How I managed to be friend with Harald from the classical era to the far future.

[Ryoga]

I often see people on this forum lamenting the "impossibility" to build durable friendly relationships with other civs. Sure the AI is very competitive, but in truth once you understand how it works you realize that it isn't random at all and that, since G&K, if you play your cards well, you can befriend a civ or two and *gasp* even trust them!

So here I'm going to explain how I befriended Harald Bluetooth (a usually aggressive AI), and why since the classical era till until the very end of the game, he never betrayed me and always consistently accepted my defensive pacts proposals.

Consider also the following:

1) Emperor difficulty
2) He was bordering with my empire, in fact I practically took all of the land that he could use to expand. This is usually an automatic DoW from the AI. But Harald never did so.
3) I didn't even use the same religion bonus.

So how did I achieve this feat?

If you want to know the whole story you can read the following full explanation else just skip it and jump to the TL;DR.

Spoiler :

Before everything else let me explain the background of this game. This was actually one of the craziest games I ever played, with Siam even throwing GDRs at me, but this is not the place to talk about that.
It was a continent map, 4 civs in each continent (even though I ended up in a slightly smaller one), emperor difficulty, standard time and settings.
I was playing as Gustavus Adolphus and I was planning to win by diplomacy since the beginning. Due to my UA and my objectives getting a friend was a must have.

I spawned on the southern part of the continent, Harald was on the north and Montezuma (!) was just between us. Harun Al Rashid was on the east relatively isolated from the inevitable war that was bound to involve the rest of us.

When Montezuma spawns near you, you know it's trouble, it's automatic. I already new that he was going to spam his jaguar warriors as soon as I met him, and of course my predictions were true. So while I would have rather avoided war entirely until the industrial era, I gave up on some of the early wonders to prepare for war. I built archers and I teched to crossbows as soon as possible.
Now I actually built some nice relationship with Monty in the beginning, but of course that meant nothing, the AI just wants to be friendly with everyone in the very beginning but then will strike you with no mercy. The problem is that Monty found himself with a lot of units but no one that he really hated, so what did Monty do? He started attacking every city states around!

In a few turns he manged to conquer two city states, and considering that I was going for a diplo victory, that was absolutely unacceptable. Moreover Monty just became super strong right at the beginning and I knew it was only a matter of time before he would attack me and then proceed to conquer the whole continent. I had to do something quickly!

So well I finally managed to get two spearmen, one swordman, two catapults and 3-4 crossbowmen. I was ready to fight! But...
I really didn't want to attack Monty alone, not considering that he had that huge army at his disposal.

So I tried to convince the other bordering civs that "Montezuma was a menace to the stability of the world" and all that stuff. I first asked to Harun, but he didn't have a big military at all and so he just told me I was crazy and sent me away.
Then I asked to Harald, but he wasn't any more willing to be the one to face Monty and so he declined as well...

And then... that's where I got an idea. In the end what I wanted was for Monty to be at war with someone else, it didn't matter who would initiate the war!
And so I contacted Monty I asked how much money did he want to attack... HARALD!
That's right I payed Monty to attack the guy that would later become my best buddy. This is how you make friends in Civ V, folks!

The funny part is that Monty asked me like 7 gold and four horses that I didn't even need. In truth I could have even offered all my luxuries, it didn't matter, because I DoW on him two turns later! Anyway that's irrelevant because Monty was just looking for someone to attack anyway.

So while Monty sent all of his troops north, I attacked him from south, encountering almost no resistance in the process!

I'm sad I couldn't watch what happened between Monty and Harald but I can imagine there were a lot of fierce battles. Harald lost two of his cities to Monty, and he was bound to be annihilated when I finally went to his rescue.
His sacrifice wasn't in vain, Monty did conquer his cities but his loss were severe.
In a few turns I liberated Harald's cities, I liberated the two conquered city states and I kicked Monty out of the game for good!

Harald simply LOVED me after that. He loved me for fighting a war together, and he loved me for liberating his cities.
Moreover he never really managed to fully recover from that, it's not like he was really in a bad shape, but I've been always ahead of a few techs, so even if I never had a huge army I never fell too much behind and so Harald never thought about attacking me or anything.

The funny part is that the poor sucker never knew that if he was in that state it's because I conspired against him from the shadows!

The reason I couldn't make use of my religion to further consolidate our friendship was because Harun took advantage of the situation to spread his Islam everywhere undisturbed. At that point it was too late to recover there was so much religious pressure that even my capital was converted.

Harun later DoW on me, but I was stronger and my buddy Harald gladly helped me in repulsing the vile attacker. After that Harun was wiped out. I conquered almost all of his cities leaving one to Harald.

Even though at this point Harald could only fight against me to become competitive again, he didn't. Our friendship was simply too strong.
Later we got news that on the other continent Siam annihilated every other civ and became a runaway tech behemoth... but that's another story.

TL;DR

1) Wait for two civs to go on war or, better, orchestrate one.
2) Prepare an army to go on a conquest spree.
3) Wait until one of the two civs conquers a city of the other, then DoW against the winning side.
4) Liberate the conquered city and take the rest for yourself
5) Enjoy the diplomacy boost with the remaining civ that comes from being at war with the same foe and from liberating its people.
6) Keep your army at least on par with the befriended civ and make sure you always have the embassy and that you have a declaration of friendship.
7) If you can spread your religion to that civ without messing with their religious ambitions, do it asap.
8) If your befriended civ is being denounced or denounces another civ, follow suit and denounce them.
9) Try to choose the same modern ideology of your befriended civ.

EDIT (fogor a few tips):

10) They will spy on you. Forgive them. In the end you actually want your friend to don't lag behind too much in the technological department. Forgiving them is a cheap way to increase your relationship. However absolutely avoid spying on them.
11) If they bully city states under your protection, let them. It's a lot easier to recover the lost influence on a city state than the friendship of a civ.
12) Since G&K there isn't really a penalty in denying the requests of friends, so for the most part simply refuse. If they ask you for luxury, though, it might be a good idea to offer it to them later for a price.

 

[Maxym]

Good work. That is standard operating procedure at higher levels as paying someone yo DoW becomes the best use of gold. As the difficulty goes up so does the damage you cause with a paid for war.