As far as trust and hatred goes, the enemy civs think short term and are very simplistic (In other words, they will not consider such abstract things as how good a start you got). They will forget repeated backtabbings if you give them enough time, will never consider the way which you have treated third parties when they are judging your character, and will never trust further than they can throw you.
When more powerful than you, enemy civs will always become hostile. The stronger, the more hostile. This is regardless of how you have treated them or how "nice" they are.
When about the same strength as you, enemy civs will always start out with threats. I found it is quite difficult to convince such civs into submission, as they are playing the same game, trying to get the edge on you. As long as neither of you backs down, the stalemate of threats can only continue or escalate into war. If you are trying to get peace, then you are in luck if your opponent is peaceful and will probably able to establish peace. If your opponent is particularily unfriendly (mongols, russians...), then you should prepare for war. War *will* occur, it's just a matter of when. Forget trying to threaten them; instead work for peace (hopelessly) while building your armies for war. Another thing to try is taking *something* from them. This can either have the effect of them noticing your power, which can convince them to give in to you, or make them hate you, depending on their temper and government type. A good pre-emptive strike also has the possibility of making them substantially weaker than you, essentially winning the war for you in advance, causing them to concede defeat and give in to your threats.
As for weaker civs, the best thing you can do is to simply absorb them. In fact, as my personal high score board can testify, rampant militarism is the most effective civ1 strategy. However, it is usually possible to coerce smaller civs. I found this is most useful during the early stages of the game. For example...
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All of the civs are evenly matched, each with exactly 2 cities and armies which have no defensive capability. However, the game ranks each civ based on its power rating, and gives the ranking order to the AI's. Your civ has been ranked most powerful, and your nearest neighbour has been ranked least powerful, although the difference between your two civs is not noticable. Neither of you is properly defended against a simple attack, and yet neither has the military resources required to launch even a simple attack. In this case, you should threaten them. They think you are more powerful than you are, so take advantage of it. You will probably be able to enjoy generous donations from them for a long time. Be careful, however, because a slight shift in power followed by one of your routine threats could produce a dangerous enemy.
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Power information can be determined in 3 main ways:
1. Cheat. The computer players all have constant and ready access to the power ratings of all civs, so there is *limited* justification in cheating to get this information. Press shift-56 (if you have version 1) and then f8 to get the powergraph showing who is more powerful and by how much. If you want to stay relatively honourable, immediately press shift-56 again upon exiting the powergraph to avoid seeing the map.
2. Wait for an historian to tell you. One of the things they report on is power. If you are lucky, they will tell you the order, showing how powerful you are with respect to your neighbours.
3. Count their advisors. This is the best method. When in a parlay with an enemy leader, the number of advisors standing behind the enemy leader will represent their power:
4 advisors: most powerful
3 advisors: moderately powerful
2 advisors: moderately weak
1 advisor: weakest
You should always pay attention to their number of advisors when parlaying, especially during the early parts of the game.
Now, you asked about inciting the russians to war... This is part of a larger problem in civ of causing wars while a democracy/republic. My favorite way to solve it, of course, is to have the pyramids built so you can easily switch to another government to initiate a conflict and then switch right back. Refusing to pay bribes also works, but only if the other civ is more powerful than you. My guess is that in your game you were actually much more powerful than you thought, and the Russians were intimidated by you.
A third strategy, and a useful one, is to make yourself weaker than your opponent. I know this sounds like suicide, but it actually works...
Firstly, establish a peace treaty. You must do this immediately before you continue the rest of the plan. With a fresh or renewed treaty on the table, your opponent will be unwilling to take advantage of your future temporary weakness.
Secondly, disband all unnecessary military units. That is, all except your main city defensive units, 1 or 2 basic transport ships, plus of course your settlers/diplomats/caravans. This has the immediate effect of dropping your power rating, which is what the enemy civs look at. The power rating is based on the combined attack, defense, and movement capabilities of all of your units. By disbanding all unnecessary or offensive units (and ALL nukes), you can greatly bring your power rating down, which makes your opponent want to prey on you.
Now that you have made yourself weak, you must increase your strength again, but this time in areas which are not measurable to your opponent. Build city walls in all major cities, even ones where you did not intend to build them. Cities walls triple defense in a city, making it virtually invincible to Armor attacks, and most other units which do not fire right through city walls. Also, concentrate on building up your cities. Give factories and similar buildings priority, perhaps even going so far as to research a few more techs quickly to get the technology for power plants or something. Second, focus on marketplaces and banks. The extra city walls cost a lot of money to maintain, and having cash around is handy for other purposes as well, like quickly replacing lost defensive units... and of course diplomats. Build a supply of diplomats, about a dozen or so. They are useful, and they have very low power ratings, so you appear weak if you have them.
In the next phase, you just wait. Wait for them to attack you. And I mean ACTUALLY attack you, not just approach you. Wait until they strike before rebuilding your military. In the meantime, continue to hone the areas emphasized in the last step, but add some longer term goals, like developing the technology to build SDI defenses, and better city improvements.
Once they attack, take advantage of all of the improvements you made, switching all your cities back to restoring your military. Launch an attack with all of your diplomats, sabotaging (free), and bribing offensive units. Remember that units that are further from home are cheaper. You may even want to buy a key city.
In the event that they do not attack within 5-10 turns, send a diplomat to them. Hopefully they will have some new threats you can turn down to catalyze the process. If they still won't go to war with you, then sit back and count your winnings, because they will probably NEVER attack you. You can either race them for the space ship (which you should be able to win easily, because you are more stronger, and they spend too much resources on military, whereas you spend almost none), or you can switch to a communist government, build a few nukes and waste them, because they won't be much of a challenge.
Oops... this post was way too long. I'm almost late for class.
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