all of mine are colored by the fact that i tend to not be a warmonger. when i do go war, i like to have my time to get prepared (hubby says ultra-overprepared to the extreme), and i like to control the timing. so i like to have friends around that i can use as attack dogs, and use diplomacy so that i kind of have military power that's not reflected on the powergraph. i borrow their troops if someone DoWs me.
especially in OCC since i can't take over the troublemaker's cities anyway. in those cases i do make sure to raze any holy cities if part of our friendship is religion-based *giggle*.
i hate meeting monty, shaka, or genghis early. ewwwwww. hannibal and ragnar too, those two carry elephants in their pockets i swear, they have jumbos in every single game i've met them in! cathy i hate to meet at any time, even if it was 2049 and i was on my way to alpha centauri i bet. shaka scares me, sometimes i can handle him, sometimes he goes crazy on me. stalin i only remember meeting once. i had declared on liz, and just about all my troops were in england (dumb, i know, but as i said i'm not good at the warmonger thing) and he decided it would be a good time to attack me. well he was right, and i was flat out gonna get slaughtered. so i quit that very turn because the game had suddenly become unfun. so he's on the "i hate you" list but next time i meet him, i'm gonna get revenge. somehow. or restart until i succeed at it!
am I the only one who dosent think alex is that bad? only once has he ever dclared war one me
i adore alex. vanilla/warlords/BtS. <3 <3 <3. he is absolutely the most reliable attack puppy on a leash i have ever ever had, in at least 6 games, probably more. to the point that the one game i played as pericles, i included alex as a leader even tho i left the rest of the AIs random, since i knew he wouldn't appear otherwise
. i've never otherwise on purpose included him, but when he does show up i grin. he's never once attacked me. in one vanilla game with agg AI on, i was at -4 close border tension just about forever (going for culture), so i had to stay in HR longer than i wanted to, for +wise civics to make sure he didn't go crazy, but it worked. he declared on a bunch of the AIs but not me *giggle*. and that was vanilla agg AI where the agg negative is only against the human. i think he has a crush on me
.
Aside from the obvious ones mentioned (Shaka/Monty etc), I have to say that Augustus is one of the most guaranteed fighting neighbours I ever have - I dont think a single game has gone past with him as a neighbour that hasn't ended in a sneak attack while at pleased or the like.
i haven't yet met Gus in BtS, so this is all from Warlords... i've never had Gus as a close neighbor except in one SG. in that game we had issues with him, but i can't blame him since another player in the SG kinda sorta declared war on him
. when i've encountered in my games, he's always been far enough off that there hasn't been close border tension at first. and we've always gotten along. if we ever get border tension, by then it's likely we have wise civics going, and he's been a pal every time. in culture games he's done the "perhaps this would be of use to you" thing and gifted me rifling even. if i have a crush on any leader it's gus. i dunno why, it's not his looks. i just like him
. don't tell hubby. or alex.
I love seeing Tokugawa next door. Since he doesn't trade with anyone and stays isolated, he typically falls behind quick. Whenever I see Japan, I see another few cities for my growing empire.
i like him because he doesn't trade, but not because i plan to take over his cities. if i meet him early on, and not on immortal/deity, life is grand. i'm beelining to alphabet anyway and i get to gift him techs. he gets to pleased, then friendly, and i get to use him as a shield. i'll gift him good techs if i need to, because i flat out know he won't trade them to anyone unless he's friendly with them, and fat chance of that. he's come in handy quite a few times.
play w/ random personalities on for more interesting/unpredictable game play.
i did that once, for an event type game where several of us started from the same save and compared our finished game, those are fun. it was quite odd, most of them i were mysterious. but qin was one of my next door neighbors and i realized early on that he had gandhi's personality. that kind of disappointed me, that i know gandhi so well i could recognize him in disguise! but it kinda figures, gandhi's really not like everybody else.
The others are ok as if you are weak you know they will come after you so if you build some military they are xp farms for great generals.
