Consider this likely scenario.
You are friends with a runaway civ. You're getting good trade deals, research agreements, etc. He/She is helping you progress. The problem is that they will likely achieve victory before you. Fortunately, you can block most of the victory conditions:
1.)Culture: you can obtain things that will delay influential status over you long enough for you to reach your victory condition first.
2.)Dom: you can make your capital impregnable.
3.) Diplo: as long as you can make sure they don't have ALL of the CSs plus FP and either their world religion/ideology, Diplo is blocked.
Leaving just:
4.) Space: this is the hardest victory condition to block an AI out of. Aluminum-pillaging implies war and you're gaining too much from your friendship and also would consider DoWing a suicide mission as they are too far ahead. Bribing others to DoW them may not work if they're too far ahead, rifles attacking tanks. Nuking may be an option, but if they're too much of a runaway, they may complete the spaceship before you finish Manhattan.
Would this work? After rocketry, spam rocket artillery and gift it to them. After each one is gifted, it returns your aluminum so as long as you have 1 aluminum copy, you could make infinite rocket artillery gifts. Would the AI be smart enough to disband them, or could you block space victory this way.
I tried experimenting with this a few times, but can't create the scenario to try it out.
You are friends with a runaway civ. You're getting good trade deals, research agreements, etc. He/She is helping you progress. The problem is that they will likely achieve victory before you. Fortunately, you can block most of the victory conditions:
1.)Culture: you can obtain things that will delay influential status over you long enough for you to reach your victory condition first.
2.)Dom: you can make your capital impregnable.
3.) Diplo: as long as you can make sure they don't have ALL of the CSs plus FP and either their world religion/ideology, Diplo is blocked.
Leaving just:
4.) Space: this is the hardest victory condition to block an AI out of. Aluminum-pillaging implies war and you're gaining too much from your friendship and also would consider DoWing a suicide mission as they are too far ahead. Bribing others to DoW them may not work if they're too far ahead, rifles attacking tanks. Nuking may be an option, but if they're too much of a runaway, they may complete the spaceship before you finish Manhattan.
Would this work? After rocketry, spam rocket artillery and gift it to them. After each one is gifted, it returns your aluminum so as long as you have 1 aluminum copy, you could make infinite rocket artillery gifts. Would the AI be smart enough to disband them, or could you block space victory this way.
I tried experimenting with this a few times, but can't create the scenario to try it out.