Diplomatically staying Peaceful

In a recent game I've been playing (Immortal Level, not Aggressive AI) I had on two seperate occassions 'Friendly' AI declare war on me.

"How is this possible?" I thought. So I ask: How is this possible??

In the first case, my 'friend' declares war on me on the same turn as another AI ('pleased'). This happens often enough I guess when one AI bribes another into war, yet it was my 'friend' who had their troops in my lands that same turn, suggesting they are the aggressor and the 'pleased' one took the bribe.

For the sake of argument, lets say my Friendly AI was Justinian. Looking at the xml code suggests that the DeclareWarThemAttitudeThreshold is CAUTIOUS, so he wouldn't be able to be bribed into war with me. Furthermore, the NoWarAttitudeProb for FRIENDLY is 100, ie, there is a 100% chance of him NOT declaring war on me. I don't understand!!

Later in the game the same thing happened, but with a different AI, lets say it was Huayna Capac. Again, the NoWarAttitudeProb at FRIENDLY is 100. Yet he still chooses to send a stack of units at me.

My power rating compared to them was indeed quite small (0.4 or thereabouts) but I had a decent enough tech lead to fend them both off without too many losses.

Is there a guaranteed way to diplomatically stay peaceful in this game?

Also, is there an article that explains each of the items in the Civ4LeaderHeadInfos.xml file?

If they go into WHEOOHRN before they reach friendly they may still declare. The apostolic palace can also vote for a war.

^ In addition, Catherine can be bribed to DOW you at friendly. But, most likely the AI was in WHEOOHRN mode in which case the decision for war was already in place (although of course they can cancel their plans).

Edit: One last thing is that you could have dropped to please momentarily and they could have gone into WHEOOHRN mode without you realizing it.

Or if you had a vassal, all bets are off.

I wonder where people get some ideas...

ALL the AI can declare war at Friendly.

What the AI don't do is plan attacks to Friendly civs.

Besides that, there is the attitute averaging with vassals, AP Crusade, events ( yes , there are events that can make you war with friendly civs )....

In neither case was it an AP crusade, since they weren't the AP religion. And events are off in this game.

I had a look at a save of the game from about 15 turns (Epic speed) before he (HC) declared on me. He was Friendly, not currently in a war, but was WHEOOHRN. So I guess he possibly had already made the decision while at Pleased.

I did not have any vassals - I wasn't actually doing all that well in the game to be fair. I didn't even share a border with HC, he must have just seen me as easy pickings.

r_rolo1 said:

ALL the AI can declare war at Friendly.

What the AI don't do is plan attacks to Friendly civs.

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By "plan attacks" do you mean the turn they make the decision (WHEOOHRN) to attack you. And this cannot happen while Friendly? But the actual declaration of war can happen while Friendly, provided they already made their mind up some number of turns earlier, while not friendly?

Do you guys have any practical tips for how to stay at peace at higher levels (Emperor/Immortal - Diety is well beyond my reach)? I find that attempting to keep level in power rating is very inefficient.

I have a question: If an AI bribes another AI to go to war, do they both go into WHEOOHRN mode first?

adrianj said:

By "plan attacks" do you mean the turn they make the decision (WHEOOHRN) to attack you. And this cannot happen while Friendly? But the actual declaration of war can happen while Friendly, provided they already made their mind up some number of turns earlier, while not friendly?

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Exactly. The default leaderheads on BtS will NEVER plan a war against a civ while they are pleased with them. But they can, and they do, attack a Friendly civ if they decided to attack that civ when they were far less pleaded with them. It happens a lot if something gets in the middle of the attacking SoD, like lack of astro or impossibility om getting a path to attack the target ( like closed borders or mountains in the path )

adrianj said:

Do you guys have any practical tips for how to stay at peace at higher levels (Emperor/Immortal - Diety is well beyond my reach)? I find that attempting to keep level in power rating is very inefficient.

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First, know the enemy. If you know that civs will need to be annoyed to plan a war vs you, you can be far more lazy in buttering them. The oposite for AI that can plan a war while pleased with the target. Either ori spreadsheets or dj_anion booklet have that intel.

Second, make the AI hate eachother more than they hate you If all the possible troublesome AI hate someone more than you, you have far more security in terms of play.

To end, read the "Is there any logic to an AI DoW?" , especially the posts from DanF5771 from page 4 on IIRC . It is a little heavy ,but most of the things you need to know on this subject are in there.

^ A tip that I wished I knew way before I found out is to delay choosing a religion as much as possible, unless everyone (or the AI's that are a threat to you) have all chosen a particular religion. Another thing is to watch the worst enemy trades. And be more amenable to giving into demands than you were at lower levels (obviously it depends on what is being demanded...).

And from what I gather trying to keep up to AI's power ratings on Immortal or Deity is an exercise in futility. Rely on diplomacy instead. That doesn't mean that you neglect your military, but don't go overboard either. I might not be an Immortal or Diety player yet, but that's the advice that I've seen them give.

In this game I did not choose a religion at all for the whole game, simply because nothing shared by anyone had spread to me. I ended up going straight to Free Religion.

That thread you linked r_rolo sounds exactly like my situation. Lots of great info there. Thanks for all the advice

The article written for SGOTM7 by Niklas which is linked in that thread is most excellent.
He should get a gold star for writing that

r_rolo1 said:

It happens a lot if something gets in the middle of the attacking SoD, like lack of astro or impossibility om getting a path to attack the target ( like closed borders or mountains in the path )

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I didn't understand this statement. Is the availability of a land path for invasion considered in an AI's total war plans? Or would the AI declare but not invade due to closed borders or mountains?

And how if the AI and I start on different landmasses but later in the game we share borders in a small island? Will I be a valid target for total war?

C62 - read Niklas article.

From the section about Total War:

3) The AI then makes three passes through all the other civs it has met, to see who to go to war against, if any. If a suitable target is found in one pass, it doesn't bother to do the subsequent passes.

A) On the first pass, only adjacent neighbors are considered. Just who is considered adjacent is determined by the AI's iMaxWarMinAdjacentLandPercent number, ranging from 0 to 4. If that many percent of the AI's total land borders the considered target, it is a valid target for that pass (for those who have 0, it is enough to be reachable via land). Asoka has 0, HC has 1, Washington 3, Lizzy and Toku 4. This means we are valid targets for Asoka and Washington for this pass, but not for any of the others.

B) If no suitable target was found on the first pass, in the second pass all civs reachable via land are considered (or, if the AI in question is alone on his land area then all civs, but that's no issue here). In this pass we are valid targets for all our current contacts, and maybe a few more that we haven't met yet.

C) If no suitable land target is found, all civs are considered. Here we are obviously a potential target for anyone.

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So under B), you could be a target if the AI civ is alone on their island, and if neither A) or B) work out you could still be a target under C)

That process, including checking the iNoWarProb and PowerRatio could identify many potential targets - and then who is actually the target is determined by:

6) Each civ that matches the criteria so far (i.e. not liked enough, and not strong enough) is a potential target, so if any civ gets this far in the calculations, the AI will start planning a war. To find who of the potential targets that the AI will choose, calulate the AI's war value against that civ. This is done by the following steps:
- Take the number of land tiles the target owns that borders the AI, multiplied by 4.
- Add the "capitol proximity" between the target and the AI - this is quite simply the plot distance between the two capitols, multiplied by 1.5 if the capitols are on different land masses.
- Multiply the number gotten by a factor determined by the AI's attitude towards the target: 1 for Friendly, 2 for Pleased, 4 for Cautious, 8 for Annoyed and 16 for Furious.

The chosen target is the one for which this value is highest.

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That 'capital proximity' seems a bit whack - that the AI would favour a more distant civ?
But still, there are any number of situations where that best target is you!

I learned a useful trick in a recent game. Ragnar was in WHEOOHRN and was sailing an armada of Galleons and Frigates towards my nearest city (He was Pleased with me but I guess I was target #1).

I made my usual 30-turn round of begging for gold, and actually convinced Ragnar to give me 30 gold. We entered the 10 turns of enforced peace, and his armada turned right around and sailed for home.

I may have been mistaken and nearby Rome might have been the target, but it seemed that Ragnar was willing to drop his invasion plan in exchange for a measly 30 gold.

^ I'm not sure that this eliminates the plan to attack, but at the very least it gives you time to prepare for an invasion.

True, I should have said 'postpone his invasion plan' rather than 'drop his invasion plan'.

'Usual 30-turn round of begging for gold'
I haven't really used that before. Why every 30 turns? Is that how long before the AI forgets about the last time?
Does it need to be 30g? Could you ask for 1g, and is that more likely that they will accept?

IIRC there's a random beg-decline chance of 0.95^x where x is the turns since the last begging. 30 turns is just a rule of thumb for avoiding these random declines.

Hmm, quite often the AI will drop the units in your territory if you have open borders agreement.
Also the rule of the peace is somehow flawed since the AI can break it, at least it has happened in a recent game.

adrianj, note that Niklas wrote that article (post in SGOTM 7) for Vanilla. It's an excellent read, but some things are different in BtS. Here's Dan's post from that thread that sums it up: war mechanics

Still, there's a lot of other important things in that thread. Not paying tribute for example can trigger a war, even if the civ that demands it already fights some other war. Regarding the usual war mechanics, attitude is most important because it determines potential targets. Then, identify land targets because they are first in the routine. It's useful to point out that war targets are not picked randomly: when the decision for war is finally made it's a strict routine that chooses the target. (there's only the attitude roll to determine who's eligible, after that is step by step to the best victim.)