Too close to borders is broke?

[Disgustipated]

Scythia repeatedly had problems with units supposedly near her borders. My city was settled close to hers, my units were "behind" my city and no where near her borders. It seems my only option was to leave my city completely undefended. And I have a sneaking suspicion the unit station inside the city was counting as being too close to her borders. I refused to remove my archer from my city.

I even had her complain when we had open borders with each other which seems completely broke to me.

Anyone else have this experience? Any solutions?

 

[Xypherenc]

I had this problem with Gandhi and Pericles. In Gandhi case, my army was no where near him and my city at it's maximum border spread would never touch his cities' (we are neighbor btw, just to be clear). The only thing that we share was being on the same continent. My Pericles' case is similar to yours.

 

[Sebmono]

I've had this issue as France with Congo as my neighbor. Our borders were flush against each other but I was always at least one tile away from his borders, and he loved to spam me the units near birders complain. Even when we had open borders and he was flooding my territory with his military units. And then even when we were in alliance!

Maybe it is tied a bit to past wars and warmonger? I had some lingering warmonger issues from an early war against Pedro where I razed a city and not too long after Congo declared war on me, bit we were fast friends ever since. Something definitely seems off with what the AI thinks is too close though

 

[Ryika]

Yes, there seem to be some bugs with that. In a Deity game it literally triggered from a Knight that I was using to scout, with a whole civ between us. I moved the knight away from them, and yet, later I still got the Broken Promise notification, with no units even close their borders. Needless to say, the Knight was no threat for them to begin with. Makes me believe that instead of only my own units it also factors in units owned by other Civs.

 

[Browd]

It does appear to take into account units owned by any CS over which you are suzerain.

 

[kampori]

Scythia had exactly the same problem with me. I kept promising her my troops were merely passing through. I had nothing near her except crossbow in my city. Every other turn I kept getting a notification that I had broken my promise to her.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

It does appear to take into account units owned by any CS over which you are suzerain.

Ok... Why the heck would it do that? There is a word for this decision, but it's banned from use on these forums... I'm sure everyone can find it if they search their head a little bit.

 

[Sascha77]

As I mentioned in another thread: Same here.

Arabia and Sumeria have put down cities at minimum distance to mine and within pressure-distance from my capital/holy city. Now Arabia suffers a heart-attack every 20 turns or so because his city can't help but get flipped to my religion.I didn't actively convert any of his cities, mind you. He was dumb enough to put a city within the "pressure-range" of my holy city and then blames me for his city getting converted again and again. IIRC, even Civ V's AI "knew" the difference between "natural conversion" (through religious pressure) and active conversion via missionaries and great prophets.

Sumeria freaks out on me over "troops near his borders" when all I have in my border-town are two crossbows and a pikeman. All of which are at least one tile away from his border and haven't moved in ages. Oh, and moving a single knight through his territory (while we had open borders) towards the next continent to do some exploring, apparently broke my "we're just passing through"-promise to him.

Weird ...

A lot of this stuff could probably be avoided if the AI tried to keep a bit of distance to my cities when they found theirs. In my game, there's actually no reason for either Sumeria or Arabia to have cities this close to my well-established borders - well, other than to piss me off and sour our relationship... .


S.

 

[King Jason]

Ok... Why the heck would it do that? There is a word for this decision, but it's banned from use on these forums... I'm sure everyone can find it if they search their head a little bit.

Eh, it kind of makes sense. The west was bothered by the Iron curtain during the cold war era. I think a civ has cause to get nervous toward an empire that has control of a powerful city state on or near it's borders.

Now, that might not have been the design intent - could very well even be a mistake. But Mental gymnastics are fun.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

In a similar vein, not doing conversions has some unexpected break conditions. I've had enemy apostles suicide themselves against inquisitors in my territory, and the lightning-miracle-conversion radius affect an enemy city. So because Gilgamesh was careless with the lives of his apostles, China felt that I had violated my promise.

 

[Sebmono]

Gameplay trump's realism. Given that you have no control over your city states unit movements (unless mobilized obviously), this is just not fun. Taking control out of the players hands is not a good idea. Honestly if CS units are doing this then my guess is that it's a bug rather than WAD

 

[dexters]

Gameplay trump's realism. Given that you have no control over your city states unit movements (unless mobilized obviously), this is just not fun. Taking control out of the players hands is not a good idea. Honestly if CS units are doing this then my guess is that it's a bug rather than WAD

I agree. Refining text/diplo penalty would seem to be the ideal solution here.

But in all honesty, I'd be weary of an AI having a Suzerain CS near me or behind my lines of defenses as well.

 

[Dearmad]

It seems bugged to me. I tried to honor moving my units and left a border empty. Still got a failed promise! Interestingly once I went full warmonger no one complained anymore.

 

[redwings1340]

I moved a few troops through France's large borders to attack Norway, and we had open borders, and got a broken promise for that. I mean, I guess I didn't move it away in time (I was trying to), but its unfortunate because I had no plans on attacking France and the majority of my forces were not near them. I just wanted to use their roads.

It seems like something that should be improved, but of all the problems the game has, this isn't the most pressing to fix.

 

[DeutschDachs]

I had 3 cities arranged in a "C" shape with units lining my borders. Peter the Great decides to settle a tiny city with no room for tile expansion between my three and the very same turn messages me to move my troops away from his city.

The bloody nerve of that guy.

 

[Sebmono]

There seem to be a lot of proximity related AI issues with diplomacy. Just today I had Russia yelling at me for "ignoring barbarians so close to home" when there's not a single piece of land on the entire continent that's not within any Civs borders, and obviously zero barbs. I'm guessing it came because one of my auto explore caravels passed by some foreign land with barbs on it. Kind of ridiculous if that's triggers a breakdown in diplomatic relations.

 

[TitanZ]

I was Suzerain of Jakarta, which borders Spain, and decided to mobilize their battalions of warriors to wipe out some barb camps and immediately got a warning from Spain for having troops close to the border, but all of Jakarta troops were embarked out in the water, doing who knows what, far from Spain's borders. We were neutral before that and he never had any issue with Jakarta's troops before I took control.

 

[Sebmono]

All this is starting to sound like a simple AI bug somewhere, like a variable for Warn If Troops Within 2 tiles was set to 20 tiles, or something. Has there been any feedback from the devs on it?

 

[Disgustipated]

It's clearly a bug then. Thanks for the input.

For now my solution has been to choose the 3rd option (ignore). You take a small hit with your neighbor, but don't get broken promises.

 

[Sebmono]

Yeah agreed, the ignore option seems to be the best but it's pretty annoying to be forced to do. Looking forward to the first got fix patch, a lot of these feel pretty minor and easy to correct hopefully.