Absolutely Ridiculous Wars

[Cao Cao Mengde]

I don't know about you guys, but sometimes the AI just does the stupidest effing moves that can ruin the game for me.

I just had a game as Sweden, where all my Luxuries were whales. I had a massive amount to trade, and I was friends with everyone, my army was quite powerful as well and I had pretty much every wonder.

Out of no where, for no reason, no rationality, France declares war on me, and spend pretty much 60 turns doing nothing but raiding my fishing boats. We had only met the turn before, and I hadn't even DONE anything war like to anyone.

Where it gets incredibly stupid though, is the fact that France was an entire continent away. His military was pathetically weak according to the demographics and he didn't even TRY to land any troops or take any cities. I wouldn't have minded it, but the problem was it dropped my happiness down to -24, leaving my empire completely stagnant, I'm fighting off rebels and turning the game into a boring mess. I fight off and destroy most of his frigates which are pretty much doing nothing but raiding my fishing ships, and he REFUSES peace.

I wouldn't have minded if it was an actual invasion force coming, troops coming to land, actual battles- but NO, it was just his lousy frigates doing nothing but raiding my fishing boats. He didn't even bombard any of my cities or soldiers. Nope, just staying JUST out of range and raiding my fishing boats. If it was a human player, OKAY I'd get it. But last time I checked, the AI isn't this smart.

I don't know if it's bad programming or what, but it's the only time where I actually had a case of absolute gamer rage, I nearly threw the computer out the window. (Glad I didn't)

Seriously, I absolutely hate this kind of bull when wars happen for NO REASON, or for the AI to do absolutely nothing but rancidly annoy you.

Anyone else have stories like this of incredible game breaking stupidity?

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[caiman0815]

You are stronger. you are winning. So what should a well programmed AI do?

Land a weak army to get immediately crushed by you ? No
Make peace and let you run further away? No
Just raid your workboats, gaining gold and pushing your empire in chaos? Yes

 

[Olleus]

Sounds like Napoleon executed a pretty decent war strategy.

 

[isau]

Sounds like Napoleon executed a fairly brilliant war strategy despite having a weaker military force.

As for the war happening for "no reason," just because the reason isn't apparent to you doesn't mean there was no reason for it. We bribe AIs to war all the time on each other andno one complains then that they attack non-players with "no reason."

 

[Kidies]

I'd love it if the AI does that to me lol

 

[Xiao Xiong]

Moral of the story: don't neglect your navy, especially if all your resources are whales!

 

[MarshalN]

Instead of building that new wonder build a few new frigates, park them near your whales, problem solved

 

[Talcove]

I actually had something similar happen, except it was the other way around. The Celts and Indonesians were starting to get a bit big, and were attacking my trading partner, Portugal. I know I couldn't beat them, or even capture most of their cities but what I could do was hit them where it hurt. I amassed an army of cavalry and raided the Celtic countryside, burning and pillaging every farm, mine, luxury, and great person improvement I could find. It was pretty easy with Indonesia, as their happiness was dependent on whales and pearls. I quickly crippled their happiness, and consequently, their military. It worked only to a lesser extent with the Celts, who had a larger supply of luxuries, from the conquered Babylonian lands.

In the end, though, I managed to wear Boudica down, little by little, until she was no match for me and Maria.

Moral of the story: don't neglect your navy, especially if all your resources are whales!

I'd think that's pretty self evident. It's like saying, "Make sure you breathe, eat food, and drink water, or else you'll die!"

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

I'd believe it if it was a strategy, if it didn't happen the first turn after I had just MET HIM. We literally had no contact at all. I didn't even know France existed until the world congress. Yeah, I made a few mistakes with not having ships set up, but you can't tell me that it makes sense for an AI to be planning to attack you before they even know you're there?

 

[isau]

I'd love it if the AI does that to me lol

They seem more likely to do it in BNW than in G&K. IMO its the main risk of war mongers in this expansion. They rarely can capture cities (as before) but they do a lot of damage on their retreat.

 

[Green_Power]

This type of schizophrenic AI behavior never happened to me in G&K and BNW. It happened in Civ5 vanilla though, but not anymore.

You mean, you have no clue why Napoleon declared (not that it would matter much in the case of Napoleon)? But, what was your diplomatic status with him before he declared? Who was he friends with? Who did you denounce? What was his ideology? And, which was yours?

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

No one seems to be able to read.

He declared war on me literally the first turn after we met.

We were friends with the same factions, according to the little pop up. It was too early in the game for ideology. I didn't even have the "You built wonders I wanted" because again, we JUST MET. There wasn't even the "you have lands we covet" negative modifier.

But it's not the fact he declared war that's irritating, although I prefer it to have an actual casus belli; it's the fact that his war was nothing but a time waste, that completely obliterated the fun of the game. It wasn't even a situation where I was losing a war, it wasn't even an enjoyable stalemate. It was just him going "dur, I'm going to raid your fishing ships" and that's it. Didn't try to land troops, didn't bombard my cities or soldiers, just raided. So I let him have his fill, and he still refuses to make peace, which was ridiculous, because he had the weakest army in the game.

Moral of the story: don't neglect your navy, especially if all your resources are whales!

I DID have a navy. Yeah it wasn't as strong as my army, but it wasn't NOT there. The problem was he just refused to engage me apart from the raiding. And not that the navy could do much, when I was stuck at -24 happiness either.

 

[isau]

I DID have a navy. Yeah it wasn't as strong as my army, but it wasn't NOT there. The problem was he just refused to engage me apart from the raiding. And not that the navy could do much, when I was stuck at -24 happiness either.

A navy that never engaged you on land could not have gotten you to -24 happiness by itself. For that to happen you had to have had some other major issue going on. If you were the world's supplier of whales then defending that resource needed to be a top priority and so at the least you were not prepared on that front. You didn't protect your interests and got your butt handed to you--it happens. Now you have to take a look at what went wrong and fix it so it doesn't happen again.

Napoleon declaring war 1 turn after meeting you is the only semi-strange part, but it's not like declaring war is out of left field for Napoleon. He was likely sailing for someone else, encountered you, and being either friendly or intimidated by everyone else (perhaps because his original target built up their forces) you came up as a prime target.

From the sound of it, you had a wonder mongering empire that was built on a house of cards and Napoleon had a decent navy, few local targets, and got sort of lucky. But sometimes that's how the chips fall, and our empires with them.

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

I wouldn't say a house of cards, persay, but I definitely agree with you that I should have kept an eye out for more luxuries. It was a fairly barren start in that regard.

Yeah, I should have protected the whales. (Whale Whores?) But in my defense, it had been a fairly peaceful world, and Napoleon was on his own little Island on the opposite end of the world. I don't think I was being unreasonable to think that I wouldn't need to have full battle stations on literally the turn after we met. But ultimately what frustrates me is that it just completely killed the fun. If he actually tried a straight up invasion, actually attacked, actually DID something other than raid my fishing boats, I wouldn't have been as irritated. Even if his army was destroying mine, but there was an actual war, that'd have been GREAT. But he just meandered. It's that that really got to me. It just felt like such a waste.

Which makes me wonder sometimes if the AI actually does plan for meeting you, even if it hasn't met you yet? This isn't the first time I've run into situations like that.

 

[caiman0815]

No one seems to be able to read.

He declared war on me literally the first turn after we met.

Most of deity player make this; they encounter an AI, declare war and steal his workers, despite being overpowered by AI at that stage of the game.

They know that the AI is unable to retaliate and so they grab what they can get.

The same story with nappy in your game: You cannot hurt him so he gets gold pillaging your boats. The resulting happiness issue was pure luck and surely not intended by the AI.

What I think is that napoleon was bribed to declare war on you, because the AI is to stupid to launch an attack of this strategic dimension

 

[Cao Cao Mengde]

That must have been it; I wish I could say that the AI has improved that much and is clever of such tactics, but even games with the best AI can't come up with something that subtle.

Well, just remind me to nuke Paris everytime I see Nippy e_e.

 

[isau]

At least he bothered to declare war. A sneakier AI would have proposed a ban on Whales in the World Congress and robbed you of any opportunity to defend them.

FWIW in BNW an AI that can't actually defeat you will still pillage tile improvements, and won't (seemingly) sue for peace as long as they keep succeeding at taking them. As for dealing with Napoleon in that game, if he was truly weak, that was a case were it was a duty to bribe his neighbors into turning France into a grease stain that smelled faintly of burnt cheese and singed wine.

 

[Tarvok]

He might have just needed the cash to support an overbuilt navy, and found loads of undefended fishing boats.

 

[katfish]

I raged recently when i played interesting map on emperor as Venice - got decent start location, grabbed 2 GLs(library at 42 turn) Colossus Mausoleum HG Stonehenge etc.
Also gone piety and had Jesuit Education
I really liked the map, so i started it again, but this time moved literally one tile to get a bit better start location to get cows.
BAM GL gone at 37 in faraway land!
Reload and squeeze every hammer and chop everything
BAM Lighthouse gone 2 turns before i get it.
Reload and get only 3 key wonders
BAM Lizzy get Jesuit Eductaion, when last time she got Sacred Sites.

It was like ai was reloading with me and tried everything to piss me off

 

[dashwinner]

meh. it really doesn't sound as much of a problem as you make it out to be... build privateers/frigates wtv and park them near or on each one of your resources. problem solved. Also, if you were relying on your whales for happiness (ie. straight resource for resource trade) then you were asking for problems. As someone mentioned, a ban in the world congress would have just as easily crippled you.

In the words of the Chappelle Show: You gotta diversify your bonds...


edit: subs. one shot kills. awesome. send a couple towards france, sink all his ships, plunder HIS resources, and he'll soon be suing for peace. If that doesn't work, pay off his neighbor to attack him.