Montezuma afraid

In my current game Montezuma is systematically wiping out civilizations one by one. He only has me left to deal with, and is a good thousand ahead on score, has much more land and cities, and far more military than me. So it came as a shock when he just approached me, wanting a delaration of friendship because he was AFRAID! I absolutely cannot understand this, as he could wipe me out. I am putting the save on here so someone can explain just why he was afraid. I accepted his friendship declaration and now he has gone to neutral.
Thanks, Kev.

Montezuma often does that as a feint of sorts. It's a precursor to war.

It's a filthy Lie!!! The Aztecs fear no one. Like steve said, it's more of a warning. It means you have less than 50 turns to live. Usually when someone is "Afraid" of me we end up at war in 20-40 turns. And I'm not the one to DoW. Start beefing up ur military buddy, it's eminent.

On a side note, if Monty has a lot of coastal cities (like half his cities) here's something that might work if he has a feeble navy. If you build op a decent sized navy you should be able to crush his and begin taking his cities one by one. You don't even have to keep them. One of the great things about the new naval system is that certain ships can take cities. He'll waste his time retaking his cities, all the while steadily weakening. You only need enough land troops to defend against his. All this is possible b/c the AI still neglects building a decent.

Anyway however things go, good luck.

The last time I saw Monty declare that he was afraid of me was after I handed him his butt after he declared war on me. I had 3 cities, which were defended by 1 warrior, archers which were upgraded to CB and some African Forest Elephants. After wiping out most of his army, we made peace and he was scared. I haven't gone back to that game though, but we were still in the Classical era.

Drewbc, spot on. He did declare war very shortly after, and proceeded to annihilate me. Dropped umpteen atom bombs on my cities, devastating me. I retired soon after he took a couple of my cities. My first game on Prince with Gods and Kings though, so not too disappointed. I am now faring much better on my second game, and am well ahead of Spain and Polynesia.