[Alneyan]

I have given you a more... relevant answer in my mail, as appropriate to our situation.

I believe taking provinces without warning will fall under the heading of war for most players, and will result in immediate retaliation (if you do have something to strike back at 'em, of course). Some players may wish to ask you if you really meant that before sending in the cavalry, or they can offer a bargain if they don't feel like waging a war, but others will simply jump on the opportunity to fight you: who is to say you won't go on with your attack, after all? It does not apply to chance battles, when two armies attack the same indy province on the same turn, as in this case neither party really wanted to trigger the fight... though there can always be fishy occassions, where an enemy task force just happened to target the same province as your lonely Pretender, and was oddly very well equipped to take down said Pretender.

Another such situation would be if you happened to cast one of those nasty enchantments, mainly Utterdark and Burden of Time: those are plain annoying, and will result in you being declared the Bad Boy, with armies knocking at your doors before soon. I am personally find with virtually everything else, included having armies and forts on my borders: I can watch them if they are close to me, after all, and with all the teleportation going on, it will not be possible to keep safe borders anyway (not to mention flyers and stealthy troops).