Magma_Dragoon
Reploid
- Joined
- May 10, 2008
- Messages
- 2,354
At least, until you don't care if everyone hates you. Forum is filled with people complaining they get denounced and everyone hates them for making small wars. They are doing it wrong.
Step one: pick your friends
The AIs start out symmetrically indifferent to everyone. This symmetry is broken when they start expanding toward each other, send each other caravans, or spread religions to each other, and they coalesce into cliques. You want to be in the clique that has money. Ideally, it will consist of AIs who are fairly trustworthy. Not China, not Carthage, not France, not Russia.
Step two: pick your enemies
Picking friends forces you to pick their enemies as your enemies. Ideally, they will be the jerkass AIs above who are willing to declare war at friendly.
Step three: dance puppets, dance
Any time you have horses or iron or luxes you can't sell, or you are in a comfortable position with respect to gold, bribe any of your enemies to attack your friends, or friends to attack enemies. Bribing a future victim to attack a city state you have no interest in or can't afford allying with right now is also good, as they will either win and become a pariah you can smack around, or lose a bunch of units trying.
Exhibit 1
Step four:
Now that you have an army and a victim, it's time to go attack
But first things first, bribe your victim to attack all your friends and denounce him for it before attacking. I don't like letting great works go to waste, so I have some slots ready and use spies to find out where the nice loot is. Repeat this process until you have eliminated the problem AI, or if you like, all the AIs.
If at any point things don't go as I have described, follow the flowchart below:
Step one: pick your friends
The AIs start out symmetrically indifferent to everyone. This symmetry is broken when they start expanding toward each other, send each other caravans, or spread religions to each other, and they coalesce into cliques. You want to be in the clique that has money. Ideally, it will consist of AIs who are fairly trustworthy. Not China, not Carthage, not France, not Russia.
Step two: pick your enemies
Picking friends forces you to pick their enemies as your enemies. Ideally, they will be the jerkass AIs above who are willing to declare war at friendly.
Step three: dance puppets, dance
Any time you have horses or iron or luxes you can't sell, or you are in a comfortable position with respect to gold, bribe any of your enemies to attack your friends, or friends to attack enemies. Bribing a future victim to attack a city state you have no interest in or can't afford allying with right now is also good, as they will either win and become a pariah you can smack around, or lose a bunch of units trying.
Exhibit 1
Spoiler :
This is how you get people to like you and hate each other
Step four:
Now that you have an army and a victim, it's time to go attack
But first things first, bribe your victim to attack all your friends and denounce him for it before attacking. I don't like letting great works go to waste, so I have some slots ready and use spies to find out where the nice loot is. Repeat this process until you have eliminated the problem AI, or if you like, all the AIs.
If at any point things don't go as I have described, follow the flowchart below:
Spoiler :