Question: defending a railroaded empire against sneak attacks from (un)friendly civs

[Onipsi]

People advice not to have all your cities garrisoned, only the ones most exposed to the enemy borders. To me this seems to be perfectly fine until Replaceable Parts, when most cities get railroads surrounding them and inevitably leading to quick access to every corner of the empire.

Here's the problem: how can you defend your railroaded lands, when a sneak AI civ abuses of your ROP agreement to attack any of the unguarded cities (most probably the core ones)? I mean, how can you do this without having to resort to a preemptive strike, which would result in a rep hit due to the agreement being broken.

Does this mean that once you have railroads then all your cities should be guarded or am I missing something here?

 

[Bartleby]

Why do you have RoP in the first place?

 

[Onipsi]

Well in that case (the game is over now) it was necessary to cross their borders to get to another civ I was striking, because it didn't have any coastal cities at the moment. But I'm sure there could be more possible reasons other than that.

Are you saying that by this time in the game I shouldn't make ROP agreements anymore?

 

[Bartleby]

As a general rule I would be very reluctant to enter into a RoP agreement at any stage of the game. The only thing worse than RoP is MPP.

edit: to be more long-winded, since I was interrupted just then.

In the situation you describe I might be tempted, but I'd also consider conqering the civ in the middle first, unless there was a strong reason not to. At least try to tie the RoP in with a Military Alliance against the third civ so their armies are likely to be busy and less likely to sneak attack.
The AI is hopeless at RoP abuse anyway; they'll send a single unit to capture your capital city and then send the rest of their army over your borders.

 

[Onipsi]

Yeah, they did capture only one of my cities at that turn, but I can't say it didn't scare me.

About ROP, thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

 

[vmxa]

Not going to have any RoP that lat in the game. If some far away empire wants a war, I just phone it in. IOW I do not really make war on them. I want to get the land next to me under control first.

What do I care, if the want to land units now and then for me to leader fish upon? If they are able to send ships to ping things, not a big deal either. Not big enough for me to get side tracked into forgetting to expand in adjacent area.

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

If you can't avoid the RoP, practice blocking/herding moves and depending on the length of your common border, blockade the whole thing.