Difficulty Level and Declarations of War

[Didz]

That business where the AI declares war on you for leaving a Regional Capital unguarded is really lazy programming. What it ought to do is consider the relative strengths and weaknesses, and make a assessment as to whether it can win the war, before it actually plunges in like an idiot.

[SwordsMaster]

I think difficulty is rather irrelevant. I'm playing a french campaign on H/M and for the last 6 turns I've been getting DoWs at a rate of pretty much one per turn from people I don't actually have a border with.

Funnily enough, I'd say this is somehow affected by the number of trading partners you have. I noticed a sharp increase in DoWs after getting myself 4 more "trade for military access" deals...

[Prussian to the Iron]

That business where the AI declares war on you for leaving a Regional Capital unguarded is really lazy programming. What it ought to do is consider the relative strengths and weaknesses, and make a assessment as to whether it can win the war, before it actually plunges in like an idiot.

this is a great idea, but instead of only considering forces, it should also consider the current situation and nationalism (country A is the attacker, country Z is the defender):


-is country 'Z' ready to attack country 'A'?
-does country 'Z' have any troops near country 'A's border?
-does country 'A' feel oppressed from country 'Z'?
-is the country 'Z' fighting multiple wars on fronts away from country 'A'?
-can country 'Z' pull troops away from another front to country 'A's front without losing any ground?
-are the other warring countries capable of pushing into country 'Z'?
-does country 'Z' have the will or capability of pushing on into country 'A' if country 'A's army is defeated?
-does country 'A' have the resources to carry on an offensive war, and to recruit guards for the newly captured cities?
-does country 'Z' have enough resources/tactical cities to justify a war?
-can country 'A' defeat country 'Z' on the seas?
-does either side have the ships required to blockade the other?
-does country 'Z' have good infrastructure/buildings comapred to country 'A'?

i think for now thats good, but they really should use these and not just:

"so, we neighbor you, and even though we're trading with you, we'll still attack you and then get our asses handed to us and be destroyed, when the only thing we could have gained in the first place was 2 backwater regions with few possible towns, no ports, and can only build governor buildings"

that was what georgia and dagestan did in my russian campaign. had they been smart like my list, than they might have waited until i had gotten all of my troops into sweden and Prussia. in fact, i had no intentions of attacking them. i was going to go arond the caspian sea, through the desert, and around to attack persia.

[Quickening]

I must be playing a different game to most people. I just ended a campaign as Prussia on Very Hard/Very Hard and the AI just would not declare war on me. I never like to initiate war and by the time 1750 came around only two factions, Courland and Poland-Lithuania had declared war on me but I'd only gained three territories from it because the latter asked for peace soon after I took Warsaw.

Anyway the point is, my problem is that the AI doesn't declare war enough! I hate being the badguy to instigate conflict and since the AI won't do it I simply run out of years to win.