Hello everyone, periodic longtime lurker here.

I'm struggling to make the step up to emperor, winning about 10% of my games there, mostly with good starting positions or the leaders I'm best with.

I've reached the point where I can crash my economy and recover fine generally, and usually stay near the top in techs and close to equal in power early, fine late if i make it that long. I have a feeling it's my lack of diplomacy skills that are primarily holding me back, and my last game was a perfect example.

Short version: How do I make people hate other leaders they should hate? Long version to follow!

I had Asoka, on a big and small map, the main continent, I was smack dab in the middle of it. I had Augustus to my NE, Charlemagne one city away to my west, Sitting Bull far SW, and Hammurabi SSE. Charley founded Buddhism, Hammurabi as in every game I've ever seen with him founded Judaism (is that hard coded or what, I don't think I've ever seen him not get it). I founded but did not switch to Confucianism, just needed the courthouses and I had the marble for the oracle. I have a gold rich area with marble, a bit light on food, but ok; get 4 commerce cities, one production, one GP farm out of the area.

Judaism spreads to Augustus, I spread Confucianism to SB praying he'll draw the attention of Charley and Hammurabi. He switches to Buddhism eventually, then finally to Judaism. All this time I've been sitting on the fence not wanting a religion. Now it seems time to switch; I have Augustus boxed in and am afraid of him DoWing as his territory is pretty small so I figure take the Judaism, everyone gangs up on Charley, and I'm in the best position to actually grab his land. SB actually shares borders with Charley, and Hammurabi touches a few corners.

Charley DoWs me a couple turns later, I fight him off with jumbos, but don't have enough power to push him yet so take peace while I build up. The one big problem in my area...no horses, no iron. With jumbos and siege and copper I figure I should be fine until I can get some iron. But no one will help out vs Charley, despite all of them being cautious towards him, and no one will trade me iron, not even for 4 resources they don't have in return. (ivory, gold, silk, incense, 10 gpt couldn't get me iron. yet SB will trade it to Charley for just gems, so frustrating). In the end he suddenly somehow started teching much faster and reached engineering; without iron I gave it up.

It seems to come down to how can I get all these other guys to hate Charley enough to dogpile him and I can't seem to do it; am I missing any espionage or diplomacy tricks? They won't stop trading, won't dogpile when I'm already at war and have beaten him up a little. The only thing I can do to get them to dislike him more as far as I can figure out is get him to DoW me a few more times but constantly building jumbos to hold him off long enough to get a significant penalty for declaring on a friend would slow me down so much that hammurabi would run away with the game.

Wellcome to the forum Outlandish! :beer:

I read the short version. ;) You can get people to dislike each other by influencing the others religion or civics. both can be done by diplomacy or espoinage. You can also ask the AI to stop trading with another. All this requires some manipulation on your side because no one will do this willingly if they dislike you.

Diplomacy is complicate and becomes much more important in high level. If you can manage most of the things right, then congratulation, you are approaching the deity level or you are a deity player already.

Making your neighbors happy is just the basic step. You usually can't please everyone due to the religious difference. So you have to determine who you are going to be friendly with and choose a religion when you feel safe to do so. There are many ways to increase the relationship with your future friends beside the religious love, OP, resource trade, sharing favorite civic, and etc. The fastest way is to give them benefit by trade. Therefore, leading the tech will make everything easy. Hmm, easy to say, hard to do, but this is another complicate issue.

Back to your problem. Some leaders can be bribed to the war at cautious, others need to be pleased or friendly, and some leaders can not be bribed. Moreover, some leader don't declare at please. You need to check it. So basically, you need to improve your relationship with some AIs, have something (tech or cash) to bribe them to help you for the war.

influencing civics via espionage sounds promising; otherwise in that situation i can't see why they wouldn't be bribed as they were all pleased with me and cautious with charley. i've never used espionage really except to run the occasional counter espionage mission or revolt a city so i'll give that a try next time, thanks very much.

When you are surrounded by different religions, consider fav civics as well.
Hammurabi, for instance, likes Bureaucracy and isn't terribly concerned about religion, so you can have him at pleased (safe) even in a different religion.

In your situation there are big hidden modifiers between those AIs. All of them have high peaceweights, so they naturally like each other.
Can't say much without screenshots, but I'd pick Augustus or Charlie as my bff. If you get Charlie to pleased you are safe and he's likely to attack SB.
Augustus has a tricky fav civic but doesn't care about religion, so you may be able to keep him pleased (safe).

bleh, i don't think i've ever even considered anyone's favorite civic other than isabella's except to take constant -1 hits for rejecting them; diplomacy is definitely the weight dragging me down. time to do a bit of research i guess.

bleh, i don't think i've ever even considered anyone's favorite civic other than isabella's except to take constant -1 hits for rejecting them; diplomacy is definitely the weight dragging me down. time to do a bit of research i guess.Or you can ask specific questions. Diplomacy is not that hard to get the hang off, it is the weighing your options thingy that makes it so hard. Understanding how it works is the easy part.

In order to get specific advice that you can learn from I recommend posting screenshots of relations, land, tech situation and such, and maybe more if some one asks for it. Then explain what you are trying to accomplish and you will get lots of feedback and fast too. The more specific you are in your questions the more useful feedback you will get.

yet SB will trade it to Charley for just gems, so frustrating

How do you know that ? I can only determine my own trades with AI, not those between AI's.

SB was already trading it to charley for just gems, i'm not clairvoyant...yet. suppose i should have used a different word other than will there.