People never getting dow'd, what difficulty?
I've spent the last two nights playing immortal and trying to get away with building no army, something some people here keep saying is now always possible. I went light on expanding to avoid provoking the AI, I agreed to their requests, I traded resources with them, sent trade routes, obtained DoF's, and each game (I'm up to 6 games now) has ended in a backstab. Usually I'd have 2 archers, a warrior and a scout.
Just to be clear, these were all backstab dows for lack of military, not a civ that got more and more angry at me, but a civ that was friendly that told me they were backstabbing me during the dow.
My theory is that the AI only declares war if they feel they have the upper hand now. I imagine they'll be more likely to go into war without as much of an advantage if they hate you, but it seems like there's a threshold of relative military power, and once that's crossed, they'll dow you no matter what because you're an easy kill. On higher difficulties the AI is much more likely to reach this always dow unit threshold, meaning they're much more likely to attack you.
I've spent the last two nights playing immortal and trying to get away with building no army, something some people here keep saying is now always possible. I went light on expanding to avoid provoking the AI, I agreed to their requests, I traded resources with them, sent trade routes, obtained DoF's, and each game (I'm up to 6 games now) has ended in a backstab. Usually I'd have 2 archers, a warrior and a scout.
Just to be clear, these were all backstab dows for lack of military, not a civ that got more and more angry at me, but a civ that was friendly that told me they were backstabbing me during the dow.
My theory is that the AI only declares war if they feel they have the upper hand now. I imagine they'll be more likely to go into war without as much of an advantage if they hate you, but it seems like there's a threshold of relative military power, and once that's crossed, they'll dow you no matter what because you're an easy kill. On higher difficulties the AI is much more likely to reach this always dow unit threshold, meaning they're much more likely to attack you.