Territory incursions

Donsig has requested discussion on the part of my instructions regarding territory incursions. Here it is as posted in the most recent turnchat instruction thread:

Territory incursions: Please ask all nations that station troops in our territory to withdraw them when their troops appear in our territory. You may repeat this at intervals of 2 to 3 turns as necessary. Do not demand that any nations move troops or declare war. If what appears to be a possible invasion force arrives near a city, please stop the chat and we can determine what to do in the forums.

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Please discuss how you feel about this instruction and any changes you feel should be made with it,

Here's what I posted in the FA thread on this subject:

I'm not so sure that a blanket order to ask foreign troops be withdrawn is a good idea. Will we always know if such a request will NOT lead to war? Also, would such a request ever allow foreign units to jump to the *other side* of our borders thereby making their passage through our lands swifter? Finally, what effect does such a request have on our relations with other nations?

I would like to point out that that instruction specifically disallows any demands for them to leave our territory that may result in immediate war; only peaceful requests are allowed. Therefore, they will not be able to jump to the other side of our borders and it is doubtful that requests for troops to be withdrawn can cause war in the future.

What I'm asking is, do we always know if our resquest will result in them not declaring war before we ask them to withdraw?

I think donsig raises a valid concern here. While it is rare (in my experience) for a non-aggressive civ to declare war immediately on first demand, it could happen I believe, and that could be disasterous to us at this stage.

Will the AI ever declare war if just asked to leave? I have never seen this. They obviously can/will if you demand remove your troops or declare war, but I have never seen a war declaration when asked nicely.

I am racking my brain for examples (been a while since I played vanilla Civ), and I swear that aggressive civ's have declared war on me on first, non-binding, request to leave. I suspect they were going to attack anyhow.

I may be mixing versions though.

I remember asking the zulus to leave very politely, quite recently, that is the "would you please move 'em out of here". They declared war very unexpectedly, and wiped out a few cities from which i never recovered. But as far as i can remember that's the only time the AI's done that ever.

I say we should be very cautious with russia, polite requests with barbs shouldn't lead to war. If we do have a war now, I doubt we can pull through.

Ok so lets break this down a bit. I can see 6 types of incursion we may have to deal with:

Case #1: Workers
Case #2: Settler/Defender pairs
Case #3: Scouts
Case #4: Lone wandering troops
Case #5: Multiple troops
Case #6: Galleys or ships wandering around our coast

I have gone through Bamspeedy’s article in the War Academy on AI attitude and can find no mention of asking (or even demanding) them to leave affecting their attitude (although them asking us to leave does). So I guess we can ask/demand as many times as we like without problem – as long as they don’t declare war of course!

So what can we do in each case:

Response A: Don’t worry about it, but watch them carefully
Response B: Block them with troops
Response C: Ask them to leave
Response D: Demand they leave
Response E: Stop the Chat


My thoughts:

In general I avoid Response D unless I am in a position (or can get in that position in time) to fight the resulting war, or I believe that the AI will not declare war (they are weaker than me and I have no resources they need). Unless we decide in advance which Civs we can safely demand to leave, or are prepared for the resulting war, we should not do this without suitable discussion in the forum.

Case #1: I tend to use A, B or C with workers and they have helpfully built me roads and irrigation in my territory when they are trying to reach an isolated city. In this case I tend to station troops to ensure that my roads aren’t blocked, rather than block them all together. At the moment there isn’t an isolated city, so I would go for Response C.

Case #2: Here I go for Response C, but I will also use B to prevent them getting too far into my territory.

Case #3: Their movement points make them more difficult to block, but I rarely seem to start next to a Civ that has them – A or C?

Case #4: Could be being used as a scout, or a stupid invasion force – C is called for with B if they persist.

Case #5: Likely to be an invasion for either for us or someone else. We’re likely to only get the option of demanding they leave here. So we either risk war or use troops to funnel them away from our cities, while preparing our defences to give us a little time to do so.

Case #6: These will start to appear before too long, again A or C

What would I add/change in Boot’s instructions? – I would like to see military units used to prevent particularly Settler pairs moving too deeply into our territory – but the use of military units comes under Defence so that instruction would have to come from there.

I have always thought that Response C, asking them to leave was always safe, but apparently not. Perhaps we should identify specific Civs/circumstances (maybe Case #5) where we shouldn’t even ask and should just treat the incursion as a potential invasion and prepare for war.

I have opened a thread in the Civ3 General Discussions forum asking under what circumstances a declaration of war might result from a polite request to remove troops from our territory.

@Furiey - Those look like great ideas for how to deal with these types of incursions. I'd first, however, like to see what the response is regarding declarations of war with requests to move from our territory before deciding under what circumstances we should use response C.

@Boots - Good Idea - I too would like to see the response - I'd always thought it was safe!