Hey folks-

I've recently moved up to Monarch difficulty with Bhuric's unofficial patch and have noticed in several consecutive games that the AI has a disturbing tendency to have several civs declare war on me during the same turn. Has anyone else experienced this? Is there anything I can do to discourage this type of behavior?

In my current game I just had five civs declare war on me in the same turn. My relations with most of these civs were cautious. I'm 4th out of 12th in score and have been doing fairly well in the game. I'm thinking the cause of this behavior is my military, which while not exactly a skeleton crew, probably doesn't match up to those of the, IMO, unit-crazy AI. It is worth noting that three of the warmongers are aggressive (Catherine, Shaka, and Kublai Khan).

A somewhat related issue I've encountered is AI civs declaring war on me when they have absolutely nothing to gain. For instance in my current game Shaka is nowhere near my empire and we're too early in the game for him to be able to effectively use his navy to transport troops for attack. Any thoughts on why the AI behaves this way? Are they simply trying to use war weariness to slow down my economy?

Just for the record I like the new aggressive AI that uses war as a tool but I'm concerned that this sort of behavior is fairly foolish.

Are you sure it isn't a single civ dragging its colonies and vassals into the war? While you'll get several declarations of war at the same time there, essentially you're facing a single opponent.

Other possibility is the Apostolic Palace. That can be used for bring all the civs with the AP religion into war against one which doesn't, which will have the same effect.

How are you on the power graph? The score graph is nearly meaningless when the enemy AI goes to declare war. They usually exhibit this dogpile behaviour on the one civ that is the lowest on the power graph.

They often bribe each other to attack, as well.

How many times do you have a Civ that isn't at war with another show up and say "care to join me in smashing the evil Dravenites?", and it's after you say yes or no that it says "Morgrad has declared war on the Dravenites" in the message pane? Answer: a lot.

They ask and/or bribe each other to DoW you, and you need to give them reasons not to accept. "We couldn't betray our close friends!" "We fear their military might!" and "We just don't like you enough" are all reasons you can nurture with your rivals rivals.

A very low power rating is usually enough for other non-Pleased Civs to join in on the dogpile without being asked, just because there is a pie to divide up and they want a piece.

Thanks for the responses. I checked the power graph and I'm actually second to only Hannibal and roughly equal to Kublai Khan so I don't think that would be it. There are no colonies or vassals in this game either, these are five independent leaders acting on their own. It's just bizarre. Only one civ was annoyed towards me, the Incans on my northern border, and they are one of the civs that didn't declare war on me. To make things even more strange I've played a peaceful game, fighting only one short war against Catherine when she declared war and I beat off her small stack in a few turns.

One other issue that may be worth mentioning is that I don't have iron hooked up yet, though I will in a few turns. I didn't have any within my cultural boundaries and had to build a city in a crappy location to secure it. I don't know if my lack of that critical resource has any impact on the AI's willingness to war but I figured I'd mention it anyway.

Are the all the same state religion and yours is different? If so, has the Apostolic Palace been built?

And if not, chances are you just got unlucky.

Shaka and Kublai Kahn with DOW at pleased. Catherine with DOW at Friendly. I suggest bribing them to attack one another and building more troops.

Regardless of the reason, don't worry about it if they are too far away to attack. You get war weariness only if you have units outside of your borders.

I wonder why nobody mentioned AP war on heatens resolution yet....

Yeah it happened to me once. I've found it's best to be friendly or please with at least one civ maybe two, then if you get DOWed it will tick off your friends and the other AI's don't like that. Other than that, I'd say 'religion'

My relations with most of these civs were cautious ... three of the warmongers are aggressive (Catherine, Shaka, and Kublai Khan).

Cautious relations + aggressive personalities = dogpile

... AI civs declaring war on me when they have absolutely nothing to gain.

"Our mutual military struggle brings us closer together."