Is trading unfair? (AI related)

Hi.

Sometimes one AI Civ calls and asks me to cancel my trade with someone else. How do they know that I'm trading with that particular Civ? I, as a human player, can't see what the AI Civs are trading among themselves... Is it fair?

Another unfair thing is trade routes. If I have control of almost every aspect of religion, why can't I control trade routes? Because religion spreads through trade routes, so I should be able to cancel a trade route between an enemy city and mine, if I don't want to spread that religion there...

I once played as a Christian nation, but had only 1 city with Islam on the border of my empire. Since I couldn't do anything about trade routes, that city spread Islam to the neighbour Civ, and he adopted it as the national religion! I had to spent lots of turns to re-convert them with missionaries, but all that could be avoded if I had the option to cancel the trade between that rogue city and my neighbour.

What do you think?

Cheers.

Religion spreads by word of mouth, not always by missionaries.
The other civs probably figured out that those caravans carrying furs and dyes were not just people going into the forest to make tie-dye clothing. I agree though, you should know what the other civs are trading...

You shouldn't let your religion function on autopilot. If you want to get all the cash and diplomacy benefits of religion, you need to be specific about what religion you want to spread and use missionaries to do it. Otherwise, religion will spread by word of mouth.

I'm almost positive there's a way to see which AIs are trading. Look at the diplomacy screen -- you can see who has an open borders agreement. They're the ones trading. Ask them to cancel it if you're worried they might be trading resources, or techs, or using the open borders to mount an invasion.

on the trade screen u can ask them to stop trading with so and so so you can see who they are currently trading with there

You can do something about trade routes. Close your borders or use Mercantilism.

!scorpion said:

on the trade screen u can ask them to stop trading with so and so so you can see who they are currently trading with there

Click to expand...

Yeah, but suppose I want to block all iron from going to my enemy, and 2 other civs have iron. How do I know which Civ to ask to stop trading with my enemy?

In Civ3 you could see what agreements(ROP, MPP, Trade) was agreed upon between all nations you had established an embassy with from the main diplomacy screen and although you couldn't see the specifics of these agreements you could see if any existed.

Am I understanding your post correctly in that this is no longer possible/available in cIV?