How does the Power graph work, or intimidating Power?

Funny, I didn't even look at the dates and to me it seemed like a pretty new and also relevant discussion.

Something I wanted to add here is that I am rather fond of using the opposite approach from time to time: I pretend to be weak so that the AI declares on me, then I beat the crap out of them. This "strategy" has flaws, but worked outstanding in a recent game.

I had already killed off three of my neighbours in the Middle Ages. I had a decent, highly promoted but outdated army in the Renaissance, while Qin Shi Huang was 0.7 on my power rating, i.e. fairly much stronger.
I had the Great Wall, so I enjoyed him invading since that meant a major boost for Great Generals. I just needed to prepare some troops in the build queues. When Qin invaded with Choco Flakes, I upgraded my troops and repelled the invaders while switching civics to Theo+Feud, then finished the builds of loads of modern units and went forth to curbstomp Qin.

To be fair: I'm playing only on Monarch and for this trick to work, you need to be able to reload, so it's not seriously a strategy. Also I had already the economic lead, while there was a tech parity between myself and 3-5 friendly cultural top techers. Still, it was a nice way to have mighty Qin declare war on me, because Qin was everybody's good friend and I would have gotten that penalty it I had declared first. I got Qin's land and could cruise to tech victory even easier.

The same strategem didn't work as well in another game, again in Renaissance on the verge of Industrial. Just like with Qin, I reloaded and spiked my build queue, but my "target" Vickie wouldn't declare on me in the second run and instead went berserk on my best buddy Darius with whom I had a defensive pact. The same war, but I had to eat the diplo penalty.
 
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