AI declaring war - room for some improvement

[Ekaton]

In all of my games, AI made some dumb decisions when declaring war. It usually does so very unprepared, but on occasion, it would leave its capital area almost completely undefended, even when it was about 10 hexes away from my border. It's usually not able to provide proper protection to vital areas, such as their only metal mines, and can't prioritise fronts very well when fighting more than one war.

The declaration of war itself can be rather dumb - in my last game, I was the main major power, with 25% of the population and about 35% of the planet. A dumb neighbour, a major power, himself in the middle of a terrible war against the 2nd most powerful regime, declared a war against me with no preparation. My motorised troops simply waltzed towards his capital and defeated the green replacement troops stationed there on turn 3 of the war. I'm not sure what the calculations were like under the hood, what precisely made them declare war, but it was very odd that they chose to do so without diverting anyone to defend the capital. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make AI run a sub-routine of making sure its main assets, primarily its cities, have decent protection from the side they choose to declare war against?

EDIT: Or maybe make the game check AI's assets when it wants to declare war, to make sure that it can protect its cities and prevent it from declaring the war if it doesn't?

[chb75]

confirmed, i noted the same attitude, mroeover i think they declare war just after your refuse some payment... but they dont check if they are ready to war
In my case one were been beaten by a minor and another declared war after i refused a blackmail .. but they were already annihilated (0 victory score) ..

[Ekaton]

Blackmail is definitely an issue. They do go to war even if they're already losing heavily and when there is a huge disparity of power.