For the first time ever I was able to enlist a couple allies who happened to have some units in the area to go to war with my neighor, Montezuma, to help me weaken him and so I could take his land... but the AI took the whole thing WAYY too seriously and it was a struggle to try to take the cities before they did. Even when I wanted to halt the war for a little while and recover, they kept going! I guess this is what they mean by letting lose the dogs of war? Pandora's box? Getting the Genie back i the bottle? They were expensive to bribe, but try stopping them! Ugh.

I'm thinking it was a mistake to enlist BOTH Russian and England. I was just suprised that they took it so seriously. My pervious experience with allied warfare is such that my allies hardly do anything.

What difficulty level was this?
Did you have 'Aggressive AI' turned on?

No aggressive AI, but raging barbarians is on. So maybe they just happened to have lots of units laying around from that setting. I noticed they were lingering around inside my borders. That's why I originally enlisted them.

EDIT: Noble difficulty.

Allies can be troublesome, especially when the target civ capitulates to your ally, preventing you from taking any more cities (unless you want to fight your ally, too).

I normally find it easier to bribe them to stop a war than start one. With one exception - I once had an ally, can't remember who it was, but the option to make peace with the civ I was trying to vassalize was redded out and when mousing over it, said "we'd rather win the game" :lol:

Ye the AI like to get a domination victorys sometimes :D But never seen one get it. They have often been close but I am always there stoping there planes :D

Speaking of enemies capitulating to allies.... it seems like there should be a little more notice of this. I can't count the number of times I've declared war on an enemy that I'd been warring with for centuries only to find out they've capitulated to someone else. There should be a warning that says "declaring war will also declare war on X." Or is it there and I am missing it? I guess I just have to be more vigliant about checking the civ relations before going to war.

Last time this happened I had to take a city of a larger civ that my enemy had capitulated to just so they would agree on a ceasefire without me giving away one of MY cities. Oh well, they will need to be put in their place eventually anyway. It is just that I have a whole New World to colonize. I don't have the resources to absorb yet another civ.

Allies can be counted on to do what you really don't want them to. Most of the time, they sit back when you want them to take the pressure off you, but if you really just want to distract someone so you can walk in, they'll go full-bore and out-conquer you.