Accept Demand

[DasBoot]

Trying to understand this: whenever I "accept" a demand of an AI player, despite them losing war support, they declare war on me and attack that turn. Is this a bug, or working as designed?

[Dorok]

It's like you are rejecting a demand, then the AI will be forced either accept it or declare war.

I haven't accepted any demand recently, could be bugged and trigger reject instead of accept. It's playable without ever accepting any demand, but that would be a serious bug.

[yutterh]

Sometimes the ai doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥ if you accept or not at a certain point. They already decided that they are gonna go to war with you. It's best to just reload the auto save and reject the demand since they are gonna go to war with you anyways.

Edit: also beat to look at how they feel about you. If they are hate filled and have a superior army they want to conqour you regardless and the grievance was just there to build up war support.

[Dorok]

There's no need to react to any demand, enemy demand is void if you win next war.

Reject demand has two purposes:
- Have more demands give a bit of war support against the AI at each turn. but it's a slow way.
- If you feel weak agains the AI, reject demands is with the purpose to remove an annoying demand, or force them declare war so they have war support lost at east turn, but you need be ready for the war anyway.

So in practice, don't bother reject demands if you aren't ready for a war it's hardly worth it.

To build up war support, I never dig it fully, even if I often had to build it up. The demands is a slow method. The fastest method is win some combats, so lure some stacks into a failed combat thanks to reinforcement you hide not far. But there should be other ways I didn't bother dig yet, forgive grievances, accept demand, ransak with some cultures or perhaps badges.

To control an enemy war support, firstly it's pointless against Military culture. Otherwise it's tricky, but I also didn't dig this topic. i quoted it only though some AI against which I wanted build war support and it was ultra hard. The first point is keep all armies in frontiers, so avoid any combat. Otherwise avoid create grievances against you but it's rather hard because there's many method, including influence and religion. For religion you have an edict that should disable religion grievance against you. For Influence you have an edict to lower a lot influence against you.

[yutterh]

Originally posted by Dorok:

There's no need to react to any demand, enemy demand is void if you win next war.

Reject demand has two purposes:
- Have more demands give a bit of war support against the AI at each turn. but it's a slow way.
- If you feel weak agains the AI, reject demands is with the purpose to remove an annoying demand, or force them declare war so they have war support lost at east turn, but you need be ready for the war anyway.

So in practice, don't bother reject demands if you aren't ready for a war it's hardly worth it.

To build up war support, I never dig it fully, even if I often had to build it up. The demands is a slow method. The fastest method is win some combats, so lure some stacks into a failed combat thanks to reinforcement you hide not far. But there should be other ways I didn't bother dig yet, forgive grievances, accept demand, ransak with some cultures or perhaps badges.

To control an enemy war support, firstly it's pointless against Military culture. Otherwise it's tricky, but I also didn't dig this topic. i quoted it only though some AI against which I wanted build war support and it was ultra hard. The first point is keep all armies in frontiers, so avoid any combat. Otherwise avoid create grievances against you but it's rather hard because there's many method, including influence and religion. For religion you have an edict that should disable religion grievance against you. For Influence you have an edict to lower a lot influence against you.

The original poster accepted a demand, not rejected. The AI attack them after accepting their demands.

[Dorok]

Yes but you suggested a pointless reject. I explained why it was pointless, just ignore instead.

[yutterh]

Originally posted by Dorok:

Yes but you suggested a pointless reject. I explained why it was pointless, just ignore instead.

So I did lmao my bad

[想不想]

No doubt, this is a fool design. Even if I had forced AI to surrender 2 rounds ago, even if AI now has only the last territory/city left, even if AI has no troops anymore. As long as I make a request or refuse AI's request, the AI will immediately or in the next round pop up a declaration of war request, unless I withdraw my request. There is no diplomacy at all. It's just unilateral s-h-i-t. So that I had to wipe AI out of the map completely. I mean, in low difficulty, military AI will be like this. In high difficulty, such as humankind, the same is true of peaceful AI.

[Dorok]

It's not systematic, I never saw your case. You case would worth a bug submit.

There are actions that won't generate a grievance and still decrease relationship with AI. It's quite probable that grievances duration is lower than the corresponding effect on relationship with AI.

But there are two elements that push AI to wars no matter real relationship:
- No matter AI traits when it is being cornered without expansion possibilities it will go to war, except if you are much more powerful. If that's the case of this AI don't search further, that's the problem.
- If you are too weak military, except Pacifist AI, most AI will tend make war with you sooner or later.

For the military power, it's clear, ensure have good armies and not hide them. I wouldn't suggest put them at AI frontier which is perhaps considered as an aggression, but not far from it.

For AI expansion possibilities, for sure there's a long phase of territory expansion, but if you want avoid war to focus more on different targets, you need consider neighbors position to let them place to expand. It's often very tempting to be greedy and try block an AI with territory expansion, but it's not often that useful.

Beside some awful Neolithic start, I never have problem to share the cake to have a large part and ensure each AI on the continent have a fair share even if smaller. But this require have done a serious scouting, and sometimes it can be tricky. The typical tricky case is one or two AI packed, letting behind them large territories and you didn't scout them, you can think the cake is quite smaller than it is really.