What difficulty level are you playing?

Exactly. Guaranteed he's at NORMAL or less

You have a single transport sitting between your two planets. For the AIs, who are way to sensitive to this problem, that is reason enough to declare war, or at least get mad. Something about having a ship capable of invading a planet drifting in open space is something they have a problem with.

I once played on the largest map size possible. I left a transport near a dregin planet for a while, who I was at war with for a very long time, in a corner of the galaxy. A minor race that I haven't even found thier planet yet had declared war on me because my transport was in open space. I later found thier planet was in the corner on map oposite to the corner that my transport was sitting at.

As you can tell, the AI has problems with transports, period.

Arceans repeatedly threaten me for my "military buildup", even though my entire military consists of one warship protecting each of my two planets and a single transport sitting between them.

Well, the military buildup complaint may just befrom , as mentioned above, your transport sitting in space. The other reason they're randomely declaring war on you is probably because you have a REALLY weak military, if you only have one warship.

The A.I. will almost always attack you when your relations with them is "Hostile", the only time(s) they may not attack you is if you start giving them gifts, and good gifts at that, if you have a significantly stronger military, or they're at war with someone else and doesn't think it can take the both of you on.

Unfortunetly the A.I. doesn't follow the "You leave me alone, I leave you alone" policy. It usually does the "If you leave me alone, I won't leave you alone if you're my easiest target" policy.

Mistoffeles
The Yor message is easy to explain. The surrender is triggered when their position is deemed useless. You are the human player and are flagged as "At War", there fore you get the message. It doesn't matter that all the damage is being done by a third party... nor whether they started the war with you. In essence all the message is saying in game terms is "one of the civs you are at war with is surrendering... and in this case (based randomly) it is not to you".

Sorry I wasn't meaning to be condecending it is hardly cutting corners... It is difficult to evaluate which of the civs it is at war with has had a significant impact on its demise. How many ships would you have had to kill before the mesage was appropriate? What other factors would it have to weigh? Much of the dialogue is appropriate. But some situations are "off the beaten track" e.g. your war where nothing happened... What was it supposed to say "We are at war but don't kid yourself that you've beaten me... it was the damn Thalens." It is not an AI issue as such, I'd rather them spend there limited resource on getting the AI to think more strategically, rather than worry about the messages it has in one particular unusual case.

None of this accounts for the problem with the Yor, they literally forgot that they were the ones who declared war and the only ones to commit any aggression, which is my main point here. It doesn't take a lot of memory or code for an AI to remember whether it was the one to declare war, or attack, or that I never did anything to them.

The reason the Yor weren't attacking you is because they were probably getting slaughtered by the Thalans. Wouldn't you leave the weaker player, the one with virtually no military, alone so you can deal with the larger threat?

The reason the Yor gave the "we'll have the last laugh" message is because you were at war with them. They also said it probably because the Thalan's may have literally destroyed all of their military ships thus making you have a much stronger military, despite only having one ship. The A.I. does know wether they declared war on you or you on them. It is much easier to make a Peace Treaty with a race that went to war with you and are starting to lose, than it is to make a Peace Treaty if you're losing to a race that you attacked.

In the "Speak to" screen, even the A.I. will sometimes admit that going to war with you (assuming they attacked) was a mistake.

As a matter of fact, the game this happened in was set with all 9 races at Bright, making the overall setting Challenging, and the galaxy is tiny, with only the home system available to each race at the beginning.

Skyjack > I don't see your difficulty level showing on your forum posts, too embarassed to post yur games to the metaverse? As a matter of fact, the game this happened in was set with all 9 races at Bright, making the overall setting Challenging, and the galaxy is tiny, with only the home system available to each race at the beginning.

No matter what size galaxy, you only start with your home system. Also, "Challenging" isn't very challenging (no pun intended) I've found out. I think the A.I. may still not be at 100% economic/production/research capacity. It also doesn't use every single algorythm to make it's decisions. I find sometimes playing with less races can be more difficult since if spaced apart, everyone can make a lang grab at the beggining without worrying about hostilities.

Skyjack isn't posting any medals because he doesn't have any characters under that screen name.

I want to know how you can get the "Wounded in Action" medal. Although, it sounds like something you get when you do something really dumb in-game that ends up leading to your own demise.

All in all, stop whining, stop trying to rip on others, you'll only draw negative attention to yourself. If you make a bold comment like that, expect bad replies. Just give your reasons for your opinion without whining about it or about what other people say about your opinion. Alright?