How many wars can the AI start on Noble?

After playing around with this game over the years I've decided to get serious about Noble. And while I've had modest success I've run into a problem on my latest game.

I'm sure this topic has been discussed before but I've search through dozens of threads but can find nothing on my specific question... which is in the title of this thread.

In the current game I'm playing American on a large map with 8 other Civs on a single continent. I have 8 cities and I'm about 200 pts ahead of the nearest Civ. At around 1330AD Alex starts a war. I take two of his cities over the next 50 years. At 1440 Genghis stars a war and after successfully defending several attacks Fredrick and Asoka also start wars with me. So now I have 4 of 8 civs trying to put me out of the game. Is this normal for Noble?

nanomatrix said:

After playing around with this game over the years I've decided to get serious about Noble. And while I've had modest success I've run into a problem on my latest game.

I'm sure this topic has been discussed before but I've search through dozens of threads but can find nothing on my specific question... which is in the title of this thread.

In the current game I'm playing American on a large map with 8 other Civs on a single continent. I have 8 cities and I'm about 200 pts ahead of the nearest Civ. At around 1330AD Alex starts a war. I take two of his cities over the next 50 years. At 1440 Genghis stars a war and after successfully defending several attacks Fredrick and Asoka also start wars with me. So now I have 4 of 8 civs trying to put me out of the game. Is this normal for Noble?

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Sounds like you have made yourself a pariah somehow, probably by adopting a minority religion that you founded yourself right?

Learn how to manage diplomacy a little and you won't seem any, if any wars declared that you haven't planned for. Theres several articles around the site that hopefully someone will link to diplo.
Also useful would be the list of what AIs can start planning to attack at what diplomacy levels, 50% of AIs can't start plotting at Pleased, none can at Friendly!)

I treat all religions as superstitions even though I build temples for the culture.
I have resource deals with all cultures and tech deals with some but most have remained Cautious... before they became Annoyed at which time Comm lines went Red.

Religion is the prime drive of diplomacy in civ 4, while at times adopting none can be the best option the majority of the time the best play is to align yours with the local majority religion to put yourself in a position of diplomatic clout. You can't please everyone so don't even try, cautious offers no protection from anyone and limits your trading options.

It's very easy for AIs to bribe other AIs into wars against you.

nanomatrix said:

Is this normal for Noble?

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No, not at all really. It's more likely a result of things you are and are not doing correctly.

For one, you may want to dial down the settings until you get better at diplo. Normal settings (standard size/6AIs) may be better for you for now.

Can't say a whole lot without more info and actually seeing your game. There's so many things you can do and not do to keep the peace or war on your own terms. Lot's of variables too.

AIs tend to be less aggressive on lower levels. However, there are still more Aggressive AIs than others and the whole random factor. Yet if you are getting DOW'd that much but different AIs on Noble, then you are missing out on some early diplo mechanics that could stave that off or prevent entirely. And keep in mind that with the right experience at hand you should easily crush all AI on Noble in every regard possible.

Anyway I can say more with more info. This thread seems more S&T like, which is probably where you should be spending more time.

It's very easy for AIs to bribe other AIs into wars against you.

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It's also very easy for the human to prevent that from happening.

Are you denying all of their demands? That will kick them into war fairly often. Do you pay attention to your Civics choices? There are times you may want to adopt someone's favorite Civic purely for diplo reasons.

Strangely enough this behavior by the AI seems to be triggered by my researching Gunpowder.

After replaying the past 100 years a few times; signing a peace treaty (w/Alex) changing the order my trades and my Research I have been able to delay the onset of Global war from 1450 to 1530 by delaying when I research Gunpowder.



But at 1530 even the Chinese have joined in.

@ AntiKythera I negotiate demands I don't give into them. If I can't cut a deal I usually give them a small consulting fee (bribe??)...

That may be too late. If you say no to a demand there is a chance that they will immediately start plotting on you. The bribe will not change that, it may make them like you a wee bit more, but once plotting has begun that won't matter.

About the Gunpowder, trading techs can potentially create enemies as well. Maybe you need to rethink who you trade techs with.

edit: you should be bribing the AI against each other so that they are too busy to bother with you.

nanomatrix said:

@ AntiKythera I negotiate demands I don't give into them. If I can't cut a deal I usually give them a small consulting fee (bribe??)...

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yeah forget all that...what matters is the actual demand. you need to track the actual relationship with each AI. Get the BUG mod if you don't have it...or even better the BAT mod.

That whole Gunpowder mess you are describing is just RNG. You are getting DOW'd because your Diplo sucks.

Go to Strategy & Tips forum

@ lymond Okay, so how does a BTS mod help with a Civ 4 AI?
Does it even work with vanilla Civ4?

nanomatrix said:

@ lymond Okay, so how does a BTS mod help with a Civ 4 AI?
Does it even work with vanilla Civ4?

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It's not about the AI it's about information. You are thinking too much about what the AI does and does not do as opposed to thinking about what you could do better. AI is stupid, you are not.

The BUG mod is unaltered gameplay. UI improvements that brings forth and better presents a lot of info you have to dig for. BAT is BUG plus some graphical improvements. They only work for BTS, which you should be playing.

Well, if he's playing vanilla then he's playing vanilla.

To test and see if an AI is plotting a war (against anyone, they select the target randomly after a few turns "plotting") I think it's possible to use the WHEOOHRN trick even in the original release. Bring up the negotiation screen with a rival and mouseover the "Declare War on..." <civs>. If civ is red and the reason given is "we have enuff on our hands right now" (WHEOOHRN), then the leader is plotting a war.

To defend on multiple fronts, do what you'd normally do to attack on one front: build siege! Distribute the sieges and get the jump on enemy stacks when they come to call (ie use your siege to do collateral against them before they do it to you). You can stagnate enemy stacks by throwing away the occasional cat against them - they will sit and heal.

They also sit while their cats bombard the city def% down. So it's nice when you see a stack of 20 infantry and one cat show up at a doorstep, since the cat will slooooowly bombard, plenty of time to get guys in place.

Maybe this is a case where it's sensible to build walls sometimes. Medieval is a pretty nice time to get dogpiled by the AI anyways. Let them bash their expensive attack units against your walled Longbows. Pfft

nanomatrix said:

At around 1330AD Alex starts a war. I take two of his cities over the next 50 years. At 1440 Genghis stars a war and after successfully defending several attacks Fredrick and Asoka also start wars with me. So now I have 4 of 8 civs trying to put me out of the game. Is this normal for Noble?

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Alex and Genghis will start wars, with you or with anyone, and particularly with those leaders who are relatively peaceful, like the American leaders. You start with a couple strikes against you there. Once you spot them you should start preparing for it. Do you understand the concept of the invisible peace-weight modifier?

The more surprising part is that Asoka and Frederick are joining in. Are you quite weak compared to the others? Are Alex and Genghis bribing them in with techs?

nanomatrix said:

After playing around with this game over the years I've decided to get serious about Noble. And while I've had modest success I've run into a problem on my latest game.

I'm sure this topic has been discussed before but I've search through dozens of threads but can find nothing on my specific question... which is in the title of this thread.

In the current game I'm playing American on a large map with 8 other Civs on a single continent. I have 8 cities and I'm about 200 pts ahead of the nearest Civ. At around 1330AD Alex starts a war. I take two of his cities over the next 50 years. At 1440 Genghis stars a war and after successfully defending several attacks Fredrick and Asoka also start wars with me. So now I have 4 of 8 civs trying to put me out of the game. Is this normal for Noble?

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It's normal for Genghis and Alex. The other two are piling on.

Ais can start wars on you sometimes. I once was sitting bull and had every ai make a dow on me. I thought it was racism or something. That was so long ago though and all that I remember.

Just want to get back to you guys and let you know how it turned out.

After replaying several hundred years it seems that these wars were all triggered by a misunderstanding. The Civs in question had a bunch of settlers and though I had land past my borders that was available for homesteading. So once I was able to show there wasn't any available land they all packed up and went home. Everybody's Pleased except Alex because I kept 2 of his cities.
Strangely enough everybody started attacking Fredrick. In fact he had the same four AIs declaring on him at one point in the game.
Finding a Goodie Hut with Astronomy helped me secure a source of Iron on a Barbarian continent ahead of the caravels.

Spacerace by 2014... Unfortunately the AI didn't think I was any better then Neville Chamberlain.

Thanks for all the suggestions. At these higher levels the Civs apparently need something more than an occasional cookie to keep them in line.

The AI doesn't declare war because of perceived empty land (and frankly, it's probably not perceived, they probably already know as the AI does scout decently well... or at least, send units to scout frequently... they are actually pretty stupid about the particulars..).
If the AI all attacked in a group on someone else, then perhaps the AI used the apostolic palace to declare a holy war, and by changes in the random number generator, frederick was chosen instead you this time. Alternatively, one AI plotted war and the RNG chose frederick instead of you, and both times bribed the rest of the AI into it. Or again, they dogpiled into it (some AI's like dogpiling -- going to war on someone just because they are a already at war with someone).
But techs, perceived empty land, etc do not come into the equation, as lymond referred to.

The criteria/flowchart are/is:
1. Do I want to declare war? (bolstered by being able to build their UU in the capital)
No> Ok then.
Yes > Pick a target (affected by shared borders most of all, but also by "compactness" of target. ore borders, more likely to pick that target. More compact, more likely to pick that target, but still decided by a random number roll, just biased by the aforementioned things)

2. Does current (at the start of plotting and not affected at any future times) diplomatic relations bar that target (some AI's won't declare at pleased, some won't at friendly, all will at cautious)?
Yes> Pick a new target (return to 1, with that target gone from the pool)
No> Continue

3. Does the target's power ratio compared to mine (including the partial power received from vassals for me and the target, but not all of the vassal's power) cross a certain threshold, unique for each leader, which makes me too scared to declare on them (and if it is any amount lower than this threshold, has no affect at all whatsoever)?
Yes> Pick a new target (return to 1, with that target gone from the pool)
No> Declare war!

Peace treaties come in here somewhere, but to be honest, I'm not sure if having a peace treaty by coincidence before plotting precludes you or not. Making one after the plot begins definitely does not (they will declare when the peace treaty is over most of the time). I am also unsure if Defensive pacts come up at all. I know that if they already moved their units to your borders (and are ~1 turn from declaring) and THEN you make a defensive pact, that doesn't come into play at all. I signed 3 defensive pacts once, and the AI in 2nd place had no problems declaring simultaneously on the 3rd (me) the 5th 6th and 8th place civs.

traius said:

The criteria/flowchart are/is:
1. Do I want to declare war? (bolstered by being able to build their UU in the capital)
No> Ok then.
Yes > Pick a target (affected by shared borders most of all, but also by "compactness" of target. ore borders, more likely to pick that target. More compact, more likely to pick that target, but still decided by a random number roll, just biased by the aforementioned things)

2. Does current (at the start of plotting and not affected at any future times) diplomatic relations bar that target (some AI's won't declare at pleased, some won't at friendly, all will at cautious)?
Yes> Pick a new target (return to 1, with that target gone from the pool)
No> Continue

3. Does the target's power ratio compared to mine (including the partial power received from vassals for me and the target, but not all of the vassal's power) cross a certain threshold, unique for each leader, which makes me too scared to declare on them (and if it is any amount lower than this threshold, has no affect at all whatsoever)?
Yes> Pick a new target (return to 1, with that target gone from the pool)
No> Declare war!

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Also note that the AIs who employ the "Dagger" strategy (Boudica, and a few more I can't think of off the top of my head) will circumvent most, if not all of the usual criteria and just DoW you.

If you have a couple AI friends nearby who hates (or at the very least, dislikes.... diplo rating varies) the angry AIs who are plotting against you, bribe them to DoW on whichever AI is about to DoW on yourself - it will instantly override any of their existing war plans.

Also getting a religious fanatics/zealots (i.e. Isabella/Saladin) to share a religion makes for a good lapdog/meatshield.