The AI is very, very stupid in this build. It's apparently better in the next one, but we don't have the next one yet.

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Hi.  I played a whole lot of GalCiv 2 in the past and have now jumped in on GalCiv 3 to see what's going on in the galaxy.

I've been playing a game as the Yor, and the Iconians keep going through the same pointless cycle:

1. They declare war.

2. Sometimes I see one of their ships flying near one of my planets.  It is a medium size ship, quite a bit stronger than my small ships.  It never attacks, and after a couple of turns, flies away.

3. Six to eight turns later, the Iconians ask for peace and I accept.

A dozen or so turns later, they declare war again and the same cycle repeats.  It's now gotten quite annoying.    

What's the point of declaring war if they aren't going to attack?

Their trying to extort money and techs from you for you to ask them for peace? the drengin do this to me accept peace then 2-5 turns later they declare war again.

There are other AI erratic, poor choices and strategies too. I assume it will be better in the next build as they've said.

In my experience, it can often be explained by looking at the motivators in the Diplomacy window. "You are out of our reach" or however it goes is typically the reason - they're pissed off enough at you to declare war (if you're avoiding building up a military at the start, this'll easily cause early declarations of war), but they don't bother to check if they can actually send warships out your way before declaring war. Then it's "oh... right... nevermind."