How to provoke a war?

[lindsay40k]

Suppose I have the army (or the ability to quickly acquire an army) easily capable of conquering a rival.

Suppose I want the DoW to come from that rival, so as to be perceived as acting in self-defence.

This could be for AI exploitation, or to bluff human players.

What options are available to me that have a good chance of getting the result I want, and if successful how would these 'sucker punch' city captures affect my Warmonger reputation?

 

[Talcove]

Just do everything in your power to piss off your target. Spread you religion to his cities (If they have their own holy city), buy up their CS allies, denounce them (If it won't hurt other friendships), spy on them, and settle a city RIGHT next to their borders. Most important of all, when they complain about it, say you won't stop (Our missionaries go where they please, our settling habits are none of your business, et cetera). In other words, make them want to go to war with you.

 

[lindsay40k]

Aha. So, it's a better idea to be openly defiant to their requests than to promise to stop being a jerk and then break those promises? (I should make it clear that an objective is to maintain relations with everyone else as much as possible.)

 

[Heinage]

Breaking promises, I think, will anger the AI more. However, it carries the added diplo penalty with other AIs, so potentially harms maintaining relations with others

 

[lindsay40k]

If I settle a trash city on their borders, I can of course let them capture it and decline any offer to return it after capturing their core cities, right?

I get Babylon with Petra and a Desert Folklore religion, he gets Douglas with no food, a bunch of unhappiness and a reputation as a warmonger. That's the best-case scenario, here.

 

[Quineloe]

I think the whole warmonger reputation thing is reserved for the human players only. I see AI civs removing an entire enemy civ from the game and still being happy tree friends with the remaining civs.

 

[Mercade]

Note that if the other party declares war, you're perfectly in your right to hit back and kill his units. If you then start taking his cities ... that's considered as offensive on your part beyond self defence.

 

[njmfff]

Aha. So, it's a better idea to be openly defiant to their requests than to promise to stop being a jerk and then break those promises? (I should make it clear that an objective is to maintain relations with everyone else as much as possible.)

If you are able, take War General and steal their territory. In 95% AI will attack you if he thinks he has advantage. It seems that AI sometimes consider just number of units when declaring war, but not the type of units. I often get him bragging how my "military is laughing joke" even if he's still using longswords\crossbows\catapults against my rifles and artillery.

I especially love when he attacks with muskets on GWBs and gets obliterated.

 

[EK834]

Suppose I want the DoW to come from that rival, so as to be perceived as acting in self-defence.

If you do that to avoid Warmonger penalties when you conquer their cities, it won't work.

It doesn't matter to the AI who declared war and it doesn't take into account "self-defence". If you take cities in the war (as opposed to simply pillage and kill units and possibly getting a city in the peace deal), you'll suffer penalties (modulated by various factors like who's friend with whom and if other civilizations are already at war with the one that DoW you, the size of the CiV you take cities from etc,).

To take a smaller diplo hit you need to bribe the AI Civs you care to preserve your relations with into declaring war on that civ first. You'll suffer a much smaller penalty with those Civs when you declare war on their foe in turn.

Denounce the Civ you mean to attack or provoke into war first too, the AI hate backstabbers.

 

[Polisurgist]

I think the whole warmonger reputation thing is reserved for the human players only. I see AI civs removing an entire enemy civ from the game and still being happy tree friends with the remaining civs.

You think wrong. The diplomacy system works between AI as well, which is why you get AI players sometimes asking you to join in a war with them because such-and-such is a threat to the stability of the world.

 

[FeiLing]

He's not all that wrong. When you dow like 3 times everyone hates you, including then former friends. If the AI declares 3+ times (or 10 times, why not) they never get hate from their allies.

Concerning getting someone to declare war: Opportunity is one thing. If you are on different continents reasonable far away an AI will never dow you except 2 turns before you win (saying: "when you leave this planet in a spaceship I'll at least yell at you and let you know I never really liked you"). So a nearby city is a good idea. However if your army is a lot stronger than theirs they'll also never ever dow you no matter you angered them in every possible way the game offers for the past 4000 years.

Conclusion:

Spoiler :

If you want to attack you need to attack.

Only other option is to be weak. Then aggressive enemies will have dow'd you already on King+ and friendly civs can be sometimes be "lured" into dowíng you if you piss them off enough.

 

[phillipwyllie]

...the AI hate backstabbers....

You only are a backstabber if you denounce or DOW during a DOF. The only reason to denounce to see if you may have potential allies or DOF's.

 

[Quineloe]

You think wrong. The diplomacy system works between AI as well, which is why you get AI players sometimes asking you to join in a war with them because such-and-such is a threat to the stability of the world.

Well, that doesn't seem to work too well either, given how I constantly get those requests vs Civs that had been completely peaceful.

Seems to just be a generic "I want to start trouble" request

 

[Muskie]

If you are able, take War General and steal their territory. In 95% AI will attack you if he thinks he has advantage. It seems that AI sometimes consider just number of units when declaring war, but not the type of units. I often get him bragging how my "military is laughing joke" even if he's still using longswords\crossbows\catapults against my rifles and artillery.

I especially love when he attacks with muskets on GWBs and gets obliterated.

This used to not bother City States much, but now seems to greatly upset them too. Definitely annexing territory with a great general is the surest way to anger an opponent. Also at the World Congress propose things that anger them, or outright ban trading with them if you have the votes, I did that in a recent game because as the war rages on, the World Congress still meets, so why not embargo your enemy?

 

[EK834]

You only are a backstabber if you denounce or DOW during a DOF. The only reason to denounce to see if you may have potential allies or DOF's.

To get the backstabber modifier you need to break a promise/DoF. I should have said the AI dislikes sneak attacks.

Denouncing before a DOW apparently mitigate the diplo effects of declaring war in some situations (but not the warmonger penalties).

 

[phillipwyllie]

....Denouncing before a DOW apparently mitigate the diplo effects of declaring war in some situations (but not the warmonger penalties).

It doesn't. I denounced then DOWed Venice early on as he was trying to convert my cities(no cities were taken only missionaries captured). I had a minor warmonger penalty with Songhai...

If you break your word it only seems to affect the civ in question, except about the troops on their borders(which carries major diplo hits for every civ).

 

[njmfff]

This used to not bother City States much, but now seems to greatly upset them too. Definitely annexing territory with a great general is the surest way to anger an opponent. Also at the World Congress propose things that anger them, or outright ban trading with them if you have the votes, I did that in a recent game because as the war rages on, the World Congress still meets, so why not embargo your enemy?

Yeah, I noticed that as well. They will now hate you afterward if you steal their territory during war. World Congress proposal can also make or break diplo. I had civs hate me, DOW me all the time, but became my friends after one or two good proposal.

 

[Polisurgist]

Well, that doesn't seem to work too well either, given how I constantly get those requests vs Civs that had been completely peaceful.

Seems to just be a generic "I want to start trouble" request

Or it's because there's another reason why the civ doing the asking doesn't like the one it's targeting.

The biggest misconception I think people have about AI diplomacy is that it starts and ends with the warmonger penalty. There are a bunch of other factors that can affect whether an AI likes you or not, and if they don't like you, there's a bunch of factors that can affect whether they actually do anything about it. But because there are players out there who are fairly careless about AI attitudes, they see that warmonger penalty light up and the denunciations start rolling and think that's the whole deal, while they've spent the whole game ignoring other avenues of diplomacy.

Then, flip it when they do flip it around and play peacefully and find denunciations or even declarations of war, it's proof that the game is even more broken, because they weren't even waiting until you went on the warpath.

 

[Lectere]

Normally IA does not declare war on you unless you have a smaller army than he has. I'm not very sure if gold is taken into account.

So prepare in means of bulding barraks, etc, but keep your army small, then once he declared war, buy units quicky...

I usually have a very small army to cut the cost. If I don't need a unit anymore, disband it directly, it saves you money. It's better to have 2 units with 100XP, than 20 units with 5XP. Your army is paid per unit. So have a small and mobile strike force. War is all about money, and

Best thing to do is to be the 'bully' from start on. Just build 2 extra warriors and start pissing off everyone around you. Steal their workings and settlers. Works two ways, no only you gain a worker, but more important; you stoped his development. Which is of even greater value than you gaining the worker. In this case, you have the bigger army, and they start to offer you gold for peace....

 

[njmfff]

Normally IA does not declare war on you unless you have a smaller army than he has. I'm not very sure if gold is taken into account.

Not sure in BWN, but in GnK, they were less willing to attack if you had large stack of gold. (they probably consider you can instant buy units)