War declaration messages

[Seravy]

I've been wondering, at the moment, war declarations are pretty generic and often make no sense in the situation like "you have tried my patience" 2 turns after meeting a wizard and stuff like that.
Chaotic war declaration has a specific message group and can be easily recognized but the others, no.
I wonder if we should use the unused message slots and make it so that each type of war declaration uses a different text group?
One for helping allies, one for military expansion, one for same army power, one for low relation score, and one for repeated warnings?
Or do we keep this the way it is since it's not as fun if you always know what's causing a war?

Or we can reword the existing ones to be even more generic and take out stuff that refers to "patience" and stuff?

Also I'm wondering, shouldn't Death Wish and Great Unsummoning have a diplomatic penalty? Global enchantments that stay in play do, these don't even though they directly kill units!

[zitro1987]

I'd like the messages of war declaration to be more specific. We can even use this thread to brainstorm well-written statements of war. As far as categories, the 5 you listed seem to cover most situations. I'd merge attacking/conquering/cursing an opponent into the 'military expansion' message type maybe.

Death Wish and Great Unsummoning should have a significant diplomatic penalty as you're pretty much killing their units, just in a less direct way.

[namad]

I always just assumed great unsummoning and death wish had penalties.

[Seravy]

All right, this is the full list of conditions that can cause the AI to declare war to the human player :

1. Chaotic personality random roll. This one already has a specific message group and needs no change.
2. Militarist and Expansionist objective declaring war on a player having weak military strength.
3. Relation being lower than -40 while the difficulty level exceeds the number of wars the player is currently involved in.
4. The player being at war with the AI's ally.
5. The player failing a roll on a repeated warning message.
6. The player having nearly equal military power to the AI (or very bad relationship penalizes this check to stray further from the "equal" point)
7. The player conquering the wizard's city successfully

However if I remember well we only have 5 free message group slots. 3 and 7 most likely should use the same "I hate you" type of message without other explanation. 2 should probably refer to "My armies demand war" or "I must expand" and equivalent. 4 should refer to other wizards asking for it either directly or indirectly. 5 should be the "you tried my patience" type message.
Not sure about 6, aside from paranoia (and the nature of this game) there is no real reason to declare war on someone equally strong. I guess this is where the AI should come up with generic excuses like "the circumstances changed" and the like.

By the way, in case of breaking a treaty through the "need for war" procedure, the same problem is present, but we definitely don't have enough message groups to do the same for that. So this unfortunately has to stay generic, in 99% of the cases a war declaration of the same type will follow anyway. Also, broken treaty to repeated warnings is different, that one has its own texts for each type of warning already. So in case of treaties, only 2, 3 , 4 and 6 are using generic messages. 5 has specific and 1 or 7 cannot break a treaty, it always starts a war instead.

Oh and there is one more :
8. If a "stop the spell of mastery" warning is being made there is a 10% chance for war, without a war declaration message.
I think we can ignore this one as the warning speaks for itself even without the AI explicitly saying a war started.

[Seravy]

Successfully implemented the war declaration message system.

Still undecided on Great Unsummoning and Death Wish, while the penalty would make sense, the spells cannot be specifically targeted at a wizard meaning to use them against one enemy, you'd have to go to war with all 4 of them and that's...not good, in fact makes the spell outright useless (unless you are already at war with everyone or can afford doing that). This problem is even worse for the AI which has a lot of casting power on higher difficulty and will use these spells very frequently, meaning they'll end up at war with everyone, even their allies. It's especially bad for Great Unsummoning because Sorcery strongly relies on making allies and cannot handle a 4 way war at all.
How "bad" these are for a wizard is also hard to measure, even if they lose 100 units, if they are your ally and your common enemy lost 500 then it was helping your ally and they shouldn't get angry for it.

so yeah, the penalty would make sense but it would be bad for gameplay (especially if it is high) and that's a greater priority. Death Wish might be fine (Death does pretty well in a multi front war) but unsummoning, not so much.

[Seravy]

The list of messages for each type of war :

Warning type
- X, I have warned you repeatedly, now my patience ran out. Prepare for war!
- It seems trying to reason with you is impossible. Now we have to resort to using force!
- Our mouth did the talking until today. Tomorrow our weapons will make you listen!
- I believe the great X has deaf ears. Our soldiers can fix that by cutting them off your head.

Alliance type
- I have nothing against you, but under these circumstances I have no choice but to attack.
- You dare to attack my friends? You'll pay for that by your blood!
- Did you seriously think I will not help my ally to eliminate you? Fool!
- The time for talk has passed. Prepare to meet our allied forces on the battlefield!
- Our spellcasting union has decided you are a threat to the world and must be eliminated!

Generic type (Army sizes getting close to each other)
-I apologize but the circumstances within my empire have changed. I must start a war against you!
-If you gain any more power, our existence will be threatened. We have to strike first!
-X, you are rapidly becoming a threat to the balance of the world. Perhaps a war will put you back into your place!
-We have beheaded our spies when they mistakenly reported the great Y is less powerful than you. Your head is next to make sure that never happens again!

Hatred type (low relation or attack their city)
-War has begun. The time for talk has passed. I never liked to talk to you anyway!
-Your presence has been tolerated long enough. Of course you know this means war!
-You cannot escape my wrath. Prepare to die, scum.
-My empire will soon cure the world of the X madness.
-I shall follow you to the ends of the world and destroy you without mercy.
-I am determined to free the world from your tyranny.
-Finally it's time to wipe you off the face of the world forever!
-You have left me only one choice : to reduce your empire to dust!
-Soon, X you will meet your ancestors.
-Soon I shall put an end to your pathetic existence.
-I always believed the world would be a better place without you. Now I'll do something about this!

Chaotic type
-I grow bored. Perhaps a war between us will add some spice.
-X, you hide between a deceptive mask of friendship. I shall strike first before you can reveal your true intentions!
-This conjunction of stars indicates that I must eradicate X from the face of the worlds.
-In a vision, the gods have decreed that I alone shall rule the world and all infidels must be destroyed. Prepare to die!
-It looks like a nice day for war. Farewell, oh mighty X!
-I have known all along that you couldn't be trusted. Now we strike first!

Militarist type
-An empire needs a proper military force to exist. X, you seem to lack that, so your lands are mine now!
-Maintaining relations with such an amateur is no longer convenient. I am mobilizing my troops and preparing for war!
-My armies are starving for blood, and yours is as good as any! Prepare to submit to our superior forces!
-I apologize, but our citizens need your territory. Surrender now or I have to take it by force!
-A peasant thinks they can call themselves a ruler without soldiers to command? I rule these lands now and you'll obey!
-I shall make an example of you for other wizards who would resist the might of Y!
-You think you can maintain a diplomatic relationship with the great Y? What insolence, you are just an ant for our troops to march on!