Diplomacy Still Broken???

[R3dD0g]

I was going to post this over in the Complaints? Please post here, we need know what to fix. (http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=303539) thread, but it's apparent that thing has degenerated into a flamefest rivaling the pre beta patch days. So I decided to create a new thread. Mods - kill this if need be - but if you do end the flamewars over in the above thread.

I'm playing an easy, huge, 2 arm with 14 civs. Turn 260+ and my allies are turning against me. I could live with that if they were actually MAD at me!:(

The Nommo (NOMMO!!!) offered to increase our Intelligence treaty in the same turn they declared war. We were allied for maybe 150 turns and now 4 turns after war was declared the Casus Belli is still 197!

Just now, my other ally the Eoladi (allies for 100+ turns) declared war at the same turn he offered to exchange techs (lousy exchange items, but I haven't responded yet) and the Casus Belli is well over 190.

Neither of these relationships have any reasons to turn from allied to total war in 1 turn. I don't have any spies out, even in my enemy the Rocks. I don't have any ships in the allies systems. I don't even have scouts running around.

I want to play this game, I want to love this game as much as I still love 1 & 2. I don't want this game to be 2.5. I'm really enjoying the DevPlans and VRs. But, this Diplomacy thing is really too much to deal with.

I'm going to scrap this attempt and start a new one with fewer AIs. But I expect to hit this same brick wall in a few days.

[Mailer]

It may be that your allies offered the tech exchange, etc, but in the same turn got a demand from their other allies to fulfill alliance obligations and declare war on you.

Check the diplomacy matrix of your treacherous allies and see if they are allied with an enemy of yours.

I feel like I am something of an expert on diplomacy, as I am most interested in playing diplomatically in all empire games and have spent some time observing the cause and effects of dip. in MOO3.

SO

if you feel I am wrong, let's talk more and try to figure out why these things happened, because so far I have had a pretty normal situation with diplomacy since the code patch.

I have built some very effective alliances and used the senate to heap punishment on my enemies.

Also, could be that a bill was passed to declare total war on you in the senate. Don't know. Look into it and get back to me.

Mailer

[R3dD0g]

I took a look at the autosave turn 267, where the Eoladi just declared war and asked to exchange tech in the same turn. Looking at the Foreign matrix shows nothing between the Eoladi & Nommo, in fact between them and any other AI empires.

I've uploaded the file to
Saved Game Zip File (http://www.arkansashighered.com/software/acs/autosave_00267.zip)

Take a look and see if you can discern any reason for those 2 former allies to be at war with me while the CB is still so high.

[kevm]

Also, where do you stand power wise in the galaxy? Are you ranked #1? Are you close to getting the Senate?

Don't forget that the AI wants to win too..so if you've gotten too powerful your allies will turn against you since they don't want you to win.

Also...don't forget that Casus Belli isn't the only thing affecting diplomatic relations. In my current game my empire (Meklar) have a Defensive Allience with the Grendari (sp). The current relations is 197, but the Casi Belli are in the low negatives.

Based on CB alone, there shouldn't be a D.A. but it was just offered to me a few turns ago because I'm on good terms with their leader (but the ppl don't care too nicely about me, but they don't hate me). So just because the CB in your game is high, what are the current relations...its possible that the leaders no longer like you (for the above noted reason). They'll have to pay for going against popular opinion with increased unrest.

[Harioshima]

just ignore diplomacy. i found out that nothing worthwhile is accomplished through it. just make sure you have plenty of spies to steal their technology (hopefully one day you will be able to use it - when they fix the issues with this that is)

[kevm]

Originally posted by Harioshima
just ignore diplomacy. i found out that nothing worthwhile is accomplished through it. just make sure you have plenty of spies to steal their technology (hopefully one day you will be able to use it - when they fix the issues with this that is)

OR you can use dipolmacy to form aliances so you can limit the number of AI's you are at war with...nudge your allies to attack your enemies, gain increased trade and research benefits, get invited into the Senate if you aren't in there, and trade tech you don't have.

yeah..nothing worthwhile there.:rolleyes:

[Harioshima]

Originally posted by kevm
yeah..nothing worthwhile there.

why are you repeating me?

[Harioshima]

Originally posted by kevm
Don't forget that the AI wants to win too..so if you've gotten too powerful your allies will turn against you since they don't want you to win.


you are a comedian right. the ai never makes a concerted effort to destroy you when it declares war. the most it will ever do is glass and planet

[NightHawk74]

Play as Harvester... I do. Then you can just throw everything you know about diplomacy out the window, cuz you neven need to send or read another message.... hehe :-)

Turn off Senate win if you play Harv...

[Patton1942]

Originally posted by R3dD0g
I took a look at the autosave turn 267, where the Eoladi just declared war and asked to exchange tech in the same turn. Looking at the Foreign matrix shows nothing between the Eoladi & Nommo, in fact between them and any other AI empires.

I've uploaded the file to
Saved Game Zip File (http://www.arkansashighered.com/software/acs/autosave_00267.zip)

Take a look and see if you can discern any reason for those 2 former allies to be at war with me while the CB is still so high.

No time to check, but is there any room for the AI to expand? If not, then it will declair war on you so as to continue its own quest for Orion Domination. QSI posted this somewhere recently.

[Mailer]

I downloaded your saved game and will take a look at it and see if I can figure it out. It may take me a day or two to get a chance to look at it, but if I can figure anything out I will post.

there has been a lot of talk above about Diplomacy not working or being useless, but I have made a number of effective alliances, traded some great techs, and had a very consistent experience with diplomacy since the patch.

One time I was stuck in the arm of a galaxy because the path was blocked by a gaurdian and I didn't have the tech to beat it, but fortunatly, I made contact with a freindly race on the other side of the star, and after building a good relationship, I traded him some good techs for a planet on the other side of the guardian system. I was then able to join the rest of the galaxy in the quest for mastery of Orion. That was a useful thing that occcured entirely through diplomacy. This race remained my freind through the entirety of the game and helped me defend many a system. Oh, and as a fringe benefit, the planet he gave me was populated by his people, so once they started migrating I was able to add his race to my population which had many many benefits, kind of like a magnate civilisation.

[Ron_Lugge]

Originally posted by Harioshima
why are you repeating me?
Actually, he's using sarcasm. Of course, you wouldn't realize that since it takes an advanced degree in humanity (at LEAST an elementry school diploma) to recognize sarcasm.

edit:

the above is a joke, and should be taken as such

[R3dD0g]

Originally posted by kevm
[B]Also, where do you stand power wise in the galaxy? Are you ranked #1? Are you close to getting the Senate?

snip
I'm 8th in a 14 civ game. Not even close to #1.

I'm not in the Senate now. How do I determine my chances at Senate membership?

I wouldn't really concern myself with these wars, except one of those guys is #1 and I've let him colonize some worlds in my 'sphere'. Now he's eating at me from within.

[Rikaelus]

Diplomacy is definately funked up in some cases. I started a game and not 3 turns in, someone declared war on me. I'd never met them, interacted with them, or anything.

And it's too bad the AI can't "learn" your diplomatic strategy. Like in my current game, I'm on turn 350-450 or something, and have never once attacked a species that didn't declare war on me. And right now I have such a serious advantage on them that I could completely wipe them out if I wanted to. You'd think they'd realize that they'd be safe if they didn't declare war on me. They just have no sense of self-preservation.

[Beamup]

Originally posted by Rikaelus
Diplomacy is definately funked up in some cases. I started a game and not 3 turns in, someone declared war on me. I'd never met them, interacted with them, or anything.

And it's too bad the AI can't "learn" your diplomatic strategy. Like in my current game, I'm on turn 350-450 or something, and have never once attacked a species that didn't declare war on me. And right now I have such a serious advantage on them that I could completely wipe them out if I wanted to. You'd think they'd realize that they'd be safe if they didn't declare war on me. They just have no sense of self-preservation.

I'll say it again. Some races just despise other races. If you play a game as Sakkra and have contact with some Nommo, YES they will just up and declare war pretty much immediately. They hate you, what do you expect? It is NOT something being "funked up."

As for learning how you act - yes, that would definitely be nice. But given the current state of AI technology, that won't be happening in a game anytime soon. Teaching an AI how to "learn" is very very very very very hard to do and AFAIK (though it's not my field) it's only been done in very rudimentary form so far, even by the people who spend their lives doing AI.

[Rikaelus]

Originally posted by Beamup
I'll say it again. Some races just despise other races. If you play a game as Sakkra and have contact with some Nommo, YES they will just up and declare war pretty much immediately. They hate you, what do you expect? It is NOT something being "funked up."

As for learning how you act - yes, that would definitely be nice. But given the current state of AI technology, that won't be happening in a game anytime soon. Teaching an AI how to "learn" is very very very very very hard to do and AFAIK (though it's not my field) it's only been done in very rudimentary form so far, even by the people who spend their lives doing AI.

What do Silicoids have against Cynoids?

[ken the great]

Originally posted by R3dD0g
How do I determine my chances at Senate membership?
There are three ways to become a member of the Senate:

1. Before the game starts, customize your race and spend some points on Senate membership equals yes.

2. Assuming you did not spend any points on Senate membership (yes or no), then you have a 50/50 chance of being in the Senate at the beginning of the game.

3. During the game, a current Senate member sponsors a bill to allow you entry in the Senate. The bill must pass by a majority vote. This is the most difficult way to gain entry to the Senate.

If you are the Ithkul, options 1 and 2 are not available and option 3 is almost impossible, so don't bother with the Senate.

[Mailer]

Still haven't gotten a look at your saved game yet, but if you aren't in the senate, it may be possible that a senate race who doesn't like you may have proposed and passed a declare total war bill on you. Is your treacherous ally in the senate? If you don't answer, I'll find out for myself when I load your game. I'm looking forward to seeing how other players build up their empires.

Also, regarding the above statements about races hating one another, the only effects this actually has is that races who hate one another will start with a lower relationship and Causes than with others. So, though difficult, I have built decent relationships between two enemy races.

I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that's what I read either in the manual (flimsy comic book turd of a manual) or maybe somewhere on the boards. Through observation and experience, it would seem that races that hate one another do start at lower diplomacy status, but will not maintain any special racial hatreds if you build a solid relationship.

[Breschau]

Was wondering if anyone could explain this scenario:

I create a custom Meklar with diplomacy turned down to Poor. I start playing and expanding my empire. I conquer a human empire, refusing all communications along the way (initial relations weren't great, but not quite at the point of sanctions and war.. the sanctions started after I initiated invasions). This opens up communications with 3 empires: Eoladi, Nommo and Klackon (with poor diplomacy meklar, the eoladi start around -50 relations, nommo +50ish, klackon near 0). I do not engage in *any* diplomacy with them - I send no messages and do not respond to theirs. At all.

After a while I have 200 relations with 2 of them and 187 with the 3rd. I forget what the CB was, but nothing spectacularly high or negative. I declare war on the Eoladi and start invading their worlds. Relations remain high - there's turn-to-turn fluxuations, but none of the relations ever fall below 160. The 3 AIs are all either allied or NAP with each other, decent to excellent relations between them. This was all in the first 150 or so turns.



For the most part I'm finding I can work out why the AI does the stuff it does in diplomacy, even the more surprising things. But that game just had me utterly baffled.

[mad00001]

Originally posted by R3dD0g
I was going to post this over in the Complaints? Please post here, we need know what to fix. (http://www.ina-community.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=303539) thread, but it's apparent that thing has degenerated into a flamefest rivaling the pre beta patch days. So I decided to create a new thread. Mods - kill this if need be - but if you do end the flamewars over in the above thread.

I'm playing an easy, huge, 2 arm with 14 civs. Turn 260+ and my allies are turning against me. I could live with that if they were actually MAD at me!:(

The Nommo (NOMMO!!!) offered to increase our Intelligence treaty in the same turn they declared war. We were allied for maybe 150 turns and now 4 turns after war was declared the Casus Belli is still 197!

Just now, my other ally the Eoladi (allies for 100+ turns) declared war at the same turn he offered to exchange techs (lousy exchange items, but I haven't responded yet) and the Casus Belli is well over 190.

Neither of these relationships have any reasons to turn from allied to total war in 1 turn. I don't have any spies out, even in my enemy the Rocks. I don't have any ships in the allies systems. I don't even have scouts running around.

I want to play this game, I want to love this game as much as I still love 1 & 2. I don't want this game to be 2.5. I'm really enjoying the DevPlans and VRs. But, this Diplomacy thing is really too much to deal with.

I'm going to scrap this attempt and start a new one with fewer AIs. But I expect to hit this same brick wall in a few days.

From all the games I´ve played, I can draw one simple conclusion concerning diplomacy: There ain´t any.
Nothing makes sence, or those contacts from other races are intentional jokes that I don´t get.

All that is left is planetary bombardment, which gets boring pretty quickly.. There is no satisfaction that I´d like to expect - if there was some drama to the game. Just numbers running down, creatures dying. In MOO2 it felt a bit like killing billions of creatures, but in MOO3 it feels so numb without working relationships with alien civilizations.

I keep coming to these boards to see if the patching efforts bare some meaningful fruit: I grave for more than UI tweaks...
If they´d get the MP to work, even to some degree. That would be something... Then I could play against something else than that AI, capable of some colonization, random diplomacy and utterly random war waging.

Sure you can guess it´s motives: - maybe a bee stung the Klackon emperor, maybe he/she had a bad day. But, would some down-to-earth motives for war an earthling like me could understand be bad?

Sure they declare war if I attack one of their colonies, sure they declare war if they´re clearly more powerful than me and I´m blocking their colonization.. Sure they´ll accept my demands and give me some technology in exchange for their survival.. Sure they won´t declare a war on me if I have a score hundred times theirs, and Sure they won´t keep cancelling and redeclaring the war for all eternity...

[Mailer]

I've noticed that if you kick the crap out of some races, their relationship will rocket up to nearly 200 like you described above, bres.

This is because they want to submit and work it out rather than have your burning their planets to bits.

Also, I've noticed that the eolodi shy away from conflict. When they send spies, I threaten them, and in return they give me a planet. When I deal with them diplomatically, I use the rougher tones, and they eat it up with a spoon. They like to be b**ch slapped around a bit. But watch out, they are sneaky. They spend all their time(from my observations) building good diplomatic relations and spies. I have seen the eolodi AI win a number of president victories.

Now, one last thing, I'm terrible with the race names. Eolodi are the floating mushroom head guys right. If not, that's the race I'm talking about. Could be Eolodi are the blue faced, dread lock humans and I'm thinking of the wrong race. What I've noticed about the blue boys is that they are wierd. Mostly I'm polite with them and everything works out pretty well, but then they start sending spies at some point (usually when relations are good) When I threaten the blue boys, they usually get ticked and causes belli drops considerably, but the spies talk.

In summary--

Floating mushroom head guys--like to be treated like crap
Blue boys--wierd, secretive, unpredictable. responsds well to politeness as far as I can tell.



Mailer

[James1701]

Originally posted by Rikaelus
What do Silicoids have against Cynoids?

They keep wanting to toss into smelters for spare parts. *&%#&(*&$@ robots!!!

[swilhelm73]

The mushroom heads are the Imsaies. The dreadlock guys are the Evon.

The race names aren't too hard to remember, but I *really* wish they had choosen somewhat easier empire names to remember though...

Oh look its Emperor ZXEDIECJEINW of the Ithkul and Emperor EUFJEUWYRE UDHEJEHE of the Imsaies....doesn't that just roll of the tongue. :bulb:

[Breschau]

Originally posted by Mailer
I've noticed that if you kick the crap out of some races, their relationship will rocket up to nearly 200 like you described above, bres.

This is because they want to submit and work it out rather than have your burning their planets to bits.

The first time something like this happened it was a Saurian race and their relations went up quite rapidly as I kicked them around. I figured it was the whole respecting a show of strength thing.

It's just it has happened with a wide range of races now and while most of them had a lot of variables in play (making it hard to judge), that last game had very few - purposely as I wasn't responding to any diplomacy attempts.

I'm gonna try another run at that game (well, different game since I don't have the saves) - meklar, poor diplomacy, ignore all diplomacy attempts. See if the same happens again, or if it was something specific going on in that game.

[Mailer]

Then which ones are the eolodi? Are they the other floating ones that look REALLY alien? Not the Nommo, I know who they are, I mean the bizarre ones that are cousins of the mushroom cap heads.

Don't really have any oppinions on the eolodi, if I'm thinking of the correct race, because for some reason, I seldom encounter them in the game. Don't know why, but I hardly see humans either.

[Hikari]

Originally posted by Rikaelus
What do Silicoids have against Cynoids?

Generally speaking, everyone hates the Cybernetiks. Not as bad as the Ithkul, of course, but they're a close runner-up to the title of "Scourge of the Universe."

When questioned on the specific reason for their racial animosity, the Silicoids cited a particular incident in which the Cynoid representative mistook their ambassador for a fuel rod.

[EE_Worzelle]

Gee, the first poster in this is right. A developer actually capable of changing things opened a thread so players could give input and it turned into an ego thing...

I love strategy games, with MOO2 and Wizardry 8 (yes the RPG) as my favorate strategy games of all time.

I purchased MOO3 and the Guide, read them thoroughly and spent considerable time playing the game.

The biggest change I would like to see is stability. Strategy requires some things you can count on, that you know what will happen every time, depending upon your choices. The presence of spys that are so incredibly powerful and tedious to play make it tough to build anything.

A whole adaptive strategy can be built around a great leader, but, in this game, what's the point? I thought it was great that leaders applied across the board, but when you don't know how long they will be there...

The research went backward, to MOO1, back to the relatively boring next slightly faster engine and next slightly bigger gun. In MOO2 the research topics changed the whole identity of your civilization and the types of strategies you would apply. A key technology like Terraforming or Autolab could make your whole civilization turn a corner to a new level of play. Could you afford to go for one of those, or was it necessary to get better weapons or shields, first? Those were the kind of strategic choices I love and would like to see.

I'm not trying to do a comparison, looking backwards, but just, looking forward, would like to see, in some way, more meaningful variety in the research, so there are real decisions that mean something, and less focus and decisions concerning spys, and the chaos they bring.

There ought to be a way for a creative, research and exploration civilization to not have to worry about spies destroying everything which is built, like a way to protect key leaders, for example which is solid as a rock against spy attempts to assasinate.

Protecting from spies ought to be a LOT easier than spying, like it is in real life.

[Kralizec!]

Mailer wrote:
Then which ones are the eolodi? Are they the other floating ones that look REALLY alien? Not the Nommo, I know who they are, I mean the bizarre ones that are cousins of the mushroom cap heads.

Don't really have any oppinions on the eolodi, if I'm thinking of the correct race, because for some reason, I seldom encounter them in the game. Don't know why, but I hardly see humans either.

Here is an excellent reference on the Eoladi (complete with a picture!):

http://www.mithyk.com/stationprime/race_etherean.htm

[kziti kat]

Well, IMO, diplomacy if bad even after the patch.

1. Mindless repeating trade/research offers. I have yet for anyone to find some hard facts that these trade/research agreements do anything at all for you.

2. I can ally myself with the Nommo and then go on a trading rampage e.g., I offer to trade one of my worst planets for three of his best - he happily agrees. :bulb: It is a mind boggling thing.

3. You can put as many spies into your ally's (or enemy's) territory and it seems like the diplomacy AI ignores it. I would expect the AI to send me an email saying "Quit the spying or you risk our wrath!"

4. Casus Belli: I have seen the CB vary like a yoyo with different races. Maybe if they gave us a detailed manual of what is supposed to happen if you sign a non aggression pact with your friend's enemy or any of the other scenarios you can get into then we could figure something out. Then we could at least verify if it works correctly or not!

5. You can start a trade agreement with a race and the next turn that same race declares war.

One positive aspect of the patch: I don't get the "stop doing this or we will destroy you messages" near as often as pre-patch.

You can even totally ignore diplomacy for what it is worth. I haven't seen it to be a critical part of any aspect of the game (and this is crazy because diplomacy was advertised to be one of the highlights of the game)

[Rutjak]

A lot of speculation in this thread. According to QS/Atari (Rantz/Chantz) diplomacy works ("So cool if you know what is going on..." Gamespy, post mortem), but the guy (girl?) who coded the diplo dialogue is no longer available. So, the only thing wrong with diplomacy is bad feedback. Things are happening for a reason, you just don't get to know this reason. Hence, it doesn't really matter if diplomacy is broken or not. It is, to some extent, pointless either way.

[pedxing]

i just ignore the text.

that's very different from igonoring diplomacy entirely!

and if one spends points on Diplomacy skill, Empathy, and Fantastic Trade, and Senate membership, ignoring diplomacy entirely would be very foolish.

right now, i'm playing custom Tachidi with poor Diplomacy and paying not to be in the Senate, and in my current game have only one neighbor who i am busily trying to beat into submission, so for now, i don't even have any diplo to ignore... and little prospects for it to go well later in the game, since the Senate Victory condition is on... fight, fight, fight mighty battle bugs!

maybe next time i'll go for custom Raas in the Senate, with all the diplo/trade bells and whistles on, and max number of players, and see what happens... see if i still feel the same way about diplomacy not being all that "broken".

[James1701]

As for declarations of war from civs I'm on good terms with its been my experience that 90% of the time it is due to a tangle of alliances. For example in my current game I'm at war with four different races and for three of them the only reason is my beating up on the Klakons. They dragged their ally the Nommo into it who in turn dragged Rass into it who in turn dragged some other empire I had just met.

Over all I think the diplomacy system works well. I've outlined what I consider to be a bug concerning an AI's tendency to perform contradictory actions on the same turn (agree to trade/declare war) in another post which can be found here. (http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=4008633&highlight=diplomacy#post4008633)

The other problem I've come to see in the diplomacy system is the alliance system. By mid game it seems like everyone, especially the AI players, is allied to everyone else. One war starts and its starts a WWI like chain reaction which can be near impossible to stop.

[R3dD0g]

Originally posted by James1701
<snip>Over all I think the diplomacy system works well. I've outlined what I consider to be a bug concerning an AI's tendency to perform contradictory actions on the same turn (agree to trade/declare war) in another post which can be found here. (http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=4008633&highlight=diplomacy#post4008633)

The other problem I've come to see in the diplomacy system is the alliance system. By mid game it seems like everyone, especially the AI players, is allied to everyone else. One war starts and its starts a WWI like chain reaction which can be near impossible to stop.

That same turn trade / declare war phenomenom is what caused me to start this thread way back when the beta 1.2 first came out.

Now with the 1.2.5 patch I'm not seeing that problem. Granted, I'm only on turn 165 of my first full game. I am seeing a lot of messages trying to draw me into a war with my allies. But, it seems that if I ignore the message, nothing bad happens and I'm not drawn into the war.

Anyway, I'm more satisfied with the diplomacy... so far.

[Fierion]

Sorry, no intelligent comments, just another couple of questions:

I have having great difficulty in getting AI players to trade tech with me. I am careful to offer 1) more tech than I ask for, 2) high-level tech than I ask for, and 3) to offer tech that they totally missed out on, if possible (very tedious to figure this out sometimes!). I only try exchanging tech with empires I have good relations and at least defensive alliances with. I always use the middling tone of voice, because I lack the information to intelligently customize it.

Nothing works. I have never - not once, never - gotten a positive response. What might I be doing wrong?


---------

Second question: If I really don't want to fight a war with someone, what can I do?

Here's the deal. I've been friends with the warrior Grendarl for a long time; trade, science, intelligence, defensive alliance, and even colonized systems intermingled. Good deals being made, mutual exchanges of praise in the Senate. There were some potentially serious issues with third-party relations, which I expected to make for trouble someday - eventually, I'd have to choose my real friends - but for a long time they seemed not to matter.

All of a sudden - and I do mean all of a sudden - their attitude goes from about +30 to -200. And it's staying there. Despite three gifts of three techs each. Despite a planet (they took the planet, but never gave me any acknowledgement). Short of tribute, I've tried everything I know.

What I really need is information. What did I do wrong? How can I avoid the consequences? Right now, an all-out intersteller war is approximately three turns away, and I *really* don't want to fight.

[Beamup]

As for tech trading, you generally need very good relations to get them to accept such deals. 175 or over, typically. There have been reported exceptions, but the AI doesn't like trading tech.

As far as the second goes, this most often happens when they run out of room to expand. The AI likes expanding, and if they can't do so peacefully any more, they will start a war with somebody in their way. In this case, it may have been you. There are other possibilities, but this is the most common.

[Fierion]

Originally posted by Beamup
As for tech trading, you generally need very good relations to get them to accept such deals. 175 or over, typically. There have been reported exceptions, but the AI doesn't like trading tech.

As far as the second goes, this most often happens when they run out of room to expand. The AI likes expanding, and if they can't do so peacefully any more, they will start a war with somebody in their way. In this case, it may have been you. There are other possibilities, but this is the most common.

Thanks ever so much.

I especially appreciate the answer to the second question, because now the tush-toasting and butt-broasting I'm about to to do will be RIGHTEOUS!