Every War is a World War

I don't know if anyone else has discovered this, or if it is just the mod i use (Worldwide), but I have quickly come to the conclusion that if you launch ANY war, it will without fail expand to include almost EVERY nation within 5 turns, and takes 50-100 turns for things to calm down. My current play through saw a WW break out at 710 ad, and we are coming up on 1500 ad now. Not sure this one is going to end before everyone destroys everyone. Luckily it looks like Flight is going to enter the game early, and the bulk of my cities is on an island, so between the two i will be ok for a long time.

at least until Ghandi discovers Nukes....

I'm not familiar with that mod, but I declare war or make the AI declare war with a purpose.
When a civ is eliminated or a recourse or lux is taken, I sue for peace and get some extra cities or techs out of it.

- in the ancient age, wars are short, only to grab workers or to get a strategic point on the map. No allies are uncluded and II end asap.
- in the middle ages, I'm in Republic so I want to end early. I often fight with an ally, so a typical war is 20 turns or a bit more.
- later in the game I'm just going full elimination mode. So I have a war, wipe someone out and then in peacs time its just planning for the next victim.

I play the same mod and find that the AI tends to declare war often when they don't have any superiority except in the ability to pay other civs to do their bidding. To this end every other civ either enacts military alliances or starts an embargo against the victim! You are not alone.

In my experience though its a far bigger pain in the early ages when i'm trying to stay within unit support limits (Especially with Kingship and Republic *shivers*). Best solution i've found is to defend and snag alliances early, lest the trigger happy aggressor starts to "pay" other AI civs to attack you. Once you reach flight though, you can make them pay dearly for their foolish endeavors with heavy aerial bombardment. This has made me learn to LOVE using the bomber.