TIP: Anticipate those 'no reason attacks'

[KillerSheep]

The AI sometimes seems to attack for no reason leaving you (possibly) unprepared to their assault. There are some ways to anticipate and counter this sneaky behaviour though.

First you need to know when they will attack. Herefore you need to check your foreign advisor screen on a regular basis. Keep a keen eye on the way the AI rulers are feeling about you. If you notice the AI's mood suddenly changing from polite to cautious or even annoyed you've found your sneak attacker.

Now I found two ways to counter this.

First of all this can be done by brute force and some serious bloodshed. Make those bastards pay for their misbehaviour!

The second method is a little more costly but can buy you some more time to build up your army for the attack that is sure to come. This can be done by quickly by signing some per turn agreement with the AI. Give them some outdated tech for 2p/t or even an RoP is enough already. Be sure though they give u something too, just giving them some 20turn tribute won't help as they don't break their part of the deal by attacking you then.

If your reputation isn't too questionable you've then successfully managed to keep them at bay for another 20 turns!

 

[Gothmog]

Or at least you've gotten something out of them for attacking you. It's not uncommon for an AI to attack the turn after trading you tech for gpt. It wont work to give them something for gpt. They will just attack you, either way if they attack they take the reputation hit.

 

[Angmar]

The main trick to keeping the AI from "sneak" attacking you is to make sure that none of the AI views you as weak. The AI's view of weakness has to do with a few things.

First is total size of your army vs theirs. If your Army is WEAK compared to theirs, you had better do whatever you can to keep them polite with you. You could be in trouble.

Total wars you are involved in. The more people you are fighting the more likely an AI civ will join the battle taking advantage of the fact that you will have to fight a multi-front war.

Troop strength in nearby cities. If you leave a front exposed do expect the AI to take advantage of this. If you have all your troops garrisoned in the north of your empire and have undefended ( EEEK! ) cities or weakly defended cities the AI will come knocking.

These are just things to watch out for if you are trying not to go to war with your neighbours. Of course there are a ton of other reasons why the AI will go to war. However these are good watermarks to decide that if the AI does want to go to war with you how it will evaluate your weakness and their probably success.

I was playing a conquest game where I was on the massive super continent. The Ottomans were my neighbour to the west and the first civ I encountered. Through out 5000+ years we worked very very well together. I made money ( I was greek ) and I bought all their tech. It was working great. He was always polite to me. We even fought a few wars together. However with the advent of the modern era. I decided it was time for me to go on a rampage. I took out Korea ( neighbour of the Ottoman's to the north and what I think was a "good friend" of the Ottomans ). After the war with Korea I started to build up a large collection of transports and navy to go strike the two island nations to claim land. They were all backwards techwise and had lovely luxuries

Around this time a war broke out on the other large continent, it was fairly heated and managed to free up some land just as my ships were loading up. One settler and a group of modern armour were shipped to the other continent to start a colony there. The sea invasion of the America and Germany started just after I set up that colony.

Right away Spain started to give me grief, had some very tasty cities right by my new colony so my Modern Armour struck them in a surprise attack.

This third front was only one or two turns fresh when the Ottoman tanks started to roll into my cities. I had honestly expected this and had most of my cities that were near the Ottomans to build up. I had even used the draft to bring in a few cheap Mechanized Infantry.

Key events: I had just started my third war. I had just taken two transports of Armour, Infantry and Artillery to reinforce the war on the American island. Most of my cities that were bordering the Ottomans had 2 Mechanized Infantry, and an artillery unit protecting it. Despite the fact that the "home front" wasnt weak the majority ( over 10 transports worth ) of my military was oversees.

Needless to say this strike by the Ottomans tore into my once mighty Greek empire. While I was not defeated in one turn my empire was crippled, loosing my entire air force ( stationed in Old Korea to strike America ) and about 1/4 of my cities. I decided that I had my fun with that game, accepted defeat and started a new game.

It taught me one lesson though. The AI can ONLY be trusted if you can match his Military THAT turn. Doesnt help if your massive military is on the other side of the world. You always need a strong garrison

 

[Gregski]

Well to reduce the risk of being attacked, you could give them 1 gold / turn as a gift. After all it's only 20 gold overall. Sometimes it works.

 

[Scyphax]

From my experience AI moods are a good guide until all known lands are filled up.

After this CIVs start to look arround to for areas where they can expand and they don't let good manners get in the way.

You can get some extra breathing room by selling them a map which contains unoccuppied lands.

 

[Djurre]

In my last game Bismark was starting a sneak attack on me with a big smile on his face (polite). He moved a lot of his archers in my territory. I just revolted to democracy so I really couldn't use a war at that moment.

Then I found out that when the AI sneak attacks it wants to sneak attack a city. I started blocking Bismarks units with my own units and he started to move around them. I kept placing units on my border with Germany and he kept moving his units to the last open space to reach one of my cities. After I filled my whole border with units, I left one space open on the south most point of our border. Bismark moved his army to that opening. When he was almost there I opened up a space on the north most point of our border and placed a unit on the open spot to the south. Now Bismark started to move all of his troops to the north. I could keep this up for more than 1000 years. Bismark just wouldn't sneak attack a unit out of one of my cities.

When I needed to use my golden age I attacked the zulu ( because they did not have any alliances at that moment) and took one of their cities. Now Bismark moved his units to the newly captured zulu city and sneak attacked me. While I had strong military compared to him and he was polite toward me.

 

[joycem10]

i love usuing the blosking technique described by Djurre. its alos great for keeping AI settlers marching around instead of builing new cities.

one thing to keep in mind is that the AI will also have a galley or 2 running around with a couple of units. keep your eye out for these as well. nothing worse than having the persians drop a couple of immortals right next to a far off, weakly defended city.

 

[Bismarck]

I used to have problems with "sneak attacks" from the AI. I rarely do anymore. The trick is to

a) maintain a large military
b) keep frontier cities well-defended (inner cities can be defended sparsely)
c) trade a lot with the AI, especially gpt deals

With this method, you'll rarely be sneak-attacked. You'll be extorted sometimes, but nothing serious; some gold, maybe a map, and that's it. I play on Emperor, so in the first part of the game, I have no techs for them to extort from me, and in the second part, I'm too powerful to blackmail anyway (if I survive that long...)