Regarding Mutual Protection Pacts & Rights Of Passage

[DivineImpact]

Okay, here's the situation:

Rome and Egypt just signed a Mutual Protection Pact. I sign a Right Of Passage with Rome, and move a ton of my troops into position inside of Rome, right in attacking position. Then, I attack Egypt. Because of this action, Rome declares war on me.

In theory, Rome would lose its reputation for breaking the Right Of Passage by declaring war on me. But it doesn't matter because my troops are in position to take out Rome in a few turns anyway.

Would this work?
Is it an exploit?

Have any of you tried this?

[superslug]

Excellent question! Hopefully the answer will be posted soon...

[Strider]

If you have troops inside of rome's terrority when they declare war I believe you will take a rep hit for it though. Not very certain on that though...

[DivineImpact]

Anyone else familiar with this?

[anarres]

It was my impression that no-one would suffer a rep hit.

Consider the reverse. If Rome was in your territory and you declared on them, you wouldn't expect them to get a rep hit right? You also wouldn't expect a rep hit for declaring on someone if they are trespassing.

Also consider the multiplayer situation. Rome would no way get a rep hit if they were a human player, I know for sure by direct experience.

Personally, I think that deliberately doing this is an exploit (IMHO of course ).

[Renata]

I actually don't know what the effect would be on *your* reputation if another civ declares war while your units are in its territory. I suspect that your reputation would *not* be stained. I do know that Rome's reputation will not be affected, since it was not the one with units in the wrong territory. (If they did happen to have units in your territory, though, that would hurt their rep.)

Would it work? You'd have to survive Rome's initial attack on your units in Roman territory, because you wouldn't be able to attack them yourselves on the same turn that you triggered the MPP (or it'd be triggered in the opposite direction and the rep hit would *definitely* go to you). If they're a strong civ militarily, you could be left with not much of an attacking force afterwards.

Is it exploitive? The game doesn't have any way of dealing with blatant abuses of ROP and has absolutely zero defense against it. (This same thing in reverse is why I don't much like ROPs myself -- it's not much fun to watch a dozen or more attackers waltz into your territory clearly bent on aggression and not be able to force them to leave in any way that doesn't ruin your own reputation. But humans are much better at it.) In this case you're giving the other civ first shot, which I suppose is better. Give it a try if you feel like it.

Renata

[Sirp]

If another civ declares war on you, it can never damage your reputation. It's them declaring war, they're the aggressor, you're just an innocent party. (Oh it could ruin your reputation if say, you were trading something to Greece, and all your trade routes go through Zulu territory, and then the Zulu declare war cutting off your trade route, but that's different...)

-Sirp.