Abusing diplomacy

[Bhranthan]

I noticed that the diplomacy system can be abused quite easily.
If you wish to fight another realm, you can simply join in without declaring war against anyone.
You could defend your allies land by signing an alliance, fight your enemy anywhere even loot enemy regions rogue, without declaring war.
Now there is nothing wrong with that in my opinion per ce.

But it does help you circumvent diplomacy game mechanics, where your peasants would protest against wars they don't like(which is a quite powerful feature).

As long as relations are on neutral, aggressive or murderous settings will be enough to engage the enemy alone, thus allow you do anything else you'd be able to WITH a war declaration then without.
I've seen that its definitively worth it to circumvent these mechanics as they can cause allot of trouble.

[Chenier]

If you want to attack, alone, sure, you can pull this off. If you want to be part of a coalition, or to defend someone else, you are likely to just watch your allies fight before taking your turn against the common enemy.

[Bhranthan]

If you want to attack, alone, sure, you can pull this off. If you want to be part of a coalition, or to defend someone else, you are likely to just watch your allies fight before taking your turn against the common enemy.

Not if you ally your self with them.

[vonGenf]

I've always seen this as a feature, not a bug. It's realistic, too.

[Chenier]

Not if you ally your self with them.

No, not even then.

Search these forums and you'll see a ton of examples of people complaining about how their armies didn't fight alongside their allies, to which they were all answered: just use diplomacy correctly.

Murderous can also make you attack your allies. And neither murderous nor aggressive will make you fight anyone else if your troops control the region.

[De-Legro]

In my opinion this is something that should be handled by the players. If a realm was always conducting war this way, then either the continent decides it is unacceptable and does something about it, or they decide it is a valid form of warfare on the island.

[Anaris]

Given 3 realms, A, B, and C, with A at war with C:

• If A and B are allied, and in a region belonging to A or B, A and B will defend together against C.
• If A and B are allied, and A is attacking C, B will probably not join in the attack.
• If A and B are not allied, and all three arrive in a region belonging to A, A will defend against C, and B will sit out.
• If A and B are not allied, and all three arrive in a region belonging to B, there will be no battle.
• If A and B are not allied, and all three arrive in a region belonging to C, A will attack C, and B will sit out.

I'm reasonably sure this is accurate. If I'm wrong, hopefully someone will catch my mistake.

Basically, the moral of the story is:

If you want to defend alongside another realm, make them your ally or don't complain.
If you want to fight against another realm, declare war on them or don't complain.
If you want another realm to fight alongside you, make sure they are allied with you and at war with your enemies, or you're likely to have problems.

[Indirik]

I noticed that the diplomacy system can be abused quite easily.
If you wish to fight another realm, you can simply join in without declaring war against anyone.
You could defend your allies land by signing an alliance, fight your enemy anywhere even loot enemy regions rogue, without declaring war.
Now there is nothing wrong with that in my opinion per ce.

But it does help you circumvent diplomacy game mechanics, where your peasants would protest against wars they don't like(which is a quite powerful feature).

As long as relations are on neutral, aggressive or murderous settings will be enough to engage the enemy alone, thus allow you do anything else you'd be able to WITH a war declaration then without.
I've seen that its definitively worth it to circumvent these mechanics as they can cause allot of trouble.

As others have said, this is known and expected behavior, with quite a few caveats and gotchas.

To put it plainly, an Alliance will allow you to help someone defend. If your ally is the defender, you will join in to help defend them against attackers. However, simply being allied/federated with someone will NOT cause your army to join an attack with them against another realm. If you want to join in the attack, then you have to be at war with the defender. If you try and just set Murderous setting to get around that, then you may very well end up being the Attacker against your ally who is the Defender.

In addition, your enemies can use these same loopholes (they're not really abuses) against you. If they can arrange to be the defenders, then they can prevent the not-at-war-enemy from joining the battle. They can steal the walls right out from under you by having neutral allies move in and camp there for a turn change, then following them in a turn later.

The addition of other realms to the mix, who also have confused diplomacy, can even result in some realms switching sides. We had a battle on AT with Suville where, due to AT's totally F'ed up diplomacy, Tara ended up attacking the people they were defending-but-not-allied-with, because they are allied-but-at-war-with Strombran who is allied with Suville who is at war with Caergoth ... Damn, I can't even remember the whole situation, it's so screwed up. BUt I sure remember laughing my ass off seeing those Tarzans attacking the people they are supposed to be defending.

So, yeah, you can use the "loopholes" in the diplomacy system to wage a war against other realms without declaring the war. But unless you can describe in detail the seven steps that the battle system uses to set up the sides in a battle, don't expect it to work like you think it should. And when it blows up in your face, don't come to the forums complaining about how the system is full of bugs. Or, go ahead, and we'll explain how it worked exactly as designed, and then get a good chuckle out of how you and your "enemy" teamed up to massacre the people you were trying to defend because a group of four monsters wandered onto the field where your three 20K CS armies were about to wage a glorious battle,

[Penchant]

With AT for example, if Strombran was out of the situation, Tara could attack Suville no problem without needing to use murderous settings. Using murderous settings is asking for trouble as its completely unnecessary, you can attack a realm you are neutral with by using aggressive. The big disadvantage to not declaring war is that you can't take over regions. Whether or not Tara can even declare war, I am not sure about because like you said, F'ed up diplomacy.

Btw, what happened was Strombran and Suville were sitting in a region. Carelia and a Taran or two attacked, which they aren't even supposed to do. Tara is federated with Strombran, so when Carelia attacked they defended their federation partners.

[Chenier]

And I would add that defending is more complex than simply being the region owner. Often, the invading realm is the defender.

[Indirik]

The big disadvantage to not declaring war is that you can't take over regions.

Drive rogue -> TO. Problem solved.

[Indirik]

And I would add that defending is more complex than simply being the region owner. Often, the invading realm is the defender.

Yep. This is quite common. I can, off-hand, think of at least two situations where this could be the case.

[Eldargard]

Would it not make sense for both declarations of war against a realm the commoners are sympathetic to and attacks against a realm the commoners are sympathetic with to both result is trouble for the offending realm?

[Penchant]

Drive rogue -> TO. Problem solved.

Thats a common strategy but you can hardly call that problem solved because when you drive it rogue you give yourself a region that is near worthless for months then whereas if you have just declared war you could have took it over without destroying the region. The supposed abuse though rarely happens because realms that truly at war have always declared war AFAIK. The time that realms aren't declaring war is because they are just supporting an ally and don't actually want to personally be at war.

[De-Legro]

And we are also forgetting the sure fire way to prevent this "abuse". The realm you are attacking without a war declaration can always declare war upon you.