Submarine question

[JoeCivFan]

I have noticed something on Civ 3, and I wanted to make sure that it wasn't just me who was having this problem.

When playing in the modern era and submarines come about, I have noticed that the AI will declare war on you if your submarine is in the path of their ships. Normally when I'm playing and have a ship which couldnt see a submarine, such as a battleship, and i try to move over and theres a submarine there but I cant see it, my advisor tells me that if I move there then I will declare war on them, but if you have a lone submarine out there...Even if its just fortified in the middle of nowhere and a ship belonging to the AI heads towards that square and wants to use it, they will declare war and continue on rather than go around. Is this a bug or is it on purpose?

 

[Bobv13]

As a programmer I must tell that there are no bugs, only undocumented features and that is what you have stumbled upon. However my advise is keep your sub under some other ship of yours.

 

[sercer88]

It can be a good strategy for getting a civ to declare war on you, though!

 

[HellboundHeathcliff]

This is known as the invisible unit bug. It causes all heck to break loose in any game once invisible units are available. It was fixed in Vanilla and PTW but popped back up in C3C and never got fixed.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

yeah - it sucks. Kind of blows part of the purpose of subs - they can't just hang out.

 

[JoeCivFan]

I have found it a useful tool in purposly getting another country to declare war on me... However, It sucks when I'm using subs to block narrow water ways and the strongest country decides it wants to come through!

 

[El Justo]

we refer to this phenomenon as the "submarine bug" as it is indeed a bug since it was reported long ago and nver fixed in any of the conquest patches.

are there ways around it? yeah, sort of...but it entails removing the invisible flag from any units in order to avoid it. i don't really like this option though as it removes the utility of a whole category of units. so i usually just accept the bug in my stuff...

some modders actually use this exact bug to initiate or trigger a war for their scenarios.

 

[Marsden]

Here's a strange question regarding the sub bug, has anyone noticed this happening to a privateer and will the AI declare on you? The privateers with hidden nationality aren't supposed to start a war when attacking, but I didn't know if it would apply to the sub bug. Privateers can start wars, I have found out to my embarassment, by parking them in port without having a unit "on top" of them like a spearman or mech infantry. If the AI has a bombardment unit, like a frigate, they will bombard the privateer in port, which is your city, and therefore start a war but it won't happen if there is a land unit covering it. I noticed even before the war happend there were about 3 squadrons of 4 frigates each saling around rather randomly unless my privateer was uncovered, then they headed straight for it. One turn I moved the Mideaval Infantry I had for an MP because a neighbooring city needed pacification and when it was their turn war broke out. And of course the first frigate redlined the privateer, which meant the rest of the frigates bombarded my town, destroyed my library and stuff. But I guess this could be good if you wanted someone to attack you, but in this case I didn't.

 

[Nergal]

I've noticed the AI hunts down privateers, I once built a stack of twenty and used them to kill AI ships, which was funny. On the other hand I have been attacked by AI privateers which shoot out of their cities in plain view and attack my ships. Of course the AI disclaims any knowlege of them and it doesnt start a war. Not actually had one attacked in a city though. I wandered a sub over to a Byzantine city in one game, the Byzantines didnt really have any advanced techs, I got the complaint about my units being in their territority. THat has to be a feature, or a bug whichever way you play it. The hidden nationality seems to work a lot better in Conquests than vanilla .