Forget backstabbing, tell me of your grand Alliances!

[Reprisal]

Hey all,

I've seen a few threads on this forum, as well as in the Conquests and the Strategy ones, about various ways that you and opponent AIs have backstabbed each other for various resources and what-not, and I got to thinking: "How many people do a little roleplaying and form a long-standing and grand alliance with another tribe?"

It often seems that most people only make temporary alliances which will be broken once they've placed all their units in prime position to wipe their former allies in a matter of a few turns. On the other hand, I find it a good diversion to promote Gracious relations with one, or even two, neighbouring tribes. Do other people do this as well, or am I in a minority?

I'm currently playing as the Mayans on a small (96 x 80) map that's set to Arid and Temperate. There are four other civilizations on two continents. I'm on the largest continent with two other tribes, the Americans and the Egyptians, and I found that the Americans were the most cordial tribe that I traded and signed agreements with... The Egyptians were polite but I needed room to grow, so as to maintain a relatively dominant position on the continent -- so I used that "Upgrade all your old Warriors to Swordsmen/Medieval Infantry" tactic and sent them packing with some Trebuchets to pull down the halls of the Pharoahs.

So far, I've been keeping up good relations with the Americans, and am currently starting to put together a fleet of ships to discover the other two tribes. It's going well, and I'm planning on helping out America even more to forge a good alliance that will probably end up with a Mutual Protection Pact. I've basically decided that if anyone attacks them, I help out with everything I can spare.

My only wish is that you could "give" units to your neighbours like in Alpha Centauri...

So, how about you? Any Grand Alliances? Any Ententes-Cordiale?

- Rep.

 

[Blackbird_SR-71]

ive also done that Reprisal

i think that keeping at least one ally the whole game is a good strategy so that if you at war and have a good relation with another civ for a long time they may actually help you and this tactic has been proven many times at least in my games.

but i'm not sure about everyone else but i think most people like to kill of civs and basically only have alliences for a shotr perod of time

 

[dmanakho]

IMHO for the most part it's a bad idea to have a long term AI ally and help it.
I will try to explain....
You think AI is an ally, AI doesn't think so, it is not programmed in such a way.
Let's say You have signed MPP with such an AI next turn that stupid AI goes to war when you are not ready... even worse....
You had a war with 3rd AI and then made a peace agreement, and then stupid AI you had MPP with declares a war against that 3rd AI and you are automatically involved into this war, breaking peace agreement and your reputation goes down the drain.
One more example, you have your "ally" AI and you think things are great, next turn random number generator triggers something and your "ally" backstubs you...
Remember guys you play against a computer not against a human...
The only good AI is dead AI

 

[Uncle Sam]

The only good AI is dead AI

Well put.

While having an AI buddy around is good, they will have absolutely no compunction about backstabbing you for the highest bidder. You can, however keep an AI underling loyal by continually bribing them into joining wars with you. Unless they're those backstabbing Celts... how i loathe them.

I swear, they've broken more deals with me than i can count.

 

[javad]

How do you make locked alliences in a general epic?

 

[dmanakho]

How do you make locked alliences in a general epic?

You can't unless you mod it within editor, but i don't think person who opened this thread meant "locked alliances", unless i have mistaken.

 

[Reprisal]

No, I wasn't really talking about Locked Alliances. It's really only a conscious choice to try to get an alliance going with constantly Gracious relations. I only really pursue one when I'm in the same culture group (American, European, Mediterranean, Asian, etc.) as a potential ally and such. Really, it makes up for my lack of time to actively play multiplayer with real people. Even if I did play MP, it'd probably be with a friend against some higher difficulty AI -- probably Monarch to Emperor for my level of play.

I know that it's technically a bad idea, but there's little I can do to combat my urge to "Play the Part."

- Rep.

 

[Cu Chulainn]

It was a somewhat short term thing but my most memorable alliance occured a long time ago, on my first Regent game.

I, Carthage, was sharing a border with India and Rome with Arabia on the other side of them. I was just cleaning up after having wiped out the English when, out of Roman territory, a mess of Ansars ride up and start attacking my border towns. My defenses were left rather weak after the war but I figured I had just enough to hold them off until my newly discovered Cav arrived to handle the problem. The next turn the Romans entered the war sending a large stack of Legionaries after my weakest city.

Realizing that I was about to lose the majority of my new cities I swallowed my pride and appealed to Ghandi for assistance. He wanted Metallurgy which I gladly paid. The next turn I was greeted by the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in Civ. Stacks of war elephants emerged from Indian territory and in one turn completely decimated the enemy force. After that I never saw another Ansar, and the Roman Empire quickly fell to an onslaught of Indian Elephants and Carthaginian Cavalry which propelled me to an earlier-than-expected Domination win.

 

[King_MJS]

I like to have a long term alliance, but it dosent often seem to work.
Eg:
In my last game as the Dutch, I had a rather long standing alliance with the Russians. Everything was going great... Until they suddenly turned on me and declared war.
They were even Gracious at the time of the declaration against me!
Just shows how warmongering those Ruskies are.

 

[dmanakho]

Be carefull with Kathy, even if she reminds you of a grandma....
she loves to sneak attack....
Same applies to Joannie, she might look like your ex-girlfriend you still have feelings for but then she will back stub you at the least expected moment.

 

[Masquerouge]

Really, it makes up for my lack of time to actively play multiplayer with real people.

But I know that syndrom...

I usually like to have a "best friend" AI. Usually I pick a weak one. It's more of a little brother than a best friend, now that I think of it
The ideal lil'bro AI is small, on a faraway continent, and threatened by my archrival. All the beauty of the relationship is to give enough so they don't die, but not too much so they become powerful !

 

[morchuflex]

Personnally, I like to play as a nice Civ.
I almost never declare war. I would never use a ROP to prepare an attack. But I give a good run to those who dare betray me. Those who played MOO would call me "honorable". Or Good and loyal. I know it's hard to win w/o wars, but I will try to anyway, up to Sid level (I'm at Emperor now).
In fact, on advanced levels, there is always a CP that's going to attack you eventually, so I don't need behaving as a bad guy to wage war and get leaders or a golden age.

 

[MikeH]

In one large pangea game I had the Dutch as neighbours and the Germans as the next civ over. Bismarck decided to attack me very early with a few regular warriors (I'd left a city empty for a couple of turns) and I brought the Dutch into the war to stop the Germans reinforcing their forces. Oddly enough the Dutch and I remained on good terms until I achieved a space race victory, we allied a couple of more time to knock out the Celts and the Portuguese. I suspect that it was a one-off though.

 

[Smellincoffee]

In one game, I was playing as the Iroquious and decided beforehand to have something like this. I made sure the Aztecs were in the game and decided to always be their ally. If they were declared on, I would declare war on their enemy. If they were the agressors, I'd wait until the enemy entered Aztec soil.

We didn't start on the same continent, which was a problem. By the time my suicide galleys got over there, he was in three wars- against Rome, Babylon, and China. I could only get a few troops over there at first, so I was only attacking their units, but then I got a massive fleet of ten ships ( ) and dropped off twenty knights. I destroyed the entire Roman invasion force of Aztlan, freeing Montezuma to invade France. My goal was to inflict enough pain upon the AI for them to sue for peace with Montezuma

Long story short, I won by domination. I had to completely destroy other nations for them to stop attacking my friends. I had four Cavalry armies rampaging across their continent. (I also had to take out Russia, on my continent, as she decided to be stupid and attack my cities on our border).

 

[viper275]

Hmm... best ally ever... I remember a while ago I played my first GOTM (I never completed it, so it wasn't submitted) as the French in GOTM 31. 2 civs on the continent (England and Iroquois) and I was at war with England. It was a pretty pointless war, where nobody really got far ahead or behind, but I was slowly but surely winning. However, it was at the rate where it would be an age or two later that they'd be gone. So I got an embassy with the Iroquois and convinced them to fight with me against England. Together we destroyed the English.

Incidentally, the Iroquois declared war on me a few turns after England was gone. That's called artificial unintelligence, I guess.

 

[Perfection]

Well, I had a pretty cool alliance once.

I was playing huge map with the least amount of land and an Island map.

I get stuck on this really tiny half iced over island with a killer starting location. So I manage to get three or so ancient wonders. Just to the north the Iroqois develop alone on a freakishly huge island grab the great lighthouse and end up with a huge amount of power and money. So I've basicly got one killer city 2 decent cities and maybe 10 crappy cities in the tundra and a couple 3/4 tile nieghboring islands compared to a powerhouse of 16 big cities.

So anyways, my other nearest neighbors are the Germans, Aztecs, Zulus, Russians, Persians, and Vikings. Most of them are bigger and stronger than me and itching to take over. So whenever one declared war, I just allied with the Iroqoius, giving them technology for a war alliance. It basicly prevented me from being taken over.

By the end of the game (my One-city-cultural-victory) I've taken out a small island with my troops while the Iriqious took over 35 percent of the land.

 

[Kubannus]

I like to be honest, even to AI. I think ROP rape and thinks like that spoiles the game. So Yes I like to be a "big brother" and protect my allys, especially when they help me in the past. I played once as England stuck on small peninsula covered by jungle and totally overexpandet by AIs I choose france as my ally I gave them all I had before them, gems for a gift. They were my ally whole game fight for me and won many wars, I was small tinny civ, but supported by France (they never attacked me) they could destroy me in a few turns, but they didnt do that.
VIVA FRANCE!

 

[mac224]

In my current game there was a funny occurrance. I (as Germans) was in a war with the Zulus with whom I shared a large continent. The Persians were on another continent with the very weak Egyptians. In the midst of the war which I was fighting with bombers, panzers, artillery, and infantry, the Persians landed a galleon and a transport full of cavalry, infantry, and immortals on no-man's land between me and the Zulu. They were not yet in a state of war with anyone, so I asked for and was granted an alliance vs the Zulu for a piddling cost. For about 5 turns they proceeded to attack the Zulu with me (though without much effect), and landed more units. Then, they declared war on me, and captured one of MY weakly defended cities. I easily wiped out their forces on the German-Zulu front as I had far more units and better ones. However I was worried that they'd land more units in my rear so I asked the Egyptians for an alliance vs the Persians - which they accepted as-is! Sweet! 2 turns later the Persians had wiped out the Egyptians back on their continent. In the meantime I completed the destruction of the Zulu and consolididated my gains, and redeployed to defend against a possible Persian attack. The Persians declaring war on an obviously more powerful Germany while still fighting our common enemy threw me for a loop.

mac

 

[Giio]

lol on a 32 player tiny map i was nice to everyone giving them what meagre money i had and techs for a wee bit of money and if i was going to beat a civ to a wonder id switch and let them get it.

Then when beserks came around i pumped them out and took over half of the island putting me in 4th place from my starting 22nd when i talked to korea demanding 600gpt and a heckuva lot of techs they refused and said what happened to the allan we all once knew and loved? i took them oveer in two turns. AI is dumb kill them all!

the celts had a mpp with me and decleared war on me, which started this entire boondoogle.

 

[silver 2039]

I built a grand alliance here http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=93793