sjm:
However, getting attacked by so many AIs at once is nothing but your own fault. You do need to build up a military throughtout the game (you can't just wait for tanks), even if only to discourage other civs from attacking you. It would be plain silly if the AI were not programmed to take advantage of your weaknesses. If you have the poorest military, all civs will attack you, not just the warmongers (and it's a good thing they do!)
I do build a military, how else do I fend them off? It's just that there's a fine balance between trying to keep a military and trying to advance your civ; IOW keep it in at least the top 3 in research. As I tended to do things with the old warlords, I would have a substantial army, averaging maybe 3 units per city before the wars started. Then I start getting into 2-3 cities minimum building nothing but military units. Problem is now, to all appearances, once they declare war they aren't going to ask for peace, and in my very limited example they will take them on seemingly only equal terms, even after I've kicked him around pretty thoroughly. It's not just militant ineptitude on my part, and frankly it's a lot more WW adjustment by this AI -and- their unwillingness to come to favorable peace terms that is proving upside down.
Say for example in the old days I could depend on maybe $300-$750 in peace terms from some civ that knew nothing but military thrashing when trying to invade me. He would have to or his WW would throw him into a pit. That money could be used to support my economy or in spots upgrade key units. Now it's like the game is forcing you to either be super firendly or just be an attacker all the time.
But actually, the clever thing to do is not to trade a tech to one AI and allow them to trade it to everyone, but to trade it to everyone yourself; you need to do this on YOUR turn btw. If you get the AI popping up asking for a trade, that means it's their turn. Give them the tech, and they can trade it to anyone they want. That's not the case if you do the trading in your own turn. In fact, if you do it right, tech trading is actually a good idea, as you can get, say, 6 techs in return for one.
Well apparently you haven't been noticing the difference. The AI now has time to convene with the other AI's before you can get back to offering the same things to the other AI's. It no longer appears to make a difference whether you do it as a proposal to them or vice-versa. I can't tell you how many times I've seen a civ with a large sum of money mysteriously disappear when I proposed an offer to another civ. I have also proposed and thought I had 4 deals I could make immediately, only to find I had only the original one and what was left were really bad trades if I wanted (like getting half the value at best). The end result is I don't trade techs to them anymore, because I know it will benefit at least 4 or 5 of them everytime I do it. Believe me, there's a VERY strong reason why I pre-patch did 99% proposing deals myself, and running as the tech leader, only to do the same thing now and I'm pulling often like 9th out of 10 civs. It's frankly amazing at certain parts of the game to see how many civs get what I had, and that at least one civ had somehow come up with 5 or 6 I do not. It is a very rude fundamental shift going on here, and it's not because I've changed my style for the worst.
I'm also starting to wonder if the option to not trade techs, isn't just keeping the human player from doing it. You wouldn't think so, but then the one or two games I tried that it was amazing how many tchs all the civs were getting, as though they were trading with each other, but that was a limited sample anyway. I temporarily went back to allowing tech trading, but I am still taking the attitude that they aren't getting squat out of me, and will have to really make it a juicy deal, because I know it will go to at least three civs everytime I give them something.
It seems another poster is thinking civ4 has always been this way with the trading. In my experience it wasn't as bad before, as now, as I could at least get a couple of good deals going from one tech.
