What am I doing wrong!!!!!!

[Polisurgist]

This hasn't happened to me once, I'm afraid. Only when I'm pursuing domination victory they declare wars in self-defense or something like that, but they just smile and idle around when they could destroy my CS allies...

Just happened to me in the first game I'd been trying for diplo on Immortal. They didn't get too far, though, since I had already kind of screwed everyone's army via the WC...I let Standing Army Tax pass because I was the only one who could afford the maintenance, then repealed it in the next session, leaving me with a military advantage they couldn't make up for.

 

[JustinianIV]

Just happened to me in the first game I'd been trying for diplo on Immortal. They didn't get too far, though, since I had already kind of screwed everyone's army via the WC...I let Standing Army Tax pass because I was the only one who could afford the maintenance, then repealed it in the next session, leaving me with a military advantage they couldn't make up for.

You sly dog! Might try that my next war-mongering game.

 

[Civert]

Civert: There's an easy solution to that... just DoW the turn before the critical vote, particularly if it's the one that you'll win on.

I couldn't have won on that turn, I was just trying to keep him from winning.

DoW would not prevent that.

It was probably inevitable anyway since he had 12,000 gold to my 4,000.

Attrition would have got me at some point.

 

[Polisurgist]

You sly dog! Might try that my next war-mongering game.

I actually left out a key part of the tactic: I let the tax pass because the only other large army in the game was Shaka's and he was riding close to 0 GPT while I was making upwards of 500. The tax would hurt me, but it would ruin him, so I let it happen, then took my time conquering him (two wars, with just enough time for the peace treaty in between). Once I'd taken him out, the rest of the AI civs thought (knew) I was a warmonger, but I controlled more than half the world and virtually all of the delegates to the WC and could basically do what I wanted.