Avoiding worst enemy

[Nikolai Dneppen]

I'm a big fan of watching TheMeInTeam and other LP's, but recently (well maybe not just recently) a lot of my games have been encountering this problem that I have yet to see others encounter:
A.I. declares on there worst enemy. I don't want to get involved for many reasons (other side of world, most common). It takes them several thousand years to finally kill of their worst enemy. In that time, I am guaranteed to become there next worst enemy because I repeatedly refuse to get involved.
Just what the hell am I supposed to do here?
This screencap is a good example. I have the military to keep Cathy out my turf, but Kublai Khan has just finished off Wang and now a Dogpile is inevitable (especially since Shaka hates me despite my best efforts to make him same religion).

 

[Loukoum427]

How much is the "you refused to help us during wartime" malus ? I can only read -1, but maybe there's another digit after the 1. It would be surprising, since I've never seen less than -2, but otherwise I can't explain why KK's annoyed while you share the same religion, nor why Cathy hates you and prepares to DOW… Did you attack her? Do you consistently refuse demands ? Do you trade with theirs (other) worst enemies ?

To answer your question, from my viewpoint, unless certain circumstances where all the civs on a continent share the same religion, you can't please everybody. The trick is choosing the best side... In your exemple, if the war is with somebody on another continent, which isn't part of your religious block, then you can "join" in the war, without sending any troops, and call for peace as soon as possible (which can be long if the other civ isn't damaged badly enough). Better yet, as (next to) everybody is confucianist, you could take a shot at the AP and call a holy war against the heathens... But this trick works if you can be elected resident, which I doubt in your present case.

 

[lymond]

Wow...I've never seen anything close to -14 before. Usually I might get at most 2 request to join a single war by a given AI. Curious: I see BUG in there, but are you using any other mods?

You might consider joining a war anyway if that AI is far away like you say. It can open up other opportunities like creating domino DOWs to your advantage. Check out Absolute Zero's LPs - he does this a lot.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Very odd to see -14. I also suspect mods or some seriously trippy "luck".

Depending on situation you can always just declare on the guy he's fighting before you get into that mess...

But seriously, in NORMAL games the anger over this decays...

 

[lymond]

Another option, if you are Pleased or better with the AI victim of Kublai or whomever, is to beg a small amount of gold from that AI for a 10 turn Peace Treaty. Kublai cannot request that you join the war during that Peace Treaty. You can beg gold multiple times, but generally need to wait several turns after the end of the Peace Treaty. You will have more success by just begging 1 gold. The Peace Treaty also allows you more time to assess the situations and make adjustments as necessary, like war prep.

 

[CommonKnowledge]

You say there are many reasons for not wanting to be dragged into this war, I'm just wondering what they are? When I find myself in a similar situation the only reasons that I wouldn't help out my friend is because either my military is weak or because on declaring I would damage relationships with other civs and make more enemies.

If the war was going well for Kublai and it was on another continent then the chances are pretty good that you could join in and not face a single military engagement. You would also avoid the -14 diplomacy and gain the war ally bonus. After ten turns you can just declare peace and probably get some gold off of the AI since, as the war was going badly, they would be glad to get rid of you.

 

[nfw]

Khan's power seems to be lower than Cathy's, you should probably kill him instead.

 

[AJ11]

The "several thousand years" part probably had something to do with the -14 refusal to help out nonsense. In the meantime, Kublai probably had other wars and kept yelling for help. Also, I'm am not 100% sure, but I think certain leaders give a -2 instead of -1 per refusal.

Next time you find an AI that yells for help more than once, my recommendation is to send your army over to his territory (preferrably via ship) and declare on his rear. Bribe others to dogpile him, if possible. He is likely to be engaged with his current WarDec, so you will have a field day taking his cities (raze if they are too far from you to keep). Once you see his stack returning (have a few expendable scout/cavalry types handy), hightail it back to your ships and get the heck out of dodge. Only defend if you are reasonably certain to being able to kill his stack (and only if you have been taking and not razing his cities, of course).

Dogpile HIM before he dogpiles you. And remember, pity is for the dead. If you are going to attack someone, either you completely eradicate him or you don't attack. Leaving him hanging around merely invites a dogpile or worse later on as he is invariably going to hate your guts.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I'm a big fan of watching TheMeInTeam and other LP's, but recently (well maybe not just recently) a lot of my games have been encountering this problem that I have yet to see others encounter:
A.I. declares on there worst enemy. I don't want to get involved for many reasons (other side of world, most common). It takes them several thousand years to finally kill of their worst enemy. In that time, I am guaranteed to become there next worst enemy because I repeatedly refuse to get involved.
Just what the hell am I supposed to do here?

Get involved, BECAUSE the target is overseas and unlikely to send a stack after you. Sympathy wars or phoney wars are some of the easiest ways to maintain diplo with someone you don't want to fight. And often after the "ally" AI seizes one or two cities the target AI is willing to make peace with you, even with a small chunk of tribute, just to reduce his perception of danger.

On the flipside, when there's a dogpile it's not always a true dogpile--some AIs are simply buying diplo brownie points with some other AI and not really lining up a stack to move against you.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Another option, if you are Pleased or better with the AI victim of Kublai or whomever, is to beg a small amount of gold from that AI for a 10 turn Peace Treaty. Kublai cannot request that you join the war during that Peace Treaty. You can beg gold multiple times, but generally need to wait several turns after the end of the Peace Treaty. You will have more success by just begging 1 gold. The Peace Treaty also allows you more time to assess the situations and make adjustments as necessary, like war prep.

Consecutive requests never work. Each turn AI has ~5% chance to "forget" requests, making the "fair" time to wait before making one ~20 turns. If you get unlucky though, the timer resets even if they refuse you.

Tribute demands can be made to get an ai to hate you on purpose, if for some reason that's desirable.

 

[Nikolai Dneppen]

Well, for this game the reason I didn't want to get involved were because Cathy was on my arse from the beginning, so I new there was a war between us in the future. My plan was to build just enough military to hold off her stacks and then buy peace. I had the tech and religious advantage, and I wanted to milk that as much as I could to delay war until it was on my terms.
As for MODs, this is just the Buffy 3.19. Playing a custom map based loosely on Earth Huge, but with the Americas populated instead of vacant. This problem as mentioned isn't limited to this game. Any map I play recently, I get begged for war by at least one civ almost every turn. Sometimes I will join in just diplomatically if the war is one sided, but with multiple wars going on, I don't want to join them all for happy cap reasons.
And I have never once noticed the AI forgetting a negative diplo modifier.

The solutions I can think of off the top my head are only either my love of selecting warmonger AIs is the problem, or my game is bugged with more requests than normal and no forgetting of past requests.

 

[nfw]

I seem to get a lot more asinine demands in LOR than regular BTS, I suspect it's the Better AI mod, does Buffy include that?

Tribute demands can be made to get an ai to hate you on purpose, if for some reason that's desirable.

I do that whenever I can get a defensive pact

 

[uat2d]

-14 war refusal, damn, I've never seen anything like that.

I'm surprised he's not Furious with the -7 overall diplo relations.

As if this wasn't oddly enough, you're both Cathy's and Kublai's worst enemy, even though you share a religion with them and they're fighting each other.

I'd advise you to either roll over Cathy, preferably in less than 20 turns, as she might get magic maces in 22, or, if you're that weak, DoW Kublai as he's enough busy and faraway to be a nuisance and enjoy the diplo relations with Cathy warming up, even though that still might take some time and not be good enough, since you'll also have to continue trading away your tech lead to keep Kublai away from bribes that would otherwise get people to DoW on you, not to mention that probably Cathy already hates you enough for the shared war to be relevant to bump her at least to pleased.

If I were you, I'd start massing troops asap. Forget your Castle or your Angkor Wat, what you need is military. With only 8 cities vs Cathy's 13 or Shaka's 18 (and he's plotting, so he'll grow even stronger), what you need is more land. If I was playing your game, I'd start rushing trebs and maces and roll over Cathy. Then keep Shaka busy while you roll over Kublai or (perhaps harder), keep Kublai from attacking you and focus on Egypt, as it's weak and if Shaka gets it (oh, and he will, easily), he'll surely put all those flooded plains to good use and you don't want a monster like Shaka having a tech lead.

If you secure Russia and either Mongolia or Egypt, you'll then have a chance vs Shaka (your real enemy in this game) and winning the game.