I don't know a lot of details about AI diplomacy, but my recollections are:
1) In general, if you have a NAP with someone, they will dissolve the NAP before declaring war (at least one turn before). Erratic war declarations (I think) and the Diplo event (I'm sure) can both break this rule, going straight to war from NAP or even Alliance, but most wardecs by erratic leaders actually follow the regular rules; only the special "shall we randomly make war with someone this year?" roll results in going direct to war.
2) Yes, I'm pretty sure the Meks will abstain if they've met neither us nor the birds.
3) I'm guesstimating that if they don't get any tech increases and we use the current Nuker design, we'll need a little over 350 bombers to take out Cryslon's defenses, but if we use only that many, we should expect to lose nearly all of them. If the Silis get ECM3, we'll need over 550 bombers. If they instead get BC4, it would be more like 650. If they get a planetary shield up (without any computer tech) we would need over 750. If they get Scatters, even without any other tech, we'd need ... to basically just leave them alone. (Until we have Stabilizers or better engines anyway.) I haven't thought about other bomber designs, but with current tech, I don't think we can do better than Ianus's Nukers. So my guess is that we should either go hard for Cryslon ASAP or reluctantly table the project (I lean toward the latter). Of course I would love to be proven wrong!
1) In general, if you have a NAP with someone, they will dissolve the NAP before declaring war (at least one turn before). Erratic war declarations (I think) and the Diplo event (I'm sure) can both break this rule, going straight to war from NAP or even Alliance, but most wardecs by erratic leaders actually follow the regular rules; only the special "shall we randomly make war with someone this year?" roll results in going direct to war.
2) Yes, I'm pretty sure the Meks will abstain if they've met neither us nor the birds.
3) I'm guesstimating that if they don't get any tech increases and we use the current Nuker design, we'll need a little over 350 bombers to take out Cryslon's defenses, but if we use only that many, we should expect to lose nearly all of them. If the Silis get ECM3, we'll need over 550 bombers. If they instead get BC4, it would be more like 650. If they get a planetary shield up (without any computer tech) we would need over 750. If they get Scatters, even without any other tech, we'd need ... to basically just leave them alone. (Until we have Stabilizers or better engines anyway.) I haven't thought about other bomber designs, but with current tech, I don't think we can do better than Ianus's Nukers. So my guess is that we should either go hard for Cryslon ASAP or reluctantly table the project (I lean toward the latter). Of course I would love to be proven wrong!