Let's Make a World War

[The 777 Hoax]

I applaud you! This is a very good article.

 

[Oralelk]

Great thread! I have two comments:

Excuse III: "Our hands are busy with something else."

If you really need to get such a civ to make war on your intended target, you could always bribe them to make peace with their current enemy, then bribe them to attack the target you want.

Excuse IV: "We would have nothing to gain."

Is it possible that one factor in this is the distance of the two civs? I had the situation in one game where Genghis Khan and Washington disliked each other significantly, but still Genghis didn't want to declare on Washington because he had "nothing to gain". I figured this was probably because they were on different continents, far apart, and the Genghis AI didn't want to pay for the distance upkeep of the cities it could gain through this war. Has anyone made similar experiences?

 

[maltz]

I have two comments:

Thanks for all the contributions above. With a few more experiences from recent games, I have added a few contents into the original article. I think I am still missing an excuse, but it is a very rare excuse that I don't see it often.

(1) "Our hands are busy with something else."

This means the AI is either currently at war, or has set out a defined target, and is on its way to declaring a war on the defined target. There is no way to bring back the AI's willingness to take your bribe, unless you either pull them out of the current war, or cancel their definied target somehow. Sometimes, if your military falls behind, this target is very likely yourself!

Just a side note:

You can accurately predict an aggressive AI's attack, from the diplomatic screen. The warmongers are usually willing to take bribes, so you can see at least a few white fonts in the list of "decalre war to". If all of a sudden, all targets are reded out, and you get the excuse of "our hands are busy with something else", then you know you are a little bit late on bribing. In one of my current games, I was attacked by Monty, then Genghis Khan. When I loaded back a few hundred years, I can pinpoint the exact turn where they decided to attack me, and I can go to the previous turn to bribe them to go after somebody else. The lesson here: always bribe them as early as possible.

(2) "We would have nothing to gain."

It is a generalized "lack of hatred" for AIs. Usually, you get this from peace-lovers give you this response even AFTER you become Friendly to them, while they are already less than Cautious to the target. Warmongers also give you this line when their power is significantly below a stronger potential target. Distance to the target MAY be a factor here, as you mentioned. At least, I know distance is a factor of the bribe effectiveness, as distant Civs don't fight really hard, and declare peace very soon.

By the way, I made a little illustrated story on one of my "deity eye and luck games", through the use of map editor and random seeds:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=165183

Since I still follow the gameplay in a normal way, all AI patterns here are still valid for a regular game. In this story you can find out various AI bribing examples, so I think it is worthwhile to include it here. (I am not promoting cheating, of course. )

 

[Oralelk]

Thanks for all the contributions above. With a few more experiences from recent games, I have added a few contents into the original article.

Yay, the tips got even better.

Since I still follow the gameplay in a normal way, all AI patterns here are still valid for a regular game. In this story you can find out various AI bribing examples, so I think it is worthwhile to include it here. (I am not promoting cheating, of course. )

It's not cheating as long as you say in what way you cheat. And I like the game report for your deft manipulation of the AIs into fighting each other, and find the idea of looking over the Deity AI's shoulders to watch what they're doing quite appealing.

One trick that worked very nicely in my current (Noble) game was to gift Liberalism to another civ in order to make them change to Free Religion and thus break up a religion block. I really wanted to be good buddies with Genghis, but he was Isabella's Jewish pal, and Judaism just didn't want to spread to my (OCC) city. After I gave him Liberalism, he switched to FR within a couple of turns, thus paving the way for me being his favourite neighbour; we now have a PA. IIRC, the "brothers in faith" modifier towards Isabella disappeared right after his civics switch, but I may be mistaken. Do you know if this can be applied more generally / on higher difficulties?

 

[maltz]

...the "brothers in faith" modifier towards Isabella disappeared right after his civics switch.

Switching to Free Religion results in a loss of state religion, which cancels any religious modifier. I think it is unrelated to difficulty.

It is interesting that in another game, when I switch to Communism many turns after I switched to Free Religion, I suddenly got back to my original state religion during those anarchy turns. This again enabled me to spy on a lot of enemy cities, and become temporarily friendly/annoying to some nations.

 

[a4phantom]

Switching to Free Religion results in a loss of state religion, which cancels any religious modifier. I think it is unrelated to difficulty.

It is interesting that in another game, when I switch to Communism many turns after I switched to Free Religion, I suddenly got back to my original state religion during those anarchy turns. This again enabled me to spy on a lot of enemy cities, and become temporarily friendly/annoying to some nations.

Oh, so the ability to spy on cities with the religion of one of your holy cities depends on that being your state religion?

 

[Steve3000]

When i'm winning but i have other civs catching up to me I like to go to war with the one that's not my friend then I invite the one that is my friend to join me then a coule of turns later i make peace and let the other two duke it out. If those two are evenly matched then it seems that it hurts both of them to be fighting each other.

 

[Wallisdj]

I noticed that, thus far, no mention has been made of giving arms to other nations. I have tried, successfully so far without any negative ramifications, to give my "friend" superior units as gifts in their war(s) against opponents I would like to see defeated.

Has anyone else tried this tactic. If so, I curious about the long-term effects.

 

[actionmedia]

That is very usefull tactic. Make the AIs fight eachother. It helped me few times:
I remember that I was in a space race with my closest friend Hapshensut and it seemed she will win this time. I was palnnig even to declare war to her, when something realy good happends: Catherine, the weackest of all 10 civs declared war to me! Catherine was neighbur with Hapshensut.
Hapshensut was friendly with me so she declared war to Catherine only as a simple favor to me. The egiptinas had to build only the stazis chamber to win wile I had 2 more undiscovered yet elements to finish my space ship. While the egiptians and russians fight eachother, I fihished the Internet and got the techs I need for the space race, building the last 2 items was piece of cake.
The lesson I learn from this is that when AIs are at war they build only military units or improovments and research military techs. It is goot do make them fight each other.

More recent game, I play with Tokugawa and I have decided for cultural victory. From diplomatical point of view, I need to keep a balanced world. Monty was very active. Thanks to him Mansa was whiped out by the end of medieval era. I let him do that, I even encouraged him, helped him. The last city of Mansa flipped to me. And I learned that capital city can flip too.
Than Monty turned it's atention tu Frederik and realy fast conquered 2 german cities, at this poin I have decided that it can't let Monty getting stronger. I had a Defensive Pact signed with Cyrus and good relations with other civs. So I canceled all my deals with Monty and start building more units. No wonders to be build, I had the Rifleman and the Cavalery, and in few turns, the cannon. I was prepared to meet Monty in combat, and there he is, he made peace with Frederik and declared war to me. So Cyrus declared wat to him and I managed to convince, first Caesar and next Peter to declare war to Monty. Monty had war with 4 enemies at once, realy bad situation for him. I conquered an kept one of his cities (was one of Mansa's cities). Than conquered Munich and Essen and gived them back to the germans, than one more big city (defended only by 6 catapults), this one I made him gift to the Romans. Than signed a peace treaty for gold, map and gold per turn.
At all this time Ashoka didn't want to here about going to war with Monty. Shortly after my peace threaty Frederik declares war to Monty, Caesar to Frederik, Cyrus and Asoka to Monty. And Peter give signs he wants to fight Ashoka. It is craizy but it is a good thing. Let them fight while I am building my wonders and my culture.

 

[a4phantom]

I noticed that, thus far, no mention has been made of giving arms to other nations. I have tried, successfully so far without any negative ramifications, to give my "friend" superior units as gifts in their war(s) against opponents I would like to see defeated.

Has anyone else tried this tactic. If so, I curious about the long-term effects.

Yes. In one pangea game I was close to Egypt and friendly with the Malinese. I was the strongest, but the next two were Gengis and Monty, and they were allied and conquering much of the world (they took out the large German empire and were cutting into Malin and Egypt, and I think they'd swallowed most of the small civs except Egypt). I went to war with Gengis on my Western border, and supplied the Malinese and Egyptians to my east with units to help them stave off Monty (Gengis was also hitting them through Aztec territory, and I'd had a few short Aztec invasions over the years through Mongolia). I mostly gave them old units that weren't experienced enough to justify upgrading, but also some very strong city defenders. This kept my girlfriend and the Malinese alive while I gutted Gengis.

Has anyone tried giving away UU?

 

[scipian]

I've done two great World Wars. One was a jihad with 13-5. We won easily and I kept the largest pagan alive. He was hated, I was loved so i easily won diplo victory.

My other one was like WWI. We all had defense pacts and England(the strongest) attacked a weak nation. So the entire world went to war and we (barely) won. After the victory I was able to mop up the nations England had messed up and won a conquest.

BTW- I also did another proxy world war. I had two strong allies, one "lapdog", Montezuma, he was very powerful, two independant nations, and 4 hindus. I paid the Aztecs to attack the unallaigned nations. He really messed them up and at the same time I gave my allies a huge force (40-50 units). They went ahead and destroyed the unallied nations and grew very powerful. Next I sent them against the Incans(leaders of the Hindus and my only real match). With my armies and the Aztecs they won fairly easily. Then I attacked the hindu peninsula and destroyed them all. Next my allies and I turned on Montezuma and killed him. Still he fought a REALLY hard fight and destroyed nearly all the Hindu peninsula (under my control). Eventually I did a Permanent Alliance with the larger of my allies and won.

 

[Compromise]

(1) "Our hands are busy with something else."

This means the AI is either currently at war, or has set out a defined target, and is on its way to declaring a war on the defined target. There is no way to bring back the AI's willingness to take your bribe, unless you either pull them out of the current war, or cancel their definied target somehow. Sometimes, if your military falls behind, this target is very likely yourself!

Just a side note:

You can accurately predict an aggressive AI's attack, from the diplomatic screen. The warmongers are usually willing to take bribes, so you can see at least a few white fonts in the list of "decalre war to". If all of a sudden, all targets are reded out, and you get the excuse of "our hands are busy with something else", then you know you are a little bit late on bribing. In one of my current games, I was attacked by Monty, then Genghis Khan. When I loaded back a few hundred years, I can pinpoint the exact turn where they decided to attack me, and I can go to the previous turn to bribe them to go after somebody else. The lesson here: always bribe them as early as possible.

Hmmm. I wonder.... Let's say you are the weakest and least well liked neighbor of an aggressive civ who suddenly "has enough on his hands." You are almost certainly the intended target of his upcoming aggression. If you bribe someone else to attack him, you will get another -1 "brought in a war ally" hit to his opinion, but the attacking civ should get a -3 "you attacked us" penalty. This could benefit you in two ways: 1) he'll be at war and so won't initiate conflict with you because his hands really will be too busy, and 2) maybe you won't be the most hated of civs in his opinion any more, and so you'll be less likely to be a future target (again). Especially if you use his time in war to beef up your own troop levels.

 

[civictor]

It seems like (with the correct me if I'm wrong caveat) that if you are at war with someone and then get allies to attack them, the AI will pull the main forces off you to attack the more recent aggressors. In other words, the AI throws his armies at Johnny-come-lately. I have used this tactic to get people off my back while I build up my armies to counterattack.

Is this a characteristic of the AI that anyone else has observed? If it is, then the reverse problem would occur if you get someone to attack first and join the war--the AI may focus attacks on you and leave your ally alone (thus making you bear the brunt of the war). Experiment and see what you think.

 

[dh_epic]

Vassalage seems to have flipped a lot of this on its head. I find world wars a lot more frequent, although many of the observations of this thread are still valid. Just maybe less necessary.

 

[a4phantom]

It seems like (with the correct me if I'm wrong caveat) that if you are at war with someone and then get allies to attack them, the AI will pull the main forces off you to attack the more recent aggressors. In other words, the AI throws his armies at Johnny-come-lately. I have used this tactic to get people off my back while I build up my armies to counterattack.

Is this a characteristic of the AI that anyone else has observed? If it is, then the reverse problem would occur if you get someone to attack first and join the war--the AI may focus attacks on you and leave your ally alone (thus making you bear the brunt of the war). Experiment and see what you think.

The AI seems to believe in attacking your territory over attacking your units (or dividing his forces to try both) even when they're besieging his capital. Therefore even when you're rampaging through the heart of his empire he may have a pretty large reserve of offensive units (likely knights and cavalry) ready to go on the offensive with. I don't know if a new enemy entering the war is an automatic trigger to unleash the counteroffensive or not.

 

[Tommy1234567890]

The AI can be really stupid some times on time I had practically setteld my continent so I set out to find another cathrine was at the north julius was at the south I made 1 succesfull city on the south of the other continient and another on an island near by with a lot of goods.

by the WW1 era cathrine was getting really mad threating me untill she declared war and took over my sothern colony. It was obvios to me there were a million cosask outside my border. It happend again we she sent a fleet of trasnports filled with infantry outside my border i destroyed before she could even decleare war on me just to be saf .

 

[Tommy1234567890]

More recent game, I play with Tokugawa and I have decided for cultural victory. From diplomatical point of view, I need to keep a balanced world. Monty was very active. Thanks to him Mansa was whiped out by the end of medieval era. QUOTE]

Yeah I did the same thing i was playing on a world map for some reason and wanted a nice even world. I put the random thing adn it got america. Julius ceaser had almost wiped out the egiptians so i wanted to keep it balanced i sent a lot of troops to destroy the romans gave back the cities to their ritefull owner (hatshesput and mansa musa) but i kep the ratherbig ones such as Alexandria, Thebes and Memphis as a prize Now im am thinking about wipigin the powerfull russians or chinese

 

[blueraider0]

Doing a one-city challenge I somewhat accidentally started a world war. I forget the exact details but I had become bored so I looked to see who had the worst relations with everyone (Tokugawa) and declared war on him. I convinced Stalin and Victoria (Stalin having mastery over Vikky) to join, as well as Louis the XIV. I invaded Kyoto and, as a result of the one-city challenge, burned it to the ground. Stalin and Victoria continued the war as my ships ensured no Japanese counter attack snuck past us. Eventually Stalin got Toky to capitulate.

This should have been the end of an entertaining war, but it was not. As the war was turning into a massacre, I signed a peace treaty was Toky and managed to get a couple of techs out of the deal. That same turn, Montezuma and Hannibal (his Vassal) declared war on Stalin. Montezuma asked me to join his side, but I declined. Then Stalin took Toky over and the war machines went at each other. Mehmed II joined Montezuma but Louis the IVX and I decided to stay out of the conflict.

This might have been the end of my story about an amusing world war in which I lost very little, but Montezuma had demanded I cancel my deals with Stalin. I agreed. Montezuma was a closer rival - I'd rather war with Stalin than him.

Needless to say, Stalin was angry and declared war on me. I retaliated by launching nukes and taking (and razing) several cities. The UN had been built and nuclear weapons had been banned, so I wasn't worried about retaliation. It was Stalin, himself, who had suggested the resolution). But Louis the XIV was annoyed enough about the introduction of nuclear weapons that he declared war on me. Stalin then launched two nukes into my one city, then promptly invaded and destroyed it.


However, I had succeeded in, rather accidentally, beginning a ferocious world war that tore apart any hope of reconciliation. While the UN had been built and Stalin had been voted into power, once the war had begun there was a split vote between Stalin and Montezuma and neither ever had enough.

 

[FrancoisB]

About the cost of bribery..

Obviously, when you want a civ to attack your enemy it's more expensive if you're not already at war with that enemy. Someone knows how much more expensive? It looks like about 30-50%..
Also, you get more "excuses" when you're not already at war.

thx