AI's Inexplicable War-Declarations, esp. in Mid-Game

[SorvinoBackhand]

Am I the only who gets really miffed about the AI making downright bizarre war-making choices?
Possibly the most egregious example is on maps with a lot of water, where I am on a seperate continent or island. Even though it may be surrounded by land opponents, and even though I have never launched an aggressive war the ENTIRE game, almost uniformly, an AI will declare war on me and sail across an OCEAN in the 16-18th C to invade me.

This just violates basic geopolitics. Islands have strong advantages because their geography makes them less threatening to their neighbors. Who sails around the world to take on large powers when ones are sitting on your doorstep? Perhaps in the 19th C, but frequently this happens in mid-game, which is just too much of a leap. (Mind you that I am not taking about colonization or that my civ was critically weak; I am talking about full-blown invasion.)

The point is, whatever equations drive the AI's war-making choices need to be qualified by distance and geography.

Or maybe I am just a terrible player. So if any of you have advice on avoiding these out-of-the-blue mid-game invasions, please let me know. I play on Prince and usually lose around mid-game to some huge, unanticipated attack. Its very frustrating - kind of a game-breaker.

[The keeper]

Why does the US invade Iraq when Canada sits right there beside them.



The only AIs I have seen do this to me are ones that would do something stupid like that anyway. i.e. Montazuma, or Alexander. Some of the AIs are just programmed to fight.

I have seen an AI from across the world declare war on me before Astronomy. (Montazuma again, I believe) So we were at war for many years but no blood was ever shed. Eventually he sued for peace so I gave him a token gold amount (much less than he wanted) to stop the pointless war.

[johnmcd]

You say you sometimes lose because of this so I don't know I'd see it as pointless. In a recent game I went to war with Mansa, who was on a different land mass as he was worryingly close to me on tech and had better production and I thought I'd lose on the space race to him. I went in with a smallish army, razed his best two cities (one the home of the world religion of Judaism) over about five turns and saw my entire navy and invasion force destroyed. Well worth it though as he was never in the running again.

We'd be great friends up till then though.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

You really can't avoid them unless you luckily draw alot of non aggresive civs. The only advice really is to be more prepared for invasion. If you see Tokugawa / Alexander / or Genghis in your game then you better build a lot of units. On prince you shouldn't have much trouble surpassing the AI in production capability and thus you should be able to churn out more units then they can. If they attack you from afar you have a massive advantage if you are competing in military strength. You said it yourself. You just aren't making use of the advantage.

In the late game make sure to build plenty of rails for easy troop transport. You should be able to decimate any stack they send at you by then. Build lots of seige units to take out stacks. Build improvements on your borders to slow the enemy down. Build a huge navy and block access to your land. There are tons of options here.

[LodeRunner31]

I think the number one thing an AI looks for is military strength. It doesn't care where you are, and sometimes even your relations.

I learned my lesson from this when Cathy, my friend at the time, attacked my island civ when I was about 250 or so points ahead of her (she was in 2nd). She loaded up several galleons and attacked one of my less important smaller cities. She razed the city, and did a good bit of plundering, then asked for peace. I had to accept as my military was fairly weak. Looking at the score, we were then even, and she was back being pleased with me (offering open borders, resource exchange, etc...). Perfect strategic war on her part.

The point is, when you find yourself on an island, keep an eye on when the other civs are about to discover astronomy, and make certain your military (including navy) is on par with the AI's.

[zabrak]

I went in with a smallish army, razed his best two cities (one the home of the world religion of Judaism) over about five turns and saw my entire navy and invasion force destroyed.

I'm a big fan of invading religiously significant areas with a small, mobile force. But I prefer to keep the place, and station a few cut-off troops there to absorb the constant counter-attacks. Others might be concerned with the effect on world opinion or my military strength, but I say "bring 'em on!"

Nationalism makes this even easier - if the people back home start getting upset, draft 'em!

[Swiss Pauli]

Re: AI's Inexplicable War-Declarations, esp. in Mid-Game

Originally posted by SorvinoBackhand
Even though it may be surrounded by land opponents, and even though I have never launched an aggressive war the ENTIRE game, almost uniformly, an AI will declare war on me and sail across an OCEAN in the 16-18th C to invade me.

This just violates basic geopolitics. Islands have strong advantages because their geography makes them less threatening to their neighbors. Who sails around the world to take on large powers when ones are sitting on your doorstep?

Sounds like the Spanish Armada to me. Spain went for the militarily weak, 'heretic' England and not their neighbours in Portugal or France.

Keep an eye on the power graph and check who's got Astronomy. If 1 AI is shooting up the power into a huge lead, they're coming for you. If you can't catch up in time (in your estimation) then get a defensive alliance with one of the likely aggressor's neighbours. Unless you plan on warmongering then this is a good plan anyway.

Build Cavalry and position some stacks where they can get to likely landing points. The likeliest point is the city nearest to the AI's core. Position a ship or two offshore around here so you get an extra turn's notice of the invasion.

Place small stacks immediately outside the target city. With the amphib attack penalty you should get a good outcome. Mop up the remains of the landing party and wait. If they bring in an ally, bribe another AI to attack your new enemy.

[allybhoy]

Britain invading india

Britain and France fighting over Canada

Britain and Russia in the Crimean war

Dutch in Indonesia

Spanish conquest of south America

Portugal in Brazil

The Boer War

Many wars were fought far from home

[amicus curiae]

I think the invasions you're talking about would be fine if the ai actually had a plan to get some benefit from their invasion. Usually when this happens to me, the ai declares war, then mabye 5 turns later a single ship with 2 or 3 military units shows up. It gets killed right away and then another 5 turns later another single ship comes. This makes no sense. If the ai is going to do one of these crazy invasions it should at least have a plan. It should wait until it had several ships within range and then declare war.

[allybhoy]

obviously a fan of Cortez

I know what you mean mate, it is crazy

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by zabrak


I'm a big fan of invading religiously significant areas with a small, mobile force. But I prefer to keep the place, and station a few cut-off troops there to absorb the constant counter-attacks. Others might be concerned with the effect on world opinion or my military strength, but I say "bring 'em on!"

Nationalism makes this even easier - if the people back home start getting upset, draft 'em!

Yeah, I would have kept it but OCC limits ones options like that....

[zabrak]

Well, I was joking. Pretty tasteless, though.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by amicus curiae
I think the invasions you're talking about would be fine if the ai actually had a plan to get some benefit from their invasion. Usually when this happens to me, the ai declares war, then mabye 5 turns later a single ship with 2 or 3 military units shows up. It gets killed right away and then another 5 turns later another single ship comes. This makes no sense. If the ai is going to do one of these crazy invasions it should at least have a plan. It should wait until it had several ships within range and then declare war.

In those cases I'm in complete agreement. In my Devel's Workshop Ia game I had an invasion like that from our old friend Montezuma. Meanwhile he had a massive stack of fully-loaded galleons sitting in port, and *those* concerned me, but he didn't do anything with them until I showed up with destroyers and battleships. THEN the Armada sailed, and it was shooting fish in a barrel.

The massive invasions make sense, the piddling raids don't.

[Hauptman]

Sometimes their amphib attacks are silly and weak, sometimes...

...They scare the bajeesus outta me. Nothin quite as bad as havin 5 galeons unload next to a city you thought secure far from your land border, with its single defender.

It's all part of the game, to keep you on your toes. I've been playing marathon games since they introduced it and that makes you have to maintain a fast response defense stack, because you just cant make units fast enough if someone sneak attacks you.

Adapt. Overcome. Win.

[Hermann the Lombard]

Originally posted by Hauptman Adapt. Overcome. Win.

There's the motto for *our* version of SURVIVOR