1.3 Beta 3X | "False positives" that I am going to attack an ally

We THINK we know what you're doing...

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a bug, or if it's just a necessary circumstance of galactic politics. It bugs me when an AI race that I have always had good relations with suddenly thinks I'm about to attack one of their planets and pre-emptively declares war on me.

EXAMPLES:
1) Drath are getting decimated by the superior Drengin military. Drath are about to lose, so I trade nearly my entire fleet to them for a bunch of tech and cash. We have always had good relations, never been at war. I have a mining starbase in Drath space, near my border, which is midway between my core space and the Drengin homeworld. A pissant Drath world (PQ 4) happens to be nearby to my starbase. As the Drath start to lose again, I declare war on the Drengin as well and start building new ships and massing my forces on top of my mining starbase to attack the Drengin homeworld. Some of my ships are already in Drengin space taking out any ships that are not orbiting their planets. The Drath (whose asses I just saved) suddenly declare war on me because they think I give a rat's ass about their PQ 4 planet! It was the last mistake they ever made.

2) Arceans had obtained some worlds from the surrender of another AI. One particular planet is nowhere near their core space, and the surrendered planet is on the border of Korx space and my space. I had a big fleet on the way to Korx space to wipe out the Korx, but I had not declared war on the Korx yet. I had to pass by this lonely Arcean planet on the way, but I didn't have my fleet sitting idle near it for more than 1 turn, as all the ships were in-transit to Korx. Arceans declare war on me because they think I want their planet (PQ 9). I had always maintained good relations with the Arceans, never went to war, and had 1 well-established (and long distance) trade route with them.

It would be great if the AI could be improved to eliminate some of these erroneous conclusions that I am about to attack. I'm just brainstorming some ideas of indicators that the live player is not planning to attack the AI:
+ never been at war with my race before
+ no history of launching sneak attack on any other race
+ has existing trade routes with me
+ has traded/gifted combat ships to me recently
+ is at war with a mutual enemy
+ my planets are between player's space and space of AI that player is at war with
+ my planet (that I think is at risk) is not very valuable

I have no idea if the game AI already considers some or all of these factors before doing a pre-emptive declaration of war, but I offer these as a suggestion.

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I know what you mean dude, I hate having to wipe out entire races ( well actually I like the thought they're all getting killed) just because a few of my ships passed by they're planet.

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I've had the same (And similar) situations happen to me in a few games.

A friendly race that I have nothing against but happen to pass by with a large fleet on route to an enemy of mine who is not an ally of theirs tells me they're not stupid, and declare war. (Which almost always IS stupid, because it's only a small race, in my experience.)

However I've also observed the flip of the coin, instead of super-paranoia, some races who are just too stupid to protect their planets, even when I take multiple turns to assemble a fleet. Hell, on normal I once stacked up an invasion fleet some 3 squares away froma a Korx planet fully stocked with ships. (We were at war.) Now, they could have defended the planet, had they attacked before I stacked up the fleet, but do you know what they did? The ships actually took off, but rather than attacking me, started en-route towards one of my other worlds, completely ignoring the invasion fleet. Now that was...short-sighted. Not only did I then take the planet early, but by the time their ships arrived, I had a fleet waiting to counter them.

The AI, as it is, is good. Better than the AI of many other games. But nothing is perfect, and it can always use improvements when the devs have time.

(Which I hope they will.)

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Well, this may not be exactly what your going through, but I love it when One race declares war on *me*, when Im mostly neutral or luke warm to most civ's. Next thing you know, they all start issuseing chain DoW's on your *** becasue im at 'war' with there friend.......the....agressor. Now of course it makes perfect sense for 1/2 the galaxy to declare war on me just because one of them attacks me for no good reason and im the 'bad' guy. Its hard to make seperate peace with the original agressors friends....well sometimes you can, one time I went from being more or less on decent terms with almost everyone to at war with 6 civs in the space of a few weeks....depressing.

I can see how that converstion must have went. "Im sorry But since your at war with our friend we have no choice but to declare war"

WTSchMEgg! He attacked us!..First-shot up a transport full of Nuns. What we do!!?

MMm well since hes an ally the friend of our friend is our enemy, or the enemy of my enemy is our enemy..or something like that

Werent you warmly to me last week with and we had trade routes?

I have to go now, I hear the doorbell

Ok how about a Peace treaty then since we've never done anything wrong to you guys...ever...

I think Not

grrr

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