One Big Happy Family

[Olfart]

Currently playing a fractal map, Prince level, as Hammy. I share a landmass with Qin, Augustus, and Lizzie. No other civs in sight yet. Liz found Hinduism and everybody converted. Now, we're all happy with each other. Unclaimed land for further expansion is about gone, I have the biggest military on the continent and would like to start whittling down the competition. I'm afraid that back stabbing one is going to cause the others to dogpile on. My tech situation is good, but not great. It's AD680, and I'm starting to stack phants, swords, and cats. What do you do when everybody is happy with you?

Side note: I blew a golden opportunity around 500BC to own the continent. Once we went OB, if found myself as the only one with axes. Liz and Auggie didn't even have archers. Qin would have been tough with protective archers, but I probably could have taken him. This would have resulted in me being isolated on their ruins for a long time. Would be interested in other peoples thoughts on this.

 

[Tatran]

Don't worry, some action will come as soon as Lizzy has Liberalism.
Her favourite civic is free religion.

 

[CivilizedTiger]

Isolation is relevant mostly in the early game and usually because by "isolated start", people don't mean just an isolated start, but one with only enough room for a normal civ. An isolated civilization that has the land of 4 civs is a different story altogether Add to that the fact that you'll have optics soon anyway and voila: no fear of isolation if you want to decide to attack the other AI.

 

[georgjorge]

Attacking one the AI is good friends with doesn't carry much of a diplomatic penalty, either -1 or -2, so everyone liking each other isn't as problematic as it sounds. The big question is if the one attacked will be able to bribe the others in, so in general I would attack the one that a) doesn't have anything to bribe the others with b) is most aggressive (Augustus), so he would have to bribe the more peaceful ones in which is harder to do.

As to the golden opportunity - that would have been great, but why would you have needed to conquer all of them? Taking on one or two and leaving the rest for tech trades and trade routes would have been my preferred choice (and I guess they didn't even have Alphabet to bribe each other in).

 

[Olfart]

@gerogjorge: Your second paragraph answered my question. Intuitively, it would seem economically better to keep one trading partner. But, the opportunity presented itself, and I let it pass. With and aggressive leader on marathon, I probably should have made some sort of move. There may still be time. Even tho Rome is starting to build praets, I think I still have enough numbers to take them if no one else backstabs.

Thanx to all for the feedback. I'm comfortable at Noble, trying get Prince down.

 

[Tristan_C]

Difficulty setting is always a consideration in these decisions. Although there is definitely nothing wrong with playing as if the difficulty setting were higher! But a trading partner on prince is still generally just for the inter-city trade routes; you're not going to be getting a whole lot of mileage out of tech trading until after monarch (before then it helps the AIs overcome their penalties, more than netting you extra ). The inter-city routes may be important to your commerce, though... I don't know.

The other consideration is that even the aggressive AIs still face some hard caps on the proportion of their production they can allot to military in peacetime. By exceeding these caps yourself-- say, having more than half your cities producing units-- you win wars by sheer weight of numbers. Any civs that attempt a dogpile will be faced with the prospect of waging offensives against a much larger opponent (you).

 

[Revenant]

If the civs that you are worried about dogpiling you are pleased or friendly with you, you can ask for a small amount of gold (say 10 or 1gpt) which will guarantee your 10 turns where they can't be bribed to war against you. It should give you a decent window of opportunity to do some damage.