RTI invaded by Spain on 3rd turn... WTH?

[Steve255]

Initialy ive been playing TW games for ages and each was rather predictable in terms of AI and diplomacy. However ive just received a massive stun in AI tactics in EmpireTW.

Im pretty sure its the RTI 3rd Chapter (starting in Boston with mr Washington).
Turn 1:
Invade New York and hold with troops. Leave sizable force in Boston and hold with mr Washington.

Turn 2: England Starts to amass its forces around my borders, raiding towns.

Turn 3: I kick out england but im still outnumbered and alot of mines and towns are still damaged. I open my diplomacy screen and notice Spain and France are friendly with me (Spain is "Very Friendly"). i decide not to do anything in there yet as im still surrounded buy British forces and plan a counter attack by recruiting militia. Meanwhile all my ports are being blockaded by british forces.

I click on end turn. It gets to Spains turn and a window pops up (i still havent seen a single spanish force yet). The window said "Spain has declared war on you". i click ok and invita all of my 0 allies to fight on my side.

Then a lovely looking Spanish naval fleet sails right up to the eastern bank of Boston and unloads a FULL STACK of 50% infantry and 50% Provincial Cavalry which then decided to attack boston.
I did manage to fight them off using the firelocked citizens in a stealthed ambush with a 3 tired defence using the buildings to the left as a sort of wall and my cavalry on the right. i took heavy casualties, loosing alot of my militia, all of my citizens and some of my cavalry but managed to fend off the attack.

Now i have a massive british force to the north, east and west and a broken but still menacing spanish force on the peninsular.

How is this possible? I did love the surprise but since when does Spain attack a very friendly US in the first 3 turns?!!??! i seriosuly doubt i will survive this.

[trench]

That is almost exactly what happened to me - just happened a little later in game. Nice surprise.
I would have suggested getting alliance with Spain to keep from happening in future.

[korbell]

I never saw it before patch 1.5 but in the 3 campaigns I fought since then they have tried that trick. The first time they declared war on me and took Boston and Albany before I had a chance to do anything. my computer crashed on the second so I havent any idea on what would have happened but the 3rd time I kept alot of units in and around Boston so the Spanish fleet just sat there at Long Island for the duration of the campaign without ever declaring war. I never could get Spain to ally with me so I spent the entire campaign in a cold war status with that fleet and invasion force off my shore.

Besides leaving a large valuable army just sitting around you can build a few ships and have them positioned outside Providence so when the spanish fleet sails up and declares war you can try and fight them off.

If you have AI moves on, and have trade routes to Spain you can actually watch him gathering his invasion force and sailing towards you from turn 1.

[Toxic]

That is what usually happens in RTI.
The AI try to take advantage with a quick dow & attack against an lightly defended city with a amphibious assault. And Spain just love to do that in RTI against US.

The best way to counter it s to have an alliance with Spain, but that might cost too much, and they will likely just laugh at it and say No!
The next best thing is to give them military access to your land, then they will also get a big badboy penalty if they declare war against you. So it works pretty well.
Remember that you only have to give them access to your land, you don’t need to have access to their territory

[british_general]

Anything can happen in the game, like this guy who was part swedish was the heir and then the swedes attacked me for reasons related to their rights to ruling my country.Another example is that marathans once attacked the US and nearly destroyed the 13 colonies before I could help