Everyone attacking me

I've had some modest sucess playing Rosevelt at "Noble" level. I've tried switching to Bismark and I hit the same problem every time. All my neighbors keep attacking me until I end up with my tile mods all destroyed, my tech very backwards, and my economy in tatters (if they just don't wipe me out). The best I've done is had both neighbors attack, fight them to a standstill until one made peace. Then I managed to start to push back militarily and repair the worst of the damage to my tiles when the second just attacks me again. This was in spite of them both being the same religion as me.

How do I get out of this or avoid it?

 

On Noble, it's fairly easy to gift a warmonger AI a tech (or even a junk city) and then give them more techs to attack someone. Also, switching to their religion helps a lot. In general, unless you're attacking, try to disappear from people's radar; don't adopt a religion that's different from everyone else.

Once you get someone to pleased, beg them for small things for 10 turn peace treaties.

I once created a scenario containing this situation where I handpicked a bunch of warmongers; if you can survive this on Noble, you will no longer have issues with that.

 

It depends - if the AI is playing to win for conquest (think Shaka or Monty) you have to realize that it will attack the best target. The only way you can prevent this diplomatically is if you are friendly with them, or you bribe them to attack another target. Even if you share a religion they may still attack you at pleased, especially if your military is weak. Another thing that happens is the AI starts conquering other civs and gets vassals. If you do nothing they eventually conquer everyone on the map and you're the last man standing, then they come for you.

 

i think that this might also has to do with the players military force. if the AI discovers (through various scouting units) or "senses" (through cheating maybe? ) that you are low in military forces then all or most of the AI civs will group up and attack you or declare war on you and the closest ones or strongest ones attack you.

 

I also think so. Check statistics to see AIs power compared with yours (you should invest some espionage points to see AIs statistics), and try to keep your military at least at their level. This will deter them (the non-crazy ones) to attack you.

 

Just saying, the AI doesn't play to win for conquest. The only victory type it can actively go for is culture. Space race and Diplo it can accidentally stumble upon, domination and conquest are rather rare.

On topic: try to have a standing army. Flanking 2 HAs, combat 2 Knights/Cuirassiers or Flanking 2 Cavalries are a good choice, with some siege thrown in. Just attack the enemy stack with it, you should have minimal losses in your cavalry units and lose some siege, which can be replaced.

 

Here is something I found in the S&T Forum which might help you:

[URL="http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=459369]Avoiding War Thread.[/URL]

 

@strijder: Nah I don't find conquest AI that rare. Let's say you're playing pangea and Shaka has 2 vassals and you destroyed 1 civ yourself, that leaves 4 players left on the map. You, Shaka and his vassals, and 2 other civs. Next thing you know Shaka declares on someone and they capitulate to him, now he has another vassal, now it's just 3 of you left. He declares on the last remaining civ who is not you, they too capitulate to him. Now the world is just you and Shaka (and his vassals). What do you think he's going to do next? I'll give you a hint - it doesn't involve a cultural victory.

 

Well, one had been converted to the same religion and still attacked me. Also, even though I founded a religion, I tried holding off converting to it to prevent them from attacking me because I was the wrong religion.

They attacked me so early, I didn't have cities to spare. I might have tech to spare, but I rely on trading it to get tech. I didn't have enough to give them multiple techs (esp. if they then trade it around, preventing my trades).

 

Well, I had decent relations with them. I hadn't had a chance to try and improve them. They refused to consider attacking any other target.

I wasn't the stronged militarily, but I have a hard time having a bigger military without it consuming my entire budget when I play Germany.

 

My military was weak, but I find it hard, that early on, to have too much more and still have a budget. When I fought them off, I had my tech down to zero just to support all my guys, and then just one stops and even then only for a little while.

 

What are espionage points?

 

I was able to inflict disproportionate losses in war, but the only bought me a short respite.

 

try posting a save

 

Maintain a force that give you a power rating in the midst of the local AI. No bully other than Monti will attack you. As for monti, if he is not Friendly, then he will attack your warrior defended city with his archer, regardles of that you also have tanks 5 tiles away and best he can field is a mace.

It seem to me you are deep in a cottage economy without much production.

But here are some questions for you.

When does this happen?
How many cities do you have?
What is the force protecting you cities?
What are the techs you know compaired to the aggressive AI?
What is you tech rate as in % slider and BPT?
Do you have a dedicated hammer city or two?

 

Instead of trying to avoid this situation(although it would help to learn to avoid it) why not try to solve it in the good old fashioned imperial tradition? Start claiming land and annexin your neighbors? Upon the increase in both percieved and actual power they will all start to back out. More often, once the original dow-er backs down the rest scrambkle to be the first to peace offer, often for little or no cost to you (sometimes they tribute you if they are weaker militarily).

Try keeping advanced scouts(literally scouts or explorers, expendable units like warriors, workers, spys, etc.) at your borders, at bottlenecks, at strategic points in countries with an ob agreement with you.

Try to keep four or five units a city when at peace (I use less, but I do this more often and am at peace less, frankly). Improve border tiles first in the event of war your workers will be safe inside your boders. Keep a few counter-uints around, and a small stockpile of gold for lubrication of mongers. Pick one side (one religion, one friend, one group) and stick HARD to them. Like glue. If they ask you to switch religions, do it. if they ask you to tinkle on a friendly civ, do it. If they ask for a reasonable tech for free, do it. Small price to pay for a solid ally, who will help you win wars and trade consistently.

Specialize cities if you haven't. You do not have to start out with crazy schemes... but pick a city and devote it to capital, pick another and mine it out for production(military units often come from these), use a third for gp farming (high pop and maximize gp/turn modifiers(or rather one specific gp/turn type)).

Plan your six or seven starter cities prior to placing your second. esp. if you want to peacemonger early on. Remember that animal barbs cannot harass your worker if he stays inside your borders.

Sign OB agrrements carefully. When they cannot see your cities they cannot see your defenses. follow the movement of enemy or neutral stacks carefully. Often they seem (to me) to feint and fake, or to test how carefully you pay attention.

Remember that if you really piss off somebody they will dow you as soon as they can afford a decent military and bring it up to your borders. Weaker civs will team up to do so, and bribed civs will take half-hearted swings at you, even if they do not hate you.

Plan for the Astro expansion carefully, if you have a New World of sorts. Start to stockpile settlers and warriors, workers prior to building ocean-bound vessels. Reg barbs I rarely have too much difficulty with, but on a sufficient landmass w/ragers I often find two or sometimes three of my superior units have difficulty defending a new settlement while a worker tries to improve it.

A navy counts as military, and while the ai is a little slow with it they can surprise you. Keep more than a token fleet at your disposal.

Nukes may be powerful, but airplanes are easily just as effective. Zepplins are a must for me asap(well...quickly).

 

playing one civ exclusively (and the arguebly worst civ(s) due to the extremely late UU/UB to boot) aren't helping either

 

How early was early? Why are you founding a religion? Some people will backstab you at pleased or better, so it's best to get them bribed on someone else. If they started planning war when they are not pleased with you, then they will attack you regardless, thus you must act fast with certain people.

It is not needed to have any kind of army on Noble , besides a decently armed militia of city defenders, preferably in a hill walled city facing potential enemies. If you can match them in strength, you should be the aggressor. The AI is stupid, and archers are insanely good city and hill defenders. You cannot do this against people or the K-mod AI, but the default AI doesn't know how to target your weakly defended cities in the back.

If you want to avoid early shenanigans, one trick on Noble is to simply beeline alphabet after Bronze working and worker techs and start gifting people crappy techs so they reached pleased with you. Then you can beg them for small things like resources which gives you 10 turn peace treaties. The AI techs so badly that sometimes you can gift them alphabet and not really lose much. Do not do this with the worst enemy of anyone, as then people will be mad at you.

The other key thing about early warring are catapults. Enough of these can nullify any enemy invaders. You must also take care to trim all forests and jungles near your cities because you DO NOT want the enemy going into them and setting up position there with the defense bonus from terrain.

 

Do you play Vanilla or Beyond the sword?
Espionage was introduced in BTS. Some buildings and spy specialists produce espionage points espionage: or EPs), some buildings are EP multipliers. You can also get EPs from commerce through the slider.
Espionage-related buildings are courthouse, castle, jail, security bureau, intelligence agency, Scotland Yard.
There is an Espionage screen (shortcut ctrl+e I think) where you can assign which AI leaders you invest those generated EPs on. The more EPs you invest on a given leader, the cooler spy actions can you perform on that AI.
To see AI statistics (how good they are doing compared with you) you need just few EPs. To steel techs you need a lot more EPs.

 

I recommend getting the BUG mod. It shows you in the bottom right how happy people are with you but CRUCIALLY when you are someone's worst enemy. This is a good indication that someone is probably going to try to get everyone to gang up on you. Also it shows you (with a muscle icon) your military strength in comparison to the rest of the civs (1.0 being the same, anything below 1 they're stronger and if greater than 1 you're stronger). If your military strength is low then people will consider you an easy target.

I play with espionage off myself... I assume if its on that BUG only shows you what you know via espionage.

I'd personally guess that atm you're either an easy target because your not building enough troops or you keep trading techs with "worst enemies" which results in you being the worst enemy of lots of other people.