Defensive Pacts

[Feanor01]

I had a question revolving around defensive pacts.

I am playing Germany on Noble Pangea Standard sized map Marathon speed with vanalla Civ4 vs 1.64. I am based in the western 1/3 of the landmass and have discovered the techs required to build panzers. I have 6-8 artillery, ~10-15 panzers, ~10 marines, ~ 20 extra infantry and can build ~1 panzers every turn. Have already taken out Mogals and Sulidan. I am basically tied in a tech race with Malasia and Persia. England and Egypt are still on board too, but a bit behind. Malasia is about 20 pnts up on me (but I don't particularly care). The problem I have is everyone has a defensive pact with everyone else. So if I go to war with someone I go to war with everyone. I tried asking anyone for a Defensive Pact, or even to break theirs, but noone will.

In the end I declared war on Persia and razed three cities on turn 1 (they were colonies built in the abandoned Mongolian land). I was able to eventually get peace with him. I weathered Malasias attack (I was expecting it and had 15 spare infantry standing by to whip around on my rails and rally city defenses). Actually Egypt had more calvary then I expected and sent calvary and spys out to pillage my resources (got all three of my oils and I had to rely on marines for a few turns). I ended up destroying egypt and england, but my main competitors, Malasia and Persia still exist. I will regroup and heal and take them out I guess. I know I cannot win domination victory or cultural or diplomacy. Space race is a possiblitiy but conquest is easiest.

My question is what other options did I have because I really could not fight 4 civs at once and win all four (though I could hold my own). How do you break defensive pacts and keep from being ganged up on?

 

[r_rolo1]

The best way is to piss a AI so bad that they Dow you ( demanding a lot of stuff normally works ), but it is not a failsafe move....

 

[Feanor01]

But how would that help? As soon as they declare war on me and I counter attack would the other defensive pacts inact and the other AIs declare war on me anyways?

 

[r_rolo1]

No... defensive pacts only work in defense ( like the name implies ). If you attack a member of a DP ,the other member will have to comply with it and attack you. But if one of the Dp partners attack you, all the DPs are canceled and the other civs are free to not attack you ( sometimes they do, but because of bribery, not of the DP )

 

[DMOC]

I have tried to piss off an AI before, but without success.

Try this: the Beyond the Sword AI will get suspicious if you mass troops at its border. Perhaps getting an AI furious with you, then massing troops on his/her border, will get them to declare war on you. I haven't tested this, though.

 

[BigDaddyOttawa]

If they all have defensive pacts with each other.. maybe they saw you coming?

The same sort of thing happens under the Vassal system. You beat an AI opponent into the ground but don't finish him off. In the 10 turns of peace, they go and turn Vassal with someone you have no intention of fighting.

My best advice would be... don't let all the other AI's get that friendly with each other if you can't do a peaceful victory condition. It always helps having a couple of civs who you know will be powerful enough to last until the end game on your side and bribe 'em into wars you can't start yourself.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

You might have some luck breaking defensive pacts with spies. If their friendliness is dependent on shared civics or religion then using spies to change this could lower their diplomatic relations to the point the DP is broken. Declare immediately this happens as they will switch back.

Other than that if you have the land from two AIs you can just play defensively until your tech rate passes them or one DOW on you.

 

[Commodore Nate]

Getting the AI to attack you is the best way: you get no -1 penalties with any civs, war weariness is a little less, and you get to sharpen your army on the flood of units coming into your civ that have to be dealt with.
Add the Great Wall into that, and you're looking at a potential great general pop, depending on the point limit.

But in all honesty, good luck getting them to attack you. Unless their army is much larger than yours and they sense some sort of weakness in you (which panzers would not equate to), they won't attack you.
I once had a game where I had Izzy to -10 on arrogant demand for the whole game, yet the only time she attacked me was when the game was starting to wrap up, and even then, I totally rolled over her (and used the momentum to conquer the world).
Again, point is, AIs won't attack unless they think they can win.

But maybe AIs are less likely to attack if they're under a defensive pact? That's something that I'd think is true, but should be verified.

 

[mystyfly]

In BtS you can piss an AI off by failing several espionage missions

 

[Feanor01]

Umm, thanks for the replys. By the way, playing vanilla civ 4, so BtS advice is a bit over my head. I ended up taking on both Persia and Malasia head on. I had over 40 panzers so made two army stacks:
10 panzers, 4 marines, 4 artilery, 4 infantry, 4 gunships/helicopters in each stack. One up north and one down south and some tanks to protect myself. Lost a city or two because I forgot to watch my back (they actually landed a huge army on my coast where I thought I was safe). Anyway domination victory.