Preventing the "hey, you're too close" issue

[EternalSpark]

Here's the deal:

I'm a peaceful player, and 90% of my Wars-Not-Started-By-Me are caused in part because of the "our close borders make us all uppity" negative modifier. I know it seems odd - it's only a -1 or a -2 - but it's usually enough to turn an AI from Nice to Pissed.

Is there any way to prevent this, outside of playing island maps?

[UnOrthOdOx]

You will always get the -1 or whatnot from your borders touching.

However, I'll lay odds that this is not the primary reason you are being attacked. There are a number of factors outside of what is displayed on the attitude meter that contribute to it. AI "personality", how strong your military is, etc.

So, if you start next to an aggressive person, and you are perceived as weak (and an aggressive AI builds TONS of units), chances are you will be attacked just cause they think they can weaken/kill you. No matter how friendly relations have otherwise been.

Want to be attacked less? Build a massive military. AI's can be pissed at you and still too afraid to attack you.

[LordShiva]

Burn down their border cities.

[jbp26]

Originally posted by LordShiva
Burn down their border cities.

the penalties from razing their cities and declaring war will far outweigh the close borders penalty.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by jbp26
the penalties from razing their cities and declaring war will far outweigh the close borders penalty.

But it's more fun.

[jbp26]

touche.

[MasterDave]

Building a huge army sort of defeats the purpose of being "peaceful". Also, I am not going to spend resources on a huge military unless I intend to use it.

[Dis]

Originally posted by LordShiva


But it's more fun.

lots more fun.

Or another solution is to conquer the civ completely or make them capitulate.

[Dis]

Originally posted by MasterDave
Building a huge army sort of defeats the purpose of being "peaceful". Also, I am not going to spend resources on a huge military unless I intend to use it.

Unfortunately, there seems to be no other way. This seems to be coded into the game similar to civ3. If they see you are weak militarily, they will attack you.

[Virdrago]

Isn't that the premise of the Rome scenario? Each culture desires peace, on it's own (read - dominant) terms? in other words, Pax Romana.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by jbp26
the penalties from razing their cities and declaring war will far outweigh the close borders penalty.

But it gives you a nice buffer zone from which to pick off their units.

Alternatively, you can just raze the rest of their cities too.

[Blake]

Close borders is something you can manage. Close borders is not caused by close borders per-se, rather it's caused by intruding culture. If your borders are entirely outside of the AI's city radius then I believe it should not cause close borders. For example if you found a new city right next to an AI city (ie 2 tiles away) and do NOT create any culture in it, then that city will NOT cause close borders - but if it was the AI's city then it WOULD cause close borders, because much of it's radius is consumed by foriegen culture.

Thus to avoid close borders you need to manage culture in border cities - basically don't generate more culture than needed to generate a little breathing space. For example if your city and there city are seperated by 4 tiles, you want both cities generating equal culture. If there is only 3 tile seperation, you want to generate a bit less culture, so their city claims the contested middle tiles.

Whether you WANT to do this or not is entirely up to you and how badly you want good relations with your neighbour. Also sometimes the AI will just be a dumbass and found a city really close to your borders - flipping the city will solve that and pre-emptively you can try strategically founding cities to deny those spots where the AI might try to found. For example say there are 4 resources, you could place a city in the center of all 4, but then an AI will probably try to sneak a city in and steal 1 or 2 of those 4 resources, so instead you would found 2 cities in such a way to make the resources unstealable - after all there is the 2 tile minimum seperation between cities. I've only done this in practise a few times, but it has worked.

[Stickyman]

I just played a game where my close neighbor was Louis. We shared the same religion and the only negative modifier was the "close borders." I had the number three military, so I wasn't inviting attack.

Attack he did. I think the reason for the attack is that I had him pinned in a penisula and that was his only possible means of growth.

I've had similiar situations in the past, so I believe that "growth room" is a powerful motivator for the AI to go to war.

[Blaupanzer]

Lebensraum, a primary stated reason for several real-life recent wars.

[Ming]

Originally posted by Stickyman
I just played a game where my close neighbor was Louis...

Attack he did.

Louis always attacks... doesn't really matter much what the situation is.