Hostility is the diplomatic variable which decides whether an AI wizard wants to attack another player or not, and if yes, how important they consider doing this.
Hostility levels and their effects[]
None[]
The wizard is not interested in causing harm to the other player, and does not consider them or their troops a valid target for military attacks or hostile spells. Attacks can still happen by accident, but not intentionally. AI wizards are unable to retract or change orders already issued to troops during previous turns, which can lead to unintended attacks if the targeted map square gets occupied by a different player.Additionally, if Visible Relation is -60 or worse, the shortest path finding algorithm will consider map cells occupied by that player as empty as long as the size of stack is lower than the size of the moving army, and will allow bumping into those units. This effect even affects the movement of troops controlled by the human player! In the 1.40 unofficial patch the human player has been made an exception to this effect, however, AI players are affected at Visible Relations -20 or worse, and the movement cost of these map cells has been altered to zero, so the units will PREFER to bump into the armies of other players even if other way would be shorter. The 1.50 unofficial patch disables the bumping "feature" completely for everyone except neutral stacks of Rampaging Monsters or Raiders. Additionally, in the patch, the AI is forced to reissue orders to every army every turn, so accidental attacks due to lack of reaction to the changing map are significantly less frequent.
Annoyed[]
The wizard is slightly interested at causing harm to the other wizard. They can attack their troops, cities, and cast hostile spells against them, or the wizard himself. The priority of targets is significantly lower than normal. In the 1.50 unofficial patch however, cities are not valid targets for Lawful and Peaceful wizards.
Warlike[]
The wizard considers the other party as his enemy, and is taking steps towards conquering their territory. Any unit or city owned by the other wizard is a potential target for attacks at full priority value if there is an official War, but still reduced if not, and the continent containing this wizard's cities will receive a larger priority for a naval invasion. Note however, that due to bugs, the AI is very unlikely to successfully execute such an invasion, except in the 1.50 unofficial patch. Additionally in the patch, cities are only valid targets if the treaty status is War or the wizard does not have a Lawful or Peaceful personality.
Jihad[]
Although intended for the wizard to go all out and try to destroy the other player even at the cost of neglecting his own defense according to the strategy guide, in reality, Jihad hostility level has no effect at all, except for an increased chance of selecting the wizard's home fortress continent as the destination for unloading troops from ships.
Ways to change Hostility[]
-When War is declared, Hostility is set to Warlike for both parties.
-When a new treaty of any type is formed, Hostility is set to None, including the Peace Treaty.
-During a Diplomatic Reaction, Hostility is automatically set to the correct type according to treaty status, see Diplomatic Reaction for details.
-If attacked by another wizard, Hostility is automatically set to Annoyed. If the treaty status is War, it gets upgraded to Warlike. This is a bug, as it can effectively reduce the hostility level if it was previously higher. If the treaty status is Alliance, it is set to none. However, attacking during an Alliance is impossible in the first place. The 1.50 unofficial patch fixes this problem and only allows changing the hostility if it was previously lower than Annoyed.
-After a period of random(10-25) turns pass counted from the last Diplomatic Reaction, change in Treaty Status, or reevaluation, the AI will reevaluate the Hostility status. This cannot happen earlier than turn 100. War will always set Warlike or Jihad hostility. In all other cases, hostility is None, with a chance based on relations to get increased to Annoyed or Warlike. The outcome is also affected by personality. In the 1.50 unofficial patch however, the AI will never execute such reevaluation if they are Lawful or Peaceful. The only way they can become aggressive is through attacking their troops, or when one side declares War on the other. Unfortunately, the timer for this reevaluation is shared between a wizard's relations towards all other wizards. If any wizard does anything to another wizard that resets this timer, it will effectively prevent the other wizard from changing their Hostility through this procedure towards uninvolved wizards, including the human player as well. Due to this, in the 1.50 unofficial patch, Diplomatic Reactions no longer reset the timer, so the re-evaluation happens 10-25 turns after the wizard's previous reevaluation or change in Treaty Status with anyone else.