Is the Ai aware of alliances when declaring war?

If they are aware, they aren't nearly aware enough. Which is a shame, since apart from this the AI is generally quite good at choosing its enemies.

I do not think they r aware. Been in a 5 strong alliance before now and an AI (in this case the Altarians) declared war on one of the members. Big mistake got ripped to bits in short order. The AI was doing its usual bullying tactics, Altarians had 3 x military rating of the Thalans, so it declared war. Did not consider the military rating of the other 4 alliance members as for as I can tell.

I don't think the AI is aware of it (or not enough), but it definitely should be.
I've seen medium powers declare war on a small race which was allied to me, the biggest power around.

Just one more thing about diplomacy. Some times i see things that don't make much sense to me. Like A is at war with B, B at war with C, C at war with A, like a triangle war, or also a square war if you include D. I think when a war involves more than two civs, they should form two sides. Three or more sides all fighting against each other doens't make sense to me.

It also happens with alliances, where A is ally with B and with C, but B and C may even be at war with each other!

All this is caused becauses diplomacy relations are always bilateral. You can't form a group like the NATO , and then let members decide if they accept a new member, instead of that you have to ally separatley with the Ai's and then hope they ally with each other instead of going to war one with another. I don't know, any ideas about this?

Yeah, I think there should be like, a NATO kind of thing too. That and planetary sieges...and maybe a Death Star...but I digress...

Just one more thing about diplomacy. Some times i see things that don't make much sense to me. Like A is at war with B, B at war with C, C at war with A, like a triangle war, or also a square war if you include D. I think when a war involves more than two civs, they should form two sides. Three or more sides all fighting against each other doens't make sense to me. It also happens with alliances, where A is ally with B and with C, but B and C may even be at war with each other!

I agree. There's a lot of room for nice additions to diplomacy, like a more elaborated alliance system. The biggest problem would probably be to teach it to the AI though.

(Did I mention the word "expansion" in my posting, yes? )

If two allies of one player are at war, I see no problem with that. Just because you like both the Altarians and the Thalans doesn't mean they have to like each other. It then creates a moral dilemma for you, the player, who is allied with both. Who do you support? Or do you sit back and watch?

Though I can't remember if you're allied to both whether one will ask you to be honour-bound in declaring war.

If two races who are allied with each other then turn around and declare war, that's okay too because evidently relations have broken down.

There needs to be more factional AI, where civs will spot the formation of 'power blocks' and try to arrange their own. It's *absurd* that all the other AI just sit there while I make alliance after alliance - instead of complaining about my influence, they should be coalition-building and the galaxy should end up polarised between two great alliances with the little people in between. This should be particularly true of 'good' guys, who should really be doing this sort of diplomatic warfare much more.

When was the last time the AI made an alliance *specifically* to discourage you from attacking someone? It should do that much, much more often.

I see your point dthought, and you might be right, but i still think different. If the Altarians and the Thalans don't like each other, you shouldn't be able to ally with both. You could have a good commercial relation with both, and like both, but an alliance is something more than that.

If you take a look a Cuba during the cold war, to say an example, they were allied with the russians, and obviusly, they couldn't ally with the US too, that wouldn't make sense. And by being allied with Russia, they gained good relations with other communist countries, like China. Something like that is what i mean.

There could be exceptions, but i think it would make more sense if the races would ally forming groups rather than random bilateral alliances. Game politics would gain a lot. The way things are now leads sometimes to weird results. Once I attacked someone, and that started a chain of war declararations that ended up with every race at war with other four or five races, in a way that made absolutely non sense. It was almost like all against all. It was fun though... yeah, i don't know, maybe it's funnier like it is now.

oh a little off topic, but in the civ manager screen, on relations, one of the key codes is 'team' i've never seen this occur with anyone, what does it mean/do?

the "team" code designates "sides" in a team scenario.

diplomacy for the AI would probably be the one aspect i would like to see "scripted" in some form or another...

-0.

Team is for some of the campaign missions and a couple of the sandbox scenarios. It's an alliance that can't be broken.

Maybe the AI is thinking to declare war anyways since maybe somebody is trying to go for a diplomatic victory.