the (AI) message "Nation X has declared war on your unholy nation"

[onomastikon]

This message has always intruiged me until now. Sometimes I get this from AIs I havent even scouted yet, and found out later they were so far from me they *couldnt* have scouted at that time (on Aran, they had no flying scouts).

My questions would be:

1. Anyone know what prompts this message and if any/what effects it has?

2. It would be great, especially for SP AI but also I think for MP, if there were an in-game way to send such Messages, such as:
- a message from (me): "(Me) suggests a truce with your nation."
- a message from (me / human player): "(Me) hereby declares war on your nation"
- a message from (me): "(Me) suggests a truce with your nation until (X)" where (X) usually stands for "Nation Y has been eliminated"

whereby such Messages can be interpreted by humans however they wanted to, but would have gameplay effect on AIs (i.e. also be interpreted by AIs: either they could ignore e.g. a truce or become more friendly depending on the programming or become more hostile if you declare war).

What do you think?

[Gandalf Parker]

I think the declarations of war might be based on the scoreboard as much as being close by. I tend to think of it as "you are obviously conquering the world and if I will attack you when I see you". However Im alittle unhappy because even when they do see me it doesnt seem like the message really meant anything at all.

As to Messages to the AIs, I like the idea. Im one of the main people who pushed for allowing the other Messages (send magic items, gems, gold) to the AIs since Dom1 originally only allowed those to go to human players.

I think though that trying to "read" the Messages properly could be a problem so role-playing the message might have to be left out. Hmmm come to think of it, maybe buttons for "send war declaration" and "send peace proposal" etc etc would work then let you type in whatever you want. That way the AI can know what the message is meant to be saying without having to try and "read" it.

[General Tacticus]

1. I have a theory that the AI can read the score graph, and will declare war if
a) you are getting too far ahead in gold income/province and
b) your army looks weak
regardless of whether the AI knows you or not. I have often noticed that when my army looks weak (i.e., I'm playing Ulm and I have a small number of top quality troops), and I'm getting ahead in provinces/income, everyone seems to declare war... whereas I get far less war declarations when I am fielding a huge army of worthless units, and don't shoot ahead in the other graphs...

2. I too, would like more diplomacy option. Can anyone tell whether the AI really takes notice of gifts you might send, and becomes less likely to declare war ? The only thing I know is that it never offers me any...
And if the AI does care, could we get some way of knowing how likely an AI is to declare war, so we can try and change its mind ? And some way to make a truce would also be interesting...

[Targa]

Umm...you are rival Gods trying to take over a planet, where does diplomacy fit into that theme? As a matter of RP, the rival pretenders are all going to hate each other and want nothing more than to see the others permanently eradicated, so I fail to see where this fits in (except in MP games where you want to gang up on someone).

On the topic of declaring war, I have had war declarations on the same turn as an enemy cast "seeking arrow" or some other distance attack spell, which makes sense. But the declarations that seem to come out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, I have yet to figure out. As Gandalf stated, I've had them declare war on me, don't even bump into his provinces until way later in the game, and even then the provinces are empty and unprotected. So it seems like he/she/it was just spouting nonsense.

[Wauthan]

Well even rival gods might set aside their differences to create a pantheon.

Make sense in a "everyone take out Ermor first" kind of way.

[Coffeedragon]

Does it still make sense, after such a message, to send them Gold to convince them to attack someone else?