The_Hawk said:
PE, lucaluca, my apologies; I was unclear. I'm not complaining about smart, capable AI; I love smart, capable AI. That's not what this thread is about. This thread is about the penchant of the AI under 1.03 to make peace and then immediately break it.
And I probably overstated my case. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see if somebody has the same experience with same-religion wars. As far as I have seen, it is mainly a case of wars between religious enemies - and they are governed by special rules.
My theory (which I failed to state) is that this is related to alliances somehow -- that failing to make peace with the right people in the right order will drag folks back into war. This is notable in Iberia, because by and large the Spanish kings all ally with one another, and the Emirs all ally with one another as well.
And my theory is that it is because the AI uses one set of rules for when to make peace and another for when to declare war. The point being that - at least in the Iberian case - there is very little reason to make peace in the first place, and every reason to declare war upon weaker religious enemies (next to no ill consequences) - no matter whether they are weaker because somebody else or yourself has killed off most of their manpower.
I.e. it makes peace based on something like "long war, the other party offers his entire treasury, how nice, perhaps I
should get a bit of R&R" - and then, when regiments are demobilized makes war based on "how nice, I have an army ten times as large as my neighbour, who is a religious enemy, perhaps I should put him out of his misery".
A split personality of sorts.
Honestly, the AI routines now seem highly convoluted, to the point that any declaration of war in a mutually hostile area such as Spain leads to an explosion of wars involving virtually everybody who is or could be allied. Example: As Flanders, I warred on Barcelona, who had no allies of significance. For some reason this caused Cordoba to declare war on Navarre, who was my ally, presumably to stop me from making war in Spain. The solution? Simply not support my ally, which doesn't seem to have any negative effect for me. This just doesn't seem like the way things are supposed to work.
I would guess that Corboda attacked Navarre because Navarre was weak, not because of your actions (unless your actions weakened Navarre). Corboda often attacks Navarre.
AI routines are beyond the ken of mortal men such as myself; but similar to the example above, while I'm sure there's some reason the code tells the AI to make peace and declare war repeatedly, it doesn't seem like the way things are supposed to work. Peace means peace; if the AI doesn't want peace, it shouldn't make it. Do you still take a BB hit for declaring war while in the target province? Because if you do, the AI is probably wrecking itself by doing this...
There is NO BB for sneak attacks upon religious enemies anymore. There is, however, a small prestige hit for breaking a truce. The Muslim AI dynasties are certainly not wrecking themselves by fighting an on/off Jihad vs. the Christians - just witness how they usually manage to overrun Spain within a generation or two.
I quite agree that it would be more aesthetically pleasing if the AI did not make peace in the first place, when it is just going to declare war again (though it
does earn some money this way in exactly the way human players drained AI muslims/pagans of money in 1.01 and 1.02 - it only gets smaller amounts because people actually use their money), but that does not necessarily make its declarations of war insane (as the title proclaims).
What
is annoying is the cases where nobody ever gains anything and keep declaring war, failing to attack, and make white peace within a few days, as in Cagliostro's original example.
That is actually damaging to the dynasties involved, as they may get to pay a minor prestige hit and possibly some monthly army upkeep.
