Why does the AI declare war just because I am weak?

Generally, the likeliness of a faction to declare war on you will depend greatly on your alignment choice. If you are Benevolent, Malevolent factions will most likely declare war on you, and vice-versa. Other Benevolent races will almost never declare war on you, especially if you are not close to winning. The Iconians, for example, have never declared war on me when I play benevolent. The Altarians never declare war on me either, even if they have ten times more power. Pragmatic races may or may not declare war on you, usually depending on things like treaties and borders, and even when they do, they will usually end the fighting much quicker. At least, I have never had prolonged war with a Pragmatic race on the seldom occasion that I do.

The easiest way to maintain peace is to play Pragmatic. Of course, Diplomacy itself is not a very effective part of the game right now for those interested in maintaining peace. They are working on it though, especially with the recent diplomacy updates, so I can only say hang on tight and wait.

Nilfiry is right. I usually play towards pragmatic and try to trade with the AI factions and I'm often successful in maintaining peace even if my military is weak.

Well I am playing an evil faction and I am getting threats and mocking messages from almost every faction I have met so far. I was able to make friends with the iconians by bribing them and by forming trade routes and because we have a common foe but they are my only ally. Even minor races are trying to extort me for money.

There's actually an awful lot of scripted stuff for giving the AI personality - the majority of the diplo files are different weights on different actions depending on if the AI is benevolent, a trader, aggressive etc. I just think the weights on modifiers are too heavy compared to the relations scale - a +3 or -3 is massive on a scale of 10--10, but you can stack up several quite easily, so it becomes difficult to see the difference between factions.

Did they actually declare war on you, though? Also, minor races will try to do that all the time, regardless of your faction's strength. It is actually much easier to extort them!

Ok, this isn't even funny. Now I got dowd' by a faction who's location I am not even aware of. And I haven't seen them send any ships. Oddly I also never got any message from them I just saw that I am at war with them on the diplo screen.

Yup, just got dow'd by a yet another race on the other end of the map. I am now at war with 5 races. Looks like this game won't be won peacefully, if at all.

Seriously guys, this is just NONSENSE. There is nothing realistic about this kind of diplomacy. "Oh sure this nation is located on the other end of the map and has done us no ill, but they are weak so let's kill them for no reason!".

I laughed and laughed at this That's pretty much where all those giant European empires of the last 400 years came from... and most of the other large empires previously, though they had smaller maps.

But yeah, it's not much fun in the game. I think there's a bug somewhere which is preventing the AI from correctly checking it's relations before doing certain diplo actions. The ones which have hard lockouts (i.e., the option isn't even available until relation X) work, but those which use 'soft' checks (the option is always there but the AI weighs it up against relations before deciding) appear to trigger regardless. This may also be circumventing the distance check.

Quoting naselus, reply 8

I laughed and laughed at this That's pretty much where all those giant European empires of the last 400 years came from... and most of the other large empires previously, though they had smaller maps.

End of naselus's quote

Well those European powers at least:

1. Had the means to get to them.

2. Were controlled by greedy dictatorships.

Even the pragmatic and "good" powers dow me. And regardless of if they can reach me. It means I am cut of from possible trading partners for no reason. It sucks.

 Another thing that drives me mad is that every time I have discovered a new faction I instantly start with the worst relations possible for nothing I have done because all of them start with 3 traits that give me massive diplo minuses:

We love war!

EDIT: What causes this one to happen anyway?

Your planets are ripe for conquest!

Your weak!

Your ideas are different!

Or something like that. It means I am not even given so much as a chance to become friends with anybody I meet. With the exception of the Iconians whom I was able to befriend by sending some traders to them and by bribing them before relations got too low, I have started with horrible relations to every single race I have met and then been dowed by them some time afterward.

Is this how the game's diplomacy works like? Have a powerful army or be dow'd by every race in the game?

The horrible thing is that I am not able to increase my army power because all of my ships are instantly spent defending my empire from alien attacks so my army power remains mostly static, and thus I remain weak. And then because I remain weak I am automatically hated and dow'd by every new race I discover making things even more difficult. It's a vicious cycle I can't escape from.

Have you tried researching the diplomacy techs in the cultural tree?  Building embassies?  Do enough of that and everyone will love you.

I have researched some diplomatic techs. I don't have any minuses for diplomatic skills. The other things I mentioned are enough to destroy any relations.

Of course!

Pragmatism means that if they can do something they will do it regardless of morals or ethics.

Good doesn't mean these races are pacifistic, that they are just there as a freegift for aggressors. It means that they are *opposed* to your ethics - which is evil. Just forget about the description for a moment, it could be up or down, left or right etc. The important implication is that it creates a diversity and thus, give a reason to wage war. Without such mechanisms in place you could easily play out any map without being threatened ever...

Then I don't understand why you pick an evil-ethical race but try to play a pacifistic low-militaristic game...? That doesn't make sense...

Ironically the AI tells you what is wrong with your game

getting a military up will prevent some AIs from declaring war on you, and about the ethical mismatch you'll have to accept that there's not much what you can do to do away with that difference. usually eliminate those of different ethics and align with similar ethical factions. if you don't want to do that on your own you could try to support specific empires might do that for you

"We love war!" means that the AI has chosen to go for a conquest victory.

This is one of the problems with the idea of victory conditions. It makes factions in 4x games behave unrealistically for the sake of winning the game. What happens if I turn all victory conditions off?

Then the AI won't get the 'we love war' modifier, ever. It can still hate you for all the other reasons, though, and 'we love war' by itself isn't really sufficient to cause conflicts.

You're being targeted by all the AIs because you've under-invested in weapons research and ships (and because the military scoring system is a bit ropey and works in mysterious ways). If you're getting "Your planets are ripe for conquest!" then it sees you as VERY weak, like less-then-half-it's-score weak. Everyone will attack you at that stage because you're the softest target and they all want to get a piece of you before some other empire takes the lot. This is not unrealistic - it's happened to Poland about five times in the last 300 years (and Poland didn't exist for about 120 of them).

I think the advice about building embassies and related buildings is very good - I try to build an embassy on every planet (not always possible especially on the smaller worlds, but that's what I shoot for).

Rapidly research some military weapons techs and start putting hulls in the vacuum. That will deter the distant and protect you from the near-by. I find that my having Planetary Invasion gives them pause. Or gives me ownership of their planets...

Tech is calculated as being a part of the score? And how does the AI even know what techs you have? That sounds like cheating to me. Wasn't this game suppose to have non-cheating AI? Because I remember that being considered a feature.

Well it sounds like you need more evil races on the game I go 1/3 on all. You either need, or what I recommend which is editing your factions for 1/3 of each ideology.

If this was a game like Civilisation I`d say well it`s in Human Nature to prey upon the weak. However, you make a good point about Alien nations always attacking if you`re weak. Shouldn`t some alien nations not attack you cos you`re weak just because they don`t work like that?

Of course, that said, it`s all very well that the player whines, but I`m pretty sure he`ll attack anyone he sees as weak. I doubt he leaves a vulnerable weak nation alone.

They have those it's called a minor race.

perhaps there once evolved some of these in the galaxy, but then they got extinguished by the now remaining war mongering races (in events that took place before this game)  

More imagination required here.

There may be a peaceful Alien race that is simply so powerful, it can`t be defeated by other powerful races, yet it has no wish to overwhelm others simply because it is not `made` that way. Perhaps it had so much time isolated that it became that way. Perhaps it exists in such way it cannot be killed (ethereal for example).

It`s entirely possible for a peaceful alien race to exist which has not been touched by more powerful, violent races, if that peaceful race has some unique characteristic that protects it from violent conquest.

Remember, we must think out of the box. Too often we Humans think aliens should act like how we act. That`s not necessarilly the case because as I`ve said already, they`re alien, from alien worlds.

In most games these aliens exist, as a species that tries to manipulate the scenes in the background, out of harms way. We had the Drath before, unfortunately now they are gone. They were one of my favourite races.

The Drath were an essential race to keep the game from being boring. The minor races don't like war. You know you could manipulate some ai stradegies to do this perhaps you could make a more peaceful mod for those who like those kind of games. Or you could make these kind of races, by modding strategies.