Creepster,
You might say she was a friend to me as well, she gave me one city and 3 slaves. May not sound like much, but as a percentage of what she had you might say she gave me a bigger cut.
Cathy and I go way back, even before CIV3. But in CIV3 I think the breaking point was in a game in February where I had not really been too much into spies but Cathy was my neighbor. The map was a modified version of the continuous alternating land grid with choke points in four direction between almost every land block and where every block can basically only support one metropolis. The modification to the map added more bays and inland seas.
About every ten to twenty turns, Cathy and Montezuma would take turns puking up a single horseman or cav unit in the coastal cities near my capital and say "Just checking defenses we will leave now." They didn;t have an ROP and I was usually 1/2 an age to an age in front of them. Just harassment and it went on for almost 1000 years. I finally stopped it by blockading the mouth of the bay with a solid line of 10 destroyers and ironclads.
During the same game, Cathy kept throwing spies at me like gnats every 3 or 4 turns. I would get messages like "Mr. President, Catherine the Great's spy has been caught trying to steal a technology and was killed." I still do not know how she could afford to plant a spy and attempt to steal plans or sabotage production at that frequency.
When I attempted to plant a spy in Russia the first time, the spy was caught and killed and Cathy instantly declared war on me and attacked with two SODs of about 30 cossacks each. My MEch Infantry, Artillery, Cruise Missisles, Modern Armor and other military forces in a railroaded empire made short work of the assault forces. That was also the first game where I realized that 9 times out of 10, my land based bomber aircraft could rarely if ever reach to cities outside my culture boundary because the range was less than the distance between cities.
It's been downhill ever since. On diety level she either whips me like a redheaded step child or bleeds me dry for extortion money and any thing of value at almost every turn. If I get lucky and am close enough to her to kill her at about 1500BC, then I can have a chance at winning deity.
I long for the opportunity to have at least one leader and at least one civ that has the fidelty gene truned on so that they can actually be trustworthy and reliable allies. Perhaps MP will give us the chance for these types of games.
