So the AI can walk all through my territory and I have to speak to him to threaten war to get him to leave. But when I walk through his territory, he threatens war if I don't leave. That's not parallel. Essentially, when not at war, he has free reign to run my territory while the player does not. I find mid-game, he is running pioneers across the entire map to found a small outpost in the far edge of my territory. In many cases he wouldn't have even known that resource existed as he had not cleared the map yet. The AI shouldn't know about land it has not uncovered yet.
You can tell him to leave your territory the same way he tells you to leave his. The AI is just generally pretty vigilant about always threatening you and maintaining border integrity. The mechanic (the ability to violate borders and try to sneak through) is nice, but the implementation is clunky. Really, there should be an option to tell the unit to leave right in the unit window when you select a foreign unit that is in your territory. Having to go into the diplomacy screen for it every time gets old.
That's a great idea.
Or just a general open/closed borders option with a certain faction.
Exactly.
Once i had a neighbor that was pushing his pioneer through my territory - every turn i had to tell them to leave .... Very, very annoying. AI, however, never gets tired from telling you off and throwing you out from their territory.
I suspect that it will be hard to implement, however.
That could be a good improvement for the diplomacy
Add it an option to trade units and cities and that would be a great combo
Play higher difficulty. There they will declare on you as soon as you have lower might than them (which is almost always).. Problem solved
The lack of an ability to tell the AI that my borders are closed is one of the reasons why I tend to simply go to war with every AI I meet that doesn't have something I want in their shops which I could not get otherwise (which basically means they are Altar, New Pariden until my champions have as many spellbooks as I want them to have, and Capitar if I want the warhorses - assuming that Capitar sells warhorses in its shops instead of regular horses). That, and I hate it when they send a unit across my territory (because I really don't want to enter the diplomacy screen every single turn to tell them to get out) and beeline towards a hero I've been waiting to recruit due to funds or research priorities when they shouldn't know that that hero even exists.
The only times in history when nations have sent armies wandering through the territory of other nations is when they are at war, made prior arrangements with the nation over whose territory their army is passing to allow that passage to occur, are allies and have a reason to send armies into their ally's territory, or don't care what the other nation thinks of having their army pass through the territory of the other nation (trying to provoke a war, think that the other nation isn't strong enough to be a concern even if they take enough offense at the unsanctioned passage to go to war, etc).
Well, there's also the "we aren't TECHNICALLY at war, but I think that that bit of land is mine and you think it's yours, so I'll keep an army camped there to keep your army out of there, and if you send people by we'll kill them, but we aren't prepared to invade what we agree is your territory over it" situations, i.e. ill-defined or disputed borders - which don't visibly occur in E:FE. All national borders are clearly defined, with the potential for no-mans lands where anyone can travel.
The game already has a means of checking if something is within my territory. All that needs to be done to establish a closed-borders situation is to set up a flag that tells the AI to check to see if the path of a unit ends inside of another faction's territory (i.e., would trigger an 'enemies are in your territory' alert if the AI and the other faction were at war), and then decide if it wants to provoke that player by moving its units into their territory or not. Territory violation by passing completely through another player's territory in a single turn would be more difficult to prevent, but because most units can only move two to four spaces in a single turn it also isn't as likely to occur as moving into another player's territory and ending the turn while still in that player's territory.
I also don't mind the territory violation by crossing into and out of my territory in a single turn as much as the AI ending a unit's turn inside of my territory, since at least if they crossed into and out of my territory in a single turn I don't have to tell them to leave via the diplomatic screen.
Actually, there might be a simpler "fix" for what is admittedly annoying. I can't for the life of me remember which game it was (don't ever get old - senility creeps in and grabs you when you least expect it), but wouldn't making pioneers simply "fair game" for anyone without automatically creating a state of war work as well? In that other game whose name escapes me, pioneeer/colonization units could be eaten with impunity without penalty. You could leave a 3-person militia unit near where the AI keeps sending them and just eat them as they go by. It's not as though they can defend themselves, right?
I tend to see the AI push with pioneers to the opposite side of my territory one of two ways.
If it's just one pioneer running around, I'll just rush my own pioneers and set up outposts so that they can't snag any resources on my side of the border. If they do manage to avoid being eaten by monsters, I can take back one outpost no problem.
If it's two or three or more pioneers shamelessly gobbling up the resources and trying to build cities on the other side, I'll declare war and remove them by force.
Yes, it's not always a good idea to declare war on someone, but chances are that by the time these last pioneers are crawling all over your land to get at the good stuff on the other side, you have a fairly good economy going, you just need to give your research and military a kick in the pants.
Just go war on them, just like a real world, I guess. Do you think bad guy will leave your house if you tell them to leave? Sometime your word to enemies is useless and you had to use a weapon to drive them off...there is time I want to go other side but this non enemies is in my way, so I making war him to get his unit out of my way...since he didn't move his pioneer after few turn and it's one way blocking me...
Edit: Oh, there is time I do not want enemies pioneer come and settle land I want to settle even we are not at war, I used few unit to block thier path..funny..
I tried the blocker feature but only blocked the one tile where they could build a city. THey built and outpost next to it and kicked me out and built the city anyway.
How about forbiding pioneers to enter other´s territory entirely? I mean, pioneer unit simply CANNOT move into other civ ZOC, unless they have NAT/Alliance? Something like, pioneers are weak, unarmed unit who would not dare to enter other domain?
Funny idea though
Personally, I usually go for the non-aggression pact which lets me enter the other sovereign's territory and stay there.
(I tend to not leave any resources available for pioneers to gobble up, and the few that they do get I try to feel philosophical about.)
Borders should be inviolate. That simple really. No-one has ever bothered to create a good enough AI that will properly take into account your actions towards it, or your actions towards others (Hm, he declared war and utterly crushed another empire for repeatedly violating his borders...I SHOULD REPEATEDLY VIOLATE HIS BORDERS!), so making border integrity a part of the diplomacy to be conducted for every individual turn it happens, made even better by you never being informed that another player has, in fact, violated your border, makes it a bad mechanic.
Borders should always be closed to trained units and champions, the diplomatic option should be a treaty to open them, not a one turn demand to GTFO that will have to be issued all the God damned time.
You should also be able to tell some know, I am just passing through and it not always result in war being declared.
Perhaps, an option-- I was just passing through, would you accept 10 gildar as a toll.
If you repeatedly push a sovereign's borders, they start becoming unhappy with you.
If they are happy with you (or maybe just if you have left them alone) they will tolerate your presence for a time before they kick you out where if they are not so happy they do not have patience with you.
They also get unhappy with you when they attempt to send a pioneer through your territory to steal your shit from under your nose, and you tell them to get the hell out every damn time.
I agree that it would be great to be able to negotiate border treaties with maybe multiple stages ...
-default (no treaty .. the same as now, i.e. if you don´t want foreign units on your ground, you have to tell the AI each time to leave)
-Closed to all (all units [except caravans, if trade treaty] are forvbidden to enter your territory
-Closed to combat units (Combat units are disallowed, but pioneers and other units with Attack = 0 may pass)
-Non Aggression Pact (all untis may pass ... just as it is now)
The eagerness with which the AI is inclined to sign closed or open border pacts could depend on the power of the AI civ ... a powerful civ might like it at default setting (where it can try to send its units through your territorywithout any repercussions ... and maybe also start surprise attacks ) ... a less powerful AI however might be rather inclined towards signing either NAPs, or closed border treaties)
There may also be a new AI trait: Isolationist ... an AI with this trait is very inclined towards signing Closed Border treaties
I've found that their happiness with me has little to do with how long they tolerate my units' presence behind their borders. In fact, I've had opponents who like me issue warnings at once, and opponents who really, really dislike me keep quiet for 2-3 turns after I entered their turf. I've even reloaded to test what's going on, and could make no sense out of the AI's response: sometimes I'm kicked out at once, at other times nothing is ever said (I've literally gone more than 20 turns behind one opponent's lines, my sovereign's stack aiming for Wildlands).
Just another example in the game of behavior that, however well defined it appears to the developers, certainly appears undefined or confusing to those who play.
This is a basic feature and there really should be no issue that the options the AI gives you should also be the options you can give to the AI. If the AI can throw your units out of his territory, then so should you be able to return the favor.
You can return the favor via the Diplomacy screen. The problem isn't that you can't kick their units out, but that the interface for doing so is clunky given how often they send units to your territory. To have to go into the diplomacy screen for each faction each time they send units into your territory is tedious.
The only reason why they're sending pioneers in to begin with is because they're trying to claim any resources that aren't taken or settle sites that don't have cities yet. If you spam pioneers onto your own land you can make their pioneer rushing futile and they will stop.
The downside (there always is one) is that if any monsters that have their lairs near to those resources suddenly find themselves homeless, they will start wandering around.
This seems to be a cumulative issue - if you have had longstanding warm relationships you get different behavior, but you are right that there also seems to be a random element (which might mean that my impression of a cumulative effect is just me fooling myself).
If a faction is not at war with you, and they send any kind of unit into your territory, you should be able to attack them without a reprisal of war.
Note also that pioneers cannot settle in your territory. (Some people in this thread have expressed this idea already, but i think it is worth repeating.)
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