lindsay40k
Emperor
So I've on occasion noticed an AI was at WHEOOHRN but it never actually took the plunge and went to war. This evening I needed a screenshot of Toku declaring war; I cooked up a map for myself where I could beat him to loads of Wonders, got Currency and demanded tribute a dozen times, you get the idea. Yet with only a single Quecha, he still didn't DOW on me. I Worldbuildered him a few dozen Cossacks, Gunships, and Tanks, and next turn he piles them into me. Out of curiosity, I reloaded earlier and did the same, and sure enough he DOWs right away, with his Power graph showing a spike like the number of Deutschmarks in circulation in 1923.
Now, with no other neighbours, I couldn't tell if he was already WHEOOHRN, but I am led to believe that if the AI gains a very large military advantage over a rival over a very short period of time, then it is quite capable of declaring a war that it had not been 'counting down' to. I have sometimes assumed that dogpiles occur as a result of bribes, with the annihilation of Shaka's stack making Catherine drop the price for which she'd be willing to go to war at the request of Cyrus, but now it seems to me that the mere act of destroying the bulk of someone's units may be enough to make an AI spontaneously see their cities as low-hanging fruit?
One end result of pile-ons is that all the AI involved come out happier with everyone else who joined the coalition. It is questionable as to whether or not the +1 diplomas something the AI weighs up; perhaps this is just a happy outcome of the AI being programmed to have an opportunistic bullying streak. Perhaps WHEOOHRN does not set a countdown to war, but rather locks the AI out of being prepared to go to war with anyone but their victim, whilst setting its building priorities to producing units - which in turn will build its Power ratio to a critical mass whereby they'll declare war? Perhaps it also reduces the ratio at which they'll be prepared to do so? Has anyone been digging through the code to figure this stuff out?
Now, with no other neighbours, I couldn't tell if he was already WHEOOHRN, but I am led to believe that if the AI gains a very large military advantage over a rival over a very short period of time, then it is quite capable of declaring a war that it had not been 'counting down' to. I have sometimes assumed that dogpiles occur as a result of bribes, with the annihilation of Shaka's stack making Catherine drop the price for which she'd be willing to go to war at the request of Cyrus, but now it seems to me that the mere act of destroying the bulk of someone's units may be enough to make an AI spontaneously see their cities as low-hanging fruit?
One end result of pile-ons is that all the AI involved come out happier with everyone else who joined the coalition. It is questionable as to whether or not the +1 diplomas something the AI weighs up; perhaps this is just a happy outcome of the AI being programmed to have an opportunistic bullying streak. Perhaps WHEOOHRN does not set a countdown to war, but rather locks the AI out of being prepared to go to war with anyone but their victim, whilst setting its building priorities to producing units - which in turn will build its Power ratio to a critical mass whereby they'll declare war? Perhaps it also reduces the ratio at which they'll be prepared to do so? Has anyone been digging through the code to figure this stuff out?