How to war without being hated by everyone

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:

HA, I like the pictures: 0_0*

Nice, you answered my previous post "Successful Early Wars" with this one. Funny too.

"Do you have artillery?" "No." "Get some!"

All guides should be written like this.

Are the Ottomans trustworthy? I had Suleiman DoW on Friendly once.

Friends who allied with a lot of CS may be a smart ploy as if a CS captures the target city they may raze it and no warmonger penalty for you. You can then settle in that location if you want. This is happening in my current game, I've been involved in a bit of warmongering but have only captured 1 city, whilst reducing my enemies strength.

It's not too big a deal being backstabbed either if you can handle it. I'm currenty trying for my first Deity Domination win with Mongols on Great Plains, and while I was bashing Attila's Court with Keshiks, Pedro (who I had a DoF with), decided it was time to take advantage of my poorly defended mainland. Thanks to a well placed allied city state and a few rushbought units, I repelled him. This turned out to be great for me because I just stayed at war, picking off units here and there, and it gave me an easy diplomatic target next.

Point is, having backstabbers in your friends isn't necessarily bad for you.

lindsay40k said:

All guides should be written like this.

Are the Ottomans trustworthy? I had Suleiman DoW on Friendly once.

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There is a spreadsheet called diplo by the numbers somewhere around here. I don't know if it has been updated for BWN. Loyalty is the stat in question, I don't know exactly how high the loyalty value needs to be to refuse an offer to attack at friendly. Any AI can attack at fake friendly though. If you get an intrigue about your friend plotting against you, it means he is fake friendly. That could mean he is planning to vote against you in the WC, it could mean he has accepted an offer to attack you in 10 turns.

Very nice guide, especially second pic is just great

-Does he have bombers?
-Yes
-Goddammit!

hehehe

Good description how diplomacy should be done...it doesn't always work out that nicely though. Occasionally you set next to the AI that is friends with everybody, occupying the space you would like to expand to....here come multiple denunciations my way...

Anway, the figure is very recognisable: ...Yes! here comes the artillery...what...he's got bombers...dammit!

beest said:

Anway, the figure is very recognisable: ...Yes! here comes the artillery...what...he's got bombers...dammit!

Click to expand...

Nothing enough AA can't deal with.

You mention China, France, Russia, Carthage as "untrustworthy" civs. Is there a list of traits somewhere that spells this out? I've never had any particular problem with Carthage. I've noticed that violent leaders (Huns and Mongols, mainly) won't ever agree to a fair trade of resources even when far away and separated from me by several civs, but not noticed "untrustworthy" behavior.

Using this strategy in my current game (immortal/poland/pangea/standard/standard), I have conquered most of Germany (10 cities start of war, took 5 plus 2 more from peace deal), eliminated the Celts (2 cities), and am now trimming down Carthage (1/3 the pangea). All the while I have maintained super friends status with Ramkhamhaeng and Haile Selaisse, two AIs with the highest warmonger hate flavor. I'm pals with Pacal too.

friends status with Ramkhamhaeng

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The end times have begun...

Darviathar said:

You mention China, France, Russia, Carthage as "untrustworthy" civs. Is there a list of traits somewhere that spells this out? I've never had any particular problem with Carthage. I've noticed that violent leaders (Huns and Mongols, mainly) won't ever agree to a fair trade of resources even when far away and separated from me by several civs, but not noticed "untrustworthy" behavior.

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If look at the big leadership flavor chart (I think it's maintained via this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=11584962), all of those civs have high "Deceptive" ratings. High "Deceptive" and low "Loyalty" is especially bad (hello Napoleon and Monty!)

So look at warmongers: Monty and Atilla both have high deceptiveness and low loyalty - which is why they will immediately be friendly, and then DoW you fifteen turns later. Conversely, Shaka has a very low deceptive rating and high loyalty - meaning you usually know where you stand with him (and, if you can get on his good side early, he can become your happy mercenary friend who will DoW everyone for very little money. Though he still Shaka, if he's right next to you, it's going to go bad at some point.)

Great guide Magma_Dragoon!
Fun read also.

If my game is becoming stale and everybody is everyones friend, I just start being obnoxious. For example, if a CS is under protection of someone I wardec it. When the Civs show up I tell them to bugger of.

Send a prophet into the AI country and start converting his cities, when he complains tell him you don't care.

Steal his land with a great general.

Of course denounce as you please.

It all helps if your military is considered weak, it certainly doesn't have to be, as you can hold of many units with a city and a few ranged. Pump out more units and rushbuy an army.

Excellent! Loved the guide, specially the titles of the steps.
Also, I saw that it's clinically proven, very good! Do you happen to have the FDA seal?

I have a seal

Magma_Dragoon said:

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.

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+1 to promote this thread.

Well, it looks official.