Something that i feel is missing in this game is the ability to really manipulate the other civs.
In galactic civilizations II, i usually won without going to war a single time. I made the other civs go to war against eachother, forged alliances and had my buddies wipe out the civs that wanted me dead.
Anyone got ideas on how to make this work in Civ IV? Best i can figure is to have a lot of gold and try to work the diplomacy until i can eventually get someone to go to war on my behalf, but i dont see a good way to raise it without being last in the tech race. Also, unlike in GCII, the AI doesnt sell newly conquered territory cheap here.
The real diplomatic victory is really game dependent and relies on alot of things. Some general concepts to take into account
1) The fewer the AIs the better. Kill of the excess, and have a sizable bit of land.
2) Know who you opponent will be. Hopefully not your best freind. If an enemy make sure they will not be dead and buried by the time the UN is built.
3) Understand which AIs will stick to their religion the entire game and which bail for FR. Willem/Hannibal/Victoira are a few who will take FR, while Zara/Justinian/Isabella will stick with it.
4) Give into demands with your friends.
5) Help your friends in a war.
6) Watchout a defensive pact doesn't get you into a war with some AI your trying to win votes from.
7) Make AI heavey sided trades.
8) Do not forget the favotire civics, especially the religious ones that go with the same state religion.
Generally for me a game will "feel" right for a diplo win. An example of a real diplo win is my RPC: Bismark the Master Builder.
Im not asking about the diplomatic victory condition, what im asking is how to make the AIs work for you? Basically, how do i make them fight eachother the way i want them to on a reliable basis? What im looking for is a way to use friendly AIs to keep aggressive AIs out of my hair while i work on whatever method i decide to win with.
Ah, then your looking at it backwards. The thing to do is bribe the war-mongers to beat up the techers. Shaka, GK, Ragnar, Al are excellent war-mongers that can br bribed to war with other AI, preferable the Musas, HCs, Darius while you tech away in peace. If this is your questions then I say
1) Give them a heavy bribe, or declare a phoney war on teh AI first if you want to go cheap. Keep bribing them with war techs so they can do it right.
2) Pay trbute to the war-monger.
3) Adopt teh war-mongers favorite civic. Most likely HR
4) Keep the same religion.
Understand that there is no going back once you sick the war-monger on the weaker guy. And there is a possibility that the war-monger becomes a monster of their own.
Getting a normal AI to go after someone else is a little tricky, some simply will not do it, or will do a phoney was for 10 turns.
Isabella is stuck between me and Toku in my current game, this just might work. However i still need to find the gold to bribe him into war, and if possible to buy some conquered cities from him (anyone know how much they go for (if at all)?).
Also, is it possible to create tension between civs that like eachother? Fav civic, religion, but what else?
I could just send a few macemen to backstab her once the war is underway, but the idea is to avoid fighting myself.
Isabella is stuck between me and Toku in my current game, this just might work. However i still need to find the gold to bribe him into war, and if possible to buy some conquered cities from him (anyone know how much they go for (if at all)?).
Also, is it possible to create tension between civs that like eachother? Fav civic, religion, but what else?
I could just send a few macemen to backstab her once the war is underway, but the idea is to avoid fighting myself.
Toku is fiercely isolationist, so you might not be as successful with him as you would be with some of the more gregarious murderers (Genghis, Montezuma, and Rangnar spring to mind.) However, he tends to be somewhat backwards techwise, so you should be able to bribe him with throwaway techs without making him a serious danger to you.
1st advice - good scouting, good knowledge of the map. Learn who has good lands and who doesn't; usually it's a good hint into who'll be top and who won't really matter. Taking that in account, make up your plans.
2nd advice - learn the leaders; learn who's backstabbing, who's warmonger, who's the nerd. A few obvious things would be that you want to take out the warmonger next to you fast while you want him to be succesful if he's on the other side of the map. The backstabber is like the joker: a permanent "?". Can be useful or can be a pain.
Learn who cares about religion and who doesn't; also, the further you are from the guy, the smaller the penality is for not sharing the same religion. Even a zealot like justinian only gives me -4 for religion diff. since he's in the other corner of the continent.
Learn the fav. civics and use them; be careful however that you'll get the bonus only if the guy is also in his favourite civic himself too(however, it seldom happens he ain't). For instance, if you build the pyramids and switch to US, boudica won't love you more till she gets democracy.
Learn who keeps religion and who doesn't; obviously, those with fav. civic being some religion one will probably keep it. Obviously, those with free religion as fav. civic won't
Always strive to keep in check the balance of power. Getting the ais to fight among each other is a mean to achieve victory, not a goal by itself. Always consider before making them fight each other: the purpouse is to keep them busy in order to prevent them from teching too fast and to build up hate inbetween them. However, make sure that what you achieve by war(aka - making them tech slower) ain't countered by the fact you fed them techs or worse, land, by having one of them actually win. A win by one ai is your worst nightmare.
Learn who's good at war and who ain't. Be careful that those good at don't acquire a too large landmass. They'd become unstoppable even if they are poor techers. And that not because they'd declare on you; you can even make sure genghis won't declare on you(ok, that's bs... genghis will declare on you ). But because after they vassalize their 1st victim and get the good lands they'll go for the next. And they'd win such a war. And you'll go in a vicious circle: you bribe them to stop the war and lose some of your tech advantage only to have them redeclare soon afterwards? In such a situation, there are 2 approaches: either you declare on the "threatening to run away with the game ai" yourself and hit the back of his empire(ais are very reluctant to withdraw their SoD back when they face a new threat) or you can use the map if possible. If, say, inbetween the aggresive ai and their victim is another civ., try to bribe them into canceling the OB with the aggresor or things like that. Or even try to bribe the aggresor into canceling his OB with the transit civ.(it's the ai, they'll do it )
Try to plan ahead and try to keep your diplomacy following that plan.
Example: current game
Spoiler:
I'm the guy in the south with dirty yellow: mansa. Grey next to me is freddie. Violet is asoka. White and planted in the middle is churchill. Yellow up in the north is hatty, dark grey up in ne is justinian. The lonely big guy turned out to be huayna. Everything I think it shows up better in the mini map.
For this game, I planned my favourite menu: a domination which starts by cr2 maces prebuilt promoted to rifles.
Met everyone(bar huayna ofc.) in the 1st turns. What I knew: asoka is the nerd and he's next to me. He techs fast and trades alot. He's bound to be the 1st victim. Freddie is also a good techer and partner, but also trades alot. And he's the other guy next to me. What I also knew: they are both fast switchers to free religion so any relligion bonus I had would last that long, so I needed the +2 "we appreciate the years you supplied us with resources". Like an idiot, I wasn't careful to do it with freddie too since I thought I'd need the bonus more from others(I was running a "negate health resources to the ais" policy so had few resources I was willing to trade). This meant freddie was mere cautious when he switched to FR, which meant he started asking things, which I denied(didn't really matter, he already had a def. pact with asoka, so it was clear I was to fight them both, since I had noone to declare on them 1st and break it). Still, a mistake, which could've cost me.
Justinian is the zealot and has a nasty fav. civic which won't gain me bonuses either(theocracy - which I didn't plan to use in a long time), hatty is someone who always plays poor for some obnoxious reason and also sticks to her religion(fav. civic: OR... but I planned to be pacifist for a while), churchill is so and so(holds his own much better then you'd expect, yet his not a dedicated warmonger, nor a backstabber).
What I lacked: both backstabbers and warmongers. Seemed like a crappy game. Worst of all, being deity, I had to grab a good chunk of land. That meant I had to place my 2nd and 3rd cities far away from my capitol and right under the noses of freddie and asoka which was bound to give me some penalities due to close borders.
Again: learn the ais, learn the nerds. Leave much land for the nerds to develop, combine with no warmonger to be bribed to declare on them, combine with their already good techin' rate and you're out.
Out of the 2, I knew that asoka would declare harder then freddie, so if I was to share a religion, I'd pick freddie's, not asoka's. Worst situation was them sharing the same religion which would create a tech club hard to break(which also happened).
Justinian founds budhism and judaism, huayna turned out that he founds hindu, asoka oracle slingshots confu. Worst of all, he makes freddie a confu too. Hatty is a buddhist too and the game seems a mess. Even if I grabbed enough land, I knew it was hard to keep the pace with a freddie/asoka duo. The only hope came from the fact that, justinian founding both bud and jud, churchill becomes judaist by random spreading. Combined with close borders, justinian declares on him. 1st war ends, however soon afterwards justinian redeclares. I become confu to join freddie's/asoka's club.
Balance of power: justinian had good lands and despite being a zealot, I knew he's also a decent, while not bright, techer. Worse of all, having a tech lead, he bribes hatty in the war against churchill too. I just lightbulbed philo. and was getting back into the game tech wise. Last thing I needed was giving away a valuable tech like philo for some junk like feudalism. However, churchill, if vasalized to justinian, would mean disaster. So, I trade philo to hatty for feudalism and longbows(churchill being protective, that should help him dig in).
Churchill was already tech backwards due to the 1st justinian declaration and in a 2 front war. Any human would've make peace asap; however you know the ais... You have to bribe them even in order to have them take the decission that'd serve them best
So... I bribe churchill into making peace with hatty at the cost of feudalism which would give him the much needed protective longbows and a chance to hold justinian at bay. Which he did and they made peace sometime later. However, after making peace, they OB and started trading. That took churchill to mere cautious vs. justinian. Worst of all, churchill's new "worst enemy" was hatty, not justinian. Which was a disaster, since I knew that, when churchill would declare on hatty, justinian would jump on his back. And again, the ai seldom withdraw his SoD from the front line, so justinian would've beat churchill badly. Plus, something had to be done in order to keep justinian from developing that beautiful turf he had.
Soon he wouldn't declare on him, so... I bribe churchill asap to declare on justinian at the cost of engineering(again, balance of power - he needed something in order to at least partially defend himself against cataphracts).
End result is that I'm taking the nerds' cities(asoka's for the time being, but freddie's lack of even replaceable parts dooms him too) now while have the other 3 civs on the contient stucked into a battle where, most important, noone wins. Was also lucky since huayna declared without bribing on hatty, which saved some of my techs to go in either her or churchill's way to prevent a 2 front war against him.
The british made an empire having as philosophy the fact they must keep a balance of power in Europe mainland. Was a good philosophy.
Other tips:
- there are many threads here in which ppl., in their stories, beside letting you know when they hit liberalism and other things you don't really care about, describe their diplomatic approach. Read them; usually they have good tips. And imho anyone can count how many food sources are around, how many grasslands/how many cottages a city can support. What makes the diff. from a immortal on is diplo.
- remember that you can get a maximum of +4 from bribing the ais("our trade relations have been fair"). So, bribe them if needed, but don't "overbribe" as you ain't gonna get more then +4;
- the "our mutual military struggle brings us closer together" goes up to +4 after the war ended(with the exception of the freaks, where it can go up to +5). If you declare a phony war, remember that, after you ended it, the said bonus will be <current value> - 1. So keep checking and make peace right after that bonus was incremented; would be some turn till it'd increment again;
- if a declares war on b and the situation is fuzzy try pondering if it isn't best to stop trading with both of them. There are pros and cons. Pros would be that 1 of the 2 requests the ais do when they are at war - "stop trading with the enemy" - won't be asked anymore. Cons: lose maybe a good trade, or a good resource(if you decide you want to do it, remember to cancel, beside OB, the resource tradings too), get a -1 "you stopped trading with us". On the other hand, beside you, also the ai asking you to stop trading would get a -1 "you negociated a trade embargo" which might fuel even more the hate between them.
- identify the pariah; at all costs, avoid trading with the pariah. Also, don't gift the pariah anything. If you trade tech a for tech b, you'll get, say, a -1 "you traded with our worst enemies" penality; if you gift tech a, you'll get a -4.
- take everything with a grain of salt. Some games just have poor setup. If you plant mansa near gandhi, you can do anything you want, they still won't fight and that's that. Make out the best you can of a situation, but accept sometimes that best is still poor;
- even if you're not spiritual, bu especially if you are, learn to switch the civics. If someone comes to you and asks you to adopt whatever crap is their fav. civic, think if it wouldn't be better on the long term to soak a couple of turns of anarchy for that +1 you accepted our fav. civic. bonus.
Also, if what keeps things from being tensioned between civ. a and b is the "you have wisely chosen your civic" bonus, switch your own civic and see if you can't convince b to also switch his in order to lose the said bonus.
- when you plan a declaration: if you want to have a declare on b who has as vassal c, bribe a to declare on c. That way, the -2 "you brought in a war ally" you get will be from the least relevant c, instead of b.
- play alot
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