[BTS] Several miscellaneous questions

[jnebbe]

1: Does asking for a ceasefire lower the chance of ai accepting? Like they can tell you are scared and will not want to make peace?

2: Where does gold from captured cities come from? The treasury? Can you sell a tech for gold right before you go to war and still get the same amount of gold from capturing cities?

3: When stopping trade with someone, what determines how long before they speak to you again?

4: Building wealth vs building research, which is better and why? Is it ever worth building markets+grocers+banks/observatories+universities or just stay on wealth/research?

5: During rebuild mode after a war while new cities are building granary/library, what do existing cities build?

6: What are some key military and economy techs in renaissance era? I feel like I have a decent grasp on what tech I need and when in medieval and earlier but once it reaches renaissance I have no idea.
My goto is to get paper->printing press->beeline to steel for a cannon attack but I have no idea if that's good at all/

7: How to deal with runaway ai? I find 1 civ often out-techs, has most military, builds all wonders, and often with only a few cities. Even with double or triple cities I'm still behind and never feel ready to attack

8: Bribing ally to war. Is it worth doing? Is there any guarantee they'll attack?

 

[AcaMetis]

1: Does asking for a ceasefire lower the chance of ai accepting? Like they can tell you are scared and will not want to make peace?

2: Where does gold from captured cities come from? The treasury? Can you sell a tech for gold right before you go to war and still get the same amount of gold from capturing cities?

3: When stopping trade with someone, what determines how long before they speak to you again?

4: Building wealth vs building research, which is better and why? Is it ever worth building markets+grocers+banks/observatories+universities or just stay on wealth/research?

5: During rebuild mode after a war while new cities are building granary/library, what do existing cities build?

6: What are some key military and economy techs in renaissance era? I feel like I have a decent grasp on what tech I need and when in medieval and earlier but once it reaches renaissance I have no idea.
My goto is to get paper->printing press->beeline to steel for a cannon attack but I have no idea if that's good at all/

7: How to deal with runaway ai? I find 1 civ often out-techs, has most military, builds all wonders, and often with only a few cities. Even with double or triple cities I'm still behind and never feel ready to attack

8: Bribing ally to war. Is it worth doing? Is there any guarantee they'll attack?

1. I don't think so. I've never heard of repeated attempts to negotiate a peace deal to make the AI think you're desperate, so I don't see why being refused a cease-fire would do the same.

2. I don't think AI treasury makes so major a difference that not selling them a dumb tech to clean them out before DoWing is a good move, if it even makes a difference at all.

3. I believe it's leader specific, though I'm not sure where to find/interpret the exact variable.

4. Building Wealth until you can sustain 100% beaker rate, than building Research is better. Building a Market/Grocer/Bank can be worth it if you, say, manage to capture a very healthy shrine or two and/or maybe found a corporation or two, but beyond that it's better to just stick with building the essentials and Wealth. Observatories are necessary if you're going for Space, since you need an Observatory to build Labs and get their bonus to space ship parts production (also beaker bonus, can't forget that). Universities are worth it if you're going to build Oxford, otherwise it's they're usually too expensive to just build everywhere. Can still be worth putting one down in a solid bureau capitol of course, or maybe if you're PHI and get them half off. But generally speaking, not just everywhere.

5. Usually Wealth in order to sustain your economy until your new captures come online. You might find yourself in a situation where you need to build a few more units (aggressive neighbour is plotting and your army is out of position), more infrastructure (just finished an early rush and haven't gotten the essential buildings in your main cities yet) or other stuff, it depends on the situation. But usually? Wealth.

6. Cannons are a very solid choice for a breakout unit if you've got Iron. Cuirs or, if you can afford the techs, Cavalry are also great if you have Horses, since their 2 and ability to just punch through stuff without siege makes for some very quick wars. Economically Paper and Printing Press aren't required techs for a breakout war, Education/Liberalism likewise, but if you can afford to grab some economic techs they're not horrible to get. Printing Press for any economy centred around cottages, and Liberalism for that sweet free tech and denying the AI the same.

7. That mostly depends on what difficulty you're playing on. On lower difficulties that situation shouldn't ever happen in the first place, barring absurdly lopsided starting positions. If it does you need to go back to the early turns and fix whatever mistakes were made way back then. On higher difficulties you ideally deal with a runaway AI before it becomes a runaway AI. Bribe it out of wars before they can cap people, bribe others on them to slow down their tech pace, maybe even use spies to mess with their civics and diplo if the situation is that desperate.

8. Usually yes, the AI that's bribed into war gets a permanent -3 diplo modifier for DoWing and both should enter war mode and slow down their growth regardless, but there's no guarantee that they'll actually attack. I can recall at least one instance where I completely blocked off an AI from any and all outside contact using my own cultural borders and an army of privateers (this was me having fun messing around on a low difficulty setting, obviously), and yet that same AI still got bribed into declaring war on someone on the other side of the world. Rest assured, the only units that guy (Sury, I think) send after anyone were the ones he send after me. Time and time again. Guy was not a friendly neighbour.

 

[sampsa]

6. Cuirassiers are probably the strongest unit (relatively) in the entire game. I think most pangaea deity games can be won with them. If you don't have any idea how to do a cuir stomp, just watch some Lain videos. Economically, I think the game changing tech is communism (due to state property). However, most games can be won before that.

7. Even at a tech disadvantage with double the amount of cities you have such an advantage in that the war shouldn't be very hard. Of course, depends how far behind you are. I guess the main thing is not to fall a lot behind on tech...

 

[Snowbird]

I might be wrong on some of these. Maybe...
1.No
2. Destroyed buildings in the city - since AI builds more on higher difficulty player gets more per captured city.
4. Build the one you have less modifiers for. So, if you build wealth more of your natural coins go into science and benefit from libraries, universities, Oxford etc... Since people usually have more research buildings it is generally advised to build wealth.
5. Wealth and hammer multipliers
6. It depends but typically MT (to grab land fast) and Astro to reach the and for grabbing. If Astro is prioritized Steel and military science are good too.
7. Win the game while it does stupid AI stuff? If you completely wipe all other AI you can reach domination or manufacture diplo win. Well again, the key is to grab land fast - for typical map cannons are too slow (in my personal opinion).
8. If ally means you hope them actually help you in war - no, bribing to build shared diplo - maybe in some corner cases. Bribing AI on other AI have certain benefits, but very map dependent - not something I would do on most maps, at least being below Deity level.

 

[coanda]

1. War-ending values are handled by CvPlayerAI::AI_doPeace (in CvPlayerAI.cpp) and CvTeamAI::AI_endWarVal (CvTeamAI.cpp). Nowhere in there is there anything affected by whether a human has previously requested peace; they don't care. Offering peace won't be seen as a sign of weakness.
2. City capture gold is defined by doCityCaptureGold in CvGameUtils.py. 20 base, plus 10 per pop of the conquered city, plus a random value between 0 and 100. All scaled by 2% per turn owned, starting at 0% if the city was just founded and going up to a max of 100% if the city has been held for 50+ turns.
3. There's a random chance of the AI forgiving you each turn. The exact chance depends on the AI leader's personal MEMORY_STOPPED_TRADING_RECENT decay value in CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml. Fortunately, in base un-modded Beyond the Sword that value is 30 for every single leader - so there's a 1-in-30 chance each turn that a leader forgives you for cutting off trade with them. Theoretically you could get lucky and be forgiven the very next turn, or unlucky and have them never trade with you again for the rest of the game, but about 30 turns on average.
4. Building wealth or research will benefit from hammer multipliers, but not from beaker or gold multipliers. So you want to cover whatever your empire as a whole gets less efficiently out of ordinary commerce - whatever you get the lowest rate of return 1 commerce becomes X beakers or gold. Because most empires tend to have libraries (+25% beakers) in their high-commerce cities, and frequently an academy (+50% beakers) in their single highest-commerce city, they tend to have better research multipliers and worse gold ones - so you generally want to build wealth. If you happen to have really good gold multipliers and lousy research multipliers, or if you simply already have enough gold to run 100% research rate for a long time, building research can be better.
5. It really depends? Wealth is most common right after an expansionary phase, if your economy is struggling. But workers, settlers, garrison / barb defense units, more advanced buildings, key wonders are all possible.
6. The classic choice is trying to unlock Cuirassiers. Sometimes cannons and muskets (then rifles) for a drafted war instead. If you aren't planning an early-Renaissance war, Communism for State Property is pretty huge and you can aim your research in that general direction.
7. Below Immortal, if an AI is going runaway it means you did something wrong. Fix your own growth and you will outscale any AI in even the most favorable starting position they can get. Rarely on immortal and sometimes on Deity you need to recognize when an AI is threatening to go runaway and do something about it besides just "grow faster than them." What you do, exactly, really depends on the game; look through some old Deity shadow games, particularly ones where the human started in isolation or semi-isolation, if you want ideas of how players have handled specific situations like this.
8. Not for actual war aid. Frequently for diplomatic reasons, or to screw with their thinking (an AI who is at war prioritizes things differently, which can sometimes cause them to grow more slowly as they focus on military). Below Immortal though, I wouldn't bother with it at all.

 

[earthy]

Wealth multipliers can be fun for rushbuy strategies with kremlin. If you have like 12+ cities but you're not in a good position for early warring, you can do something like lib democracy, cottage everything, build up all of your towns, build the kremlin, and then either rushbuy market/grocer/bank in your best cities or build them during a golden age(in uni sufferage). Then you go for industrialism or something, and you can rushbuy 10+ tanks every other turn. It's probably not the best strat out there, but it's sure fun. With good timing you can be stomping rifles with tanks, and if you're late and they have infantry+ then you just rushbuy some espionage buildings, run the espionage slider every few turns with focus on your target, and take cities with tanks + spy revolts

 

[jmas]

Thank you for the info, coanda, very helpful.

This probability question got me thinking:

3.There's a random chance of the AI forgiving you each turn. The exact chance depends on the AI leader's personal MEMORY_STOPPED_TRADING_RECENT decay value in CIV4LeaderHeadInfos.xml. Fortunately, in base un-modded Beyond the Sword that value is 30 for every single leader - so there's a 1-in-30 chance each turn that a leader forgives you for cutting off trade with them. Theoretically you could get lucky and be forgiven the very next turn, or unlucky and have them never trade with you again for the rest of the game, but about 30 turns on average.

After trying a probability calculator that I couldn't seem to put the right inputs into to get accurate answers, I hit on the idea of raising the probability of non-forgiveness in a turn (29/30) to a power using a standard calculator. When I did that, the probability of getting non-forgiveness every turn slowly declined, and it went from around 50.7% for 20 turns to just over 49% for 21 turns. So if I have not made an error here, it would seem like on average forgiveness would occur within twenty-one turns (as that chance should be about 51%) . Of course your comment that it could occur in 1 turn, or never, still stands.

Please someone let me know if I made a mistake.

 

[coanda]

It's one of those mean-median-mode things. If you stopped trading with AIs a billion times, and recorded how many turns it took each time to get forgiveness, the mode (the single most common turn to be forgiven) would be turn 1. The median (the turn by which, half the time, you were forgiven) would be turn 20 or 21. And the total number of turns you'd have ended up waiting would be about 30 billion, a mean of 30 turns per trial.

 

[Snowbird]

City capture gold is defined by doCityCaptureGold in CvGameUtils.py. 20 base, plus 10 per pop of the conquered city, plus a random value between 0 and 100. All scaled by 2% per turn owned, starting at 0% if the city was just founded and going up to a max of 100% if the city has been held for 50+ turns.

So higher difficulty gold is just from pop and maybe earlier founding... I would have never guessed...

 

[jnebbe]

Some more questions (is there a discord or something I can ask quick questions in? I don't want to make a new thread each time)

1: Do you get failgold if you complete the wonder?

2: Can you get failgold from building palaces? What happens to hammers put into palaces that are completed elsewhere?

3: Why does it sometimes take more pop to whip than it should? Like sometimes it will take 5 pop to whip out a settler even though 5x30 is way more than 100 hammers. Does it take more pop to whip from scratch?

4: Great prophets usually aren't worth generating right? I'm playing a game where I conquered Mansa and he had 4 holy cities but 0 shrines, be a shame to let those go to waste.

5: When going to war, should you keep slider at 0% the entire time or can you still put at 100% when you have the gold?

 

[sampsa]

1: Do you get failgold if you complete the wonder?

Yes.

2: Can you get failgold from building palaces? What happens to hammers put into palaces that are completed elsewhere?

No, because you can build a palace as many times as you want (I think).

3: Why does it sometimes take more pop to whip than it should? Like sometimes it will take 5 pop to whip out a settler even though 5x30 is way more than 100 hammers. Does it take more pop to whip from scratch?

Yes, there is a penalty if no are invested. In general, it's best to put 1T of into a build and whip.

4: Great prophets usually aren't worth generating right? I'm playing a game where I conquered Mansa and he had 4 holy cities but 0 shrines, be a shame to let those go to waste.

They can be used to start a golden age. Shrines in general are massively overrated in my opinion and I wouldn't try to get a prophet for a shrine. Maybe on a huge map it's not that bad though.

5: When going to war, should you keep slider at 0% the entire time or can you still put at 100% when you have the gold?

Sure you can tech, if you can afford it.

Some more questions (is there a discord or something I can ask quick questions in? I don't want to make a new thread each time)

Just use this thread?

 

[jnebbe]

Some more questions

1: How does gifting to ai work? I believe you can't continually gift small amounts of gold to get like +4 with them right? Is the diplo bonus you get based on how often you gift them or how many beakers you give them or something? I also noticed I gifted toku some gold and the +1 went away after a while, and gifting again would not bring it back. Do ai forget your gifts or is that just exclusive to toku? Additionally, is gifting cities the same "fair trade" diplo bonus or is it a different one entirely?

2: Is building wealth/research affected by libraries/markets?

3: If you get a warmonger that can plot at pleased to pleased with you, are they any less likely to plot against you?

4: When bombing a target that has SAM/fighters/whatever, can each sam/fighter have a chance of intercepting or is it just one unit per bomber? If an ai has like 5 fighters in a city is there any point in trying to use bombers?

5: How is collat damage calculated? Does the siege's hp affect how much collat it does? I was watching Lain's monty game and saw he was giving his trebs almost exclusively city raider, I guess the extra collat upgrade isn't very good?

 

[krikav]

1. You can continue to gift stuff to the AI to keep that "Our trades has been fair" +4 diplo bonus.
How much you get (+0 to +4) depends on the value of what you have given, divided by the number of turns the AI have known you. So for your neighbour you have just spawned besides it can be quite expensive, but if you have just met Toku with your caravel, do gift him 20g and you get a insta +4 diplo and can possibly open borders with him!

2. No, and thats why you generally build wealth, so that you can keep your slider higher and thus get more of your commerce affected by libraries.

3. Yep, by a significant margin too! I'll look around if I can find a chart...
*Edit* Found it! */Edit*

Spoiler :

4. No clue, I don't have much experience with that part of the game!

5. CR is often much better, but promoting suicide catapults with collateral is sensible imho.
That way, you can throw away a few suicide catapults to soften up multiple longbows, and then follow up with CR-promoted ones.
Does the CR-promoted treb get 2% odds? Then it's much better to throw away a 1.9% collateral promoted one instead.
Thats at least how I reason.

 

[coanda]

Interception checks are handled by CvUnit::interceptTest and CvUnit::bestInterceptor in CvUnit.cpp. It picks the unit on the tile with the highest chance of interception gives it a chance to intercept the attacker; all other units have no chance. Because air units can only intercept once per turn, and their intercept chance goes down as they take damage, there can still be value to having more than one intercepting unit on the tile.

Collateral Damage is handled by CvUnit::collateralCombat. It does not care about modifiers to the strength of the units, nor does it even care about their current hp. Just base strength and collateral-damage-specific modifiers. So a city raider promotion will not result in any additional collateral damage, but will result in more damage and higher chance of survival against the top stack defender. Collateral cannot target the top stack defender (collateral damage is only on other units), and with some random variation it generally prioritizes higher-hp defenders over lower-hp ones - so it will be more likely to hit the defender archer who is at 90/100 hp, rather than the defending rifleman who is at 30/100 hp.

There presumably is a line somewhere between "lots of strong, almost equally good defenders" (where collateral could be better) and "a few defenders are much better than most of the stack" (where city raider is clearly better); I'm not sure where it falls mathematically. I tend to just default to city raider myself, but that's just a habit and not anything I'm certain is correct.

 

[jnebbe]

More Q's

1: Why does having religion in a city sometimes give culture and sometimes not?

2: What determines when an ai will stop plotting without dowing? In my current game ai has plotted me 3 seperate times at cautious, I get them to pleased, and they stop plotting.

3: Are markets/banks/universities good to build if they are coming from mainly whips? If there are no good tiles left to work, I will work plains farms or lighthouse coast tiles so my cities keep growing, then whip out these buildings so that I only lose these bad tiles. This is fine as long as the bulk of my base production isn't going towards these buildings right?
3.1: Can you slowbuild markets in cities with very low base productions, where building wealth/research would result in a negligent amount of gold/beakers?

4: Does the map script generate a completely new map or are there seeds? I know aoe2 has seeds so it's possible to see the same map twice.

5: What time does ai usually get alphabet? I was playing immortal and I decided to tech alphabet since noone else had it by T90 or so, I felt like the ai should've gotten it by then

6: Do city garrison work with your units in ai cities? Like if your archer gets attacked while he happens to be in another ai's city, does he get the garrison bonus?
Similarly, do you get the city raider bonus by attacking units that are in a different ai's city?

Thanks for all the responses, I am learning quite a lot

 

[sampsa]

1: Why does having religion in a city sometimes give culture and sometimes not?

Religion gives unless you are running a different religion. For example, if you have a city that is a hindu holy city and has buddhism, the city is generating 5+1 if running no state religion. If you are running hinduism the city is generating 5, if you are running buddhism the city is generating 1. If you are running judaism the city generates no from religion.

3: Are markets/banks/universities good to build if they are coming from mainly whips? If there are no good tiles left to work, I will work plains farms or lighthouse coast tiles so my cities keep growing, then whip out these buildings so that I only lose these bad tiles. This is fine as long as the bulk of my base production isn't going towards these buildings right?

Depends. I hate buildings and I wouldn't build these outside capital. If growing is no longer good, I either run specialists (when empire is in tech mode) or whip units to win the game.

5: What time does ai usually get alphabet? I was playing immortal and I decided to tech alphabet since noone else had it by T90 or so, I felt like the ai should've gotten it by then

On deity I pretty much never self tech alpha as it's so easy to acquire via trade. On immortal it's a bit more complicated, but I think most of the time an AI should have alpha by T90. I think there is a lot of value in being first to alpha, which suggests to either go for it asap (to have it before say T60) or wait until someone else has it and focus on good stuff like CoL-(philo)-CS or aesth-lit-music -line.

Don't know the answer to 2,4,6, but I do think cities act as garrison for all non-hostile units.

 

[AcaMetis]

2: What determines when an ai will stop plotting without dowing? In my current game ai has plotted me 3 seperate times at cautious, I get them to pleased, and they stop plotting.

The exact reasons are unknown, but I can tell you that brining an AI above their threshold for plotting war on you will not (necessarily) cause them to cancel their war plans. I've been DoWed by a Friendly AI who started plotting at Pleased more than once.

4: Does the map script generate a completely new map or are there seeds? I know aoe2 has seeds so it's possible to see the same map twice.

There's a game option for "new random seed on reload", so yes, I have to assume that there are seeds and that (barring that option being enabled, perhaps) they're saved somewhere on a map's savefile. I'm not sure if they can be used to consistently generate the same maps as you can in some games, mind.

6: Do city garrison work with your units in ai cities? Like if your archer gets attacked while he happens to be in another ai's city, does he get the garrison bonus?
Similarly, do you get the city raider bonus by attacking units that are in a different ai's city?

Haven't tested it, but I assume yes to both.

 

[lymond]

2: What determines when an ai will stop plotting without dowing? In my current game ai has plotted me 3 seperate times at cautious, I get them to pleased, and they stop plotting.

This is not uncommon but I've never heard of a definitive answer to this question. I think it depends on several factors, including the leader. Each leader has different coded characteristics. One particular characteristic is the attitude one will not plot war. For example, many leaders will not plot war at Please (many do plot war at Pleased). So if Leader A does not plot at Pleased, but did start plotting at Cautious, they may or may not stop plotting if you get them to Pleased. But they will not stop plotting, if they are plotting on you specifically, unless you pass that threshold attitude where they don't not plot war on you. (But for some reason that does not always stop them or maybe they are actually plotting on someone else) Begging something for a Peace Treaty + attitude sometimes stops the plot.

3: Are markets/banks/universities good to build if they are coming from mainly whips? If there are no good tiles left to work, I will work plains farms or lighthouse coast tiles so my cities keep growing, then whip out these buildings so that I only lose these bad tiles. This is fine as long as the bulk of my base production isn't going towards these buildings right?
3.1: Can you slowbuild markets in cities with very low base productions, where building wealth/research would result in a negligent amount of gold/beakers?

There's really no reason to build markets except ..maybe ..in the cap. If you are working bad tiles you are probably not making good use of specialists and bulbing, and the Caste System civic.

Unis I only really ever build in Space games where one needs Oxford. Sometimes I might built one in the cap at least in longer game regardless of victory condition.

4: Does the map script generate a completely new map or are there seeds? I know aoe2 has seeds so it's possible to see the same map twice.

Standard map script generate is not seeded. You will not see the same map twice.

6: Do city garrison work with your units in ai cities? Like if your archer gets attacked while he happens to be in another ai's city, does he get the garrison bonus?

Pretty sure units get the garrison bonus if they are standing inside a non hostile city. I've run across this rarely but I've have had situations where I attacked an enemy unit in different AI's city and that unit was getting the garrison bonus in that foreign city. I've always assumed the same applies to human units in non-hostile cities.

Similarly, do you get the city raider bonus by attacking units that are in a different ai's city?

Not sure if I've ever come across this situation...probably..but I assume city raider would apply to attack units in any city, whether or not the city in question is non-hostile. You can always test these things.

 

[coanda]

If you are planning any sort of Renaissance-era warfare, markets are not worth it unless the happiness bonuses are uniquely useful or the city has absurdly high commerce. You want to hit that key military tech timing as early and as strongly as possible; anything and everything that delays it is not worth it. A 20-, 30-, even 40-commerce city is simply not going to pay off the 150 hammers of the market fast enough; it slows down your attack timing.

If you're planning a more pacifist long-term game, maybe aiming at Space, you may have quite a few cities get markets eventually.

 

[Henrik75]

1: Does asking for a ceasefire lower the chance of ai accepting? Like they can tell you are scared and will not want to make peace?

2: Where does gold from captured cities come from? The treasury? Can you sell a tech for gold right before you go to war and still get the same amount of gold from capturing cities?

3: When stopping trade with someone, what determines how long before they speak to you again?

4: Building wealth vs building research, which is better and why? Is it ever worth building markets+grocers+banks/observatories+universities or just stay on wealth/research?

5: During rebuild mode after a war while new cities are building granary/library, what do existing cities build?

6: What are some key military and economy techs in renaissance era? I feel like I have a decent grasp on what tech I need and when in medieval and earlier but once it reaches renaissance I have no idea.
My goto is to get paper->printing press->beeline to steel for a cannon attack but I have no idea if that's good at all/

7: How to deal with runaway ai? I find 1 civ often out-techs, has most military, builds all wonders, and often with only a few cities. Even with double or triple cities I'm still behind and never feel ready to attack

8: Bribing ally to war. Is it worth doing? Is there any guarantee they'll attack?

1. No
2. It won't make much difference because the AI has a HUGE treasury on higher levels
3. It's different per AI, wimpy/peaceful AIs generally talk faster, and maybe if they would benefit from open borders with you they will talk faster
4. Research if you're beelining an important tech like civil service or currency or lib, get it as quickly as possible because it'll improve your economy afterwards, if you're doing more of a long term teching path then wealth to sustain 100% research.
5. Most people say wealth, but I say wonders for fail gold. After wiping someone out you most likely captured marble or stone, put it to use and milk the wonders for gold. Get Granaries/Lighthouses, spread your religion around, get forges and courthouses if you have a lot of cities (7 or less cities, never bother with courthouses, 10+ they are quite good)
6. Military Tradition with cuirassier rush is amazing if you're able to attack with good numbers (20-30) before the AI gets too close to rifling. If you're behind and struggling to catch up and they might have Rifling then go for Cannons. If you don't have iron for some reason then go for Cavalry, if you don't have horses then go for draft rifles+whip trebs.
7. Attack them before they get rifling with cuirs if they don't have many cities, you can capitulate them within 10 turns with a good cuirs rush before they can beeline rifling. (Peaceful, strong teching AI usually avoid it anyway). if they're big and have a lot of cities then go for a mass cannon attack with maces, promote city raider than ugprade them to grenadiers later on.
8. If you have a dangerous neighbour like monte or genghis, you can check on the trade menu if they're willing to DoW on someone behind them, further away from you. If yes, declare on that potential target yourself and then immediately bribe in the dangerous neighbour. Since you declared yourself despite not having an army or being near the target, he will suddenly be extremely willing to join in and not ask for much. For example in one of my games, I declared on Sury who was miles away and was able to bribe in my dangerous neighbour monte with just alphabet and horseback riding, and tada - 2 warmongers are now occupied and won't bother you.

Some more questions

1: How does gifting to ai work? I believe you can't continually gift small amounts of gold to get like +4 with them right? Is the diplo bonus you get based on how often you gift them or how many beakers you give them or something? I also noticed I gifted toku some gold and the +1 went away after a while, and gifting again would not bring it back. Do ai forget your gifts or is that just exclusive to toku? Additionally, is gifting cities the same "fair trade" diplo bonus or is it a different one entirely?

2: Is building wealth/research affected by libraries/markets?

3: If you get a warmonger that can plot at pleased to pleased with you, are they any less likely to plot against you?

4: When bombing a target that has SAM/fighters/whatever, can each sam/fighter have a chance of intercepting or is it just one unit per bomber? If an ai has like 5 fighters in a city is there any point in trying to use bombers?

5: How is collat damage calculated? Does the siege's hp affect how much collat it does? I was watching Lain's monty game and saw he was giving his trebs almost exclusively city raider, I guess the extra collat upgrade isn't very good?

1. Yes you can give small amounts like 50+50+50+50+50, they keep a running total of how much stuff you gave them and give you a diplo bonus which slowly decays over time.
2. No but I think forges and factories do affect it.
3. Yes, Pleased targets are far less likely to attack you than Cautious
4. Think it's per each, they don't add up together
5. Collateral is good if you have a near zero chance to win the fight even if you promote city raider. The idea is to deal as much damage as possible. It's a lot better for open field attacks imo when you need to throw like 5 catapults to wound a bunch of elephants before you wipe them out with your cuirs or maces or whatever. Same with cannons, promote a few to collat if you have a massive stack to wipe out in the open field. It does help weaken them faster and 5 collat cannons are the same as 6 normal ones. maybe 7 if double promoted. I don't think HP affects the collat damage.

More Q's

1: Why does having religion in a city sometimes give culture and sometimes not?

2: What determines when an ai will stop plotting without dowing? In my current game ai has plotted me 3 seperate times at cautious, I get them to pleased, and they stop plotting.

3: Are markets/banks/universities good to build if they are coming from mainly whips? If there are no good tiles left to work, I will work plains farms or lighthouse coast tiles so my cities keep growing, then whip out these buildings so that I only lose these bad tiles. This is fine as long as the bulk of my base production isn't going towards these buildings right?
3.1: Can you slowbuild markets in cities with very low base productions, where building wealth/research would result in a negligent amount of gold/beakers?

4: Does the map script generate a completely new map or are there seeds? I know aoe2 has seeds so it's possible to see the same map twice.

5: What time does ai usually get alphabet? I was playing immortal and I decided to tech alphabet since noone else had it by T90 or so, I felt like the ai should've gotten it by then

6: Do city garrison work with your units in ai cities? Like if your archer gets attacked while he happens to be in another ai's city, does he get the garrison bonus?
Similarly, do you get the city raider bonus by attacking units that are in a different ai's city?

Thanks for all the responses, I am learning quite a lot

1. If you are in no state religion, any religion will give culture. If you ARE in a state religion, only THAT religion will give culture.
2. I can't answer this myself but military power ratio and score will affect it, from experience nasty AIs like monte or sury will plot and continue to plot even if they come to love you, friendlier ones like hatshepsut or cyrus stopped plotting on me when they became pleased. Some will stop plotting if you beg gold while others may continue to plot on you even if they accept the beg and give 10 turn peace treaty. Honestly still a mystery for me
3. No, 2 or 3 beakers per turn is better than getting a market in 50 turns. Whipping markets with organized religion might be ideal right before a long lasting renaissence or industrial era war, so you can bank lots of money while your slider is down to keep teching afterward, and the happiness will obviously help in the war too.
4. Haven't ever seen the same map twice and I reroll a LOT sometimes.
5. It's really random, sometimes they bee line it, sometimes they don't. Sometimes you have teching gods like mansa and sometimes you have warmongers. From experience it can go in deity any time from 2000BC to 1AD, Usually around 1000-1500BC they start to get it. On immortal it can go 2000BC to 500AD, usually around 1200-800BC they start to get it. Honestly the dates are pretty similar for those 2 difficulties imo.
6. Yes can confirm I just had a city garrison 2 longbow fortified in a friendly, flat land city that I had forgotten about and someone's grenadier with 2 stars tried to attack it and only had 27% odds. It would have been much higher odds if I didn't have those promotions for sure.