Yeah, if the AI is on a smart enough level, they will react to a build up in their sectors. But if you have battle ships and they only have star fighters, you can have your ships in and attacking their stars before they have time to react.

Go to the UN.

yep. declare war should be an option. if you or an AI attacks someone they have not declared war with (either by Declare War or by offering to declare war in a trade), then that empire should get a shift towards evil. If they are nice and declare war before attacking, then they get a shift towards good.

~SDC~

There should be an option to declare war. Sometimes you don't want to be "sneaky". Instead you want to tell the enemy ambassador face to face yhey are going down.

Also, a suggestion I read in another post. The fact you fight one "skirmish" with another race should NOT be an automatic declaration of war. Much more flexible and realistic diplomatically if you can claim the one battle was an "accident" due to hot-headed troops, etc. The enemy race would of course remember the incident and take repeated affronts as a declaration of war.

>So you'd like to see an actual declare war treaty in diplomacy then?

Frogboy, YES! Please. In real life nations declare war. In real life one battle does NOT equal a declaration of war. This could really use refinement.

formally declaring war should not shift towards good. it would lead to temptation to continuously declare war and then immediately make peace in order to boost alignment ( since being good makes the game easier via influence and diplomacy ).

but a sneak attack should definitely be evil since it provides an immediate benefit.

cheers

h

well, you'd have to attack after declaring war to get the shift of course. Then the shift would also need to consider whether the victim was recently an ally. I think after you did it 1 or 2 times, the AI would not accept peace so quickly so you wouldn't get to abuse the system.

~SDC~

i would like to see something in the treaty screen where we can declare war....I read somewhere that someone had asked if it was possible to add to your "good guy" rating if you formally declare war, and add to your "evil dude" rating if you sneak attack without formal war declaration....that would be cool, if possible....

But, yes, I think it would need a war declaration in the treaty screen...

I haven't missed the "declare war" option - but perhaps I'm not as honorable as some of you.

It would be nice to "threaten war" as a negotiation tool. Just my 0.02

~SDC~

A button to "threaten" war is more appropriate than a button to just "declare" it. The reason being I cannot think of an actual battle that was declared before an attack. Throughout human history, there has been threats, buildups, and then finally someone fires the first shot. Curiously similar to how GC handles things.

Bill

~SDC~

As an example, numerous nations declared war in WW2 before they started tossing their troops around.

Usually, there will first be an ultimatum (would be equivalent to a "threaten war" option in the diplo screen) then there will be a formal declaration of war if the ultimatum is rejected.


~SDC~

But isn't what started WWII an act of aggression? Then everyone took sides and started the whole mess? Kind of like when, in GC, you attack one superpower and all the allies jump in?

Bill

~SDC~

Actually many took a side of "Neutral" at the start of WWII, including the United States. The US didn't declare war until 3 years after WWII started. That is also why there was such a reaction to Pearl Harbor was it was a "sneak attack" as there was no war declared between countries involved.

I'm with all of the above, attacking without a declaration moves you to evil, and have both a declaration and threaten war. I don't know if there is this option since I dont have Galciv (Yet the way things are sounding ) but also have an option to tell allies to make peace with others. So you don't get the Civ3 problem of making peace, then an ally who is still at war with them drags you back into it.

I understand what you guys are getting at. You would like a chance to formally declare war. I was trying to genaralize. To me, building up your forces or sending a fleet of warships to surround a planet is a good way of stating your intentions. But, using the WWII example, didn't Germany just march into Poland and that started the whole thing?

Bill

~SDC~