What's up with these nonsensical war declarations?

[Wumper]

Seemingly out of the blue empires on the other side of the world declare war with whom I'm friends with. There's no way they can reach me or anything they really could achieve but they just do it and I can't make peace with them.

Is this a bug?

 

[ashendashin]

Someone doesn't like you and is bribing everyone they can. They won't stop. Got Ethiopia in your game?

 

[Wumper]

Nope, not in this one.

Is there a way to disable this? Imo it doesn't give the game any more strategic depth since most of these are just minor annoyances rater than real war and it just confuses the AI.

 

[ashendashin]

Nope. It definitely achieves being a thorn in my side though. The far off civs tend to plunder my trade routes and such (then again I haven't played with the new open borders AI). There are some instances where you might be in a position in which you really don't want one of your less friendly neighbors getting bribed The AI just spams everyone they can till the useful one comes up.

Edit:
And after the useful one if you stick around. You either wait for the prick to come to you themselves or find them and finish it. Or some third party route where they're crippled in some form, on the rare occasion that it's an option.

 

[Tarzan737]

Can your vassals bribe someone to declare war on you? If it is, it must be wrong because then they declare war on their own civilization to!

 

[Wumper]

Is there seriously no way to stop this? It's getting ridiculous when the AI asks you for open borders and declares war on you all on the same turn. They don't even do anything, they just sit around and harass your diplomats and city state allies that happen to be in the wrong place. And the worst thing is that they rarely declare meaningful wars because they are caught up in 3 other bullfeathers conflicts.

Could I maybe fudge around with the AI files to stop them from doing this?

 

[tu_79]

Is there seriously no way to stop this? It's getting ridiculous when the AI asks you for open borders and declares war on you all on the same turn. They don't even do anything, they just sit around and harass your diplomats and city state allies that happen to be in the wrong place. And the worst thing is that they rarely declare meaningful wars because they are caught up in 3 other bull**** conflicts.

Could I maybe **** around with the AI files to stop them from doing this?

You seem to think that AI is not working properly. They've already stated that this AI is doing such things on purpose. Sometimes there's randomness, but usually there's a plan, probably not coming from the guy who declared war on you.
Most of us agree that such things make the game interesting. You may mod anything to your liking, if you have the ability or someone is able to point you the right files.
Or if a great majority of opinated players dislike one feature, it gets revised.

 

[Wumper]

I do understand that it's working properly, I just don't think that it's good. It's a pain in the ass and it locks up the AI in lots of useless conflicts and because of that they rarely do meaningful wars, especially if there are a lot of civs. There were no city conquests in my game in more than 100 turns that wasn't me, yet everyone is at war with at least 3 other civs.

Basically what I'm asking if someone could point me in the right direction to disable this. It would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Fragamemnon]

The only iffy (non-bribe) war decs I've seen in the more recent build are warmongers and expansionists declaring war against even more powerful neighbors (tech, military score) that they already had a grudge with. Those wars usually don't fare too well for them - especially after defensive pacts get in place-but they aren't awful ideas either. Those civs usually don't have the kind of long-game peacetime scaling and need to press an advantage via demos.

Note-I play on maps with proper spacing between civs and enough room for reasonably sized empires. If someone is playing on a map where civs can only settle one or two additional cities before getting boxed in, yeah I expect there would be wars.

 

[Wumper]

Most civs settled 7-8 cities in my game so there is space to build empires, but around the renaissance era space ran out, that's when I expected civs like the Aztecs, Greeks, Iroquois and Carthagians to declare offensive wars and shake up the game a bit but no one is doing anything. The AI is not passive, they offer trades, there are a few friendly relations and they bribe each other but it feels passive, the game is basically stagnant at this point.

I might try throwing in more civs next time so they are hardpressed to go to war.