War and Diplomacy

[stoots]

I'm looking for some tips on how to handle diplomacy a bit better.
I play Monarch and have issues getting a win via Domination. (culture & space are pretty straight forward)

Its the Apostolic Palace thats giving me trouble.
Useing the common religion and having to accept them forcing peace.
Or my own religion and sturggling to keep people above cautious and end up facing a battle on 4 fronts and get bogged down and end up loseing.

 

[Gnarfflinger]

With the Apostolic palace, Defy anything serious, oppose anything else you don't like. If you get an unwanted peace treaty, wait your 10 turns then invade again, with more fresh units. Eventually you'll be the biggest nation with the religion, and may eventually control the AP, so you control what they vote on...

 

[stoots]

You just put up with getting peace called seemingly 10 to 20 turns after you declair war?
It just seemed to slow me down somewhat...

 

[Carabodes]

Keep in mind: Every time you defy a resolution, you get 5-"The world considers you a villain!" in every city that has the AP religion. That on top of war weariness can be really tough!
(It can be used against the enemy though , if you have control of the AP and make a mental note on which resolution they are defying, you go for that resolution in every election and watch their 5 adding up.)

NOTE: I don't play with 3.13 because of OOS-problems in multiplayer, I understand that 3.13 made some changes to the AP, so maybe the following advices are no good with 3.13. Hopefully people knowing 3.13 can jump in and comment/correct the advices.

My ways of dealing with the AP:
1. Build it myself, and spread my state religion to all my cities as they are founded/captured. That usually keeps me as president and thus in control of the resolutions.

2. If I don't build the AP, I keep an eye out for who did, and which religion the AP has.

2. a) If I have that religion, I spread it to all my cities and adapt it as my state religion, which makes me a full member with the possibility to be elected as president.

2. b) If I'm then not elected president, I'll vote "no" or "abstain" rather than defying (for defying it has to be something realy important, I've yet to find anything important enough to be worth the 5).

2. c) If I do not have the religion of the AP, or I don't have enough votes (as a full member) to be elected president, I declare war on the owner of the AP asap. That owner becomes my no. 1 priority victim, heading straight for the AP city. (During that war, I may have to live with the occasional 10-turn-peace. ) Once AP is under my control, I spread the AP religion to all my cities, and adopt its religion as my SR. That normally does the trick of making me president, and the rest of the game (untill Mass Media) I can enjoy war or peace to my liking, never again having to worry about the silly votes.

3. And if I then spread the AP religion to all the other civs (one city each is enough), I might even get the diplo win. Cheesey it may be, but since the AP is there, we have to live with it

EDIT: If I never get control of the AP, I gift/sell Mass Media to the owner asap, to make the AP obsolete.

 

[mice]

The best way to avoid problems is to build it yourself. It's a sidetrack, but you can forget about giving back any cities. Make sure you build it when you are in a religion that you have a lot of cites of, and they have very few or none of. Then you can decide who's on your side by sending them a missionary if you want to.

Make use of the two hammer bonus for AP religion buildings too, and deprive the AI of it .

Oracle slingshot to Theology, badda bing. It's a good base for a domination game because you also have early theocracy.