Declaring vendetta when they won't pick up the phone?

[Mad Dog]

Folks,

OK, so this is bugging me. It's been a while since I played, and I thought I remembered that a right-click on a leader from the [COMMLINKS] tab would enable me to declare vendetta (after all, I can demand the withdrawal of their troops that way - even during sunspot activity). But darned if I can find the combination now I do like to declare war before beating up on someone...
Are my braincells playing tricks or is this really not possible in SMAC? I've waded through every FAQ I could find without success...

Thanks for any pointers,
Mad Dog

P.S. incidentally, what happened to Firaxis' site www.alphacentauri.com, gets a DNS error now - did they stop paying the bills?

[Snowflake]

Re: Declaring vendetta when they won't pick up the phone?

Originally posted by Mad Dog

P.S. incidentally, what happened to Firaxis' site www.alphacentauri.com, gets a DNS error now - did they stop paying the bills?

Did you try this one?

[RedFred]

I haven't played in ages, but if you keep hitting the 'demand withdrawl' button it seems to anger the AI into declaring war on you.

[Sikander]

Wow, I can't remember the last time I had to declare vendetta against the AI, they always beat me to it by 50 years at least.

[Mongoose]

To answer the question, no you cannot declare vendetta 'diplomatically' unless you do so at the request of another AI faction. There is not and never has been any right click menu option in the commlinks that permits you to do so. The nearest thing to it is, as has been said, demanding withdrawal. The problem with that is that if the AI is too afraid of you (and doesn't hate you on general principles) they will very kindly remind you that they do not have any units in your territory "As you are surely aware..." or else they will wthdraw while apologizing.

[UnityScoutChopper]

Sometimes, however -- and I have no idea what the pattern is on this -- demanding withdrawal, then attempting to contact, then demanding withdrawal AGAIN will change an AI's message from "As you are surely aware..." to a declaration of war. If you're desperate to start a war, this is one way.

Also, I noted to my great surprise recently that stealing tech from a faction caused them to declare vendetta, yet did not affect my diplomacy rating (I am QUITE the stickler for keeping a Noble rating, no matter what a rat I really am :0)). You might try that.

USC

[AMD4EVER]

Once in this type of situation it was just me and the Believers left as the two superpowers with three other factions that were unimportant. The Believers refused to declare war on me so I could defeat them. It was getting very annoying so I simply took a planet buster and detonated it on an isle of the deep away from all bases. Everyone declared war on me and I defeated them all. Quite an extreme way to get war declared but it was necessary at the time

[Lazerus]

Why didn't you just PB their cities ? gets the war off to a speedy start