War or the absence of it

[Pocus]

I'm seeing a few wars in my galaxy, but not that much. And I'm never DOWed, which is strange, considering I have set aggressiveness to 'Chaos' (the most aggressive setting), the AIs are on brutal, and my neighbors AI have 20x my military power and hate my guts and more (-115 relationships). I don't have ally either and they are not busy fighting anyone else.

So I don't get it. If I were them, I would DOW the pesky Humans and crush them with 10% of my fleet and be done. But they let me thrive and prosper.

So perhaps this is just a question of tempo and expectation. Perhaps the AIs will DOW me ultimately, in 30 years, because the game is still in its early stage and when they are busy developing, they don't DOW?

Edit: I'm not masochistic, reveling in being trashed rapidly by overpowered AIs, no... But I need tension to keep me motivated, and if I learn that the AI will not DOW me but wait for me to be ready, the tension will go away and I'll lose interest in the game.

[AFBTD]

ageod bah¡ bah¡

[Bingeling]

Your neighbor:

Is he in other wars all the time?
Is his race very passive/cautious and such?
Does he hate others more than you and prefer to fight them?

[Retreat1970]

If it's an early stage can they get to you and back?

[Pocus]

The only thing I did not check is if the races are a bit passive. For the rest, yes they are in range, not busy, powerful and they hate me.
But somehow war went to me, not from my neigbor but from a semi distant race that admitted they were bribed to DOW me! It seems veniality is not restricted to mankind [:D]

[AFBTD]

Its not about "pride" its depri...Mente

[Retreat1970]

Also remember the game engine isn't the best at war. As a human you have a distinct advantage. RetreatUE is brutal none the less so beware.

[Pocus]

I'm playing with RetreatUE mod. Can't say I'm much stressed by all my hateful neighbors though. Aside from negative relationships and race passivity what can be changed to have more wars overall?

[SirHoraceHarkness]

Have you tried declaring war on them?

[Retreat1970]

Lol. I'm in awe of your genius.

[Pocus]

ORIGINAL: SirHoraceHarkness

Have you tried declaring war on them?

Good point [:D]

The goal would be to have a decently hard game with tension. I sure can delete all my ships and then declare war to the whole galaxy for that, but this is not exactly how I want things to unfold.

[SirHoraceHarkness]

True. But maybe try it on a weaker empire who is farther away and see if that gets the rest to declare war. Just make sure to save first. [:'(]

[Pocus]

I'll rest my case. Not that I got DOW'ed, but I see that there are now a lot of wars around me. Probably tensions are building up because Empires are stepping on each other.

I don't know though why exactly I'm spared the wrath of my neighbors, me with my meager fleet compared to them. And they so hate my guts. This might be because I maintain warships in systems they control, and top that with trade sanctions to anyone who has an innate bias toward the Humans.

Was it luck? Is it a built-in bias in favor of the player, despite me playing at almost max diff level with max galaxy aggro? I'll never know. Soon I'll DOW my neighbor though, lets have these Nimitz-class carriers speak for me!

[Twigster]

Well... I never had such difficulties in the game played on most extreme settings on RetreatUE. I have a couple of AARs up that aptly demonstrate that.

[Thrake]

So, did you die a slow death with a starving economy? Was it rather a quick and painful invasion of your homeworld? Or did you crush the fleet of countless inferior design with your superior intelect?

If you like tension, I would kindly suggest you to try pirate gameplay: there is no resting time, I love it but find it exhausting at the same time: in the begining I'm fighting with other pirates for influence over independant colonies, then when empires start developing I'm fighting for them when they put bounties on other empires or pirates, but also looting during downtimes. Then comes the fight over planets... Theirs and mines... Being a pirate with history of blowing stuff up don't like for future diplomacy (I would suggest to try to not anger literraly every one for your own sake [:'(]).