Absolutely Ridiculous Wars

his navy was probably on its way directly to a war his AI had already planned, he then met you, an algorithm in the program that checks for some kind of war odds was run and it calculated that he should decc you instead. i've literally watched this happen quite a few times at least since C4 and through to GnK, where some AI built a semi-scary army that's obviously out for blood to a specific target somewhere, and then they either meet me or my neighbor who the program checked for 'weak/great odds' and suddenly they decc that target instead.

but that Nap only had all those ships and chose not to suicide themselves on your cities and only pillage all your tiles is a funny little improvement to the program.

I've bribed AIs to attack other AIs with whom I have an active DoF, I see no reason why your friendly rivals on your home continent wouldn't want to slow you down if France was willing to do it do it for cheap.

It sounds like the AI did something more intelligent and strategic than most human players would do. Weaken the top dog with little or no risk to himself. If that was purposeful programming, I applaud the programmers for a change.

CraigMak said:

It sounds like the AI did something more intelligent and strategic than most human players would do. Weaken the top dog with little or no risk to himself. If that was purposeful programming, I applaud the programmers for a change.

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The AI is programmed to take what it can get in a war; human players are programmed to take cities and nothing else.

Your just mad because you we're beat by someone weaker than you. From your reading, it was perfect stategy on Napoleons part,since you were crushing. He couldn't beat you, so he plundered. Even so, all you needed to do was park boats on your whales...

As we know by now, for players BNW doesn't put much penalty on wars of attrition. The heavy warmonger penalty comes from capturing cities. I am not sure if the same is true of AI wars, or if this is factored into AI decision making.

From a human point of view, what Napoleon makes perfect sense and I would have done the same. In most of my games I hamstring vulnerable opponents with a war of attrition. It can seriously set them back, and if I don't think I will bear much of a cost, the time is right.

FWIW, I sometimes see AI civs turn Hostile on me one turn after meeting them. So a DoW in the same time frame wouldn't surprise me.

Kidies said:

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

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Yes!!! I would love for that to happen too. That would be freaking awesome! That's really freaking strategic.

I have done that myself. Declared war on a stronger AI civ and did pillage runs all over their empire.

Wars of attrition have been very successful throughout history, and he basically beat you. The only reason this is ridiculous to you is because you were destroyed by it. There is more than one way to destroy an enemy.

As others are saying, if you don't have a strong alliance with their friends, or you haven't build up relations: always assume the AI may attack you! There are also periods in which certain AI become exceptionally aggressive.

For example, Shaka will turn super aggressive around the time he gets Impi. If you have Shaka as a neighbor, he's a ticking time bomb before he backstabs you. For diplo proof: I rescued a worker, I spread my religion, I declared friendship, and I was trading. Didn't matter, flipped in a turn and was fighting for my life.

Same with Carthage, don't let your guard down with Carthage. When they expand, it takes some strong diplomacy to keep them from turning against you! I wouldn't trust France, Greece, Siam, or Russia either. They're usually out to get you eventually.

I had France DoW me like this once just before BNW came out. I was among the top 3 as far as military, and they had less troops than me. I remember thinking that it was a brave move on their part. It felt like what a human AI would do when they see you becoming a runaway.

Slaughtered them of course. Some turns later two of the civs with more military than me DoW'd me at the same time. I wonder if France meant to coordinate with them but just botched the timing.

but how napoleon knew he was winning? and had a great army? if he was in another continent?

Luziadus said:

but how napoleon knew he was winning? and had a great army? if he was in another continent?

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The AI knows your demographics such as military strength just like you can check theirs.