Was playing the other day and was on pretty good terms with everyone except Catherine - Shes got a few "decent" allies in her camp as well. I have my Navy out on patrol and I see her invasion force set sail - based on diplomacy I know she's coming for me... now my problem:

I know she's coming - AND I know she will be able to declare war and drop those 15 troops off on my soil on the same turn.

I wish there was a "Turn Those Ships Around" option on diplomacy - either I declare war early and suffer the diplomatic penalties (maybe even invoking a Defense Pact if it had been later in the game) or I let her drop an invasion force off next to one of my cities and spend the next 20 turns trying to root them out, while destroying my economy in the process...

As an aside how do most of you handle this situation?

Was playing the other day and was on pretty good terms with everyone except Catherine - Shes got a few "decent" allies in her camp as well. I have my Navy out on patrol and I see her invasion force set sail - based on diplomacy I know she's coming for me... now my problem:

I know she's coming - AND I know she will be able to declare war and drop those 15 troops off on my soil on the same turn.

I wish there was a "Turn Those Ships Around" option on diplomacy - either I declare war early and suffer the diplomatic penalties (maybe even invoking a Defense Pact if it had been later in the game) or I let her drop an invasion force off next to one of my cities and spend the next 20 turns trying to root them out, while destroying my economy in the process...

As an aside how do most of you handle this situation?


I let the ships come into range of bombing, then declare, bomb them to half strength and sink them with my navy. Then I put an army into my own transports and go for her.

Another option is to line up loads of troops along the coast, to prevent any landing. She will still declare, but you will be able to sink the ships after she declares.

It depends - if I could concentrate my forces where she lands, and my forces will be able to take her out quickly, without any pillaging, then I would probably let her land her troops. If the diplomatic penalty for declaring on her might put you over the top with her allies, and result in them declaring on you as well, then that's certainly something to consider.

But 9 times out of 10, I would declare and blow her ships out of the water.

Rather than a "Turn those ships around" option, I would favor a one turn delay in landing troops (or launching a direct attack on a city from transports).

It was pre-flight, gallions and frigates aplenty - it would have been dicey as to me taking out the entire invasion force but I HATE sitting there knowing someone is about to sucker punch you and the only option is to eat the diplo penalty and declare early.

I just moved up to prince and had almost a 1k point lead on her at the time - and since the AI tech trades like crazy (and apparently for almost nothing it seems since theres no WAY she should have had tech parity with me) I was still vulnerable to her (boarders where fairly close - 2-3 turns sailing max).

It feels like cheating but I think I need to play with "No Tech Trading" on - I hate that some crapbox civ with 5 cities still has the same army units as me because the AI loves to tech trade.

Although there are currently some ways to react, I think adding the diplomatic option is better.
It could be less specific, something along "move away the troops threatening my borders or it is war". This should remove the diplomatic demerit (or reduce it, for the "target").
I see this as necessary war as opposed to a conquest war.

edit: If it's preflight, line up units along your coast (boats can do it, land troops can do it) to prevent a landing on the first turn of war.

In civ 2 (never played 3, so i don't know) there was an option to tell the offending party to withdraw and troops near your territory. I think it would be welcome in Civ IV. Perhaps if you do not share open borders and they have millitary units within 2 squares of your border, you could ask them to withdraw or face the consequinces.

But if you look at todays world, something somewhat similar is happening. Take U.S. v.s. Saddam Hussein. (this is a contraversial subject, and I am not taking either sides. But just for arguments sake am assuming that Saddam was a threat.) Ok Bush had an option to either attack Saddam, or wait in anticipation of an attack from Saddam (note: i am not claiming Saddam was in fact going to attack). Bush chose to strike first. Saddam is now no longer even a possibility of a threat.

Now, If in fact Saddam was planning an attack, it would most likely be in a civilian area, causing mass deaths. But the fact he was going to attack is not 100% known, but going on what intel he had at the time Bush made a pre-imptive attack. Was it the right thing to do? hard to say for sure. did it remove any threat from Saddam? It sure did. Was it popular? BIG STINKIN NO!

If we Compare your situation to the real world it kinda fits the same scene. You can wait for an attack on your soil, hoping for better relations, or you can make a pre-imptive strike lowering your popularity with other civs.

I believe this is what you call "Stuck between a rock and a hard place".

Sounds like a good time to sign some Defensive Pacts.

my friend had a similar situation and he managed to surround the transport fleet with his battleships, forcing the computer to attack or effectively lose 15 land units plus a few destroyers and battleships. my friend goes a bit navy crazy though he had 40 battleships on islands where although most cities are coastal there is far less land for cities, he acheived this on monarch aswell.

I believe this is what you call "Stuck between a rock and a hard place".

Dang, I thought you were going for the pun -- Stuck between Iraq and a hard place. :mischief:

You can set up "walls" of boats that slow down or stop the enemy navy. It takes alot of boats, but...

An "easy" way to do this would be to extend cultural boundries away from your shoreline, far enough that enemy boats can't go to war, enter your boundries, and land troops in an single round.

I've proposed one fix in the "faster boats" thread:
1> Boost coastal boat speeds by a factor of 2 (1->2 with writing).
2> Boost deep-sea boat speeds by a factor of 3 (1->2 with compass and 2->3 with astronomy).
3> When a boat loads troops, it loses all of it's movement.
4> When a boat moves, all of the troops inside lose all of it's movement.

The result is you always have a chance to sink boats before they land troops, yet boat travel is still highly optimal, travel-time wise.

Maybe I'm wrong, but: The trouble with trying to block with ships is that it may take a boatload (forgive the pun) of ships to do that. In addition, if you only have one ship per square, the invasion force could fight through it and land anyway.

The thing I don't like about an option to demand "Turn Those Ships Around": What if the AI is preparing an invasion of your neighbor? If the AI can make the same demand of you, what if you are taking your invasion fleet past another AI, and it demands you send your ships home? How close would you have to get before the AI could make that demand? None of these problems are insurmountable, but I suspect I wouldn't like this option.

I personally like Yakk's suggestion better. Although I realize the game is not always realistic (and probably shouldn't be), it is a bit ridiculous that a large invasion force can land right next to a city in one turn, and/or launch an amphibious attack immediately. Especially in the modern era.

If the blockade is outside of your waters, the AI tends not to attack it -- and if it does, you get your pre-warning of invasion. :)

But yes -- it would be rather neat to have an "intercept" mission for ships, so that they auto-attack (or maybe auto-bombard) any enemy ship that moves within a certain radius (2 squares?)

If you're going to attack a civ that's neighboring a civ that's demanding you to turn your army around. Then there should be another diplomatic option to explain to the civ that it's not going invade, and from there see if the civ will take your word for it. I think it will make invading a civ on another continent more difficult.

Cristoval's got a good point. This would be really messy to implement. I like the idea, but it'd have to work out some other way. I'd think something like you demand a 10-turn peace guarantee. If they refuse, they're forced to declare war. That'll spare you the diplo hit, and allow you to do something right away.

You know how with land tiles, when invading forces are in your territory, they don't get to use roads/rails to speed up their movement? What if, when hostile ships enter your territorial waters (those inside your cultural boundaries) they are limited to one square of movement per turn?
That way, you can still speed across the open ocean, but you don't get the sudden surprise attacks you have now -- declare, speed in, dump off your stacks, etc. It's small consolation to sink enemy transports once they've dumped their stacks on your shores :(

You know how with land tiles, when invading forces are in your territory, they don't get to use roads/rails to speed up their movement? What if, when hostile ships enter your territorial waters (those inside your cultural boundaries) they are limited to one square of movement per turn?
That way, you can still speed across the open ocean, but you don't get the sudden surprise attacks you have now -- declare, speed in, dump off your stacks, etc. It's small consolation to sink enemy transports once they've dumped their stacks on your shores :(

Best answer that I've seen so far. It would be balanced by the fact that your ships suffer the same movement penalty.

It's very annoying in the age of sail to find that you're at war with someone by having their troops land on your territory. You can usually tell that something's coming by watching diplo status and the Power graph but the where and the when are often a fait accompli.

i like the idea that an enemy ship cannot pass through your ship within certain radius without having a combat. that way it will reduce the number ofships needed to guard your waters

Heck, we could just have international borders expand beyond the shoreline. If one's cultural borders extended out 10 squares from shore, enemy transports could not sneak attack...

Of all the responses I've seen I like the request for non-agression for 10 turns the best - I think there should be some burden of proof on the defender to at least recognize that an attack is likely.

At the same time it shouldnt become standard gameplay to demand a 10 turn no attack assurance for every civ every 10 turns. There either needs to be a limit to how many times it can be requested or have it unavailable for 10 turns after being in effect for 10 turns.

Even given the "No Attack" treaty the agressor should still be able to break it -BUT at the cost of a diplo penalty with every other civ that I have contact with.

In otherwords they can still attack me, but everyone I know will think less of them (-2 to -4 I should think "So and so has proven untrustworthy to their neighbors". I think the ability to "sneak attack" is nearly a requirement - it has happened many times in history - but if I SEE an attack coming I should have some diplomatic protection.

Another idea would be to have the agressive civ flagged for the rest of the game - any diplo penalties for declaring war on them later in the game would be greatly reduced or eliminated with 3rd party civs... basically a "they had it coming to them" kinda diplo response.

In otherwords they can still attack me, but everyone I know will think less of them (-2 to -4 I should think "So and so has proven untrustworthy to their neighbors". I think the ability to "sneak attack" is nearly a requirement - it has happened many times in history - but if I SEE an attack coming I should have some diplomatic protection.

Another idea would be to have the agressive civ flagged for the rest of the game - any diplo penalties for declaring war on them later in the game would be greatly reduced or eliminated with 3rd party civs... basically a "they had it coming to them" kinda diplo response.

I don't know about "for the rest of the game." The Japanese launched a sneak attack on the U.S. in 1941. Four turns (er, years) later, the U.S. accepted their unconditional surrender, and they've been buddies ever since.
Maybe a diplo penalty for quite some time, but not for the rest of the game.

I just don't like that when the invasion force lands, you're not alerted that it happened. It's easy to miss.

Japan became a vassal state of the USA.

Speaking of which, you should be allowed to give cities to your vassals.

Japan became a vassal state of the USA.

Yeah, that's sort of true. I only play Vanilla, though, not Warlords, so vassal is a foreign concept to me. And don't let the Japanese read this!

And don't let the Japanese read this!


its ok for me...


(ill explain properly: IM ENGLISH)

It was pretty clearly a vassal state arrangement. The Japanese government issued an unconditional surrender, it's military disbanded, civil society was run by the american military.

Over time, Japan regained much of it's autonomy, and ended up becoming an allied state instead of a Vassal state.