Elizabeth, You be Crazy!

I started a new game on the archipelago map type,using Hiawatha, and for the first 50 or so, turns I see no other nations. I have one of the 4 biggest islands in the world(Elizabeth has one, Caesar/Gandhi share one, and Siam has one) all to myself, with 4 cities, and have built almost ever single wonder before everyone else. Then Elizabeth comes to meet me and from the get go she starts taunting about how anyone could destroy me, my nation is puny, and that she hates me for no reason!

I then try to make friendly with her, and try to make pacts of cooperation and open borders with her. She declines everything and tells me to stop talking to her so much! She then proceeds to insult my nation and say my economy is horrible! But I have 5000+ gold and have become the runaway nation 3 freakin eras ahead of everyone else! I literally have no army, though, so she sends a settler to a 2-hex islands with nothing right between 2 islands where I colonized!

I tell her to stop settling near me, but she says its none of my business and that she's going to enjoy destroying her. I quickly build a ton of destroyers and take the city, then she gets all scared and wants to negotiate peace! She gave me tons of luxury, but only 30 gold

Everyone else in the world is in a literal depression with 0-100 gold and I occasionally gift people I like 100g but they spend it all up without fixing their economy. I gift Elizabeth 300g then ask her to do a research agreement, but she turns around and demands all my luxury items, 500g, and open borders just for her! WTH Elizabeth, I almost destroyed you in war, but you still act top dog!

And don't get me started on Gandhi! He hates me for no apparent reason and always calls me up saying, "Oh, thought you were a barbarian, always get you guys confused". But then he always asks me to do pacts of secrecy or declare war on someone. Caesar and him were fighting in the early days, and I think he should have just wiped him out!

And Washington settles his cities all over the map! You just see dots of blue everywhere lmao

Yeah, Elizabeth can be strange sometimes. It seems like when I'm just sitting there minding my onw business she loves to come up and say, "By the grace of God your days are numbered!"

Btw, you're mentioning pacts of cooperation and pacts of secrecy. Those have been out of the game for a long time. Is your game updated?

I usually hate back, it helps

I think AIs that turn hostile are usually not actually threatening.

Heerlo said:

Btw, you're mentioning pacts of cooperation and pacts of secrecy. Those have been out of the game for a long time. Is your game updated?

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Just installed the game a few days ago, so I don't think so haha

The funny thing is now she's trying to settle all the islands around my empire o.O
And now that she has more settled areas, she starts with the puny insults again >.>

The last game I played with her, she was my best ally nation and we took on Napoleon together when he was conquering every other nation!

Simmer_E said:

Just installed the game a few days ago, so I don't think so haha

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You mean you think your game is updated, or isn't?

Heerlo said:

You mean you think your game is updated, or isn't?

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Don't think it's updated

Simmer_E said:

Don't think it's updated

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Well, Steam is supposed to update it automatically. If it's not updated, you might want to consider trying to get it updated. Up to you, though.

If your version of the game still has cooperation and secrecy, it's the near-broken version from vanilla release. You have a Steam account, right? Because it should have patched everything on install.

Biologist said:

If your version of the game still has cooperation and secrecy, it's the near-broken version from vanilla release. You have a Steam account, right? Because it should have patched everything on install.

Click to expand...

Hmmmm...maybe he pirated the game.

Something strange about starting on an archipelago map.

Playing Lizzy - built a whole bunch of Ships of the Line with some ironclads.

Started with Bluenose DOW - beat the living crap out of him and took two of his cities so he sued'd for peace.

Almost immediately, Issa with the other goddess did DOW now with the +2 England got, was able to take 4 of Issa's cities and destroy the other IA fleet.

right after I got a peace with both of these, Germany did a DOW on me - I was able to upgrade to battleships with +1 movement, double shots plus long range fire and took three of Germany's cities - got a peace treaty. Then 10 turns later, Bluenose started again with Germany - just took Germany's Capital, plus 3 other cities and looking to beat-up several of bluenoses 18+ cities

* * *

1) On an archipelago map,I am finding the AI are a bunch of bottom feeders - for example, left Issa her capital. As soon as it looked like Spain was going to fall hard, every other AI DOW on her. Since I left her with some decent hardware, so far she has beat off these attacks.

Same with Germany - as soon as it looked like he was going down hard, all the other AI did a DOW on him.

When I beat up and killed Poly, just before the fall, every AI did a DOW on him.

2) I found on a archipelago map, that pillaging is a great way of farming for gold. Since a lot of the islands can not support more then one city - when they get the expansion, it often leave a bunch of hex too far away from the city for the city to defend. Just send in the cav and pillage / farm these hex's

3) Found that Island cities, since you can not stack are useless - you just go in, blow the living daylights out of them capture and burn them.

It's important to understand that the AI's default behavior is too seek out a whipping boy. You do not have to commit some open offense in order to earn AI hate. You have that hate by default, and you defer it by looking to strong to trifle with, or at least stronger than some other poor slob.

Until war breaks out and armies start getting obliterated, that whipping boy is often the player, because the AI can amass larger armies than the player (they must get a break on unit maintenance or something). Now, if sounds like the OP had no army whatsoever, and that certainly invites hostility in Civ V.

"For among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised."

All those insults about being puny (i.e. you haven't founded many cities) or barbaric (i.e. you aren't generating a lot of culture) are just a pretext. Those aren't the reasons they hate you.

And while it sounds like the OP is playing an old version of the game, the above is still true. The AI would prefer to take cities by force than to engage in peaceful trade for their resources.