one track mind!

[thomson_2001]

interested in hearing your views about this.

was playing hotseat with flatmate, we are both on same team and playing on fiarly high dif setting (cant remember which one but 2 or 3 abouve equal). anyways, rome randomly declared war on us when i was peaceful and mate was cautuios. seemed a bit crazy as he cad come MILES to do it (where there were lots of neighbours he was annoyedwith etc). so do you think there is def a AI to played bias to keep us interested. we are fairly powerful (im 3rd out of 10, my flatmate 5th) and hes points leader, so it wouldnt be my main choice of action.

anyway, i wanted to test weather or not this could have been avoided. so i went back to an earlier auto save and became hisbestr buddy. gave him all my techs, went to same civics as him. we both became peaceful with nice diplomacy score in that department. and yet, yet still sails tons of ships over to us...exactly the same way! nothing had changed! the same events had happened! makes me think the game isnt as flexible aswe think.

tried several dif autosaves going further back. and still he does same thing with his ships. gah

 

[Bast]

He might be going for a conquest or domination victory. But you're 3rd and 5th in military? I don't think that's powerful enough.

 

[Arlborn]

Maybe you didn't come back enough in earlier saves?
Once they decide to declare war on you, there is no way back unless somebody declares war on them before they declare on you.

 

[thomson_2001]

yeah thanks for the replies guys. think the top 3 (inc me) are quite close on millitary. plus hes going to war with us both and coming half way across world...seems bit silly but hey

more alarmed about the seemingly one track mind of the game. i even went back 20+ turns and tried to play diff as a test. building up millitary and being nice (stupidly nice) to him...still war...still the boats appear in the SAME tile on the SAME turn. bit depressing

 

[PibbZ]

preserve random seed? (no idea how this works as ive never tried).

 

[Game-God]

anyway, i wanted to test weather or not this could have been avoided. so i went back to an earlier auto save and became hisbestr buddy. gave him all my techs, went to same civics as him. we both became peaceful with nice diplomacy score in that department. and yet, yet still sails tons of ships over to us...exactly the same way! nothing had changed! the same events had happened! makes me think the game isnt as flexible aswe think.

tried several dif autosaves going further back. and still he does same thing with his ships. gah

When going back to a different save remember that the AI who is going to attack will invariably change his/her civics up to several turns before your to be attacked, to things like Vassalage, Hereditary Rule, State Property, and Theocracy. (if they are not already there). So go back to a save where they are using more advanced civics and try from there to be buddies. This might be only 10-20 turns or 100 depending on the size of force they wanted to create.

I find most of the time a true fighter like Shaka sends only what they think is necessary for taking 1-3 cities then make peace or allow you to make peace by giving them tech(s). I keep shaka and the likes under lock and key early on then they are less inclined to attack later when I am overpowered enough to wipe them out. They just keep begging for stuff and shaking their fists at you...

 

[thomson_2001]

rome have come over with a ton of boats and im guessing pretorians in them. im personally not too bothered cos i have nice defensive troops in my cities and he doesnt seem to be coming for me....but my flatmate is screwed haha. ok, we r on same team but its still funny its his own fault for pumping out workers and trying to be all hippy/nice lol. btw epic is even SLOWER on hotseat...lots of pressing Enter between out turns. think one of my arms will build up more muscle compared to the other!

still bloddy frustrating that he was always going to go to war regardless what we did over the past years. makes me wonder if theres any point in being nice to any of the others if they will just declare anyway - ok so im being silly but this sucks

 

[Arlborn]

rome have come over with a ton of boats and im guessing pretorians in them. im personally not too bothered cos i have nice defensive troops in my cities and he doesnt seem to be coming for me....but my flatmate is screwed haha. ok, we r on same team but its still funny its his own fault for pumping out workers and trying to be all hippy/nice lol. btw epic is even SLOWER on hotseat...lots of pressing Enter between out turns. think one of my arms will build up more muscle compared to the other!

still bloddy frustrating that he was always going to go to war regardless what we did over the past years. makes me wonder if theres any point in being nice to any of the others if they will just declare anyway - ok so im being silly but this sucks

Actually they won't declare war on you while friendly. None of them.
And most won't declare when pleased.

 

[Ammar]

Actually they won't declare war on you while friendly. None of them.

They will declare on you when friendly, they will just not decide to declare war on you when friendly. There are some turns between an AI deciding to attack you and the actual attack. During that time the AI moves it's troop to your border, etc. If the AI is pleased with you and decides to attack you and you get the AI to friendly before it actually declares, it will still declare.

That's what probably happened above. The AI had already decided to attack before the OP tried to make friends. Since he has to attack overseas he probably has a very long preparation phase.

 

[Arlborn]

They will declare on you when friendly, they will just not decide to declare war on you when friendly. There are some turns between an AI deciding to attack you and the actual attack. During that time the AI moves it's troop to your border, etc. If the AI is pleased with you and decides to attack you and you get the AI to friendly before it actually declares, it will still declare.

That's what probably happened above. The AI had already decided to attack before the OP tried to make friends. Since he has to attack overseas he probably has a very long preparation phase.

Maybe you didn't come back enough in earlier saves?
Once they decide to declare war on you, there is no way back unless somebody declares war on them before they declare on you.

Ye that is what I meant. Just needed a bit more explanation for him I guess. So you did!

 

[Stylesrj]

Maybe you didn't come back enough in earlier saves?
Once they decide to declare war on you, there is no way back unless somebody declares war on them before they declare on you.

I had a case where Monty decided to declare war on me. Big mistake. He sent a large force of chariots, but he detoured to a Barbarian city. He lost almost his entire force to the city and didn't even capture it. All that was left was a Warrior which he sent at my gold mine. As soon as he lost his force and moved his warrior south-east, he declared war. I laughed too much.

I used an axeman and intercepted, but he did destroy a gold mine...

EDIT: I did find my topic on it...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=202647

Ahh those were the Warlord days.

Haven't had Montezuma so far in my recent games ever since I got Beyond the Sword, but I betcha he'll be the same, declares war on you for no reason, gets butt kicked and then he still demands stuff or does not surrender

 

[Jedoc]

The main thing to keep in mind is that certain AIs...Julius, Napolean, and Shaka, to name a few...are notorious opportunists. Their programming causes them to find a lightly-defended border city irresistible, and they'll often decide to declare war just long enough to grab it from you and maybe tear up some improvements. Once you get a feel for it, you can even use this tendency to spring some nasty ambushes with no diplomatic repercussions from the rest of the world.

Now, the problem: once they discover Astronomy, they perceive every coastal city as a border city. That means that if you want to avoid war with an opportunist, you've got to make sure every single coastal city has a strong set of defenders, which generally means outweighing the rest of the world militarily anyway. If you've got a SoD anywhere, spread it out among your coastal cities.

Of course, as has been said in this thread, the decision to go to war with you was made quite a while ago, so you may have to dig pretty deep into the autosaves to avert it. Once the DoW check is made, nothing you can do will avert the conflict.

 

[thomson_2001]

appreciate the comments guys. was really jusr interested to see if war could be avoided by going back in time and trying out various scenarios. guess under some circumstances it may not be true. still would have expected some slight variation in his movement of boats to the same tile in the same turn with all these changes but all outcomes were the same... 20ish turns later = war.

playing on arcipeligo so all my cities are having to be defended. again, dotn understand why he would come for us over the otehrs that he is mad at, closer to or less powerful than..but hey. cest la vie right.

 

[Peng Qi]

Actually had a similar thing happen in a game, Mongols sailed an invasion fleet from another continent and declared war. I ended up loading the game to an earlier state and made nice with them. They still sailed the fleet over, but they just landed it instead of declaring war. Then they wandered off into my neighbor's land, then they declared war, but evidently they had deleted those units since I never saw them again! It was weird.

 

[Stylesrj]

Just watch out for Montezuma and Isabella. Isabella is your friend if you follow her crazy religion shifts and fanaticism.

With Montezuma. Don't try and make friends with him. He'll attack you for no reason just because he's got no shirt and needs place to dump his stack of doom.
If you see Montezuma, try and make him the first person to be removed from the map. He's a threat to civilisation. Not as much as barbarians are, but he's close

 

[Robcore]

Montezuma=
definition:
1. Scum of the earth, parasite, lower then a barbarian.
2. Phrase: "That guy who you battered last night is back talking to your girl again, he is a right Montezuma"

poem:
Across plains vast and low,
There lays the brow,
Of a man who victory is never impossible,
To war, his want, his need complete,

As his stack of doom secretes,
Pushes and leads over the precipice,
The last jaguar drawing his final breathes,
War again, you must be taking the piss

Oh Monto, ringworm, featherhead freak,
fook off back to mexico, and no more wars seek,
Take ye inferior tech back from my borders,
Pass your troops no more orders.

 

[Larklight]

Glance over the option to ask him to declair war on someone else. If it's redlisted because 'we have enough on our hands at the moment' then he's made up his mind to attack...someone.