Probe musings

[D4everman]

If a rival faction probes you do you know about it if it was successful? For that matter, as a human player are you informed when you're framed by another faction or if someone 'bribes' a faction into a vendetta? There have been many times where pactmates and allies have instantly gone seething on me and attacked for no good reason. Maybe thats what it is....but then in one game that rat Morgan set me up and I knew about it. I had just had a long bitter war with Lal and we ended it only because it was tedious....then I denied Morgan some advance he wanted. A few turns later I saw a probe leave his base go into Lal's base and viola! Lal declares vendetta again and attacks. I'm not sure if its imagination but I think there was a message saying "Morgan has framed you blah blah blah".


It was a real mess, too. Lal was so far gone in being pissed he wouldn't stop attacking no matter what. I had to drop all of my base improvements and churn out troops to fight him off and the fact that Morgan's digital ass was sitting back laughing about it really got under my skin. He kept using probes to steal tech until I finished the HSA. The only good thing about it was the joy I got at overrunning Morgan's bases towards the end of the game. Its funny...in retrospect Roze hasn't used a lot of probes on me (except one game at the start of it) even when she had perfect opportunities.

Can the AI use probes to frame another faction with the human player? (can lets say, the Roze AI use a probe on the human player and make it look like the Lal AI did it?)

D4

[Sindai]

quote: If a rival faction probes you do you know about it if it was successful?

Yes. A pop-up will usually come up saying something along the lines of "Drone activity increased at XXXX" or "Researchers assassinated at XXXX, we lost XXX research points." Though it won't tell you who did it unless the team was caught.

quote: For that matter, as a human player are you informed when you're framed by another faction or if someone 'bribes' a faction into a vendetta?

Yes to the first part. Though unless the framing was unsuccessful and the perpetrator was caught it doesn't tell you who did it.

For the second part, no. In fact I'm not even sure that the AIs CAN bribe each other to attack you. The closest they seem to come to that is "Combining forces" in a Pact against someone....but I'm not entirely sure about that.

There are lots of ways to explain AI's spontaneously going Seething on you. SE changes, rankings, who you're friends with....

And incidentally, I've had almost exactly the same experience with Morgan that you did.

quote: Can the AI use probes to frame another faction with the human player?

I'm pretty sure that it won't. Though it will probe other AIs and frame you for it, as I mentioned before...

[Hydro]

D4,

There have been many times when I have played diplomat and asked an AI to call off a vendetta. If they will talk to me they do call it off in almost all instances. Sometimes, however, they say, "I have received payment and must fulfill my obligation", or something to that effect. That leads me to believe that the AI does accept bribes to attack another AI, or maybe the human player. Likewise, I have demanded that submissives stop squabbling and I will rarely I will get this same message.

Hydro

Note - it is dangerous to have submissives at war. One is bound to attack the other AI's unit that happens to be in your base. Presto: instant vendetta upon you by a former submissive as a casualty of a pointless battle among mice.