AI declaring war for no reason? Has anybody experienced this?

Well, I just had a game recently. I was started by Alexander and Rome. Never denounced them, all green diplo modifiers and guess what? They're just denouncing me left and right. Is this simply apart of the particular Civ's AI to declare war for no reason or something?

I just want to know, why would the AI DoW when there are all green diplo modifiers? It seems a bit illogical to me. For no reason at all, Rome and Greece just keep DoWing me. And what's even worse, they won't accept peace. I was just playing as Germany. Does the AI have some sort of "auto-hate" for certain Civs?

Anyways I'd really like to know why. It's a bit unsettling when the AI declares war for no reason at all.

DOW =/= Diplomacy

They have reason(s), but various reason(s) are not part of diplomacy.

For example, having a weak military compared to the AI has nothing to do with diplomacy, but it's an open invite to some AIs (aggressive) to DOW.

That, and the fact that the AI can, and does, hide negative diplo modifiers from time to time (part of their deceptive flavor). Greece has a base deceptive flavor of 4 and Rome is 6, but that can be +/-2 in any given game. (As an aside, Attila and Dido have the highest deceptive flavor -- 8 for each.)

Both of these AIs are also pretty expansionist, and you might have land that they find attractive. Probably one of the civs really wants to declare war on you, while the other civ was bribed. The computers do that, they bribe and ask one another to participate in their wars. That's why you're often declared on by multiple AIs at the same time, and have relatively few times where you're declared on by only one civ.

As for peace, if you have a big enough military, they will probably accept peace eventually, just they generally are programmed not to accept any sort of peace offers for about 10-15ish turns after they declare war. If they have a high combat strength they also are going to offer terms that aren't favorable to take. If your combat strengths are near even though or somewhat close, they may accept peace for peace. Sometimes they'll accept this even if they don't offer it straight out.

As for another reason why they declared war on you, Alexander is a jerk. Everyone hates him. You aren't the only one.

Look, AIs never declare war "for no reason." There is always a reason. Even if they had nothing but green modifiers at one point, does that mean that red modifiers can't appear in the future? Of course not. Your land that may not have appealed to them before may become desirable to them later on. And military weakness is always an invitation to war. Aggression and expansionism ratings both affect the probability here, but no AI civ is perfectly pacifist, none.

Also agree with the other poster regarding hidden red modifiers. It seems to me that the red modifiers don't appear while the civ desires friendly relations with you, but the moment they denounce you and you denounce them back, they all pop up.

In other words, just be ready for anything. I'm always ready for any of my neighbors to declare war on me, no matter how friendly they may seem to be. I don't worry as much about faraway civs, but occasionally even a pretty distant civ will send an army to you. The proper mindset is to assume that anyone can declare war on you at any time.

Yup, to combat this erratic A.I. behavior, I too declare war randomly on the A.I. You know, just to go keep it on it's feet. So what that they all call me names behind my back and tell me that they don't like me. Sticks and stones, you know….

Browd said:

That, and the fact that the AI can, and does, hide negative diplo modifiers from time to time (part of their deceptive flavor). Greece has a base deceptive flavor of 4 and Rome is 6, but that can be +/-2 in any given game. (As an aside, Attila and Dido have the highest deceptive flavor -- 8 for each.)

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I don't remember where is your board with AI specific personality (DoF, war, nukes, etc). May you post it again ?

NASAROG said:

Yup, to combat this erratic A.I. behavior, I too declare war randomly on the A.I. You know, just to go keep it on it's feet. So what that they all call me names behind my back and tell me that they don't like me. Sticks and stones, you know….

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When playing on deity i learned how you can actualy manipulate DOWS by declaring DOW to civ which are not treat,basicly you need to fill "max number"of dows.
Another thing is,if two civs do DOW,and "max number" thing does'nt work,you can save thing partialy by dowing one civ of two which would dow you,since often that second civ can be no treat or lesser treat.
And final,bribing civ which wants to dow you to dow on someone else,or simply other civ to dow on that civ.It is totaly funny when i instead get double dow,bribe civ to dow on the one which dowed me in team,so they fight between each other instead me.

To use load game as less is possible,you can predict dow by getting spy message how civ is having forces close to your border(they always dow when they are close to border),and other is when peace is set between other two civs,usualy dow goes right after that turn.

Also,if you want civ which will always accept your dow bribes,get Inca.

CivAddict2013 said:

Well, I just had a game recently. I was started by Alexander and Rome. Never denounced them, all green diplo modifiers and guess what? They're just denouncing me left and right. Is this simply apart of the particular Civ's AI to declare war for no reason or something?

I just want to know, why would the AI DoW when there are all green diplo modifiers? It seems a bit illogical to me. For no reason at all, Rome and Greece just keep DoWing me. And what's even worse, they won't accept peace. I was just playing as Germany. Does the AI have some sort of "auto-hate" for certain Civs?

Anyways I'd really like to know why. It's a bit unsettling when the AI declares war for no reason at all.

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Both were most likely in DECEPTIVE approach. When they are in that stance, they hide all modifiers they do not want you to see. Without looking at the code it's still relatively easy to spot: when they are in DECEPTIVE stance, you will "feel" it every time you engage in diplomacy; trades are asymmetric, or non existent at all, you will "feel" that they are not as friendly as they say they are.

In Civ4, code used stance as a threshold for DoWs. Here that does not work anymore. Stance is no guarantee at all for peace (although "real" stance might be if you continue to work on the relation).

I have shown the code related to this somewhere already. Look for it using the Search function.

this is why I play games against the most aggressive civs all at once, then play against the least, so on so forth. reason being, you see such a difference in how they act, how they expand, what seems to drive them to war. you also see some civs will just leave you alone, and you can spend all game relaxed. having played a lot of civ, I have found it is all about the situation, the terrain, and the civs involved. IMO a lot of times there is something overlooked by the human.

just had a game where of course rome wanted to expand into my territory after spamming about 6 really early cities. it forced me to totally change what I was doing, and because of one of the most insane hill infested maps, led to one of the most fun and rewarding war I have had, and then led to more. Its amazing how one small decision can change everything. if I expand in the other place I had planned to, I don't get attacked by Rome, and may have played a peaceful game. cause and effect, love the scrambled maps for that reason.

mordcake said:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=409062

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Thank you.

redwings1340 said:

Both of these AIs are also pretty expansionist, and you might have land that they find attractive. Probably one of the civs really wants to declare war on you, while the other civ was bribed. The computers do that, they bribe and ask one another to participate in their wars. That's why you're often declared on by multiple AIs at the same time, and have relatively few times where you're declared on by only one civ.

As for peace, if you have a big enough military, they will probably accept peace eventually, just they generally are programmed not to accept any sort of peace offers for about 10-15ish turns after they declare war. If they have a high combat strength they also are going to offer terms that aren't favorable to take. If your combat strengths are near even though or somewhat close, they may accept peace for peace. Sometimes they'll accept this even if they don't offer it straight out.

As for another reason why they declared war on you, Alexander is a jerk. Everyone hates him. You aren't the only one.

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So we can conclude that this is just some sort of AI trait? I think that's probably the best conclusion we can come to.

I was going wide that game, so perhaps it was just that I grabbed some land they wanted. Probably just mad I was able to grab land before them.

On the AI accepting peace; I had a pretty big army and out-teched Rome. But Rome still wouldn't accept peace no matter what.

I find that in this game, the AI won't accept peace until you almost take one of their cities. No matter how big your army is.

But yeah, I definitely agree, it's probably just the way Alexander and Augustus are programmed.

I did another wide game with Germany and never got DoW'd. I was even a warmonger and was able to befriend Siam the whole game.

CivAddict2013 said:

So we can conclude that this is just some sort of AI trait? I think that's probably the best conclusion we can come to.

I was going wide that game, so perhaps it was just that I grabbed some land they wanted. Probably just mad I was able to grab land before them.

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Yeah, that's probably it. Both Alexander and Caesar are really expansionist, and Alexander is super aggressive, and will declare war on you if he think it can benefit his empire. Some civs won't declare war unless they hate you, some civs will declare war if other civs ask them to do so (and you can use this to your advantage by bribing civs to declare war with each other), but other civs will just declare war because you exist and you have land that they want. I wouldn't call any of these reasons 'no reason', but different civs will declare war for different reasons, and eventually you kind of feel out what these are.

CivAddict2013 said:

On the AI accepting peace; I had a pretty big army and out-teched Rome. But Rome still wouldn't accept peace no matter what.

I find that in this game, the AI won't accept peace until you almost take one of their cities. No matter how big your army is.

But yeah, I definitely agree, it's probably just the way Alexander and Augustus are programmed.

I did another wide game with Germany and never got DoW'd. I was even a warmonger and was able to befriend Siam the whole game.

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Here's probably what happened based on what you've told me.

Alexander hates you and wants your land, because he hates everyone and wants everyone's land, but you're close by. He visits Rome with an offer.

Alexander: "CivAddict is a threat to the stability of this world, and can only be dealt with through war. Will you join me, friend?"
Caesar: "Yes, let's get this started."

Then, you go and crush Rome's army and have a better army than them. Unfortunately, you crush them too quickly, and Rome is forbidden by the game itself from making peace with you for a little while because they've made a deal to be at war with you with another player. Therefore, make peace isn't even presented as an option for you. Eventually this deal expires, but you associate this with where you are in the war, when in reality it's just x amount of turns from the declaration that they are willing to negotiate (forget exact number). If it was presented as an option and they wanted everything you owned, then that's different and because the game overvalues number of units and undervalues technology in calculating combat strength.

Just by the way, if I'm wrong and Alex isn't close by to you, this could easily be Caesar asking Alex to help him instead. Wouldn't really change anything in the way it worked.

http://civdata.com/

This chart is a lot of stuff, but you can kind of see here that some civs are more aggressive than others. At the start of each game each number is slightly shifted, so the AI never has exactly the same personality, but will always be somewhere around this number.

I'm not really sure if these ratings are out of 8 or 10, but a rating of 8 is generally the highest rating for most civs, and civs with higher ratings are ridiculously obsessed with whatever they have that rating in.

So, you can kind of see, Alexander has a meanness of 7, war rating of 6, and a boldness of 8. This means he is going to declare war a lot on you and other AIs and take risks, even at the potential cost of his empire.

Caesar has an expansion rating of 8, a meanness of 7, a boldness of 6, a war of 5, and a deceptive of 6. This doesn't mean he's always going to go to war, but he might very well hide that he hates you, and is pretty willing to take risks and declare war.

As a side note, keeping up a friendship with Siam while being a warmonger is impressive. Siam and Ethiopia have the highest warmonger hatred in the game. It probably meant you got a lot of positive modifiers to offset this penalty, or didn't take too many cities outside of peace treaties.

Browd said:

That, and the fact that the AI can, and does, hide negative diplo modifiers from time to time (part of their deceptive flavor). Greece has a base deceptive flavor of 4 and Rome is 6, but that can be +/-2 in any given game. (As an aside, Attila and Dido have the highest deceptive flavor -- 8 for each.)

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Dido is a deceptive and sneaky wench

redwings1340 said:

I'm not really sure if these ratings are out of 8 or 10, but a rating of 8 is generally the highest rating for most civs, and civs with higher ratings are ridiculously obsessed with whatever they have that rating in.

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I think the ratings are from 0 to 10, but my old idea was that the developers deliberately did not give any civs ratings below 2 or above 8, perhaps to allow both upwards and downwards random shifts, and to make it so that no civ is "fully pacifist" or "fully warmongering". Upon looking at the chart however, there are a few 1s, 9s, and 10s. Also, there are a few 11s and 12s.

Welcome to the wonderful world of aggressive AI. Hope you enjoy your stay!

Yeah....Alex....if he is close I just assume that I'm going to go to war with him and I prepare....I'll even try to place a city as close to Athens as possible if it'll result in a productive city.

And if he isn't quick enough about DOWing...I'll DOW him, then let him come to me....and gradually wear down his army. It actually can be a lot of fun for a while. If you do it right, you eventually capture Athens. I don't even try to play "nicey-nice" with Alex...he's just too deceptive. And if you don't get him early then he starts allying all the City States anywhere near you with those hugely unrealistic influence points and then you have to factor them into your war plans...

Sometimes that's enough for me in a particular garme...to defeat Alex...then I start a new game....

I just had another experience like this. Except, this time it was with Washington and Japan. I went wide and they just kept declaring war on me every 10 turns. Never took a city or anything Not being able to fight off Washington's endless sprees of Musketmen... I quit.

Yep, always happens with Dido