Some advice please,small pangea/monarch

[mice]

I'm trying to climb up from Prince to Monarch (again, 2.08) and want to improve my diplo skills.

Here I'm playing as Mansa on a small pangea, normal speed.

The first save is BC 125 . Before I declared on Washington.
I have confusianism and the shrine is there or on the way - cant remember-.
Washy and Quinn are Confusian.

See save below, Manny 125BC

From this save I played on to attack Washy, and take most of his cities. He's dead now.

see save below, Manny AD1340

It's an OK position to cottage up and go for space race. The problem is Saladin is big and could outstrip me later.

My question; Would it have been better to use confusianism to make allies of Washy and Quinn and try to have them attack Saladin?

Problem, although Isabella is Buddhist, she has no problem with Saladin being Hindu. Everybody is pleased with each other. It seems I cant use religion to make them war with eachother. They are all in Theocracy so maybe this is what makes them pleased with each other.


What diplo sneakyness could I use in either save to manipulate this situation?

 

[Jerrymander]

All three of your opponents have FOUNDED a religion, so I would almost consider it out of the question.

Suck up to the two weak ones, if you have good relations already. Then, dogpile Saladin with Cannon spam.

 

[nullspace]

What diplo sneakyness could I use in either save to manipulate this situation?

None, really. Saladin is powerful and well-liked. Your best bet is to be nice to Qin and help him build up to make sure he is powerful and likes you more than Saladin. Qin will probably sign a defense pact with you after you research military tradition. That will help if Saladin attacks you. But if you want to take down Saladin, you'll have to do most of the work yourself.

You're in a poor position to fight Saladin now, because his power graph is much higher than yours, and your economic techs are considerably farther ahead then your military techs. Saladin isn't very aggressive, and a defense pact would be good protection, so you can afford to sit back and tech for a while. Right now, your GNP is higher than his, so you have the economic advantage in the short term. He has more land than you, but only two of his cities are actually any good, so you could probably go all the way to a space victory without any more conflict. Or you could tech up to some advanced units, and use nationalism and/or universal suffrage to quickly generate an army, then go on the offensive.

Actually, despite the scoreboard, Qin may be stronger overall than Saladin. Still, make sure he likes you more than Saladin, and try to out-tech them both, but if one of them will be your rival for the space race, be ready to fight.

 

[mice]

Nullspace, you read the game well. I played on to a space race victory, and as you said, Quinn was the competitor.

Sally asked for defensive alliance and I accepted. After that I disbanded quite a lot of military, and sailed through to victory. Saladin isnt so good at teching eh? They both went down to pleased, but no aggresion.

I was happy to win, but I initially wanted to manipulte them, and didnt.

I'll try again. Thanks all for the advice

 

[cabert]

Nullspace, you read the game well. I played on to a space race victory, and as you said, Quinn was the competitor.

Sally asked for defensive alliance and I accepted. After that I disbanded quite a lot of military, and sailed through to victory. Saladin isnt so good at teching eh? They both went down to pleased, but no aggresion.

I was happy to win, but I initially wanted to manipulte them, and didnt.

I'll try again. Thanks all for the advice

When you are surrounded by religious nuts that are living happily together, you can't use religion to manipulate them :
they are running theocracy, and some like it so much that they even are pleased with heathens running it .
Your only hope in this situation to set up a world war is to pay one to switch out of theocracy.
For this, you need to be in another civic yourself. Free religion isn't a good one, since there would be no heathen then.
Try to reload at your 1340 AD save, switch to OR and hinduism, bribe saladin to switch to OrgRel, then attack Isabella.
You may then ask your friend Saladin into the war (you may need to wait for the religion modifier to pile up a bit, making you friendly or at least pleased).
You could then wait until saladin's units are in isa's land, then attack his cities . Beware of his troops heading back home.
You can obviously sue for peace with Isa anytime you want (before or after the backstab). Before, you get a better deal most of the times.
If you're very lucky, you can then ask qin to dogpile on saladin.

If you're , you don't invade at all. Just let them do the fighting