How Do You Declare War?

I know, it's probably the dumbest question ever asked.

from Stardock Forums

Is it possible to formally declare war on another species, and if you don't and just start attacking them does that incur diplomatic penalties?

 

I can't seem to find anywhere in the interface to declare war.  I can negotiate for other species to declare war on each other, but there doesn't seem to be a way for me to invite myself to the party.  Do I just jump in and start shooting the place up?

8,367 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Yup. All you can do is attack.

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

There is an option to declar war in the diplomacy screen. If I recall correctly, this option was added in the expansions.

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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

In DA and TA you can explicitly declare war on an AI. In DL you can't directly declare war on someone however you can offer to attack one AI (or a minor) to another AI or minor for free and the end result is that you will be in a state of war with the AI you offered to attack without having to actually have physical contact with the particular AI although you do have to have met them.

This can be a very useful feature however there are restrictions. For one you cannot offer to attack an ally, or even someone whose relations with you are "close". I'm not sure but you might not even be able to offer to attack someone if their relations with you are merely "warm" so keep that in mind as well. You also need to have a third party available. You can't offer to attack the AI that you're speaking to.

Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Yeah, I noticed that, too.  I wanted to demand the Arceans stop building their military starbase in my territory ... or else!  I could demand they give me the starbase, but they took that as a request for tribute.  I had no way to communicate my displeasure at their provocation.

I also couldn't convey to them my perception of the intensity of their provocation.

Lots of strategy games have ways to make threats, and most of them allow conditional threats, "Do X or I'll declare war," and a refusal actually puts you in a state of war.  The AI "knows" (as much as an AI is capable of knowing things) what the stakes are.

With the GC series and Master of Orion series threats are implied: "We demand tribute of resource X," where X is any of numerous possibilities, is an option both you and an AI opponent can choose, but you can't explicitly tie it to anything negative.

Given how sophisticated GCII's AI is, where it actually "knows" a particular action like building an influence base in the middle of your territory is a casus belli, it should be able to tell the difference between a player demanding tribute versus a player calling shenanigans.

But if you give me a choice between a smart AI with an unsophisticated interface versus a brain-dead AI with a very sophisticated one, I'll choose the former.  Emperor of the Fading Suns AI was so bad it couldn't put up a fight the first time I played it, but wow did it have some cool diplomatic options.  Yawn.