diplomacy quirks

[Nelphine]

Yup sprites love to hunt down cities with slearmen. Happens to me all the time. Admittedly I do it on purpose so that incoming attacks from AI are weak and my mobile defense stacks can crush them despite not being the defender.

[Arnuz]

No, units will attack any valid targets they find first, and only if none exists, are sent to the main continent.
However, intercontinental attacks are limited to a distance of 10 - if no enemies are in that range, it'll be sent to the main continent again. Red cities are further away than that. Blue cities aren't, but the distance between your eastmost city and the AI's territory is about 10 tiles - so if the stack is on the west side of Merlin's empire, if might register your city as a target as well - especially if blue cities are too well defended to attack.
As sprites are weak, it's very likely the AI assumed the stack is not good enough to attack blue cities full of units - but your cities only have some spearmen so they are a good target.

Still doesn't seem to explain why 2 wavewalking stacks have been sent to the continent. The distance of my eastmost city is 13 to his westmost bit of continent and 15 to his westmost city. The city was a neutral, he probably sent the doomstack while it was still neutral to make it all the way.

Unless.... Is it possible that Merlin considers his main continent to be the same as mine, because it's the largest and because he's founded a city there, despite the fortress being somewhere else?

[Arnuz]

Yup sprites love to hunt down cities with slearmen. Happens to me all the time. Admittedly I do it on purpose so that incoming attacks from AI are weak and my mobile defense stacks can crush them despite not being the defender.

The issue here is that Merlin is neutral with the human, while he's at war with other 2 AIs that share his continent. Edit: which is why I've got this under diplomacy quirks btw ^_^'

[Nelphine]

Mind posting a map of arcanus? I'm not near my computer can't open the save file

[Arnuz]

If you don't want this, use better garrisons.

Personally I don't mind a psycho game that manages to treat you unfairly and randomly at the same time - I'm just like that :D

But if you want to enlarge the user base, trying to address things that make no sense would be a good idea imho... Of course that's with the feasibility in mind, if stuff can't be done then it can't.

[Arnuz]

Continuing the game I've managed to pay a wizard pact with Merlin, and by giving out spells also with the others - let's see how that goes.

Nelphine: I've used rvl and reloaded, trying not to look at this...

[Nelphine]

So merlin fortress is northwest, and he's blocked from the south half of his continent by tower/node/city right?

[Nelphine]

Then my following question is, given seravys explanation, why do you think merlin shouldn't attack you? I have a feeling its a misunderstanding. OR you think that the current solution is wrong, but I'm not sure which is the case.

[Seravy]

Unless.... Is it possible that Merlin considers his main continent to be the same as mine, because it's the largest and because he's founded a city there, despite the fortress being somewhere else?

No. However if the doomstack did target a blue city, it most likely used a < shaped path towards it, putting itself a good 4-5 tiles closer to your cities on that path.

...but that's not what happened.
You say that city was already his? In that case, that is very likely his "frontier city" - the place when 1/3 of his summons will appear at. The doomstack is all Sprites, so it's safe to assume one third or even half of them comes from this city. Meaning, the stack was assembled on the ocean between this city and his home continent, putting it closer to you than blue.

The issue here is that Merlin is neutral with the human,

No, he is hostile with the human. Not in a war but hostile. Neutral only means the AI can freely choose between attacking you or not, and Merlin has chosen to attack. (You can make him reconsider by a successful threaten action, or stop it entirely with a pact.)

Then my following question is, given seravys explanation, why do you think merlin shouldn't attack you?

Well, in theory, he is at war with red, and red is accessible on the two small continents in the middle. So it would make more sense to attack them.
But the AI is an opportunist - not as much as the human player though - and will attack the closer/easier target if allowed to (and no treaty vs that personality definitely does allow it). His primary summoning location being on your continent is not helping as it means the doomstacks will usually be closer to your cities than others.

[Nelphine]

Just to see if I understand, if it wasnt crated as seravy described in the above post, but instead a stack was created near Merlin's fortress, then it would look at his home continent. It wouldn't find any valid path to any enemy target, so it would decide that continent to be an invalid target.

Additionally, it would have to designate one of the other 4 continents as the main action continent. (Specifically to give units on any continent something to do if their current continent is decided to be an invalid target.) It would do this based on both presence of enemies, and presence of his own cities. Arnuz' continent actually has the most merlin cities on it, and if blue was picked as primary enemy, it would also have the most primary enemies on it.

Going back to the stack near Merlin's capital. Since its current continent is marked as invalid, the stack will go to the main action continent*. By the above, there's a good chance that Arnuz' continent is theain action continent. Once it arrives, it then looks for a target on that continent to attack, based on defender strength and distance from the stack, and maybe a modifier to prefer the primary enemy? Since the stack is coming from the east, distance will put most of Arnuz' cities much closer than either blue or red; Arnuz' cities are probably also more poorly defended. Even though Arnuz' is not primary enemy, the other two factors make Merlin's stack choose Arnuz anyway.

*intercontinental units: they might 'see' the two northern most blue cities as possible targets within their range of 10. But if those two cities are too strongly defended to be a valid target (quite possible if Merlin's units are sprites), then they follow the normal rules and go to the main action continent as above.