I love this game

[Fire Wraith]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
I'm pretty sure I've seen the AI declare war on me twice. It seems like if the AI declares war on you, and then absolutely nothing happens, he sometimes forgets about it and reverts back to being neutral.

Only twice? Well then, I have a story for you...

I am currently in my second game since getting the full game (Lurking around this forum has been a great way to learn things, by the way ), where I am playing Soul Gate Ermor in the world war scenario with all AI players enabled and set to difficult. My plan was to first conquer all of Africa, and then figure out where to go from there.

Some time during my battles with Abysia, Machaka, and Marignon, Ulm, not content with their stronghold in Europe and eager to possess my zero population provinces in Italy, decided to declare war on me. Upon eyeing the massive army of the undead hanging out in northern Italy, their generals decided to postpone the invasion... indefinitely.

A few turns later, their false god no doubt wondering what was going on, Ulm declared war again. The Ulmish armies quickly checked the border and noticed that yes indeed, the huge mass of undeath was still there, slowly growing every day. Further preparations would be necessary before they could attack, their generals must have reasoned.

Every few turns Ulm would declare war, only to forget about it shortly afterwards. I have not been keeping track, but they have done so quite a few times so far.

Recently, Ulm even dared to attempt a couple sorties. The first one was repulsed, but still caused a reasonable amount of damage. I quickly reinforced the army, and a few turns later they attacked again. The second offensive must have been some sort of suicide attack, as their army was only a tenth the size of mine. Ulm must be getting rather desperate. Well, either that or the Fires from Afar that Anthrax flung towards their army managed to wing one of their incoming commanders.

Perhaps now that Ulm knows that I can anticipate their every move, they will leave me alone and our two nations can live in peace. Well, not if the undead hordes swarming through Spain and Byzantium have anything to say about it, that is...

[Norfleet]

Hey, it's not like I actually sit down and try to count the number of times that particular AI declares war on me, since I always tend to play on fully populated maps with all 17 nations, which turns the declaring-war scene into a giant furball. That, and there's my policy of indiscriminate gratuitous violence. Even in games with actual diplomacy, I rarely make use of it because I find that AIs generally cannot be reasoned with, or at least certainly not at a cost which would be less than simply delivering an asskicking.

[General Tacticus]

But you can reason with the AI ! Usually on the lines of : "Look what a huge army I have on our common border, why don't you go beat up someone else for a while ?". The AI is fairly good at picking those hints.

As to why I don't use that army to attack the AI, the answer is usually that all my economy is neede in beating the other AI on the other side, and I can't spare the resources to expand elsewhere at the moment.

[Bowlingballhead]

I like the idea of feeding the computer pointless, even self-defeating magical items. Can I make him put fever fetishes on his commanders?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by General Tacticus:
As to why I don't use that army to attack the AI, the answer is usually that all my economy is neede in beating the other AI on the other side, and I can't spare the resources to expand elsewhere at the moment.

You can spare the resources to have a huge army that simply sits there and eats food and drinks beer, but you can't spare the resources to use it? Wouldn't that mean that the area you're sitting that huge army in is a fairly open one, and therefore, most of your border is exposed anyway?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Bowlingballhead:
I like the idea of feeding the computer pointless, even self-defeating magical items. Can I make him put fever fetishes on his commanders?

Hmm. Never made him put a fever fetish on his commander, but I managed to get him to stick two magical eyes on his god once.