Declaring War

Just attack another race's ship with one of your ships That'll send your message of intent pretty quickly.

If your relations are neutral, cool, wary or hostile with that civ, you can "trade" a declaration of war, as if you were giving a gift to someone (or even sell it, who knows?). It even gets you around having to wait for the senate to declare war (if you have an advanced government).

You can't do that if your relations are positive. However, you can demand gifts of the target civ a few times. Eventually that'll lower your relations.

I have engaged the enemy before but my question is going to be s stupid one...how do you acess the combat viewer screen!...whenever the enemy attacks my starbases or ships I watch it on the normal screen yet i am told we can view battles in true 3d etc..how do you acess the screen?
Cheers in advance

I think there is a option to allow all battles to be shown as fleet battles. See if this does what you are looking for

Thanks I will give it a try!