what the heck is wrong with Alex?

[civvver]

Playing on full of resources terra map, starting on any continent, 18 civs, standard size, no goodie huts.

I was williem orange and ended up around the equator in the "new world" with justinian just northwest of me, alex further north, ghengis southwest and monty far south. Wow, three ultra aggressive leaders plus justinian is no slouch. Monty founded hindu, which spread to ghengis, then to me so I adopted to keep everyone happy. My power rating wasn't tops, but I was high, probably 75% of the leaders ghengis and alex. I figured monty and ghengis would be the threats so had most of my garrison down there as I expanded and prepared for a maces and trebs war. Then out of no where, alex, who is last in score while I am first with the strongest economy, tech lead and in size, alex dows me with a stack of 5 phalanxes. I'm playing on noble so that's a decent size stack for an AI to attack with this early. What surprised me was alex didn't go for justinian- a weaker, closer foe. I fended him off without much trouble after whipping a couple archers in addition to my northern garrison.

Then something even crazier happened. I missed founding Confucianism by about 3 turns, and wanted a shrine badly for my economy so I founded Taoism. It then spread to justinian and alex and a bunch of my cities. Now I had a tough choice. I had one hindu city, 3 toaist ones and two neighbors of each religion. Then justin demanded I convert so I did and built large garrisons for the south in case my switch pissed off monty or khan. It didn't. But a few turns later out of no where alex comes back and dows me again! I share his frickin religion, have double his score, have 80% of his power and he decides to drop 8 phalanxes on me. Again I fought them off, but it was harder, as I was not expecting an attack from my spiritual brothers.

So what's up with that? Is the AI really smart enough to notice my northern cities lightly defended, despite my overall strength, and backstab? What other leaders tend to do this?

 

[UWHabs]

Some leaders will declare on you.

Remember, Alex was the same religion as Justinian, and with other bonuses, is possible they were friendly with each other. So even if Alex is "pleased" with you, he might still decide you're a better foe, and attack you. And he probably wouldn't march his whole stack through your lands to get to worse enemies down south.

Remember, religion affects everyone differently. Some (like Izzy) will almost always get to friendly with you, even if you share the same religion, whereas others will pretty much not care about your religion. I had a game recently where I got to pleased/friendly with Kublai Khan even with different religions.

The crazy thing is he declared war on me, I fought off his useless units, razed one of his cities, then payed a bit for peace (I didn't want to attack him any more), and he was still pleased with me, even willing to sign a defensive pact.

The moral of the story is don't take anything for granted. Except that Isabella will send missionaries to all your cities if they're not of her religion.

 

[Outshined]

Alex is extremely erratic and war-prone. Like Monty, sometimes he doesn't even really -need- a justification for war, it is an end by itself =P. His aggression level is the highest in the game, tied with other leaders like Monty and Ghengis.

So yeah, usually if I see him on my continent I plan to wipe him out before he can backstab me (because he WILL backstab you), if it is practical to do so.

 

[macmert]

Well I guess religion is not really a factor for some leaders, on my latest game, I was mehmed, me Caesaer (ugh..typo??) and Roosvelt had the same religion, we were good friends, suddenly julius decided to wage war... we had a few fights, I wanted to lure Roosvelt, but they were good friends, a few turns later I did lure Roosvelt in, now they are worst enemies I am steamrolling over Julius... So much for religious brothers

 

[SnowlyWhite]

he has base peace weight of 0(lowest possible) and doesn't really care about religion; furthermore, distance at which he dows is high, so...

plus, if you didn't show him many troops at his border...

 

[stachnie]

It is also possible that he decided to start the war much earlier. Sometimes the time between AI decision and actual DOW declaration may be very long. Perhaps it will be OT but I think my story is so funny that it is worth to write it down.

In my recent game I play as Darius (Prince, Marathon, Hemispheres, Average sea level). I happened to start at a small continent with Asoka, I managed to get Horses very quickly and Asoka had no metals so I got a second capital quite soon Unfortunately, he did not manage to found any religion but thanks to Marble, Oracle and extensive use of Great People I managed to get all 4 later religions. I also managed to build Great Wall so it allowed me to have almost no military. I managed to get Stone quite soon so i went crazy about Great Wonders: there were only very few ones built by the AI (MoM, Sistine Chapel, Kremlin and maybe also something else). Most of these wonders were biult in my capital so you could imagine. Four religions spread everywhere + appriopriate shrines + Spiral Minaret = 90 or 100% research all the time.

I happened to be the first to get Caravels (actually they were Triremes upgraded ASAP), circumnavigate and contact the other continents. The greatest of them happened to be filled with a strong Buddhist block: Isabel, Zara Yacob, Pacal and Boudicca. My military was very puny so Izzy and Zara were making continuous demands. After Izzy discovered Astronomy the situation had become not so funny so I decided that it is the time to build some military, especially fleet. They started to "have enough on their hands" and I knew they were going to invade ME. And actually most of them did - apart from Zara who had chosen Hatty.

Fortunately, I managed to build enough land and naval units to repel all invasions. I built a big fleet of Privateers and they were able to block Spanish coast, sink two fleets of Boudicca, one of Izzy and prevent the first Zara's attempt to conquer Egypt.

After Izzy discovered Chemistry I called my privateer fleet back (among the survivors there were two Blitz ones, later upgraded to destroyers). She invaded me but at that time I already had Grenadiers and Ships of the Line The war was very long and I finished it after I built a lot of Marines and razed almost all of her coastal and island cities (I kept one island in the vincinity of Zara - just in case he attacks Egypt again). Now I have a significant military (the first to get Destroyers, the only to get Battleships, the only to get Flight, the only with Tanks...), production (Three Gorges Dam) and tech (half-built Internet and no other civ has Computers) lead. I am the UN leader but I am waiting for a Culture victory (due in about 70 turns IIRC) and... for Boudicca's invasion, because she still has "enough of her hands"

S.

 

[uncarved block]

Yes, there are AIs that will backstab you . . and there are ones that will just front stab you. Alex is one of the latter. The only times I've never had any trouble with him was when I kept a lot of troops garrisoned on that border. Had one situation on an Inland Sea map where Alex actually marched through my area to declare war on someone else; I'm convinced (this was before BtS) that I wasn't the target solely because that front was very buff.

Long story short? When Alex is in the game, assume he's going to attack you, no matter what the numbers say, and plan accordingly. He's not as crazy as Monty, but then who is?

 

[azzaman333]

You can get Monty to like you by sharing his religion.

And, FWIW, your power does not make you more or less of a target. If you're above their war declaration threshold, they won't attack you, but if you aren't, power does not affect their decision to go to war.

 

[macmert]

Actually, I remember Alex attacking me in one game and ruined me... We didnt even share borders, we were trading via sea, I didnt even know where he was on the map but he marched in through my lands, he had a few units but I didnt have enough to defend myself, so Alex has some mental issues I guess

 

[Dhaulagiri]

He's really easy to bribe into war with someone. Maybe a rival AI bribed him? If you have an old save see if he's bribe-able before he attacked.

 

[Belisar]

I share his frickin religion, have double his score, have 80% of his power and he decides to drop 8 phalanxes on me.

You have to distiguish between attitude and power.

To be safe from an attack one can either be over their attitude-threshold (for roughly half of the AIs, this is pleased, the others won't attack on friendly) or, as azzaman says, over their power threshold.
You say you have 80% of his power, for some warmongers you need ~150% of their power to be safe. As far as I know, the later is a binary decision, you are either over the threshold or not.
For the attitude thing, things are more complicated, the probabilities for an attack at different attitude-levels for different leaders can be found somewhere on the forum, I once downloaded the full pdf-sheet.