Worst Enemy means.....Nothing???

I had a situation in my last emperor game where Napolean had a worst enemy that he shared borders with. He went into wheoohrn mode and about 10 turns later I have a stack of about 30 people on my front door and a war declaration the next turn. I know my relative strength was low, 1 archer per city about, but I had good relations with everyone and every other comp already had a worst enemy that wasnt me. So, does worst enemy mean nothing in terms of war declarations? And are there any tried and true ways to foresee these wierd war declarations?

The AI attacks weakly guarded cities.. that's just the games way of making sure neglecting military has it's consequences.
Worst enemy doesn't always mean WAR WAR WAR. It could mean no trade negotiations, or increased espionage on opponent.

For most AI's if they aren't at 'pleased' they can select you as a war target. Some can still declare at pleased, while some just need friendly to not declare on you. For the most part getting to pleased is a good goal if you want to avoid war.

Instigating preemptive wars yourself with tech bribes is another good idea if you are concerned a roll of the dice could select you as someone's target. The personalities are mixed on how likely they are to build troops and how likely they are to declare... there is a excel file or chart of some kind floating around if you want the numbers.

They are all a little different on their tendencies. Most take distance into account, so they tend to attack civs with shared boarders. Power is also a factor, but diplomatic rating is checked first.

Giving into demands or making a demand they accept locks you both into 10 turns of peace, so they can't declare on your for that period. Can sometimes be useful to avoid being selected as a target.

robyextreme said:

The AI attacks weakly guarded cities.. that's just the games way of making sure neglecting military has it's consequences.
Worst enemy doesn't always mean WAR WAR WAR. It could mean no trade negotiations, or increased espionage on opponent.

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Nonsense. The AI will attack civs with little military, not weakly guarded cities... The AI in BtS is, thankfully not that shortsighted.

Teelman said:

I had a situation in my last emperor game where Napolean had a worst enemy that he shared borders with. He went into wheoohrn mode and about 10 turns later I have a stack of about 30 people on my front door and a war declaration the next turn. I know my relative strength was low, 1 archer per city about, but I had good relations with everyone and every other comp already had a worst enemy that wasnt me. So, does worst enemy mean nothing in terms of war declarations? And are there any tried and true ways to foresee these wierd war declarations?

Click to expand...

Let me ask you, if you were in his shoes who would you prefer to attack ?

Anyway, let me point you to the detailed explanation of this part of the game . Said in short, Napoleon will consider to attack target to whom he is pleased with ... and no, he having other leader as worst enemy does not shield you ( or anyone else ) of being attacked ( but it means, as for being his worst enemy , he needs to be cautious or worse with the other leader, that the odds of they being the target being far higher ).

This game has some glitchy garbage type behavior in that worst enemies are not even eligible targets for a war check if the 10 turn treaty is still intact. In other words, if the AI is fighting a war, captured a city, and just took peace for extortion, but still has precarious borders...it will sail halfway across the world to declare on you at cautious if he rolls to declare war in the 10 turns after him ending that war. He will do this even if it screws him utterly when his former rival hits him with full force while his stack is out fishing.

Even without that questionable garbage in this game, you are STILL vulnerable, because the AI could roll a really high warcheck that passes its nowarprob...and if it does that and you're a better target on the AIs targeting algorithm, it will hit you @ pleased rather than a furious AI enemy. Granted, that's somewhat unlikely, but when you play as many games as me, you see it and learn it's better to just have a good garrison city with 5-6 defenders and anti-bombardment so that if someone gets greedy/stupid you can wall them off.

Now, worst enemy does have TWO areas in which its relevant!

- Diplo: You take a hit for trading with a worst enemy. The AI flagrantly cheats to detect worst enemy trades and will give you this demerit even if it didn't know you when you made the trade. In some cases, YOU CAN BECOME A WORST ENEMY EVEN IF YOUR ONLY DEMERIT IS TRADING WITH A WORST ENEMY, a rather sore point that shows just how little our gracious game creators focused on core gameplay in favor of adding additional problems in patches.
- Trades: If an AI considers another civ worst enemy, it will not agree to new trade deals with them no matter what (exception: deals to end war). "we will never trade with you, our worst enemy!!!". Even guys who would trade tech @ annoyed like mansa will deny trades over being worst enemy, so sometimes this matters. Also useful in that resource trades between worst enemies are unlikely so that cow for horse deal the AI is trading 1:1 (another very questionable thing that happens behind the scenes in this game) isn't likely between the haters.

I was going to mention what what was just said. Worst enemy is more of a wish-washy guide, that in itself doesn't make sense. Trading with a worst enemy can make YOU suddenly the worse enemy, even if you haven't met the other Civ yet. So....

This BUG (and it sure has to be a bug because no game logic should be this way), has been complained about for years. Unfortunately this has never even been attempted to be fixed. But if some rookie thinks some over-flow could just possibly... theoretically... maybe.... one out of a hundred games give a cleaver human a bit of an edge... Oh boy, some GENIUS is sure to change that whole code to the point it doesn't work anymore, just to make sure the player gets screwed over.

Firaxis fail.

r_rolo1 said:

Nonsense. The AI will attack civs with little military, not weakly guarded cities... The AI in BtS is, thankfully not that shortsighted.

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Sometimes the AI does decide to attack if it spots a weak city, does it not? I thought that was what a dagger is?

No, dagger means something completely diferent ... basically is a fast trigger early strat that can put the AI warring in the turn they think about it, without preparation period, to make them to take advantage of a early power surge ( or early UU ) . But even in terms of running dagger strat, the AI will only consider the enemy civ power and not of looking for undefended spots as easy pickings ( and it is better to be that way, since if it was the other way you could pull a AI to run a war against a much bigger power by showing a empty border city , a la Total War games ). After the war starts, obviously they will pick the more easy pickings they can, OFC ...

@obsolete

As long as it isn't a big exploit, Firaxis won't do a thing to fix it.