Diplomacy

[itsnotmeee]

What would you do when you're on a big piece of continent consisting of 6 civ's, including yourself, and all 5 civ's feel either pleased or friendly toward each other? Despite the different state religions, they all don't seem to feel antagonistic against one another, while you're trying to be a heathen, so that you won't upset any of them. So, when you start attacking a civ, you receive a "You declared war on our friend!" message from not one, not two, but ALL of them. Then when u sue for piece and then go to war against the same civ again just to eliminate it from the map, you receive another demerit from all of them. Once you take out that civ, and attack your next neighbor, yet again, you receive your third demerit of the same action. All the AI's can do whatever they want: changing religions or whatever; and they still feel AT LEAST pleased toward each other. So, what is your tactic to make them stop feeling that way, and perhaps make them go to war against one another? When i encounter this problem, i feel clueless.

 

[Bradlius]

Destroy them all till there's no one left for them to be friendly with

 

[itsnotmeee]

Destroy them all till there's no one left for them to be friendly with

Right, not until the point where you realize all of them start declaring war on you?

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I'd avoid declaring war multiple times - fight each war until the bitter end, either total destruction of your opponent or vassalize them.

If there are aggressive AI's in the mix, some of them will declare war against their friends if you bribe them to. And they love to join in a war already established. I suspect you have mainly peaceful AIs though.

You might have to try and be very close friends with one or two of them and live with the rest hating you rather than be cautious with everyone. This will mean adopting the state religion or civics of a couple of the AIs who you want to keep as friends.

If they like you and they trade with you, but someone else hates you, that person will start disliking them a bit more as your trade partner gets "traded with worst enemies" penalty for trading with YOU.

You might also want to engineer wars by tempting the AI to attack you. Then they will start getting the -1 you attacked our friend penalties. Building an undefended city near them might be a cue for an attack.

 

[KMadCandy]

step 1: if one of them is catherine, and she's pleased with you, bribed her to attack somebody. she's not loyal at all, she can be talked into declaring on someone she's friendly with. even monty won't do that!

step 1a, if step 1 fails: hope that they like me more than they like each other, tech towards mass media, and build the UN .

as far as real answers ...

try as much as possible to not declare until you think you can wipe out your target of choice during a single war. one "you declared war on our friend!" per dead guy is bad enough.

sometimes the AI will have "stop trading with" redded out but "declare war on" isn't. sometimes it's the opposite. if you can convince someone to stop trading with somebody else, then you only get the "you started a trade embargo against us!" with one leader, and it hurts the relationship between those 2 civs at least a little bit.

look at why they're so friendly. if they're running different religions, probably some of them are getting favorite civic modifiers. often it's a case of somebody running Organized Religion, which gives them a + with brennus for example, but it's not their own favorite civic. you might be able to bribe them into running a different civic in that category for a while. that can often do the trick by itself. that "you have wisely chosen your civics" can be as high as +6, and will go away instantly when they adopt a new one. you might need to give them techs to have civic options. i recently gifted churchill Liberalism, so that he'd go to free religion. in my case it was so that he'd lose a -heathen modifier with hatty so that i could trade with her; but in the brennus case it would make him lose + civics for running OR.

a not-likly but ideal situation would be if civ B is far-ish away on the continent, and weak, but has a DP with civ A that you want to kill off. when you declare on A, B will DoW you. you'll get a - "war on friend" for anybody who likes A. but anybody that likes you will give B a - "war on friend" when they declare war on you because of the DP. of course you have to defend yourself against B if they do put up a fight. since you should always be checking for DPs before you start up wars *giggle*, here's a way you might can use them to your advantage.

i can't guarantee that any of this stuff will work of course. it's not gonna get them to go war against each other, but it might get you a few less "war on our friend"s if the stars are in alignment.

 

[Kiershar]

Build a big army then extort all the money they have every 15-20 turns. They'll all be angry be they won't cause you any trouble as you crush them one by one.

 

[Ceritoglu]

Triangle Diplomacy!
Pet Dogs!
Zealots!

Don't these things mean anything to you people!?!?!

 

[Dida]

build a giant army and destroy them all, one by one, of course. Start with the civ closest to you and one that you think you can easily crush and defend after the war is over.
But if a large civ is close-by and seems to be "taking off", it is not a bad idea to perform a rapid surgical strike to quickly take out his production and war-making capacity before turning on to weaker opponents. You don't want a powerful opponent stabbing you in the back while the majority of your forces are fighting abroad.