fairly small (as I recall, it's a -5% shield regen debuff for Volley Fire that decreases as the ability is leveled up) EDIT: The other big thing is to have a way to undo those bad effects (for example, later on make a research entity that gives a 5% MaxAlliegance increase) EDIT EDIT: Wow. Just looked at your spreadsheet, and I am impressed. That's REALLY thought out. I think EJ had something like that for the ships WAAAAYYY back... but that's right impressive. Nice.