Here's the situation:

I'm playing a continents map on Noble difficulty with the Dutch (Willem, Cre/Fin). I'm just entering the ADs and I have a pretty good economy going with six cities but I'm completely out of room to expand. My last two cities have been stretching the limit of the land (as in they're fillers not really great cities). I have three civs bumping into me with their borders (Joao, Charlemagne, Suleiman) so I can't expand anywhere. On my backside is the ocean. I've been keeping my culture up to keep them off my cities.

Now I don't know what to do...

If I tried to knock one of them out with force, all of the other AIs are gonna hate me and then probably all declare war on me. It always seems to happen that way if they all have the same religion.

Would the AP help me in anyway if I built it?

Is my only other option a cultural victory? If so, I don't have any wonders and only one established religion (Buddhism). I really don't know where to go from here. Any suggestions?

Chose one weak civ, and get them good & pissed off at you. Then, hope that they'll get so mad that they attack you, that way the other civs won't be angry that you declared war on their friend.

Continue to build up your military and attack the Civ with which you share the smallest border or one that your civ boarders abutted to a city. Be prepared to defend your border cities, but realize that if the civ you declared war on calls in an ally, you are likely to see a half-hearted attack.

Attack the civ that is least advanced as they will be easier to overtake and less capable of bribing their neighbors into warring with you.

Also, if you build up a strong military, the other civs will likely be too afraid of you to attack even if all of your military units are in some other civ's territory and not in your cities.

Just kill them all one by one.

Six cities isn't that much, though it depends on mapsize. If it's a normal size you could use some expansion.

There's likely two ways to go to expand, peacefully or by force. The peaceful route would be to find some new islands/continets to settle. Then a quick route up to Astronomy is in place (should be a prio anyway for the Dutch UU).

The other is the military way. There are diplomatic ways to get your neighbours to fight each other. One or the other of them is bound to be bribable to attack another. IE, wreck some diplomatic havoc amongst your neighbours so you get atleast one of them to be at better relations with you than the rest of the AI, then they'll not mind much if you attack their worst enemy. Though, by the looks of your neighbours you have a whole bunch of backstabbers next door, so sooner or later one of them will likely declare on you if they feel their room to expand is limited and your powerrating is to low to scare them of.

If the AP will help you or not is a whole other matter, it depends on your goal for the game. If you want a religious victory, then building the AP is a good idea so you are atleast certain of being in contest in the AP votes. I don't know if your neighbours have more population than you have, votes in the AP goes by population in cities with the AP religion.

What victories are an option? It's hard to tell without knowing the whole setting, but if it's still middle ages, all options is likely still open. But it may be time to decide what you want to do. But I would suggest expanding whatever victorycondition you decide upon.

You could also get liberalism, trade it around and spy-change their civics to free religion.
Wait a few turns and you have Joao running all over the place with stacks and you'll be asked to join in the fun.

You could also get liberalism, trade it around and spy-change their civics to free religion.
Wait a few turns and you have Joao running all over the place with stacks and you'll be asked to join in the fun.Ooh! That sounds like fun! :lol::goodjob:

Have Joao attack someone you are friendly with, so that the negative modifier will have minimal impact. Keep an eye on the defenses of Joao's cities, then backstab him while his stack is out and about. Since it's on noble, you should be able to roll up through his cities without -too- much of a problem. If the war goes on enough, you'll get a shared conflict diplo bonus with the other civ, which should negate the "you brought a war ally in against us" modifier.
Rinse and repeat with the civ who wasn't involved. However, because the only two civs remaining are zealots (Sully and Charlemagne), it's unlikely that you'll be able to get one of them in free religion. Adopt the favorite civic of both of them and see if you can't get them to war with each other. From here, it's a matter of deciding who you want to be neighbors with until rifles :lol:

I played some more tonight after reading what all of you said. Thanks for your input.

I was going to try and start a diplomatic war against Joao since he was being the most obnoxious at the time as far as being right on my border. I found that Suryavarman would join in for a pretty steep price in techs but he was way to North so I decided against it. I also considered the AP but it would take too long to build so I didn't do that either.

In the end, Joao made me really really mad by placing two more cities directly South of me in the only spare land I hadn't gotten to! I had planned on putting a city there but apparently Joao beat me to it twicefold! Anyway, I said forget diplomacy and I built up an army of cats, swordsmen, and a couple of macemen to do a lightning attack on Joao's territory. At this point I didn't care of the other civs were gonna hate me or not. I captured two of his cities and razed one within two turns. I considered called it quits at this time but I was still pretty annoyed at him so I figured I'd really weaken him and dive into another line of his cities. I captured his capital and a city South of it that were both pretty decent within the next 5-10 turns. After killing off a few lone units of his wondering around I called peace since the rest of his cities weren't really any good anyway. Now I have four additional cities and a chunk of additional land. I'll probably go and finish Joao just for the land later on when I need to expand again.

The important part:
Diplomacy with the other AIs didn't suffer a bit!
Well, I got a -1 penalty with all of them but overall I'm still pleased/friendly with the other three! The shared religion far beyond outweighs the war penalty. I'm getting +6 from Suryavarman for it and +8 with Charlemagne. They could care less that I just decimated half of their "religion brother's" land!

Was this because of the particular civs on the map? Would I get huge negative bonuses for attacking a friend with different civs?

All in all it was fun kicking Joao back a notch (the irritating expansive jerk) and I appreciate all the responses.

The AP might help you steal some cities with the reassigning ability, but you'll need to have some culture power to even get the option, and I'm not 100% sure you can use it against someone of the same religion. The hammer bonus will be nice, but then everyone will have it. It might be worth switching to a different religion for the AP, then switching back, to keep the AIs from making out too much, but this is an untried idea.

Usually when I'm in your situation, that means build up the military AND try to find some other lands to build on by getting boats out there. That way, you can either stomp on the weakling(s) who are most in your way, or start getting intercontinental trade bonuses for your cities (then switch to Merch to keep the AIs from benefiting ;) ), or both.

IIRC you can only AP a city that once belonged to you or has some of your culture in it, and if someone else gets to play pope, they're most likely gonna end all the bloodshed and sacking and that other fun...