Is it worth asking another civ to go to war against another civ?

[Orion43]

Egypt was friendly and France was cautious. France had a city that I wanted to get out of the way so the turn I decided to take it, I got Egypt to declare war. Egypt and France weren't getting along too well anyway.

As far as I could tell, Egypt had done nothing in the war. No troop movements, no battles, zip, nada. After several turns, Egypt and France makes peace.

So, in others' games, do allies actually help at all?

 

[Hardvark]

Yes and no. I've had the AI actively participate after I've got them involved, but at the very least they always ensure that your enemy has to keep one eye (and hopefully some units) on another border, thus away from you.

 

[ComradeDavo]

Sometimes the AI lets you do all the fighting.
Other times the AI goes ahead and steals the enemy cities for themselves...

It's always worth it, especially for the diplomacy aspect of having someone on your side.

 

[Ogrelord]

Other times the AI goes ahead and steals the enemy cities for themselves...

hate that when it happens. You throw 10 units against the defense , then your war ally AI comes in and counquers the city with one mounted unit. No choice now but to have declare war on ur former ally.

 

[Yosh]

From what I've seen it depends on proximity. If your ally has to use ships to get to the war, then you can forget about it unless they are already engaged in naval warfare.

If your ally is on the same continent as the person you want them to fight then it can get pretty bloody. Both in your ally stealing cities that you've beat down to next to nothing and the fighting between the two civs.

Favorite dual war was me on one side of the Russians and Isabella on the other. I'm capturing cities from the Russians, but Izzy is giving up her cities at pretty close to the same rate. At least until I had destroyed all of the Russians offensive units, then it was a mad dash to see who could get the most Russian cities.

 

[Finite Monkey]

What I do when I think the Civ I am going to bribe is going to play the passive role is give their war a head start. What I mean is wait 2-3 turns for the war to get started, the troops to move away from your borders etc. then march in. The AI is pretty reliable in mobbing an opponent. Its not stupid and will leave a garrison behind to defend, but it will be significantly easier to crack.

Another thing is that the AI just wants your bribe. It will most likely declare peace as soon as possible. Be prepared for the influx of troops back from the front when that happens.

 

[LordKestrel]

The biggest problem I've seen with it, is when you don't want to go to war with a civ, you just want another civ to weaken them a little. Every single time I've bribed someone into going to war with a 3rd party, they ask me to join them a few turns in. If you decline, you take a huge diplo hit. But if you join in, you then take a large hit with the civ + friends that you bribed the other one to fight. Unless I'm actually planning on going to war with a civ, I never bribe another to attack, because the diplo penalties aren't worth it.

 

[Kolyana]

I've had some success here. Typically I only ask for it if I'm being attacked, so I can try and deflect my oppositions attention across multiple fronts. Once I had 2 killer stacks heading my way, so I got two friendly nations on the other side of my attacker to declare and the next turn both stacks head off to the other side away from me ... clearly he had unprotected borders there. It gave me a lot of breathing space and the war was won.

I've found that allies who have to travel great distances or across water will be considerably less useful and I always try and get multiple alliances going, not just the one for the very reasons who specified: lack of participation and/or dropping out early.

 

[potatokiosk]

I've usually found it preferable for the AI to be at war with someone at all times. It slows down the tech pace enough that it doesn't matter if the AI acts squirrelly with trading.

 

[Marquez]

I almost always bring in another civ if someone declares war on me. I play on huge maps so I usually have some friendly ally that is adjacent to the attacking civ. I'm usually outgunned when a civ declares war so it gives me time to shift assets and also forces the attacking civ to shift resources away from me as well. I also tend to completely eliminate an attacking civ after they declare war som I'm not too worried if an allied civ takes a few cities for themselves. That is unless I've just finished a rather large campaign and need to take a break as warmongering can get a bit tedious after a while. Then I usually just attack long enough to achieve peace.

Also, I've asked a civ to go to war with another civ if it looks like a diplomatic victory is possible. If I have good enough relations, I'll ask the civ I'm competing against for votes to attack a large civ and its large voting block. This can sometimes shift relations to the point that the beseiged civ willl vote for me instead. Of course that all depends on the relations between the two civs and, for me, the relations of all the other civs towards each other at that point in the game is usually so buddy buddy that I rarely can get it to work. But you'd be surprised what a boat load of gold can do.