how to play neutral country?

[Ace4nyC]

hey guys i've been playing civ since the 90's (civ 2+) and i cant figure out how to play neutral nation, everyone keeps asking me to stop trading with so and so or declare war so and so as well as declare their religion.

i tried every possible way of staying of conflicts, but it doesnt always work out like that. so what you think is the best way of doing it?

 

[Boom12389]

Sorry, that's Civ 4 for ya. We're at war, pick a side! You're basically forced to choose friends or else everyone will just be lukewarm in their relations towards you.

 

[Ace4nyC]

thats what i've been doing, and spreading my own religion as much as possible lol.

 

[mariogreymist]

It can be done in many circumstances by bribing people to make up for trading with worst enemies, but you need to know when to bother trying. As a general rule, don't bother if you're in a different religion than a zealot (Isabella and Justinian are the worst, IIRC) and unlikely to change to theirs. Free religion is a pretty important aspect of being neutral in CivIV, so you can build S Paya or get to Liberalism fast to improve your chances of successful non-involvement.

 

[Ace4nyC]

It can be done in many circumstances by bribing people to make up for trading with worst enemies, but you need to know when to bother trying. As a general rule, don't bother if you're in a different religion than a zealot (Isabella and Justinian are the worst, IIRC) and unlikely to change to theirs. Free religion is a pretty important aspect of being neutral in CivIV, so you can build S Paya or get to Liberalism fast to improve your chances of successful non-involvement.

I know that ! just dont work, but i did find sort of a way for it, i go with most dominant religion, and try to spread it. helps me to avoid a war and just wonder spam, and if that doesnt work there always .

but there will be a day when i can play as gandi and only build units to protect my cities from bieng bothered by barbs and escort settlers...

 

[TheWilltoAct]

Maybe in Civ 5

 

[Udey1]

Nobody is neutral in real life either! Switzerland just had jihad declared on it a week ago by some angry country. Choose teams!

 

[TheWilltoAct]

It's true, still it's a fun mask to put on, like a merchant empire would want everyone to be friends with them so they could make more money. Maybe a more versatile diplomacy system is in order.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's impossible, and the game rigs it further against the human by making the AI capable of "redding" things out, map hacking (aka cheating) to detect trades, and starting like-kinds of AIs out at pleased.

To overcome these things on high levels, you need to know the mechanics and abuse them. To overcome these things otherwise, you can just build military and kill the idiots. You're pretty neutral when you're the only one left alive after all. Nobody seems to oppose or agree at all, neither do you oppose or agree!

 

[NihilZero]

You can get all of the people to Pleased some of the time, and some of the people to Pleased all of the time. But you cannot get everybody to Friendly all of the time.

 

[r_rolo1]

It's impossible, and the game rigs it further against the human by making the AI capable of "redding" things out, map hacking (aka cheating) to detect trades, and starting like-kinds of AIs out at pleased.

To overcome these things on high levels, you need to know the mechanics and abuse them. To overcome these things otherwise, you can just build military and kill the idiots. You're pretty neutral when you're the only one left alive after all. Nobody seems to oppose or agree at all, neither do you oppose or agree!

It is impossible to be friendly with everyone , surely ( unless you draw a map with a lot of nice religion lovers and get one of those heavy budha/hindu starts ... and then you would wish to have some religious strife ), but it is not impossible to be neutral in Civ IV, as long as you avoid being in the target list, aka having everyone have someone they hate more than you Definitely dificult ( by design ), but not impossible.

But yes, the game designers made things in a way you can't say to the AI to shut up with those proposals

 

[mirthadir]

Playing neutral is easiest when there are few points of divergence. For instance if you play Izzy, Wang, or Pacal you can do reasonably well by founding all the religions except budhhism and letting the world be one large mono-religious bloc.

The next source are wars. Some AIs are very unlikely to declare wars which in turn creates fewer times where divergence in relations can occur. You can pick opponents who don't war crazily (e.g. Alex, Monty, Shaka) or you can just be their main target and eventually grow strong enough to where they won't declare (you receive no diplo penalty for being declared upon and up through Emp you can get high enough power ratings to quench wars).

The last shot is favored civics. Mono-religious games where everyone has early favorite civics that everyone adopts (e.g. HR, B, OR) can quickly drive all civs up to friendly.

If you want to be neutral in the midst of conflict, then you pretty much have to be in a position to say "A pox on both your houses"; this is most easily done by going for an EE and dicking with the AIs to keep the always at war and evenly matched. A number of times I've watched a few thousand years of warfare, burnt everyone's iron/ivory, stolen mil trad, and pushed mass curries through one side and then the other (revolting cities as I go) also, I swap the opponents out of slavery/nat if I'm set up to run something else (or if I'm SPI). It is reasonably easy to ensure that two hated enemies keep attacking each other, but without resorting to EE it is fairly hard to leverage their tech rates to help your own.

 

[Bostock]

Playing neutral is easiest when there are few points of divergence. For instance if you play Izzy, Wang, or Pacal you can do reasonably well by founding all the religions except budhhism and letting the world be one large mono-religious bloc.

Is the idea here is to accept Buddhism, or to drown it out with a religion of your own? I suspect it's the former, but then what do you do if it takes forever to pick up Buddhism?

 

[mirthadir]

Is the idea here is to accept Buddhism, or to drown it out with a religion of your own? I suspect it's the former, but then what do you do if it takes forever to pick up Buddhism?

Accept it. Drowning it out is virtually impossible as the odds of spread from the other cities are just too high for any appreciable number of neutral AIs; given your status as founder you can't count on the founding zealot to spam foreign missionaries for you.

As far as slow uptake of buddhism: go to war, take a Buddhist city, get into OR, whip out missionaries, and liberate it back is the ultimate fall back plan. You take some once off negatives for declaring war (on our friend), but you should be able to work back up from there.

Beyond that, just don't spread founded religions, perhaps don't link them to the trade network.

This isn't foolproof or easy, but it is an option that can be fun to play a few times.