[C3C] War with neither side declaring it or attacking?

[vthokies96]

I just encountered a situation I had not seen before and am wondering if this is normal.

I'm on a continent with 2 other civs - at peace w/Sumeria, at war w/Dutch, who are down to their last city. The Sumerians and Dutch are also at war with each other. Sumeria has advanced 3 dozen tanks into my territory in an attempt to get to the Dutch (no RoP), but I let that go since I don't want to fight them just yet (they are slightly more powerful).

At the beginning of my turn, the Sumerians and us are at peace. As soon as I take the last Dutch city and eliminate them, we are at war. No advisor pop-up, I only learned this as I went to my foreign advisor looking to trade with the Sumerians.

How does this happen? I can't ever recall getting into a state of war without one side either declaring or instigating via sneak attack.

FWIW, there is only one other continent on the map, which has 4 other civs on it, though I'm not sure the relationships there matter.

 

[CKS]

You didn't have a military alliance with Sumeria against the Dutch that accidentally (or on purpose) was tied to a peace deal, did you?

 

[vthokies96]

No alliance, but we had a trade embargo against them and it was tied to a peace deal. So I guess I broke the embargo by eliminating trading as an option? Weird.

 

[CKS]

That would do it. The embargo ended when you eliminated the Dutch (though you didn't break it - I don't think anybody will be mad at you for breaking a deal), so all the stuff that was involved in the deal also ended, including the peace treaty.
Tying peace deals to other trade deals is an excellent way to find yourself at war. If you don't want to be at war with someone, don't bundle a peace deal with anything that can be ended early.

 

[vthokies96]

Thanks for the responses. It prompted me to look back at the auto-save to see what was happening. I went back and tried to re-do peace immediately after eliminating the Dutch, but their envoy refused to acknowledge us, so this kind of broken deal must cause them to get mad to some extent. It doesn't matter though, as war with them was inevitable and I just took the opportunity to knock out all their tanks that were isolated in my territory.

 

[tjs282]

Thanks for the responses. It prompted me to look back at the auto-save to see what was happening. I went back and tried to re-do peace immediately after eliminating the Dutch, but their envoy refused to acknowledge us, so this kind of broken deal must cause them to get mad to some extent. It doesn't matter though, as war with them was inevitable and I just took the opportunity to knock out all their tanks that were isolated in my territory.

There seems to be a period of at least 4-5 turns after a DoW where the AI will not talk to you, regardless of who started the war, and no matter how much of a pounding they (or you) have taken since then.

 

[Puppeteer]

There seems to be a period of at least 4-5 turns after a DoW where the AI will not talk to you, regardless of who started the war, and no matter how much of a pounding they (or you) have taken since then.

Agree. While investigating the save file format I found that the "will talk" indicator is actually a turn countdown of how many turns it is until they'll talk to you. In my case it always seems to start at 7.

I also noticed this counter starts counting down from 7 again after making peace. I think it's not a "will talk" as much as it is "war status is not changing in the next X turns", and whether or not they'll talk to you depends on the counter and whether or not you're at war, I think.

However, it's certainly possible in war to shorten the time they'll talk to you by hurting them a lot. I haven't done enough testing to see if/how this is reflected in this apparent turn countdown. Well, at least I've begun a turn where they won't talk to me, and by the end of the turn they will. As I day, I don't know the edge limits.