A Peaceful Shaka?

[Bloodstone]

Early on in this game I decided to try Rapid Expansion to seal off my borders and harvest what appeared to be solid resources. As it turned out I am woefully short of strategic, and overly populated in happiness and food.

I discovered Shaka to my South early on, and despite a poor (-1) first impression our diplo steadily grew to a positive. I have pounded settlers and workers with a minimal army, waiting for the invading force to come charging at me from the south, but so far, 290 BC he has been quiet, and happily trading, even adopted my religion without my even asking! I am now moving towards building up more military strength and only find myself behind by a small margin in that regard.

Will Shaka remain on the Peace Train? Has anybody had any experiences with him in this regard? I have invested in Espionage Points to keep tabs on him, and plan to send my first Great Spy to his region, but will that be enough? Playing with PIG and BetterAI on Monarch.

Thanks for any input.

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

He only adopted the religion because it was widespread in his borders.

Since this is BetterAI, he's probably planning something, but I'm not sure. Keep tabs on his power ratio (one of the charts under statistics) and keep a fair difference.

 

[s.bernbaum]

I played a game this summer as Ghandi. Shaka was my immediate neighbor. We both adopted the same religion. Every time he wanted something I gave it to him, including declaring war on whoever he specified (although I never actually engaged in any warfare). He became the dominant military power. He was Friendly through most of the game, although he occasionally dropped to pleased until I either gave him something or joined one of his wars. In the end, I won a Space Race victory and we were still best buddies, despite me having culture flipped three of his cities. The answer in short is ..... use diplomacy!

 

[Sisiutil]

All of the warmongers (Shaka, Monty, Genghis, Alexander, Napoleon, etc.) can be made into buddies through careful management of diplomacy. Because this can take time, I've found that one of the key elements for this which you can't control is having another (weaker) civ nearby that the warmonger can attack instead of you. If you're the only available target, even being at Pleased and sharing the same religion may not help you. The warmongers are programmed, more or less, to build an army and to use it.

 

[Xanikk999]

You probably wont be able to stay friends unless you are friendly with him or significantly over power him.

My first really decent monarch attempt was starting off great.. I had a lead with score and a significant amount of land. It was great but then Alexander traveled halfway across the world with a huge army to my doorstep and declared war. I couldnt reinforce my border cities before he wrecked havoc.

It seems the AI will declare war on you over a closer AI if they know you and you are slightly lower than a closer AI on the power scale. That game just pissed me off and I started a new game instead.

 

[Sisiutil]

My first really decent monarch attempt was starting off great.. I had a lead with score and a significant amount of land. It was great but then Alexander traveled halfway across the world with a huge army to my doorstep and declared war. I couldnt reinforce my border cities before he wrecked havoc.

It seems the AI will declare war on you over a closer AI if they know you and you are slightly lower than a closer AI on the power scale. That game just pissed me off and I started a new game instead.

Heck, I've had Alexander do that to me even when I considerably outclassed him in power! He's just a nut, and he seems more disposed than many other AIs to marching through foreign territory to bring a war to your doorstep. Unless you get him to Friendly, you should always half-expect a surprise DoW from him if he can reach you.

 

[Fleme]

Yep, getting them to friendly is the ticket to security with the nuts. Shaka, Alexander and Genghis are probably the hardest to please due to their awkward favorite civics and low preference to religion but with these guys a shared war can take you far.

Basically sharing a prolonged fake war against the warmongers enemy will get you as much as +6 relations depending on the AI and will make a very good foundation for a relationship. Added to that ob, resource trades, fair trade and help and you can do it rather conveniently but its really more of a stroke of luck than anything because if they decide that you're their first enemy, that will most likely be the case for most of the game.

 

[gilmore606]

For me this kind of coddle-the-psycho backfires more often than not. If I'm always making sure he has a not-me target, pretty soon he's eaten up all those targets and becomes a monster.

 

[Bloodstone]

Ultimately didn't matter. He DoW on me at Pleased! Probably because I'm bigger and have a good sized tech lead on him. The good news is that I've got him bottled up in the southern part of the continent and so far the only two cities he can reach are my strongest defended. In fact the primary one is my Military City, so I've been able to pick off some of his troops as they attempt to cruise on by. It's really kind of a cool bottleneck that I didn't realize at first. I have two hills due S of the city, and I'm able to place sword or spear there, get the bonuses, and he has to try to squeeze through a pass where I can beat up his Sword/Impi/Chariot stack as it goes by.

Never played with Better AI before, it's very cool, I especially like the -1 in his diplo screen that says "the war is not going well for us" that just cracks me up.