Really annoyed, Whos with me?

[Urban Ranger]

Open Border is awesome...up to a degree.

You too can sign an Open Border agreement with an immediate neighbour, then send units through him to attack another country.

[Qwertqwert]

There are other aspects of this game which are unrealistic, I'd like to see guys with muskets defeat tanks in real life.

[patcon]

Let's say civ X is attacking your land by moving through civ Y, with whom you don't have Open Borders. If your city is flush on the border with Y, X can attack you directly from Y and you can't even counterattack without declaring war on Y as well. (Sounds kind of like the NVA attacking South Vietnam from Cambodia without repercussions until Nixon said "No more" or Hezbollah attacking Israel from Lebanon.)

You should be able to demand that Y either: {1} grant you Open Borders; {2} immediately cancel Open Borders with X and expel any X units back to their homeland (other deals could remain in effect); or {3} declare war on you, triggering any defensive pacts you might have with others, cancelling any defensive pacts Y has, and giving Y the diplo hit.

Speaking of defensive pacts, if I'm not mistaken they're not triggered if a civ declares war on you until that civ actually enters your territory. It seems to me that the pact should activate as soon as war is declared against any of the involved parties.

[One_more_turn]

Open borders are great for driving siege units to enemy cities within 1 turn.

[Magnus60]

Actually, I think you should be allies to cross territory. Historically, that's the normal case, at least for the last couple hundred years. The case about the Crusades is baloney. Crusaders had to get permission to cross either the eastern half of the old Roman empire or from the city-states along the way. If the Army was large and imposing a small state would grant passage or if the state was also at odds with Arabs/muslims or any other growing threat they were happy to do so. Armies tended to be a bit messy crossing territories and they often needed supplies.

I too get tired of surprise attacks from very large armies that are invisible until the moment they cross a border. It should be difficult to hide large armies, even on the borders. The Soviets had info. when the Nazi's were massed, and the Russians on Napoleon. The United States knew the strength of the Japanese fleet and often knew where large parts of it were, etc. I think patcon has the best idea overall. I can appreciate that it is hard to program the AI for various negotiations.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by patcon
Let's say civ X is attacking your land by moving through civ Y, with whom you don't have Open Borders. If your city is flush on the border with Y, X can attack you directly from Y and you can't even counterattack without declaring war on Y as well.

That's not possible unless your culture is the pits comparing with Y. In that case you will soon lose that city to Y anyway, what do you care?

[patcon]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


That's not possible unless your culture is the pits comparing with Y. In that case you will soon lose that city to Y anyway, what do you care?

It happens in my games on a fairly regular basis. Either I or the AI will establish a city right up against the border of another civ (in either unclaimed territory or outlying areas of the new city's civ) in order to gain or secure control over specific resource tiles. When I build such a city I try to build culture as quickly as possible and usually manage to annex at least the skinny x tiles very soon. The AI does not seem to be as adept at the "culture war" and often ends up losing tiles to me, so that cities near the border (even established ones) have their center tile exposed to my territory. This is not a problem for the AI, as long as peace is the order of the day.

UR, I find your signature quote highly ironic in this particular instance.

[Swiss Pauli]

Re: Really annoyed, Whos with me?

Originally posted by faded glory For example. Im playing inland sea. I am at war with the aztecs directly bordering me my left. Motezuma bribed catherine to join, far to the south and surrounded by other civs. Im not concerned.

While I agree that OB attacks are a bit of an AI exploit, you could have tried to counter by bribing someone to attack Cathy. If no-one was willing, then you needed to be concerned.

[Cort Haus]

"OMG, Change teh Rules, I've been attacked." "No civ should be allowed to attack a non-adjacent civ unless by sea "

If the OP had made best use of Open Borders himself, he'd have observers checking the movements of Catherine's troops in time to prepare.

If he'd made use of some diplomacy he could have signed up a third party himself, especially the buffer state through whom he was attacked.

With a better understanding of how the game works, the following mistake may have been avoided. :

Motezuma bribed catherine to join, far to the south and surrounded by other civs. Im not concerned.

(emphasis added)

[QuixotesGhost]

The "Stop trading with Y" breaks Open Border agreements.

Use it next time you get into a war where there is a neutral country on your border.

[Prussia]

At least Firaxis was smart and in Civ 4 gave the option of allowing you to cancel the deal after 10 turns.

In Civ 3, it was a crapshoot if the AI would EVER stop an open borders agreement unless you declared war.

[Dis]

I'm not that annoyed by this. I'm still more pissed off by inferior units beating my superior units.

As has been pointed out, human players can use this to their advantage as well. I often choose not to, but I could if I wanted to.

I do get pissed off in similar situations, but it's usually me getting pissed off at myself for not better defending my cities.

And I usually play continents maps anyways, so I rarely encounter any problems with open borders agreements. Pangea maps could be a different story...

[FSmith]

Lebannon ring a bell?

I bet Israel is thinking the same thing right now -- "Why can the Hezbollah units come right up to my border and fire at my cities? I have to declare war on Lebannon to counter!!!"

That'z the way it is.

[Prussia]

They didn't declare war on Lebanon.

They just declared war on the peoples of Lebanon.

[asleepathewheel]

Yeah, I love the strike out of a neutral country feature by the ai. If I don't have the stones to make the buffer country pay, then that's my fault for building a crappy nation. I've been in that situation where I just have to sit back and defend against incursions, its not fun, but I enjoy that the AI will exploit my diplomatic failings.