Whenever I go to war all the other civs end up ganging up on me.

[alwayswarring]

Hi,
I've played Civ3 for 20 years and have just discovered this place!
I play at demi-god level on a standard screen size and mostly play as a military civ.
My question is, whenever I either start a war or tell someone to leave my land and they declare war on me, the other civstend to suddenly gang up on me. This mostly seems to happen in the early game.
Can someone explain this and how to avoid it? Thanks.

 

[justanick]

The best way is to be on the side that gangs up against an enemy and not on the wrong side of it. You need embassies. Shape the diplomatic landscape to meet your needs.

Generally speaking some aggressiveness of AI is expected at demigod. And if you are lacking in military, AI may not hestitate to remind you of your (perceived) weakness.

 

[Lanzelot]

• Make embassies
• Sign Right of Passages
• Sign Military Alliances
• Trade
• And finally, have a strong military...

Mutual Protection Pacts can be good in certain situations, e.g. for tricking someone to join a war on your side, but they can be a double-edged sword and drag you into wars that you don't want...

 

[Fergei]

In addition to the suggestions above, maybe try to pick a moment when third party Civs that would worry you have their own other wars that are preoccupying them.

Or pick your wars later in the game when you are at less of a tech deficit and can better compete with your enemy to forge alliances with third parties. If you declare war and have little to offer third parties for an alliance then your opponent can probably recruit them.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Agree with what the others have posted. Some additional information:
Your military advisor (screen F3) tends to value the offense / attack number more than defense. The AI are using the same logic, to assess your strength/weakness. Consider building a some archers, rather than lots of spearmen, for your early military. Swords are great, once you have iron hooked up.

As @Lanzelot , consider military alliances of your own. This will help you bribe / enlist other AI to fight the AI who are starting to fight you, while keeping them from being drawn into a military alliance against you. A few prerequisites:

• Discover Writing, so that you can establish embassies with your potential allies
• Spend the gold to actually establish those embassies
• Try trading techs so that you have something to bribe the AI with. In the early game on Demigod, they will research faster than you will, so you need to use diplomacy to your advantage
• If you have a luxury hooked up, and can trade it, that can be another way to get an AI to sign a military alliance with you

A good situation would be where you are invading / declaring on your neighbor (say, to your east) and you can bring in an ally on the other side (say, on the enemy's east). Then your target will be dividing its forces, fighting a two front war. If you sign a military alliance, are having some success, be sure not to offer a peace deal to the victim -- or accept a peace offer from the victim -- before the alliance expires. That will damage your trade reputation with other AI and make your diplomacy harder. If your ally makes peace first, that's OK; they have broken the alliance, so you can finish your invasion/campaign the way you want to.

 

[Fergei]

On a related note, today I had a weak Sumerian AI that had just lost its capital and 2nd city to the AI Eyptians, and was still at war. They have four or so cities left and are not totally irrelevant. The Mongols then declare war on me and I am scrambling for allies. Nobody is interested because I am weaker than the Mongols on every metric except land size (I effectively lost the game).

So I approach the weak, losing Sumerians merely to experiment. Not only will they ally with me against the Mongols (and declare war on them to get a war on two fronts) but for no reason they will pay me a 50 gold lump sum and 10 gold per turn for the priviledge of joining me on a swift journey to Valhalla.

The point is, sometimes the AI will want an alliance so desperately that they will bankrupt themselves and embrace certain death just for the chance to join a war. I have never seen them so desperate as my example above, and that is with the lowest aggression Sumerians (at least in my settings). No wonder we get dogpiles so often.

 

[justanick]

Weaker AIs are usually cheaper to buy into a war. If you do that first, then the stronger civs are cheaper to get into a war as well. So you should work your way up the latter in making every so far neutral party join your war.

It is easy to test this idea in the Napoleon Scenario of Conquests.

 

[SebastianP]

I experienced the same thing over and over again until I started working with embassies and military alliances and mutual protection pacts. (I used to completely negate that before) When at war with a civ, they usually try to lure everybody else into fighting you otherwise - as you experienced.

I also tend to pick one or two neighbouring civs that I gift things to keep them polite or gracious towards me (if my own resources allow). My hope is that will make them less likely to backstab me. Not sure if that works or not, maybe somebody else has more info as to whether there really is a "concept of friendship" in Civ III.

 

[Fergei]

I experienced the same thing over and over again until I started working with embassies and military alliances and mutual protection pacts. (I used to completely negate that before) When at war with a civ, they usually try to lure everybody else into fighting you otherwise - as you experienced.

I also tend to pick one or two neighbouring civs that I gift things to keep them polite or gracious towards me (if my own resources allow). My hope is that will make them less likely to backstab me. Not sure if that works or not, maybe somebody else has more info as to whether there really is a "concept of friendship" in Civ III.

I have not tested it properly, but when I lose a game (usually by cutting corners with my military) and give up after being attacked, I will reload an autosave game and see what it would take to avoid being attacked, so that I can learn for the future.

Often, nothing can be done, maybe because they have disliked you for too long. But other times gifting a resource or luxury and say 5 gold per turn can be enough for them to avoid declaring war even though they have started marching their doomstack towards you. Sometimes, replaying a few turns they will immediately declare war on someone else instead.

I only learnt this recently so now, as you suggest, I focus on key neighbours I am nervous about and ensure I have RoP with them, even if I am paying GPT to maintain the RoP. If I can keep an RoP going for day 80 turns the AI seems to really start to tolerate my existence. If I am extremely nervous about them I will gift a luxury or resource. If I am terrified I will gift a resource even if it denies myself that same resource (e.g. my last horses).

The downside is if a doomstack appears on your territory it is easy to panic and throw out a generous gift, only for the doomstack to serenely march past you and attack a Civ on your other border. I can bankrupt myself pacifying someone who had no intention of attacking me.

Its a part of the game I think works well and has a fair bit of unpredictability.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Early in the game, allowing one's neighbors to have an ROP can help keep them peaceful. I have watched an AI march through my territory (with some of my units shadowing them) on the way to attack another AI.

I've also been burned -- later in the game -- where an AI abused an ROP, used my railroads, and conquered one of my core cities that I had left undefended. Lesson learned, never again. Since I tend not to have garrisons in cities that are far from a border or coastline, I also quietly ... when they expire... revoke any ROP that I have with AI when railroads come online. By that time, I've built up my military and conducted my own invasions, so they don't see me as weak.

 

[SebastianP]

Do relations between certain nations receive hard-coded negative effects ? Sometimes I feel certain civs just seem to "hate me" for no apparent reason and despite me trying hard to befriend them (with no luck). I wonder if there's some civs simply being incompatible with each other? Since Civ 3 knows a "cultural linked" concept - will the English always hate me playing as the Germans? Will the Americans tend to come after me if I play the Iroquois?

 

[justanick]

No, you can be friends with anyone. The English will actually prefer other european tribes like the Germans. Being in the same government helps. There is an article detailing it in depth.

AI attitude

I spent a few weeks with an unpatched version of PTW and no internet access (to dowload the patch), so I decided to spend some of that time testing AI attitudes. This test was with the 1.01 version of PTW, so there might be a possibility that some of this was changed in a patch, but most likely...

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