Some weird things seem to be going on with world events nearby.
When I chose an embark site, I remember selecting a site that had access to Dwarves, Humans, Elves, and Goblins - goblins were the only hostile ones. I played with invasions off, and without selecting a baron, for several years, and got caravans from the three friendlies as expected. I remember the year I selected my baron, I was surprised to see the Elven diplomat arrive - there was no talk of a quota, just the 'you have disrespected the trees in this region' and she left. Elven caravans stopped arriving at that point, there was no caravan that spring. While the human diplomat was talkative as hell that year (I did not need to know about several dozen invasions/kidnappings/foundings/abandonments/reclamations of human hamlets), my liaison had nothing to say but that 'the world is the same as ever' - never has in all these years, aside from mentioning one kidnapping and the promotion of a baron somewhere else in my civ.
A few years later, I finally decide to turn on invasions, and checking the civ screen shows, to my surprise, no Goblins and war with the Elves.
If the war with the Elves was unrelated to my actions, shouldn't the liaison have mentioned, 'oh by the way we're at war now?'
Was it somehow related to something I did? (missed a dialog choice when that diplomat arrived? had tree-cutting active on the surface in sight of the diplomat? do any of those things incite wars now, other than directly defying quotas / having diplomats/caravans die?) It seems awfully quick (one diplomat visit and they declare war?) and unannounced.
Was it already going on, and having invaders off just made them send caravans instead for some reason?
Is it possible that this is just a different Elven civ, and that a friendly one had its nearer sites conquered, leading to the sudden and unannounced war?
Is it normal for the goblins to just disappear like that? (I'm assuming that all their nearby sites got conquered, possibly by the excessively talkative humans)
(FTR I use the 40.08 starter pack, with Modest Accelerated Mash raws, which I've made a bunch of tweaks/changes to, mostly minor cheating. I can't think of anything that would affect the civs, though, aside from taking away Goblins' handwear/footwear to reduce clutter...)