Quote Originally Posted by Didz View Post
I don't. I agree that the reasons can vary widely, only recently we have experienced a war that so far has killed over a million people and the basic reason my country was involved was that Tony Blair knew he needed a war to boost his popularity in the public opinion polls or he would lose his grasp on power. You don't get much more varied than that.

However, I don't think even Blair thought the war would be the disaster it has been. I think he actually believed Bushes fantasy idea that it would be a quick surgical strike, that he would be hailed as a hero of democracy, get to parade around Iraq have his pictures taken being worshipped by its newly appointed overlords and walk into another five years of power just like Maggie Thatcher did after the Falklands War. Both he and Bush got a nasty surprise, Bush even made the mistake of declaring the war over. So, yes the reason for a war can be very varied but even Bush and Blair didn't think they would lose out, by starting one.

However, all that is irrelevent to the discoveryI've made and I think you are missing the point. This is a strategy game, and most of us bought this game because we wanted to play a strategy game, and no matter what the reason nations do not go to war unless they think they can gain something from it, even if what they hope to gain is actually based upon a political fabrication.

What I've discovered is that none of this applies to the 'dumb diplomacy' problem. Which is just the result of a programmer have laugh at our expense. The good news is that there is a way to give this little git the finger and carry on playing the game properly.

I am now at 1715 in my game and France has remained happy and silent in its own personal war of self-annihilation. Not very clever for France but at least I've managed to avoid going down with them.

The bottom line is that if you are happy to be shafted by a geek with a god complex then thats up to you, but a lot of people on this forum have expressed disatisfaction with the diplomacy system, and it seems most of these problems can be justifiably blamed on a geeks bad sense of humour.
Hear, Hear !

Things that don’t affect game play are fine.

A very occasional surprise would be one thing, though in the game as it stands it is endemic and ubiquitous. Damn their eyes!