[Vanilla] How do you fight teaming friends?

[Maragazh]

My friends really dont like that I always win in Civ and are going to begin teaming up against me, I predict. Normally, I play as Norway and go for a religious/naval domination victory, sometimes switch if i conquer a cultural/scientific enemy, but one of my friends specifically tries to counter my religion, and I am certain that everyone else will be after me.
What is a good playstyle to combat this? So far, my best ideas are to either still go for a militaristic victory and dont hold back, go curtin and hope to have a strong deterrence with good science, or go gandhi and abuse varu. However, I dont believe i could gather a strong enough military to fight 5 people, or gain enough power in any other category, thanks to people pillaging me, or destroying me. Any help? I have all character/empire specific dlc.

 

[Victoria]

Let them win a bit is always a good strategy in any situation.but real war.
Would you like playing if you lost every game? Friends are friends, they are not to be beaten soundly day after day.
If you still want to persist 1v5 it may be possible or you could try getting a secret double crossing ally. There is even the possibility of manipulating 2 of them to be larger than the others and they both get greedy for the win... save gold, go weak.

There is skill and fun in losing well.

 

[Maragazh]

fair enough lol

 

[The googles do nothing]

I dont believe i could gather a strong enough military to fight 5 people

If your able to build up 5-7 slingers to archers with some melee mixed in you have a good chance of surviving with any civ. If you are rushed by two players before you can get there it would be tough.

 

[m_mus]

To my experience, the biggest difference to SP is the tendency in MP that all weaker players will unite against the strongest in order to deny them a swift victory - unlike the AI.
I've had to learn this over the course of the last months. So, what am I doing now to prevent this from happening? I keep a low profile, if possible. I try to keep my score rather low without artificially denying myself the ability to win the game later on. Since I adapted this strategy, more often than not my friends united against another 'strongest' player and involved themselves in a costly war ... of which I kept out or only played a superficial part in. Rather, I use this shift of attention to grow and become powerful. Maybe like the US in WW1. Europe is in shatters, whereas my Civ can rise to greatness.
So I'd rewrite Victoria's approach:
There is skill and fun in appearing to be losing well, while still shooting for victory undercover.

 

[Victoria]

So I'd rewrite Victoria's approach:

That strategy I proposed was linked to giving everyone that wonderful winning feeling.
It can be just as nice if the person you intend to win at the beginning wins.

 

[Leucarum]

You could also set yourself a different goal for the game than winning. E.g. I want to build twice as many wonders as everyone else, I want all my cities to be population X. Stuff that's still going to challenge you but which isn't neccessarily a victory condition by itself.