WHO declared war on me?

Sounds like the Drath are up to their old tricks of paying everybody to war with you.

  Man i hate the Drath!

Oops

I still say this is a bug that has to do with 'awareness' of the other races in the game. I play with blind exploration turned on. And if I haven't met someone, how can they declare war on me if they don't even know who I am?

Booo.

All that's needed is that the Drath have met both parties for them to start arranging wars (even if the others haven't met each other).

I have had people declare war on me without having met the Drath. In fact, knowing only the Krynn and the Korx, I had the ominous string of announcements about people declaring on others, followed by the inevitable declaration on me by the Korx (who had two treaties with me, and nearly all their trade routes going to my planets). I realize that it's now in the Drath's economic interest to screw up the universe, but shouldn't they have some sort of rationale for it? I personally hold off until someone starts picking on me, then I get everyone against them, not some massive hairball where it's all on all. This is also no fun when no-one has a military.

Not to mention pointless. If you had instigated a war when there were forces at least in development it's one thing, but the Drath typically send someone to war with someone else within a few dozen turns when I don't even have Space Militarization researched. Only one race may have a couple Defenders built, but then a few dozen turns later, eventually they declare peace. This happened to me in the above example with the Iconians. Never even saw a single Iconian ship, and then they said 'let's be friends k?'.

I mean, what gives?

The whole 'declaring war on people you've never heard of' thing is a little goofy too, frankly. How can you send a declaration of war, or how can you even begin to plan an attack on someone you've never heard of? That'd be like us going to war against the Crab People.

I'm more than happy to go to war with a race I have yet to meet in the game....for a price.

"What? Attack the Killer Kittens from Outer Space for 1,000bc and the Xeno Factory Tech...sure, I'll shoot at them the moment I finally see these people". In the mean time I'll make sure I build even the meekest military so when I DO meet the Killer Kittens from Outer Space, I can milk some money from them in a Peace Agreement.

Those darn Kittens! With their looking cute and the purring! Die I say! Die! No more chasing string for you! I declare war on them every time I meet them! Never trust them! Preceeding message approved by PAAPA - People Allied Against Purring Animals

That's really counter-intuitive. Why should we be fighting wars with factions that aren't showing up yet in the diplomatic window, or the United Planets? Among other things, it spoils the suspense when you're playing with random race generation. Major immersion-breaker there.

It also smells a little fishy in terms of AI fairness vs. the player... like all the AI races actually know who the players are in a game, before any official contact, and they're making backroom deals based on that information. The player isn't privy to that info about un-contacted races in the game. I thought the GalCiv AI is supposed to be programmed so it doesn't have any artificial advantage the player doesn't have, at evenly-balanced difficulty settings?

just because your at war with someone doesn't mean there will be any fights. i win most of my wars without a shot being fired. i use the method that if the other side is willing to give anything up to end the war i have won.

I just played as Drath and I had only discovered the Arceans and the Drengin. I was able to tell the Arceans to declare war on nearly every race, including Terrans, Iconians, and the Korx. It was very early in the game, and I know DAMN well that the Arceans hadn't discovered any of these races... it was also a tech training off game...

So... yeah! Something's broken.

To be fair, I believe you can do this when you play the Drath yourself, make wars with civilizations neither of you have contacted yet. So it isn't really a player vs. computer knowledge issue here, its simply an issue of an unrealistic super ability of the Drath. I can imagine the conversation going something like this:

Drathi diplomat: 'Hey, you know those Iconians, the one neither of us knows for sure exists but the Arceans keep telling us stories about'
Drengin ambassador: 'Yeah, sounds like another weakling race ready to be enslaved'
Drathi diplomat 'I want you to go to war with them'
Drengin ambassador: 'but we don't know where they are at, even if they do really exist'
Drathi diplomat 'Here's 400 BC and a couple of our star cruisers'
Drengin ambassador: '... I get it, these are one of your games of pretend that you aliens like to engage in. For the sake of these useful gifts I'll 'play along' as you call it and tell the Arceans to pass along the fact that I declared war against the Iconians.'

If the Drath can get others to delcare war on races even *they* haven't met yet, then there's definitely an issue.

the who.

i have been wondering who made me declare war at times. when i didn't do no such thing.


the message is usually like "you have just declared war on _________________"

Yep, confirmed issue. Every race, including minors. You just need to discover someone to talk to a *BAM* WARS ON!

To be completely honest, the Drath have such an extremely slow startup, they really need this

I've also had several weird situations with War declaration, and peace treaties. Sometimes i get peace with alien races without any screen popping up for them to offer it to me(this sometimes happens when my ally gets a peace treaty from a race i'm also at war with). Sometimes i get peace treaties despite the AI rejecting my offer the preceding turn. Sometimes i just get the war declaration without it telling me who declared war(this is really fun especially when its your nearest neighbor and you missed the war declaration for a few turns, but notice it in the events log).

Then sometimes i get some race declare war on me one turn, then right the next turn i have peace with him again without any diplomacy screen pop up or anything, and then the next turn he declares war again, and then peace. It stops after a while, but it gets really annoying if you make new trade-routes in between those war declarations.

This happened to me in a (Drath-free) game of DA once. I was allied to the Iconians, with treaties and trade with them. They had reasonable relations (friendly or warm I think) with the Yor, with whom I was at war, and mid-rampage through the Yor fleet I was notfied that I had declared war on the Iconians. I thought I must have accidentally targeted an Iconian mini-freighter in my haste to lay waste to all, but surely I would have been warned that I was firing on an allied ship?