Rivals you must eliminate

Maybe this is weird, but I kind of don't like Gandhi especially if he's near me! I always find myself wanting to be Gandhi's friend because he trades well and is a peaceful guy. Then I check him and he has like this on his screen : Worst Enemy of Ragnar, Worst Enemy of Montezuma, Worst Enemy of Isabella, etc etc. And I get 10,000 requests to stop trading etc. Eventually we end up with a bunch of Montezuma's cities having Indian names. Once played continents on Vanilla, where I first met Montezuma and he had like 30 cities, like 8 Indian ones. I hate Montezuma too.. Gandhi is easy to eliminate though, but I always feel like a jerk when I knock out Gandhi.

If I share border only with relatively peaceful leaders, I usually decide according to their resources, wonders, etc. Otherwise I’m trying to eliminate opportunistic warmongers like Alex or Catherine. If I don’t eliminate them early, I always have to keep strong military in cities near them. It really complicates any other military actions, because when I move army out of cities near their border, they will attack me even if they are pleased, if they are not occupied by war with somebody else. Even bribing them to other wars doesn’t ensure safety, because there is usually 10 turns pause before I can bribe them again to attack the same target, and sometimes, they attacked me during the pause.
On the other hand, Alex far from my territory can sometimes be extremely because he is keeping rivals busy with frequent wars and usually, he is not candidate for any kind of victory.

Alex and Catherine are good leaders to bribe into wars, Catherine can backstab at Friendly and Alex can consider it when he's Cautious towards you.

When I first joined the forum the first thread I created was "Dutch getting pummeled". The games I played were up to prince difficulty, playing with raging barbarians. Every game with the Dutch present they got destroyed by barbarians. In order to get my first victories above prince I studied strat/tactics here on the forum and stopped playing with raging barbarians. When the Dutch were in game without raging barbarians they became a major problem. I've learned the Dutch expand and tech like crazy. So now when the Dutch are in game I make it a point to strike at them early. If I can't completely eliminate them I periodically war against them to avoid the Dutch getting to powerful. The Dutch are a major pain in the butt, and as one poster has stated on the forums " William is a dick". In my games the diplomacy screen should say " William worst enemy of Civfanchambers".

Dutch can also be a big problem, when I’m playing continents, they are on other continent than me and they are sharing land with other peaceful civilizations like Mali. At the time, I’m able to get to them, they are usually very advanced and powerful.
Once I had to try amphibious invasion to prevent William from achieving cultural victory. I didn’t have enough power to hold the cities on his continent, so I had to raze them. When I razed two of his top cultural cities, I noticed, he had several other cities very close to legendary culture. I didn’t manage to raze them to, because he wiped out my invasion forces by nukes on his own land.

Oldlamehand said:

I didn’t manage to raze them to, because he wiped out my invasion forces by nukes on his own land.

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You CAN'T nuke your own land, or even when units or territory of someone you are at peace with are in the radius. This includes spies, great spies and privateers. Don't know about Guided Missiles though.

TheSunIsDark said:

You CAN'T nuke your own land, or even when units or territory of someone you are at peace with are in the radius. This includes spies, great spies and privateers. Don't know about Guided Missiles though.

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You CAN nuke YOUR OWN land. At least in BTS 3.19. You only can't nuke land or units of other civilizations, if you are not at war with them. But I know, before some patch, spies of friendly civilizations prevented from nuking.

Oldlamehand said:

You CAN nuke YOUR OWN land. At least in BTS 3.19. You only can't nuke land or units of other civilizations, if you are not at war with them. But I know, before some patch, spies of friendly civilizations prevented from nuking.

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Someone once DoWed me, I raged and WB'd loads of nukes, couldn't nuke a city bordering my own land. Probably Guided Missiles or land that became neutral after razing.

Tac Nukes qualify as nukes.

I have been nuked on several occasions while in enemy territory by several different AI's, most notably Taxy and Alex. The only way I have found to prevent it from happening is get to a tile right next to a AI city, AI will not nuke due to fallout affecting city.

Oldlamehand said:

You CAN nuke YOUR OWN land. At least in BTS 3.19. You only can't nuke land or units of other civilizations, if you are not at war with them. But I know, before some patch, spies of friendly civilizations prevented from nuking.

Click to expand...

TheSunIsDark said:

Someone once DoWed me, I raged and WB'd loads of nukes, couldn't nuke a city bordering my own land. Probably Guided Missiles or land that became neutral after razing.

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You can nuke your own land. You cannot nuke your own cities or units. Guided missiles are not nukes, and do substantially less damage than nukes.

Big things on my threat-ometer:
- Civs with strong UUs or UBs that the AI can use.
- Capitals with 4+ big food tiles, 2+ big commerce tiles, vast flood plains or good Shrines.
- The Sistine Chapel.
- The Apostolic Palace.
- Civs that have access to the land they need to run away.
- The Great Library.

Personal priorities-

#1) My nearest neighbor (unless it's Hattie. She makes a great girl next door until the AP. After that her popularity makes her a threat.) As I say, my favorite production city is always the former capital of my nearest neighbor.

#2) Sitting Bull. I can't stand him demanding stuff and poisoning my water every turn. This terrorist must be eradicated!

#3) Cathy. I can't trust her.

#4) Sooner or later I have to face Shaka and his tech slave vassals. If I let it go too late, he'll beat me. If I take him out early, he's the best vassal I ever had, always willing to attack when I tell him to and to put obsolete units to use when I gift them to him. But the best games are to take him on in the middle when he's a real challenge.