diplomacy

I would appreciate a little advice here, guys. I am currently playing on King, Continents.
The basic story is: There are four civs on my continent, with The Huns on the far West, then India, then me (as England), and finally Assyria on the Eastern edge of the continent. Atilla has attacked Gandhi at least twice, to no avail though. He also has attacked me but I held him off. And lastly, Assyria has attacked me twice as well. I beat Assyria back and took one of their cities. At this point I still had my good relationship with Gandhi.
Now, a good many turns later, Assyria is once again amassing military might on our close borders. It is virtually certain he will declare war on me very soon. I have checked the demographics, and he has the biggest army by a good margin. My problem is this: I have a decent amount of the brilliant Longbowmen nicely situated to annihilate the Assyrian troops posing this threat. Due to their long range they can cut nicely into said army before they advance upon me. So,basically, if I strike first I will obviously have the upper hand as I will deal the first blow. The problem is, surely initiating a war will have a large negative effect on my relationship with Gandhi? Also I really want the Assyrian capital, which is only a hair's breadth from my border. This would stop the constant threat from Assyria and let me deal with the crazed Atilla. But, once again I know my relationship with Gandhi would be dealt a massive blow. What I basically need to know is whether there is any way to keep Gandhi from denouncing me and ruining our lucrative trade deals if I deal with the annoying threat from Assyria?
Thanks,
Kev.

As soon as you start taking cities from people, most if not all of the world will dislike and mistrust you. As they should, since you are probably planning on killing them all eventually

But this is heavily mitigated if they are also at war with that person. So you need to bribe Assyria to attack Ghandi, then attack Assyria.

Interesting tactic. Would Gandhi have any clue that you did this?

I wish you could use spies to spread false ideas... get people on your side. I wish there were more subterfuge.

You can slow down relationship souring with your future victims by:

1. Get allies in your fight. In fact make one or two most of the game long DOFs; just don't renew after you've just about knocked everybody else and it's time for them to go as well.

2. Don't be the one taking their very last few cities that are both useless and not in the way of making another nearby city decent. Only conquer their capital and major cities yourself and let your allies be the ones that apply the coup de grace. (War mongler penalty for taking a city is directly proportional to number of cities remaining)

Thanks for the replies. I decided to ask Gandhi what he would give me to start a war with Assyria, and he offered gold. So this obviously helped and I indeed attacked and took his capital. I don't know if this is a relevant factor, but I had previously denounced The Huns and Gandhi had just declared war on them. Maybe this helped me too. I was pretty shocked actually with Gandhi declaring war, with him being generally peaceful. Maybe he had had enough of being attacked by him! Anyway, so far no negative relations with Gandhi, to my shock.
India have just paid me again to declare war, this time against The Huns. Diplomacy certainly has many plus points, I am finding out. I usually end up being denounced by all in the game by this point.

Seems you were able to use the diplomacy system successfully here. If Gandhi has been attacked by the Huns in the past, there is little reason for him to like them. At this point he probably wouldn't mind even if you annihilated them completely, as long as he's also fighting them himself. Also you said Gandhi declared war on the Huns himself and even paid you to attack Assyria - all good signs.

But yeah, what the previous poster said about letting India take their last, most useless cities, or not taking them at all, is a good idea.

kkapalk said:

Thanks for the replies. I decided to ask Gandhi what he would give me to start a war with Assyria, and he offered gold. So this obviously helped and I indeed attacked and took his capital. I don't know if this is a relevant factor, but I had previously denounced The Huns and Gandhi had just declared war on them. Maybe this helped me too. I was pretty shocked actually with Gandhi declaring war, with him being generally peaceful. Maybe he had had enough of being attacked by him! Anyway, so far no negative relations with Gandhi, to my shock.
India have just paid me again to declare war, this time against The Huns. Diplomacy certainly has many plus points, I am finding out. I usually end up being denounced by all in the game by this point.

Click to expand...

u do know that gandhi will most likely use nukes? Check his 'nuke' rateness number on the wiki. It is over 10.

Lone rebel, yes I will leave the last cities for others to clear up. I also have Portugal in the game, on a far off continent. We are also good friends now, and at the moment they are attacking Assyria! Relations with Gandhi are very high still. It seems the Huns and Assyria are universally hated in this game. Whilst others are picking them off I can concentrate on my own game, steadily getting stronger. I may have to watch Portugal, as they have a massive military. I don't know their personality? Are they reasonably trustworthy?
Mclericp, yes I have read about Gandhi loving to use nuclear weapons. Can I assume he will be reasonably peaceful until the atomic era then?