war declaration to preempt defensive pact?

[Ray Patterson]

I thought of something during a recent game:
Has anyone ever declared war just before an enemy got military tradition, even though you would not invade immediately, but simply to prevent that enemy from signing a defensive pact before you invaded say 10-20 turns later, perhaps even more? The AI is notoriously bad at naval invasions, and if you don't actually fight in a war there is no war weariness (declaration has no WW effect, common misconception), so you would only lose whatever trade you had with your future victim, and gain that your target has no pact siblings.

Is this a common trick? Are there any risks? I guess your enemy is not caught off guard, he has time to build up his army. However, in my experience the AI is quite likely to sign defensive pacts, so there should be many situations where this would pay off.

 

[Galileo44]

Well the AI is unlikely to get a DP with someone who wouldn't fight for them anyway, but it is an interesting thought. Maybe someone who can look up some code can tell us something based on attitudes + turns at war for declarations and DPs. It would verify the effectiveness of this strategy.

 

[cabert]

never did it for DP, but did it for "capitulation prevention".

Some explanations :
- when an AI gets the lower end in a war, it will capitulate (some faster than others)
- to assess the capitulation, the AI checks the power of his enemy, his own power, and also the power of others involved in a fight = if the AI has allies in a war, it considers the global power of his allies vs the global power of his enemies (at least that's what I think, I didn't test a lot)

So when I notice that in an AI vs AI war, one of them is actually winning, I enter the war.
I can enter the war on the losing side, if the winner is my next enemy to try to prevent the capitulation of the other AI, if I'm really powerful (like if I already have 2 vassals ) even if my troops are nowhere near the front.

I can also enter the war on the winning side to try to capitulate the loser myself, but it's very risky (10 turns of "no talking" is enough to make the biggest AI use my power to capitulate the smaller one).

 

[Napalm102]

I think (not 100% sure on this) that when AI capitulates to the other AI during the "Refuses to Talk!!" period, you automatically declare the peace with that loosing AI. I've had it happen to me on number of occasions, I just beggan the assault on the AI (like 1 or 2 turns into war), which was already at war with other AI for longer and suddenly my troops withdraw from his borders and peace is automatically sighned, with the AI now being vassal to the bigger Civ.

When this happens during the phase where you could actually negotiate with the AI but don't then you automatically enter the state of war with whomever that AI capitulated too.

 

[Jerrymander]

Vassals automatically acquire any and all stances their master has. That's why your troops were teleported out. That nation's master wasn't at war with you.

IF you were at war with the master too, then the war with the now-vassal would continue.