Confronted when massing troops near a target's border

When I mass my troops near somebody's border in a prelude to war, the target civ will realize that an confront you about the troops. There are two responses, both of which kind of sucks. The first one declares war immediately, but it happen during their turn, so they can have the first attack and damage your troops. The second choice is to declare that you're not attacking, but if you attack anyway (as you plan to), you will get some kind of diplomatic penalty.

What's your strategy for this? Is it possible to avoid the AI prompting this question? How bad is the diplomatic penalty for attacking after promising not to do so? Also, is there a way to similarly confront the AI when you see them massing near your border?

Simple, DON"T mass them near the targets border.

Instead be far enough back while your staging that it won't trigger this and don't get close in until you are ready for war.
In fact, if this is a land war, it's often best to initially use your land as a kill zone anyway and only proceed once that forced is wiped out. (DOW when you have your units in good locations to respond to his invasion)
For naval war, given how many movement points naval units have it's quite easy to stage them undetected and still DOW and bombard his cities the first turn of the war.

When they mass my border, I sometimes DOW first. I know I'm not supposed to.

Last night I was playing the Inca and Rome had a ton of troops near my border. And I knew if he attacked, he could easly pillage my terrace farms and gold mines before I could even fire a shot. So I DOW'd him first.

Of course, I got the usual "they are worried about your warmongering" thing from the other AIs.

docbud said:

When they mass my border, I sometimes DOW first. I know I'm not supposed to.

Last night I was playing the Inca and Rome had a ton of troops near my border. And I knew if he attacked, he could easly pillage my terrace farms and gold mines before I could even fire a shot. So I DOW'd him first.

Of course, I got the usual "they are worried about your warmongering" thing from the other AIs.

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Usually the best thing to do when they are massing forces, is to mass forces as well, but at a distance that when they move in, they are in strike range, so you get the first attacks in.

^^That's what I usually do. But they kept dancing around my borders for a dozen turns or so, and I got sick of waiting and launched a preemptive strike

This is one of the features of Civ5 I don't like. It really forces you to keep forces a certain distance (at least two tiles away I think?) from the border, and have no more than a certain number (two or three?) units closer than that. Which makes no sense because isn't a country's military supposed to guard its borders? And yet you have to keep your units away from your own borders because another country will get pissed at what you're doing in your own territory?

Not to mention that it's easy to accidentally trigger the demand even when you don't actually want to start a war.

And naturally, you can't make the same demand of the AI when they're massing troops on your border. Either way, the AI gets the first move advantage, whether they declare war on you after massing troops, or they make the demand and you say yes (rather than take the absurd no war for 50 turns penalty).

What makes it really bizarre is when the AI confronts you and you say yes, it still counts as YOU starting the war (and therefore getting the warmonger penalty), yet the AI gets to move first. Shouldn't you at least get to move first if you're getting the warmonger penalty? Sheesh.

Remember that the first DOW is free, so if they mass units outside your border and you haven't made a single DOW you can DOW them.

You SHOULDN'T get a warmonger penalty unless you take a city (excpt if that city is then liberated by you, of course)

LoneRebel said:

This is one of the features of Civ5 I don't like. It really forces you to keep forces a certain distance (at least two tiles away I think?) from the border, and have no more than a certain number (two or three?) units closer than that. Which makes no sense because isn't a country's military supposed to guard its borders? And yet you have to keep your units away from your own borders because another country will get pissed at what you're doing in your own territory?

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Actually it makes perfect sense. If, in the real world, Germany began staging a massive number of tanks within their own borders, but right on the border with France, wouldn't France be at least a little bit concerned?


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I have to agree with NomadMan284 -- how much of the US military is actually stationed on its borders, as opposed to military bases and other installations further inland?

Your neighbors aren't going to complain if you have two or three units marching along the border looking for barbarians or whatever, but if you mass a dozen units there it's going to look less like "border patrol" and more like "imminent invasion"...

But YOU can't complain to THEM about it.

then again, their spies can NEVER know you're plotting against them.

^^But then again--99 percent of the time, their "plotting" is nothing to worry about.

So far as your earlier post about the Warmonger penalty. In my game, about half the AIs did have the concern about my early warmongering after the skirmish was over. Maybe that was because I DOW'd Rome first.

The fight didn't last long, as I simply killed off his troops and chased them off.

bouncymischa said:

I have to agree with NomadMan284 -- how much of the US military is actually stationed on its borders, as opposed to military bases and other installations further inland?

Your neighbors aren't going to complain if you have two or three units marching along the border looking for barbarians or whatever, but if you mass a dozen units there it's going to look less like "border patrol" and more like "imminent invasion"...

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Hmm, I guess you're right and most of a country's military isn't actually stationed on its borders.

Maybe it's because I come from a country that has no land borders with any other country, so I never noticed.

LoneRebel said:

Hmm, I guess you're right and most of a country's military isn't actually stationed on its borders.

Maybe it's because I come from a country that has no land borders with any other country, so I never noticed.

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If your military is inside your own borders, then the threshold for triggering the dialog (if it triggers at all) seems to be much higher. If you're on neutral territory however, that's a different story.

But I think that can't really be compared to real life, because the idea of "neutral territory" is somewhat odd. In non-desert-regions, people have always claimed and occupied as much land as they could and I don't think there have been too many "unclaimed" lands in history.

NomadMan284 said:

Actually it makes perfect sense. If, in the real world, Germany began staging a massive number of tanks within their own borders, but right on the border with France, wouldn't France be at least a little bit concerned?

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You might think so, but...

This stemmed from the French High Command's belief that the Ardennes forest was impassable to tanks, even though intelligence from the Belgian army and from their own intelligence services warned them of long armour and transport columns crossing the Ardennes and being stuck in a huge traffic-jam for some time.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_France#Deployment