I want to live peacefully but nooooooooo....

[Killazer]

Well I was playing a game as Chinese. To the east were the Ottomans and the Americans. So well I start colonizin' the land all cheerfully and happily dum de doode dum. I have this juicy nice spot open perfectly within a circle of some of my other cities. Well my settler gets built and then I see the Ottoman settler 2 squares away from my juicy city spot...then 1 square away.... then right on top of it (dont u hate that? ) . Well then I got paranoid and killed the spearman and took his settler causing a war between me and the Ottomans.

Considering I had already built like 10 archers beforhand I quickly knocked out half of the Ottomans empire and then called a truce with them for any techs I didnt already have. I open up talks with Americans and even establish a trade route by linking my roads to Abe's and we start tradin' whinin' dinin' havin' big ballroom parties u kno all our citizens draped in fine silks, plenty of whine and ivory decorations . I had no real beef with the Americans but I did have my eye on exploiting and finising the Ottomans off later.

Anyway a couple hundred years later... BAM. American declared war on you! WTF?! They swept in a couple units and captured like 5 or 6 workers and pillages some roads. Anyway I ended up wiping half of their nation out and finishing out the Ottomans after I fully mobilized at that point. But.. I mean wtf did they declare war? Everything was going fine between us and we were polite/gracious and trading and stuff... then boom WAR. Gawd cant we all just get along

[Tattila the Hun]

Maybe they thought the trade deal was one-sided...

[Hurricane]

Sometimes the AI will attack you without any particular reason. Maybe they just wanted some lebensraum. They are no different from the human in that respect.

[MoonWolf]

Think it's hardcoded in the game; the AI is and will be your enemy no matter what. Or maybe as Hurricane says; the AI is human...

[Jamski]

I'm sure the AI makes gpt deals and then declares war to get out of paying up every turn. I know I do Or it attacks you if it thinks you are weak.

-Jam

[AIL]

They don't attack because they think I am weak. Would not think so if I have 2 times the number of cities of them.

I think what really drives em is somethink like...

if (rand()%(int)50==1)
declare war on civilization[rand()%(int)numberofcivs]

[wilbill]

Originally posted by AIL
They don't attack because they think I am weak. Would not think so if I have 2 times the number of cities of them.

Don't think they pay attention to # of cities - it's military strength (# and type of units).
Also, if they're paying you GPT and run out of money, they'll declare war.

[AIL]

My military strenght was according to my # of cities. It took me like 5 turns to take em out.

There's of course a difference between a diplomatic war-declaration and the other way, moving some troops to your land and attack what auto-declares a war. I was talking about the second one. It simply can not be military calculation to send 6 Knights to declare a war to a Nation that has 10 Riders and 30 Musketeers... When they want to attack you because of their superiority they usually place some demands on you and declare war if you deny. Wars of this kind are much harder to win because they know they are stronger. The other kind of war declaration seems to be nothing but totally random.

[CerberusIV]

Maybe the AI is trying to do to you exactly what some human players do to the AI - force you into wartime mobilisation or into a different government type and generally screw up your civ.

Like most other things, the AI probably just isn't that good at such a strategy.

[AIL]

Hehe, yeah force a Despotic Civ into another government by declaring war on it! I still belief it's a random function were the aggresivity Level of the AI-controlled civ influences how often a civ will do attack regardeless of anything else.

[Hurricane]

Obviously it is partly random. How much fun would it be if the AI never declared war on you unless it had twice the army? It is these things that gives Civ3 such great replay value.

[Deornwulf]

War may be random but ever notice how the civs you want to declare war on you never do?

[bongo]

My guess is that your workers looked too tempting. They saw a short-term opportunity but not their long term doom.

[olaf]

There is definitely a random component to them declaring war. This is easily confirmed by reloading an auto-save from just prior to the turn they declare war on you. They wont always declare war in exactly the same circumstances.

olaf

[Tattila the Hun]

Once I was the biggest military might on globe, BUT one of my cities, with one of my two oils, was unadecuately defended. So they declare war, unload a galley of marines into it, and capture it. It takes me couple of turns to mount an invasion on their homeland (no transports), and before the D and H they contact me, offering peace.

No.

My panthers spent 3 turns on the prowl, and they finish with the one city they just captured. Not for long, though.

D+5 I wipe them out. Now, was that oil really worth it?