Tech Stealing

[KingArthur666]

Yes, but Firaxis designed an AI that is so incompetent they have to build systems into the game to try to make it playable.

 

[Imuratep]

It would be a darn sight better than this magical contract that you can't ever break.

How in the hell does it make sense that you can't send troops into someone's territory because they gave you 20 gold sometime in the last 10 turns. Empires are founded on deception and double crossing, history is rife with betrayal.

Sometimes you have to put game mechanic above logic (and in my former post I stated that I understand the game mechanic behind Firaxis decision). If the game started to become realistic in every single point, noone would play it.
As a game mechanic I always considered this "magical contract" by far better than being able to declare war any time. If everyone could attack everbody after a peace treaty, you had NO assurance at all. Of course it isn't realistic, but also it's not realistic that it does not matter at all. What did a warmonger in Civ 3 care if he had a bad reputation? Even if you get one single technology by that for me it's too much. Noone likes you, but noone does anything.

If you want to be able to attack your opponent any time, sign a truce. The AI very rarely gives you enough to make any other option viable, except if you yourself want to be safe from attacks while improving your armies.

If you really want to be realistic, war would be a very complex diplomatic game, because most empires were integrated in a system of diplomatical protection. If you declared war on X you could be sure that Y and Z helped him (because they signed a treaty, that specified exactly in what case they would defend), what was kind of an assurance against war. Perhaps you should reintroduce defensive pact against a certain attacker (like in Civ3), but that would be a task for Firaxis, not for the FFH team. Also vanilla had a very effective way to prevent endless warmongering: Surrender - but you weren't the first they ask - you had to come by yourself. That way you had to consider every turn if this war is still worth being lead or not as your new opponent would have fresh resources and fresh troops whilst you are exhausted.

 

[Capn Charlie]

in Galciv II, I would corner my target of conquest into one, tiny, little planet, have my victory fleet poised, and then offer them peace, and whatever techs I had, to empty their entire tech library of things I wanted. Then I would destroy them the next turn.

Other civilizations would refuse to treat with me during war after that, until they were really desperate. And that was just fine.