Well, ain't that just sneaky!

[NewWaver]

I was playing as Germany, and I'd just made war with Spain. My forces were reasonably small, so I tried to get France against them as well.

The French didn't want to form a military alliance against them, so I tried to add a couple technologies. Still wasn't interested.

Then I got a little curious (perhaps desperate, you choose). I wanted to see what would happen if I offered my 'only' supply of iron. They accepted!

You may think that's a rough sacrifice to make (especially when I was in the medieval stage of the game), but it doesn't stop there...

As soon as France was at war with Spain, I pillaged the road to my iron supply, and later rebuilding it! This causing a war between the two, using a trick bribe.

Only one loss came of it though. The incense supply the French gave me was cut off at the same time as the iron. But that can be helped, no sweat.

 

[Spike59]

You took a rep hit by doing that. The AI frowns on that sort of behavior. It will be harder to put deals together in the future. You take a rep hit if a deal like that is cancelled through no fault of your own. Sometimes though, you just need to get through the next few turns and let the future take care of itself.

 

[RegentMan]

Purposely making deals when you know you're going to break them is just wrong. You are free to play your own way, but I hope others do not. Now that your military alliance with France is broken, she can make peace ASAP and it'll be back to normal, but you will have a blackened reputation.

 

[TheNiceOne]

It close to an exploit, but it guarantees you that for the rest of the game, no civ will accept gpt, resources or luxuries from you as a payment for MAs, techs or gold. Whether it's worth it is up to you.

Another solution which is much less exploitive, and which I prefer is to make an MPP with France instead of an MA, and make the MPP immediately before the war starts. An MPP will generally be much cheaper, maybe even free, and will force France into to war on your side. The downside is that for the next 20 turns you can be drawn into other wars that France enters, so you must be careful.

In my current game (deity, archipelago) I was spread around many islands. Suddenly Babylon, the game leader sent lots of ships into my islands and unloaded military units, but as usual didn't declare war (something they would do with an attack next turn).
Seeing that a war was imminent, I contacted the two other biggest civs and got MPPs for free with both, before demanding that the Babylonians leaved, which resulted in a declaration of war. I got the MPPs for free, but MAs against Babylon would have been very costly if possible at all since the two other civs had trades going on with Babylon.

 

[Bouchehog]

Your point about the MPPs is a very good one. Not only are they usually far cheaper and easier to get, but furthermore you won't take any reputation hit by inciting another to go to war.

However I totally disagree that breaking gpt agreements is an exploit. As with abusing ROP agreements, it is merely a tactic - and one that you use at your peril given the ramifications. I've even seen the computer break both of these agreements (you have to really piss them off though). As far as I can see the only real exploit is using a ROP agreement to position all your forces in perfect striking positions and even this can be justified given that you can only do it once. You might as well argue that using nukes is an exploit because the computer is reticent to use them first, they're extremely powerful and give a huge reputation hit.

New Waver, your tactic was perfectly valid and in some circumstances I'd have done it myself, but as TheNiceOne says - there are better ways of achieving the same effect here.

P.S. I'm not stalking you TNO, honest!

 

[morkaphi]

The game makes you pay (sometimes even when you're at fault) by not allowing you to have future gpt deals, if the trade route gets broken. As TNO said, it's all up to the player's decision. IMHO, such a trick is not worth it, as not being able to trade gpt turns is too big a penalty, especially when I rarely have that kind of cash to buy techs at higher level games.

Well, I may consider doing what NewWaver suggests only if we're talking about uranium instead of iron.