Have you ever seen this?

[Ramesses-Rules]

So here is the story for the attached screen shot. Early in the game, Ragnar walks his Settler through my territory, and settles here. When I finally get enough cultural pressure on him to flip, Victoria posts 12 units in the city. What's up with this? The only thing I can figure is that with Monarchy, this increases his happiness to forestall the culture flip. Does that make sense? Rags didn't do it for himself, because he is too damn busy making wars at the other end of the continent. I will get it to flip eventually, but this is very annoying!

[Flipantropo]

I think Viking citicens get no hapiness bonus from English troops at all.
Those units are there for a different reason.

[Flipantropo]

And it can´t be good i think

[Revent]

Ask Rags to stop trading with Viccy unless you have a good military I have a feeling it's time for war

[s.bernbaum]

Third party foreign troops provide zero effect on preventing a culture flip. A large stack placed on your border in another civ's city suggests that you may be a war target, unless they used to be in your empire and closing borders teleported them there. (Or the same teleport effect from an overseas land where borders got closed and this was the closest place with open borders.)

[Ramesses-Rules]

Well, if she intends to start a war, I will hit reset button. Is she one of those civs that attacks at "pleased"? I didn't consider that.

[s.bernbaum]

She does not decide to declare war at pleased. However, if she decided to declare war at cautious and then became pleased, she will continue with her war plans and can then declare at pleased. This, BTW, applies to all of the AI, in that if they make the war decision at whatever level of affinity and then go up a level to one where they would not decide to make war on you, they will continue with their war plans and may eventually declare war.

[Ramesses-Rules]

Weird. Victoria ended up declaring on Rags. Not sure why. He must have ticked her off by attacking Cyrus. Nobody ever accused Rags of being a diplomat.

[Seraiel]

Originally Posted by s.bernbaum

She does not decide to declare war at pleased. However, if she decided to declare war at cautious and then became pleased, she will continue with her war plans and can then declare at pleased. This, BTW, applies to all of the AI, in that if they make the war decision at whatever level of affinity and then go up a level to one where they would not decide to make war on you, they will continue with their war plans and may eventually declare war.

Have to correct that. Viccy can plot a war on pleased, her chances aren't even that low for that with a value of 80.

[s.bernbaum]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

Have to correct that. Viccy can plot a war on pleased, her chances aren't even that low for that with a value of 80.

I bow to superior knowledge of specific leaders. (Meant in honest acknowledgment. I admit to not paying a lot of attention to which leaders do what at which affinity levels.) The rest of my prior post still applies to the general case. (And would have applied to Viccy if it was a change from pleased to friendly.)

[Ramesses-Rules]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

Have to correct that. Viccy can plot a war on pleased, her chances aren't even that low for that with a value of 80.

Since you are the expert on this, maybe you can answer another question. Vicky was Queen of our continent. She founded Hinduism, and Rags, Cyrus, and I all converted. She attacked Rags at "pleased" in 1555 AD. At the time, she was "pleased" with me and "Friendly" with Cyrus. Rags and Cyrus was "pleased" with Vicky and me, but "cautious" with each other (no doubt because earlier Rags declared on Cyrus. Rags was militarily superior to Cyrus and Vicky was tog dog on military with her Redcoats.
I checked an earlier save (1250 AD) and conditions were all the same. So, the question is "Why did Vicky attack Rags instead of me?" Most human players attack the weakest civ, not the strongest. Or, why did she decide to attack any of us, since we were all faithful Hindi? Was any of this predictable?

[Seraiel]

AIs declare war on others mostly by the following factors:

• Ability to build their UU in the Capital (Viccy could, this increased her chances) .
• Shared borders with the Target-Civ (the more tiles they share, the more likely it is that they choose the other one as a target, from your narrative I get that you weren't Viccy's neighbour but Ragnar was) .
• "Juiciness of the empire" (more pop on less land means higher probability to get chosen, therefor, horizontal expansion and using less overlap lowers the chance of being DoWed, Ragnar, as an AI, probably had "juicier" cities than you had) .

The power-rating itself does influence the probability of a DoW, but that influence is minor compared to the ones I mentioned above, at least that's my experience and how I understood DanF.

Hth, Sera

[Seraiel]

Forgot some important factors:

• Viccy is "a good girl" while Ragnar is "a bad boy" (peaceweights) , they hate each other.
• Having a Vassal greatly increases chances of a DoW, don't know if she had one.

Sera

[Ramesses-Rules]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

AIs declare war on others mostly by the following factors:

• Ability to build their UU in the Capital (Viccy could, this increased her chances) .
• Shared borders with the Target-Civ (the more tiles they share, the more likely it is that they choose the other one as a target, from your narrative I get that you weren't Viccy's neighbour but Ragnar was) .
• "Juiciness of the empire" (more pop on less land means higher probability to get chosen, therefor, horizontal expansion and using less overlap lowers the chance of being DoWed, Ragnar, as an AI, probably had "juicier" cities than you had) .

The power-rating itself does influence the probability of a DoW, but that influence is minor compared to the ones I mentioned above, at least that's my experience and how I understood DanF.

Hth, Sera

She had about the same amount of borders with Rags and me, but I had more cities than Rags and less population concentration. I guess Ramesses has a lower peaceweight than Rags, plus I am guessing Rags got the "you declared on my friend Cyrus" negative diplomacy point from Vicky. I was surprised to learn that these things are more predictive than power ratings (where Rags was far stronger than me on military -- Vicky could have crushed me). Interesting. Thanks for the info!

[Seraiel]

High peaceweight = good
Low peaceweight = bad

Ragnar has a low peaceweight, while Viccy has a high peaceweight.

As a player you don't follow peaceweights as I understand it, you get the modifiers you can see with BUG / BULL, therefor, if your diplomacy was decent, she probably hated Ragnar a lot just for being a Bad Boy.

[Ramesses-Rules]

Originally Posted by Seraiel

High peaceweight = good
Low peaceweight = bad

Ragnar has a low peaceweight, while Viccy has a high peaceweight.

As a player you don't follow peaceweights as I understand it, you get the modifiers you can see with BUG / BULL, therefor, if your diplomacy was decent, she probably hated Ragnar a lot just for being a Bad Boy.

Do you think difficulty level factors into it? I am currently playing at Immortal level and I swear the software is rigged against us at this level (never tried Deity yet). For example, in the game I have been playing the last couple days, Ghandi is geographically between me and Monty. I would LOVE for Monty to attack Ghandi, and I have bent all my diplomacy against Ghandi and in favor of Monty. I will bribe him to declare on Ghandi if I can cobble together enough techs to offer him. Meanwhile, Monty has declared on the Chinese dude instead of Ghandi. Why? If peaceweight is the single largest determinant, I can't imagine two guys with more "hate" for each other than Monty and Ghandi.

[Seraiel]

Difficulty plays into AI DoWing earlier and more often because reaching the critical mass of units it needs. Monte and Ghandi not being WEs and DoWing each other is very strange. Can you post a save?

P.S.: I didn't say it's all about peaceweight, peaceweight is just one factor, others are equally important aswell. For very specific information on how the factors are valued, search for "DanF" and "AI DoW behaviour" .

[Pangaea]

Probably found the right thread, and my head almost exploded...

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...=286180&page=5

[Seraiel]

it's very easy to not let ones head explode, simply read what you understand, read what the people write, take your time, forget the rest and ask questions. If you don't understand something its explained wrongly <--- My Point of view.

[Pangaea]

Agree with that. It was more a case of information overload and being mighty impressed with the work DanF put into making those pictures on page 5 (not read or even skimmed the whole thread).

In short, it's like building a house. You first start with the bricks (sort of) and then you build them one by one. You need to learn the basics first, then progress to move advanced stuff later. Same with just about everything in life.