Make another AI collapse

[MichaelQ]

Howdy! I've been searching over and over not finding sufficient answer: Is it possible to bring down a nation with spies (and supporting action)? I'd like to avoid declaring war as it has bad reputational effects. It's rather convenient to destabilize another nation such that it collapses and you gather the remaining neutral cities, isn't?
Does someone already have experiences with that? Which civs work, which don't?

 

[The Immortal]

Spies don't really harm stability or even not at all. Nevertheless, u can try to force AI to switch civics

Spoiler :

via diplomacy is better cuz espionage points are valuable for tech stealing

but I've never used this option in my games yet so can't tell u about result. Make them switch to police state with free speech, for example. Combine it with diplomacy (bribe neighbours to attack your enemy) and look what will happen.

Btw, reputation in RFC is not really a thing to worry about (if only u don't play as Portugal or Netherlands) as AI civs can sometimes declare "historical" war even if u're OK with them. Some wars are even scripted, like conquest of the New World.

 

[MichaelQ]

Causing 8 unhappy citizen in many cities at the same time has not much effect after all? What a pitty.

But thanks for the notice. How long would it take for a civ to collapse once they entered an unstable phase?

 

[The Immortal]

Not really, besides AI often has both unhappy and ill citizens with good stability as well. AI mostly suffers from expansion penalties, so war is very effective tool to make them collapse faster.

Collapse depends on many factors. If nothing harms an unstable civ for a long time, it can become stable again. If there is trouble, expect collapse approximately in 20 turns (from my own experience).

Spoiler :

Again, if you are powerful enough - capture some cities, usually two are enough to finish with average civ. AI can regain stability easily, especially if it is powerful civ.

 

[Ogrelord]

I am not sure about this.. it has been a while since I played RFC vanilla. I think you lose a lot of stability if you lose a lot of units in a one turn or a few. So maybe pay the A.I.s to go at war with each other.

But before you do that gift the A.I.s cities that is outside their stability core zone.

 

[LyricalAssassin]

One method that I use is going to war with the AI, razing two or three cities (capitols especially) and then demanding that they flip three or four civics as a demand for peace. Kills them every time.